About Me
- Russell Blackford
- Australian philosopher, literary critic, legal scholar, and professional writer. Based in Newcastle, NSW. My latest books are THE TYRANNY OF OPINION: CONFORMITY AND THE FUTURE OF LIBERALISM (2019); AT THE DAWN OF A GREAT TRANSITION: THE QUESTION OF RADICAL ENHANCEMENT (2021); and HOW WE BECAME POST-LIBERAL: THE RISE AND FALL OF TOLERATION (2024).
6 comments:
This is a little besides the point, but the term "metrosexual" is rather unfortunate. The metro- stem obviously derives from "metropolis", and is intended to reflect the origin and urbane character of the metrosexual trend or identity.
"Metropolis", however, means literally "mother city" or "mother state" in ancient Greek, the metro- stem meaning "mother". Therefore, "metrosexual" has a literal meaning that is identical to a certain American idiom, commonly employed as profanity.
Anyhoo....
Hm, I may check it out.
Why the bias against ebooks?
Kindle now allows copy and paste from e-books (in addition to search and the like). I love that feature and have bought e-book copies of books I own paper copies of just to take advantage of it.
Perhaps you might try the free PC version of Kindle? Then you would just be out the price of the e-book. I bought a Kindle reader but don't use it.
Being able to copy from ebooks and paste to word files on my computer is a delight.
I love e-book readers. I don't use the annotation and cut-and-paste features, I just like having several months' reading in a small, light package.
Admittedly, when I stepped on my last one, I realized that I had become too dependent on a single vulnerable piece of technology.
I now have two.
My prejudice against books published solely as e-books is just that the most reputable trade and academic publishers still don't (normally) operate that way. If there's only an e-book version and no print version, I tend to wonder whether this is basically a vanity press and in any event why the book didn't find a better publisher.
Hello,
Thanks very much for linking to my blog where I reviewed Metrosexy - you've sent an awful lot of readers my way!
Regarding e-books, I think more and more books will be published like that (basically by their writers). I don't think this is the same as vanity publishing - apart from anything else, it doesn't cost the writer/publisher. But mainly, it is because traditional publishers, large and small, are becoming ever more conservative with what they will publish. Large publishers want to ensure maximum profits; small publishers, or academic publishers, want you to write for little or nothing. That has been my own experience in recent years, anyway.
Regarding Metrosexy, I can't see what sort of publisher would put it out. I think it's a great idea for Mark to publish it himself, and take any profits that arise.
Sue
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