Photos of Celebrities Reading Books about Celebrities

The gallery, like Steve Martin reading Bob Dylan, care of Flavorwire.

Haagen-Dazs, Summer Fun, Tweets, and an E-Book

Huh? New York Daily News explains, here.

Italo Calvino's 14 Definitions of What Makes a Classic

The list, care of Brain Droppings.

From said list...

1. The classics are books which exercise a particular influence, both when they imprint themselves on our imagination as unforgettable, and when they hide in the layers of memory disguised as the individual's or the collective unconscious.
   
2. A classic is a book which with each rereading offers as much of a sense of discovery as the first reading.
   
3. A classic is a book which even when we read it for the first time gives the sense of rereading something we have read before.
   
4. A classic is a book which has never exhausted all it has to say to its readers.
   

100 Baddest Mother%#*ers in Comics

It's a book? Yes it is.

Madeline Goes to Hogwarts

Enjoy!

The Best 50 Shades of Grey Parodies

The list, care of the Huffington Post.

If "Reading Rainbow" did "Naked Lunch"

Reading Rainbow: Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs from Andre Perkowski on Vimeo.

Drunk Driver Ordered to Give Book Report

Some Biblical punishment has been meted out in South Carolina.

From a story in the New York Daily News...

“Biblical punishment” may conjure images of hellfire and plague, but for a South Carolina woman, it’s been scaled back a bit. Cassandra Tolley, who received eight years in prison and five on probation for driving under the influence, has also been ordered to read the Old Testament book of Job and write a report on it. 

Tolley has struggled with alcohol as a result of a troubled and abusive past, but attended church and declared herself a Christian in court, according to the Rock Hill Herald. Her pastor, Rev. Daggett Duncan, testified on her behalf, and will care for two of her three children while she serves out her sentence (her third will go with the father).

McSweeney's #4

Biblioklept relishes in McSweeney's Quarterly, issue #4. And why not?

Alice in Wonderland Pop-Up Book

Cool.

Poetry's Relationship to the Olympic Games

The New York Times examines it, here.

From the article...

Yet the relationship between poetry and the Olympics goes back to the very origins of the Games. In ancient Greece, literary events were an indispensable part of athletic festivals, where fully clothed writers could be as popular with the crowd as the buff athletes who strutted about in the nude, gleaming with olive oil. Spectators packing the sanctuary of Zeus sought perfection in both body and mind. Champion athletes commissioned great poets like Pindar to compose their victory odes, which were sung at lavish banquets by choruses of boys. (The refined cultural ambience could put contemporary opening ceremonies, with their parade of pop stars, to shame.) Philosophers and historians introduced cutting-edge work, while lesser-known poets set up stalls or orated from soapboxes. 

Criticism could be meted out brutally: when the Sicilian dictator Dionysius presented subpar poems in 384 B.C., disgusted sports fans beat him up and trashed his tent.

What Do You Get When You Put a Conservative and a Comedian in a Smelly RV?

The Book That Can't Wait

How to Become an Author, in 5 Incredibly Difficult Steps

The list, care of Cracked.

The Adventures of a Rare (And Not So Rare) Book Collector

Lev Grossman chats about his book collecting habits for Time Magazine.

From the piece...

I love rare books. Not that I own a lot of them, mind you. You couldn’t quite call me a rare-book collector. But I did once work in a rare-books library, and I wrote a novel about a rare book. And I was once married to a rare-books dealer. So I’ve checked off a few of the boxes anyway.

But the books I collect are mostly not all that rare. They don’t tend to have a lot of value, in the monetary sense, because I personally don’t have a lot of value in the monetary sense.

My specialty as a collector is books that almost have value. When I love a book, I don’t buy the first edition, because those have become incredibly expensive. But I might buy a beat-up copy of the second edition, third printing, which looks almost exactly the same as the first edition except that a couple of typos have been fixed. (In the rare book trade the little details that definitively identify a first edition are called “points.” My books are not strong on points.) It’s not glamorous, but it’s still satisfying, and it’s a hell of a lot cheaper.

And once in a while I have lucked into an actual first edition, just to make things interesting.

Tin Toy Bookmobiles

Fun.

The Legacy of William Faulkner

The great John Jeremiah Sullivan discusses it for the New York Times.

From the piece...

