September 14, 2009

no such thing as scarcity

Natasha Vargas-Cooper got a book deal out of her most excellent blog Footnotes of Mad Men (congrats!), and, predictably, the comment thread at The Awl is full of great action, including this bit from Choire:

I think most hating on book deals – though there’s still plenty of valid book-deal-hating to do, believe me, and I intend to do some of it someday soon – has to do with the idea of scarcity. There isn’t such a thing, really. Right now, in this world? Absolutely anyone can sell a book, if they want to put up with the pain in the ass of producing said book, which, ugh, is a pain in the ass.

That lack of scarcity line – especially in the context of book production – is gonna stick with me for a while.