Tea at Trianon: Amazon and the Author

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Friday, February 5, 2016

Amazon and the Author

From Publishers Weekly:

In opening remarks, New America Foundation senior fellow and author Barry Lynn said these fears about Amazon are not easy to make public. Both he and Preston, who followed Lynn to talk about “Amazon and the Authors,” said some authors and editors refused to take part in the event because they worried about professional recriminations.

After Preston detailed some of “Amazon’s dirty tactics,” which include its 2014 dispute with Hachette over e-book pricing, lawyer, author, and past Authors Guild president Scott Turow sat in conversation with author and journalist Christopher Leonard. Turow joked that “Amazon has been very good for me,” but he’s involved in this fight because he believes in “an independent authorial class.”

The first panel, moderated by Harper’s magazine president and publisher John R. MacArthur, featured author and editor Frank Foer, Smashwords' Coker, author Susan Cheever, and William Morris Endeavor literary agent Eric Simonoff. Cheever said she's concerned that "business practices [by Amazon] have been harmful to the future of books.” Foer claimed that Amazon is "destroying the culture of book publishing." (Read more.)