A poll of well over a hundred writers and critics, taken a few years back by Oxford American magazine, named William Faulkner’s “Absalom, Absalom!” the “greatest Southern novel ever written,” by a decisive margin — and the poll was conducted while looking back on a century in which a disproportionate number of the best American books were Southern — so to say that this novel requires no introduction is just to speak plainly.  

Of course, it’s the kind of book a person would put first in a poll like that. You can feel reasonably confident, in voting for it, that nobody quite fathoms it enough to question its achievement. Self-consciously ambitious and structurally complex (unintelligible, a subset of not unsophisticated readers has always maintained), “Absalom, Absalom!” partakes of what the critic Irving Howe called “a fearful impressiveness,” the sort that “comes when a writer has driven his vision to an extreme.” It may represent the closest American literature came to producing an analog for “Ulysses,” which influenced it deeply — each in its way is a provincial Modernist novel about a young man trying to awaken from history — and like “Ulysses,” it lives as a book more praised than read, or more esteemed than enjoyed. 

But good writers don’t look for impressedness in their readers — it’s at best another layer of distortion — and “greatness” can leave a book isolated in much the way it can a human being. (Surely a reason so many have turned away from “Ulysses” over the last near-hundred years is that they can’t read it without a suffocating sense of each word’s cultural importance and their duty to respond, a shame in that case, given how often Joyce was trying to be amusing.) A good writer wants from us — or has no right to ask more than — intelligence, good faith and time. A legitimate question to ask is, What happens with “Absalom, Absalom!” if we set aside its laurels and apply those things instead? What has Faulkner left us?

6 Basic Plot Conflicts in Literature

Your E-Book is Reading You

Digital-book publishers and retailers now know more about their readers than ever before. How that's changing the experience of reading.

From an article in the Wall Street Journal...

For centuries, reading has largely been a solitary and private act, an intimate exchange between the reader and the words on the page. But the rise of digital books has prompted a profound shift in the way we read, transforming the activity into something measurable and quasi-public. 

The major new players in e-book publishing—Amazon, Apple and Google—can easily track how far readers are getting in books, how long they spend reading them and which search terms they use to find books. Book apps for tablets like the iPad, Kindle Fire and Nook record how many times readers open the app and how much time they spend reading. Retailers and some publishers are beginning to sift through the data, gaining unprecedented insight into how people engage with books. 

Publishing has lagged far behind the rest of the entertainment industry when it comes to measuring consumers' tastes and habits. TV producers relentlessly test new shows through focus groups; movie studios run films through a battery of tests and retool them based on viewers' reactions. But in publishing, reader satisfaction has largely been gauged by sales data and reviews—metrics that offer a postmortem measure of success but can't shape or predict a hit. That's beginning to change as publishers and booksellers start to embrace big data, and more tech companies turn their sights on publishing.

 

The Pulp Science Fiction Covers of Jack Williamson

AbeBooks celebrates the book covers, here.

The Sound and the Fury...and the Color

To mark the 50th anniversary of his death, the Folio Society is printing Faulkner's 1929 novel the way he intended, with different colours marking chronological shifts in the story.

From a piece in the Guardian...

The four sections of the book, which tells of the disintegration of a southern family, move back and forth through time. Faulkner had hoped to use different colours of ink to mark the sometimes-confusing chronological shifts, writing on its publication in 1929: "I wish publishing was advanced enough to use colored ink ... I'll just have to save the idea until publishing grows up."

Instead, the Nobel prize-winning author had to be content with using italics to convey different periods in time, and what he called the "unbroken-surfaced confusion" of Benjy's narrative, the first section of the novel which is told from the perspective of an adult with the mind of a child. "If I could only get it printed the way it ought to be with different color types for the different times in Benjy's section recording the flow of events for him, it would make it simpler, probably. I don't reckon, though, it'll ever be printed that way, and this'll have to be the best, with the italics indicating the changes of events," said Faulkner.

Now, following a suggestion from a member, the Folio Society has worked with two Faulkner scholars, Stephen Ross and Noel Polk, for the past year to pin down the different time periods in the novel, and is publishing the first ever coloured-ink edition of The Sound and the Fury on Friday 6 July, to mark the 50th anniversary of the author's death.

The Erotic Diaries of Louisa May Alcott

Huh?

Yup. Zing - The 50 Shades of Louisa May.

From a piece on Galley Cat...

GC: Why did you want to bring erotica into Louisa May Alcott’s life?
 
