I saw these today on tumblr, but they absolutely need reposting here - if anybody can tell me where they originally come from, I'll hook up the links.

Those are some damn fine nibs right there. The simple things in life are always the best.

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I thought I had said my piece on writing for the time being in yesterday's post but just to make sure I had my facts straight, I mailed my friend Gary Smailes at Bubblecow (go see what they can do for you if you're the sort that is likely to be admiring those nibs posted above) to check. I was pretty close to the mark, but Gary filled me in on a few things that I hadn't taken into account, once you read them, you'll see why there's more than a little life left in print publishing. I'll paste the entire email in here:

This makes perfect sense. A UK mid-list writer will be selling 5000-ish books a year. But you are missing something from the equation:

1. The advance - ranges from 5K upwards. The writer gets this no matter what.

2. Foreign rights sales - It not uncommon for writers to get 10K per country. Three or four countries and you are laughing.

3. Media options - A film option will sell for 5k+. The company get the rights for about a year and then they revert back to the writer. Screenplay writers get anywhere from 30-100K for a film, the novel writer often gets a cut. Plus the writer will get a 5-10% cut of the film's budget. It is not uncommon for a film budget to be 10 million +

If that doesn't change the way you want to look at the industry, I don't know what will. We're all aware that there are hard times right now but maybe what it comes down to is this: If somebody took away all digital books tomorrow and told me I would never read one again, would it bother me? Not in the slightest. I don't think I would miss them one iota - and if you track back through the blog, you'll find that I have tried a couple of times to reduce my stock-piling of books into a neat digital library, but it's not happening at all. Conversely, if print books disappeared, I would indeed be very sad. Where would I hang out? What would I spend my money on? Would I still love great book cover art as much as I do now?

I don't have any answers that's for sure - but you know what's more important here? I don't think I have any more questions either.

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COMMERCIAL BREAK

...and if that isn't one of the greatest moments in television anywhere in the world, I don't know what is.

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It's nearly the end of the year people. I've decided to gather together a Top Twenty Books of the Year - I'll open comments out on it and aim to post early December. I'm also going to have fuck with the format and add a clause that says I can have five books in the list that weren't necessarily published in 2012. I've discovered far too many great books this year to be boxed off by tiny details. It's shaping up to be pretty diverse. In fact, it's a pretty serious list with something I didn't expect to be at number one nestling comfortably in that very spot. I doubt it will look anything like the bestseller lists they have in the back of the newspapers at the end of the year but it may contain books you might actually read.

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Where shall we go today for an outro tune? How about this from the days when 12" remixes ruled the world: