quote(s) of the day

"The thing that impresses me most about our editors is that they understand that it's not all about the book. It's about the money you can make from that book."

--Jennifer Bergstrom, publisher of
Simon Spotlight Entertainment,
an imprint of Simon and Schuster.

She was talking about the editors for the new imprint, who are targeting 18 to 35 year olds with a line of books that shovels on the pop culture.

I'm sure Ms. Bergstrom knows publishing, but not so much pop culture, for example, from the article:

"And Weezer is a ...?," Ms. Bergstrom asked.

"Band," the staff replied collectively, sounding as if it frequently had to finish such sentences.

Uh huh.

The article finishes up with yet a third wonderful quote from Bergstrom:

"...we usually know what we want to publish. It's then a matter of wrapping the right author and spokesperson around it."

Whatever happened to publishing books writers want to write and readers want to read?

I know, I'm an anachronism.

Flip of the page to: conversational reading