LMA: The real Louisa May probably died a virgin, so she probably didn’t have much erotica in her life. Fifty Shades of Louisa May is an attempt to give her a second chance at sex. In it, Louisa May has many sexual encounters—though they end up being more hilarious than erotic, as is frequently the case in life and literature. But why not let Louisa May cut loose and have a little fun for once?

Lesser Known Titles by Famous Authors

A gallery, care of AbeBooks.

If You Love to Read

For the Reader Who Doesn't Want to Spill His Drink

Classic book cover coasters.

Shakespeare for the Smart Phone

There's a new iPad app that features 154 of Shakespeare's sonnets alongside filmed performances of those sonnets done by some theatrical and movie greats. Learn more about the app, here.

Redemption Through Reading

Four federal prisons in Brazil are trying an interesting pilot program on their inmates. Known as the “Redemption Through Reading” program, eligible prisoners (as decided by a specially-appointed judging panel) will be allowed to shorten their sentence by four days for every book they read, to a maximum 12 books per year – meaning a diligent, eligible prisoner could shave 48 days off a year’s incarceration.

AbeBooks has more, here, and a gallery of prison literature, here.

Cormac McCarthy Writes a Scene from Seinfeld

Enjoy!

Gandhi Archive at Auction

Booktryst revels in the stash that is expected to get nearly $1 million at auction.

From the post...

The archive was the possession of Hermann Kallenbach (1871-1945), a German Jew and successful architect originally from East Prussia who had settled in Johannesburg and was Gandhi's constant companion during the great man's last decade in South Africa. They met in 1904.

"He used to say to me often that when I was deserted by the whole world I would find him to be a true friend going with me, if need be, to the ends of the earth in search of Truth..." (M.K. Gandhi, March 25, 1945).

A Short History of the Great American Novel

We’ve been looking for one since the 1860s. Why?

From a piece on Slate...

The concept of the GAN seems to have been born in the late 1860s. In an 1868 The Nation essay, Civil War veteran John William DeForest—himself an aspiring GAN-ist—described the GAN as “the picture of the ordinary emotions and manners of American existence,” a work that painted “the American soul.” And what, precisely, did that soul entail? There was but one real—though unquestionably daunting—requirement: it had to be supremely national in breadth and scope. The Scarlet Letter—now a perennial presence on modern GAN lists—could never be GAN material, wrote DeForest. It was “full of acute spiritual analysis,” but was so focused on the ineffable that it had “only a vague consciousness of this life.” Its characters, DeForest complained, “are as probably natives of the furthest mountains of Cathay or of the moon as of the United States of America.” What an affront.

And so began a tradition that’s persisted as long as the search for the Great American Novel: The insistence that certain great American novelists fail to write in a strictly national vein, and so, cannot produce the GAN no matter how otherwise great their writing may be.

9 Books to Read for Independence Day

The list, care of the Daily Beast.

What Good Are Writer's Conferences?

They do good.

From an interview in the Huffington Post between Andre Dubus III and Gina Barreca...

Why are writing conferences important enough to take us away from writing?

Andre : I'm a big believer in the importance of writers' conferences. Many writers do not enroll in MFA programs, and most people who write know few others who do this strange, eccentric thing we do, which is to go to a quiet room every day and make things up with words.
The central gift of these conferences, it seems to me -- even beyond what is learned about craft -- is that it introduces one writer to another, and they can then keep the conversation going long after the conference is over. Helping to foster these connections is worth whatever time teaching or speaking at a conference demands from the visiting writer, especially now when -- thanks largely to Amazon and its predatory actions on bookstores and publishers -- the book itself seems imperiled.
It's not, of course; live theater has survived for hundreds of years and is still alive and well despite all of its flickering screen competitors. And the book, in one form or another, will live on, too. But each generation must have its passionate writers and readers for this to work, and that's the main reason why I show up at conferences.

Gina: Writing conferences make me nervous and excited in equal measure. I worry about everything from what to say to what to wear, and whether the students will profit from the experience. Like anything important, conferences offer the honor of giving you attention while demanding that you, in turn, give attention to others. I want to make sure I give the students something new and practical.
Finally, I wonder--always--whether I can afford the time to do this when I should be sitting at the desk and writing instead of talking to other people about writing.

Fireworks Posters

Enjoy!

