Thursday, September 10, 2009

Don't Blink!

In odd news, Quartet Press has announced that it is disbanding, after only starting up 2 or 3 months ago. The announcement, linked above, states:

For a variety of reasons large and small, Quartet Press has decided to discontinue operations. Sometimes, even with the best of intentions, a hard-working team, and the support of the community, things just don’t work out.

This is one of those times. It’s disappointing to all of us, but it’s reality and we will all move on. We are truly grateful to all of you who have wished us well.Your support and enthusiasm for our venture was humbling, and we hope you will not see our company’s disbanding as an indication that any of us doubt the viability of digital publishing. Far to the contrary — if nothing else, we have learned that the future of digital publishing, while overwhelmingly complex, will be bright indeed, and we will each be working toward that bright future via our individual efforts.


It launched as a "digital publishing house" with the following mission: Quartet Press was founded on shared principles to create a high-quality, community-centric, and reader- and author-friendly digital publishing house. They expected to publish their first digital titles in a romance imprint this fall.

The team was led by Don Linn, formerly of Taunton Press and also included Kassia Krozser of Booksquare.com; Kirk Biglione of Medialoper.com; and Kat Meyer, long-time book marketer for trade and academic presses.

I want to be clear that I am not celebrating, as a fan of the printed book, and in fact hope that all these folks land on their feet in this uncertain publishing world. Best of luck.

I am, however, celebrating the well-deserved public pillorying of ignorant South Carolina Republican Representative Joe Wilson, for his obnoxious heckling during President Obama's speech last night. I'm not blindly applauding all things Obama these days - because I'm too left rather than in anyway right, to be clear - but common decency should not be too much to ask of our elected officials. His apology ain't gonna cut it, either. Throw this man out of office - he's too childish and mentally unstable to have any power! And do *NOT* give him a book deal or I may have to leave publishing for good...

1 comment:

Paul said...

Joe Wilson from South Carolina, is just another good old boy where in the morning these married men preach to you that there should be prayer in our schools and in the evening they are on their cell phones setting up a date with their other women on the side, hypocrisy has been bred in. I am not surprised that he felt compel to yell like he was at some Friday night game. He is a hater not a debater like most of his side of the isle.