The Palace at Versailles

And despite all this, legacy publishers don't realize a revolution is afoot.

I think they're aware of it, but in an abstract way. I talk to a lot of people in the business, and when most of them talk about digital and the changes it's causing in the industry, you can tell they're imagining a future that's safely abstract and far off. Something you acknowledge in conversation, of course—you're not in denial, after all—but that fundamentally feels to you like theory. Because you're still having your Tuesday morning editorial meetings, right? And you just launched a new title that made the New York Times list, right? And signed that hot new author, right?

Sure, there are rumblings in the provinces, but at court in Versailles, the food is still delicious and the courtiers still accord deference appropriate to your rank. When you live at the palace at Versailles, the rumblings in the provinces always sound far away. Right up until the peasants are dragging you out of your bed in the middle of the night and setting fire to your throne.

Barry Eisler, Joe Konrath: Ebooks and Self-Publishing: A Conversation Between Authors

Painting:  Madame Adelaide, Louis XVI's Aunt (1787) by Adélaïde Labille-Guiard

The Art of Reading

I believed, and still do believe, that truth, is frequently of its own essence, superficial, and that, in many cases, the depth lies more in the abysses where we seek her, than in the actual situations wherein she may be found. Nature herself seemed to afford me corroboration of these ideas. In the contemplation of the heavenly bodies it struck me forcibly that I could not distinguish a star with nearly as much precision, when I gazed on it with earnest, direct and undeviating attention, as when I suffered my eye only to glance in its vicinity alone. I was not, of course, at that time aware that this apparent paradox was occasioned by the center of the visual area being less susceptible of feeble impressions of light than the exterior portions of the retina.

Edgar Allan Poe, The Unparalleled Adventures of One Hans Pfaal

Painting: Friedrich von Amerling (1803 - 1887), Austrian, Academic painter.

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