What We Can All Learn from Book Beast
11 Feb
I’m generally not one for sudden outbursts of digital enthusiasm, but I’ll say this:
Hooray for Tina Brown!
With newspapers cutting back, she is cutting up? with Book Beast, the new Daily Beast book site. If you haven’t checked it out, I encourage you to give it a look.
Here’s what I took away:
“Long tail” mentality
The “Rediscovery” tag says it all. Thanks to the persistence of the web, there is hope even for obscure, dead Norwegian novelists. That thing you wrote only dies the day you give up on it.
Video saved the literary star
The conventional wisdom says that books and TV are an awkward match. But books and Web video work surprisingly well. Maybe it’s the size of the image. Maybe it’s the fact that you can showcase Chuck Klosterman, John Grisham, David Denby and James Baldwin all in one clickable party strip. Either way, if you’re an author you need to get on board.
Art + Commerce + Whatever = fine by most
There is no reason why serious criticism, service-oriented reviews, profiles, features, gossip, scandal and publishing news all can’t inhabit the same page. While you always want to stay focused, you’re also freer than you ever have been. So go mix that sh*t up, yeah?
Looks great! In general sensibility? tone? (also in look), reminds me of The Huffington Post. (Which I know isn’t everybody’s taste.) Whatever else it might be, the Daily Beast seems an honest — and clever — attempt to put an online-savvy wrapper on good writing, especially good writing about good reading.