Sarah Hromack

If the blog-to-book phenomenon has done little for the book as a discrete object, we might consider its potential as a means of creating an experience economy in the publishing industry that does more than simply plop a few overstuffed sofas and a Starbucks in the lobby of Barnes and Noble—one that positions the book as a catalyst for the social encounters the Internet helps facilitate.

— This just in: Welcome to the Book Club, my piece from this month’s issue of the Brooklyn Rail is now online. It’s a follow-up to a bit I did earlier in the summer called In Print We Trust.

In Print We Trust →

“While media watchdogs fixate on the actual book deals—namely, on the dollar sum of the advance, as this is one form of online commerce that still amazes us—few pause to consider the books themselves. How strangely anachronistic is it (and yet, extraordinarily telling) that those who participate in perhaps the most monumental democratic exercise ever—and who do so daily, often for a living—would seek to tame the great, unbridled, immaterial beast that is the Internet with some high-gloss stock and two binding boards? How thoroughly odd it is that one would attempt to translate the particular digital reading experience of the Tumblr blog, or Twitter feed, or Facebook update into an analog one. What about the Kindle?”

Me, in the Brooklyn Rail, today.