Glamour Shots of 1800s Circus Freaks

Enjoy!

15 Famous Authors on Why They Write

The list, care of Flavorwire.

From said list...

Neil Gaiman
“The best thing about writing fiction is that moment where the story catches fire and comes to life on the page, and suddenly it all makes sense and you know what it’s about and why you’re doing it and what these people are saying and doing, and you get to feel like both the creator and the audience. Everything is suddenly both obvious and surprising… and it’s magic and wonderful and strange.”

Julian Barnes: My Life as a Bibliophile

From school prizes to writing his own novels, the author reflects on his lifelong bibliomania and explains why, despite e-readers and Amazon, he believes the physical book and bookshops will survive.

From a piece in the Guardian...

By now, I was beginning to view books as more than just utilitarian, sources of information, instruction, delight or titillation. First there was the excitement and meaning of possession. To own a certain book – one you had chosen yourself – was to define yourself. And that self-definition had to be protected, physically. So I would cover my favourite books (paperbacks, inevitably, out of financial constraint) with transparent Fablon. First, though, I would write my name – in a recently acquired italic hand, in blue ink, underlined with red – on the edge of the inside cover. The Fablon would then be cut and fitted so that it also protected the ownership signature. Some of these books – for instance, David Magarshack's Penguin translations of the Russian classics – are still on my shelves.

Self-definition was one kind of magic. And then I was slowly introduced to another kind: that of the old, the secondhand, the non-new book. I remember a line of Auden first editions in the glass-fronted bookcase of a neighbour: a man, moreover, who had actually known Auden decades previously, and even played cricket with him. These facts seemed to me astonishing.

Let's Go Camping!

AbeBooks celebrates camping in the great outdoors with vintage camping books, here.

Amanda Palmer - Graphic Novelist?

Indeed.

Listen to her getting interviewed on the Nerdist podcast, here.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning Sonnet Up for Auction

Learn more about the July 5th sale, here.

An Apprehension


IF all the gentlest-hearted friends I know
Concentred in one heart their gentleness,
That still grew gentler till its pulse was less
For life than pity,--I should yet be slow
To bring my own heart nakedly below
The palm of such a friend, that he should press
Motive, condition, means, appliances,

My false ideal joy and fickle woe,
Out full to light and knowledge; I should fear
Some plait between the brows, some rougher chime
In the free voice. O angels, let your flood
Of bitter scorn dash on me ! do ye hear
What I say who hear calmly all the time
This everlasting face to face with GOD ?

Top 10 Fairy Fictions

The list, care of the Guardian.

What Was It Like to Work at Playboy in the 1960s...as a Woman?

When it launched, Playboy was a literary power and a force for change. The magazine’s offices also happened to be an interesting place to work—for women. Jessica Francis Kane interviews her mother about life as a secretary in 1960s New York City, care of the Morning News.

From the piece...


JFK: What was the office environment like?
Mom: Sexual overtones were in the air, like breathing. It was the culture, not just at Playboy. Women were objects of desire, period. However, this was the office of a highly successful magazine and we were expected to work well and professionally and we all did. There were, as I remember, five of us, including the head secretary. We sat in a line at our desks in a large room and the ad men’s offices opened behind us. Each ad man had a small office, but with a window overlooking Park Avenue, a nice desk, chairs for visitors. We each worked for two or three ad men directly. There was flirting, innuendo, double entendre all the time, but rarely was it serious. It became serious only if the woman allowed it in the work place and this hardly ever happened. Not at Playboy while I was there, but certainly somewhere, and abortions were illegal. I knew one young woman who flew from New York City to Mexico for one.

JFK: How did people react when you told them you were a secretary at Playboy?
Mom: Men with double takes, truly, and undisguised curiosity. Women with a “You are kidding, how awful” attitude. I quickly changed their thinking. It was fun working there, Jessie, and fun seeing people’s reactions. There was another firm on our floor and we would sometimes meet those secretaries by the elevator and they would mumble and actually lower their eyes! We thought it was hysterical.

The Early Jobs of 24 Famous Writers

The list, care of Mental Floss.

From said list...


