Author Crack

Just as timely as the NYT discovered such hip neighborhoods as Williamsburg or Smith St years after they became a scene, they're now showing their cutting edge by reporting on something all us in the industry have known for years. Checking your Amazon.com ranking is author crack. We've all heard the plaintive "What does it mean? Why am I only at 1200? How do they come up with these rankings? What if I buy 40 copies on Amazon at once?" The Amazon.com rankings are a double edged sword. They can act as a shiny lure, distracting the author from what's truly ahead of them OR spur them on to want more despite the fact that nobody wants to review them (or the reviews have been despicable). The immediate gratification is rewarding, sending that endorphic rush through the brain each time the number nudges slightly higher. I'd suggest a 12 step program for authors, but you know the meetings would degenerate into a "well, what was your ranking?"

-The Editor

Oh no they didn't...

We here at Slunch keep talking about our friends over at Gawker, but they've crossed the line in their article about a douchebag. "There is nobody dumber than publishing house publicists. They're the publicists who couldn't get jobs working as restaurant publicists," says Emily at Gawker. WTF? I am PUBLITRON and you will feel the power of my Vorpal Pen (snicker snackpants!), or in this case, my 12 pt Times New Roman font (not quite as catchy but you get the point). I know plenty of publicists who not only choose to work in one of the lowest paying industries this fair yet pricey city hosts, but are some of the most intelligent people I know with not only passion for the books (not product) that they work on, but a sheer brilliance to multitask at light speed and spin corn into gold better than Rumplestiltskin's lil' bitch. Now, in the comments board Emily did a bit of back peddling saying in her retraction "a lot of book publicists are GENIUSES doing the HOLY WORK of pushing books the RIGHT WAY" (her caps) which is a nice start, but she leaves the dumbass to genius ratio at 50/50. While I've known my fair share of idiots in the industry, and I've had a fair share of dumbass ideas myself (insert incriminating plan "B" here that would ruin my whole anonymous persona), there are a system of checks and balances to prevent the majority of idiotic ideas coming through the publicity bullshit pipeline (as long as you have a good director and co-workers to bounce ideas off of).

So what do I plan to do now? I'm going to quit book publicity and go work for a restaurant . Maybe some five star Chinese start-up place that serves General Tsao's Kitteh on a steaming pile of shit. I'll make it sound so good, Emily will want to be one of their first to try it.

-PUBLITRON HAS SPOKEN