Truth In Trivia

I've been catching up on my biz reading this week. Thought I'd share some of the more interesting tidbits with you.

Book Publishing

This is a $35 billion/year business. If that's true, why are there so many starving authors?

Stripped Clean Classics

New versions of old classics like Moby Dick and Vanity Fair, revised and slashed by a razor-wielding Sweeney Todd of an editor, have been produced for a British publisher. Why? So they're fast and easy to read - for a younger MTV attention-span audience, I presume. Oh, dear. Does that mean the new Moby Dick is Die-Hard on a whale? And Vanity Fair? One can only imagine how they've pared it down.

Write What You Know

You probably heard about this, but I thought it was worth repeating. In 2003 in Poland, Amok by Krystian Bala was published. It was about a murder victim whose body showed signs of torture and starvation, and the corpose had a noose around his neck. Obviously a policeman who was a reader thought it was amazing how similar the story was to the body of a businessman found in the Oder River in 2000.

Eventually, Bala was convicted of planning and directing the murder. It seems the man was having an affair with Bala's estranged wife. Or at least that's what Bala thought. Of course, his thinking was obviously flawed because he also apparently thought: "Why let a murder go to waste? It's book material."

Takeaway Truth

I guess truth really is stranger than fiction.