7. Ken Kesey was a voluntary participant in CIA psych tests. Mostly these involved being unwittingly dosed with LSD. The one element of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest based on his experiences in the lab (a.k.a., hallucinations): Dr. Broom.
8. J.D. Salinger was the entertainment director on a Swedish luxury liner.
9. Harlan Ellison claims that by the age of 18, he’d been a “tuna fisherman off the coast of Galveston, itinerant crop-picker down in New Orleans, hired gun for a wealthy neurotic, nitroglycerine truck driver in North Carolina, short order cook, cab driver, lithographer, book salesman, floorwalker in a department store, door-to-door brush salesman, and as a youngster, an actor in several productions at the Cleveland Play House.” It should be noted that he’s a guy who makes stuff up for a living, too.
10. Zane Grey was a dentist. He really, really hated it. When he married his wife Dolly, he closed the practice he’d been running for nine years to focus on his literary career. The couple (and his mother-in-law and sister-in-law) lived off of Dolly’s inheritance.

10 Best Midwest Literature Books

The list, care of Flavorwire.

Weather the Storm

The American Library Association has made an interesting and telling infographic about the hurt being put on our country's library system.

Little Free Libraries Gaining Steam

Neighbors, wanting to connect with each other with books, are creating little neighborhood libraries for themselves.

From a piece in the Los Angeles Times...

Using odds and ends of fiberboard and Douglas fir, the retired building contractor fashioned a hutch the size of a dollhouse. He gave it a pitched cedar-shingle roof capped with copper. The door, trimmed in bright red, opens to three shelves filled with books by Joyce Carol Oates, Tony Hillerman, James Michener and others. Below hangs a sign: "Take a book or bring a book or both."

In the half a year that Beggs' Little Free Library has perched on a post in front of his Sherman Oaks home, it has evolved into much more than a book exchange. It has turned strangers into friends and a sometimes impersonal neighborhood into a community. It has become a mini-town square, where people gather to discuss Sherlock Holmes, sustainability and genealogy.

"I met more neighbors in the first three weeks than in the previous 30 years," said Beggs, 76.

Why Does 50 Shades of Gray Turn Us On?

Fifty Shades of Grey is now the fastest selling paperback in history. Its success has generated a debate about sex, fantasy and the nature of desire.

From a story in the Guardian...

Last month the first novel in this series telling the story of Anastasia Steele and her obsessive love for a man with a predilection for bondage and domination became the fastest-selling paperback since records began and last week it also became the first ebook to sell more than one million copies. Yet its story pivots on the young heroine's sexual submission to Christian Grey, a millionaire she scarcely knows, who promptly introduces her to his favourite fetishes, as well as to the contents of his "Red Room of Pain".

Sadomasochism has always had its articulate evangelists, from the Marquis de Sade, the 18th-century French libertine and erotic novelist, to Kenneth Tynan, the Observer's illustrious theatre critic, who once argued that spanking was the path to emotional and intellectual freedom. Yet James has managed to get millions of average readers to consider the place of erotic pain in a relationship without even advancing an argument or pretending to any literary merit. The book is "my midlife crisis writ large", Erika Leonard, the middle-aged British woman behind the pseudonym EL James, has recently admitted, adding that she put "all my fantasies in there".

So has James created the latest commercial genre for our age – what the commentator India Knight has called "the porn version of cupcakes and Cath Kidston"? Or does her racy trilogy answer a deeper, unmet need among women readers?

To Lure Teens, Classics Get Bold New Looks

Will teenagers reading "Twilight" read "Emma" if the cover looks cool? Book publishers hope so.

From a piece in the New York Times...

The covers are intended to tap into the soaring popularity of the young-adult genre, the most robustly growing category in publishing. In the last decade, publishers have poured energy and resources into books for teenagers, releasing more titles each year. Bookstores have followed suit, creating and expanding special sections devoted to them.

After the “Twilight” books by Stephenie Meyer became a sensation, paranormal romances boomed. In the last several years, the “Hunger Games” trilogy has inspired dozens of dystopian novels.

Some of the redesigned jackets are clearly inspired by the “Twilight” series. HarperCollins released a cover for “Wuthering Heights” with a stark black background, a close-up of a red rose and an inscription that reads, “Bella & Edward’s favorite book.” (Critics sneered that it was a “Twilight” rip-off.)

A History of Manga

Popeye Heading Back to the Big Screen?

It looks that way, as a 3-D cartoon.

From a story on Variety...

"Hotel Transylvania" helmer Genndy Tartakovsky is attached to develop and direct "Popeye," Sony Pictures Animation's 3D take on the familiar sailor man.

