Only three more days until Turkey Day! Only three more days until the 2023 Turkey Awards!
- RIP Dame Antonia Duffy, better known as A.S. Byatt. She's far better known in the US for a filmed adaptation of one of her densely-layered novels than for the novels themselves, which is rather a shame.
- On the other hand, if you really want to understand why so much utter crap gets published (definitely not including Byatt's works!), and why the decisions made in the New York City-centered part of publishing are so divorced from "the products," just take a look at a recent "salary survey" published in PW, purportedly covering 2022. Leaving aside for the moment the problems with "salary surveys," the table two-thirds of the way or so down the page, captioned "Median 2022 Total Compensation," is highly revealing. Jobs in editorial are paid less than management, which is only to be expected; but also less than those handling "rights" or "sales/marketing." That is, those responsible for actually selecting and working with the product make less than those selling it… or reselling parts of it. Shocking, I know.
- That's far less disturbing than profiteering on data-scraping of military members and their families. But not at all shocking: Ethics among data brokers are… mythological at best.
- That, in turn, is less disturbing than 21st-century COINTELPRO… in Blighty. Which is exactly what everyone over there needs to be thinking about when they've got a national election coming up next year, too.