They were the Pixar of their day, their first seven singles hit the “Billboard” Top Ten back when that meant something. But Steve Boone believes, despite being in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the Lovin’ Spoonful don’t get any respect. Musicians… The audience adores them, the businessmen deplore them, but without their tunes […]

This is why I hate the book business. There’s been a raft of publicity for William Deresiewicz’s book “Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite and the Way to a Meaningful Life” wherein the author decries the soft choices of today’s Ivy League graduates. But I can’t buy it. Oh, it began in “The […]

This is not about books. This is about corporations. And power. And the rights of not only artists, but individuals. There’s a fiction in America today that corporations are our friends. Amazon even pushes the paradigm by saying all its efforts are for us. Pitting writers against readers in a sideshow that deflects from the […]

ADVANCE PROMOTION IS DEAD Your anticipatory hype is forgotten in the endless tsunami of new data. It makes no sense to build anticipation, it just dissipates. Now you pounce when the story is hot. Radiohead started it, Beyonce improved upon it and now Michael Lewis is taking it to the book business. The new watchword […]