Lauren Rouleau of ReganBooks just sent me an email asking if I would like a
review copy of These
Things I Wish, the new book from Lee Pitts. ReganBooks has taken a popular
internet meme, which
has already been published in 1995 and in 2000 as part of longer books, and
put it between hard covers, with illustrations, for $14.95 – or $9.72
at Amazon.
Ms Rouleau calls These Things I Wish an "essay", which might be pushing
it for something which is precisely 464 words long. But she has somehow managed
to stretch it out into a 64-page book, so maybe that alone gives it fully-fledged
essay status. OK, I’ll do the maths for you. The book is 7.25 words per page,
on average. At that rate, this blog entry would take up 24 pages if you printed
it.
Who said publishing is hard? All you need to do is take a much-forwarded email,
print it, and sell it. It’s true, Judith Regan is some kind of genius.