Avi and Ari Arad will produce under their Arad Productions banner with Sony Pictures Animation. As of November, scribes David Ronn and Jay Scherick were attached to pen the script.

Popeye, the spinach-loving seaman who first appeared in the "Thimble Theater" comicstrip in 1929, spawned numerous spin-offs, including one of the longest-running series of animated shorts and Robert Altman's 1980 film starring Robin Williams.

10 Early Radical Poets

The list, care of Flavorwire.

From said list...


Qiu Jin (1875-1907)
Revolutionary Chinese heroine, feminist, and activist Qiu Jin founded a radical women’s journal, attempted to overthrow the Qing Dynasty, and rallied for women’s rights to marry freely and receive an education. After her own experiences with food binding, she even attempted to ban the ancient, sadistic practice. Her poems are imbued with the same spirit of defiance and empowerment, evident in lines like: “Don’t tell me women are not the stuff of heroes / I alone rode over the East Sea’s winds for ten thousand leagues.”

What's Happening Today from the Laid Off Staff of Good Magazine?

Tomorrow Magazine.

Is Philosophy Literature?

That was the question recently posed in the New York Times.

From the story...


Is philosophy literature? Do people read philosophy for pleasure? Of course it is, and of course they do.

People savor the aphorisms of Nietzsche, the essays of Schopenhauer, the philosophical novels of Sartre. They read the dialogues of Plato (and they would doubtless read the dialogues of Aristotle too, had Western civilization not been so careless as to mislay them). Some even claim to enjoy the more daunting treatises in the philosophical canon. “When I have a leisure moment, you will generally find me curled up with Spinoza’s latest,” Bertie Wooster swankily announces in one of P.G. Wodehouse’s “Jeeves” novels.

Now let me narrow my query: Does anybody read analytic philosophy for pleasure? Is this kind of philosophy literature? Here you might say, “Certainly not!” Or you might say, “What the heck is analytic philosophy?”

The Confusing Library

Branch Library

Branch Library

I wish I could find that skinny, long-beaked boy
      who perched in the branches of the old branch library.
He spent the Sabbath flying between the wobbly stacks
        and the flimsy wooden tables on the second floor,
pecking at nuts, nesting in broken spines, scratching
        notes under his own corner patch of sky.
I’d give anything to find that birdy boy again
        bursting out into the dusky blue afternoon
with his satchel of scrawls and scribbles,
        radiating heat, singing with joy.
.

by Edward Hirsch

Buying Stock in Moleskin?

Now's your chance.

From a piece on Reuters...


Italian notebook maker Moleskine plans to list in Milan this year and has hired investment banks to run the sale of stock in the company, whose thread-bound jotters are based on originals favored by the likes of Vincent Van Gogh and Ernest Hemingway.

Goldman Sachs, Mediobanca and UBS will run the offering for majority-owner Syntegra Capital, aiming to add to the list of upmarket brands which have lured investors in defiance of generally tough stock market conditions.

Private equity firm Syntegra plans to file listing documents for Moleskine, in which it owns a 68 percent stake, in early September and is aiming for a market debut in the fourth quarter, said Marco Ariello, a partner at Syntegra.

Salman Rushdie Fatwa - the Video Game?

For reals.

Why Porn and Journalism Have the Same Big Problem

The problem? Why pay for something you can get for free?

From an article in the Atlantic...


Yikes. Comparing your business plan to Apple is pretty standard corporate trope these days, but in the case of porn, the iTunes analogy is hopelessly inapt. Here's the problem: Pornography is mostly a commodity product. Music is not. People have favorite bands and expect a certain level of production value in their music. Bruce Springsteen devotees aren't just as happy listening to Bob Seger or an a cappella rendition of "Born In the USA." It's at least a little rarer to have favorite porn stars. And the audiences aren't demonstrably sensitive to production values. Worse yet, the tools for do-it-yourself filming are improving every time Apple upgrades the iPhone's video camera.  

In other words, convincing people to pay for to watch sex is a much taller task these days than getting them to pay for a song. 

In fact, it's a bit like getting them to pay for a newspaper. Like the porn studios, big media companies have seen their own profits plummet in the face of free aggregators, amateur bloggers, and the nearly limitless competition supplied by the web. Unsurprisingly, micropayments have been a hot topic in the news industry over the past few years. But so far, they haven't really taken off.