Lean In or Are You Getting Played?

The question the rest of us have to ask is, what does the game do for those not at or near the top? Are workers playing or are we getting played? (source infra)

Feminism’s Tipping Point: Who Wins from Leaning in? | Dissent Magazine: " . . . .The fact that Lean In is really waging a battle for work and against unmonetized life is the reason pregnancy, or the state of reproducing life, looms as the corporate Battle of Normandy in Lean In. Pregnancy, by virtue of the body’s physical focus on human reproduction, is humanity’s last, biological stand against the corporate demand for workers’ continuous labor. For Sandberg, pregnancy must be converted into a corporate opportunity: a moment to convince a woman to commit further to her job. Human life as a competitor to work is the threat here, and it must be captured for corporate use, much in the way that Facebook treats users’ personal activities as a series of opportunities to fill out the Facebook-owned social graph. . . . And so, in the end, Lean In may be a book not about a social movement, but about Sandberg’s own movement from Harvard to Google to Facebook, and now into her self-appointed role as leader of Lean In. . . . "

The Slow Death of the American Author
New York Times
They are much less expensive for publishers to produce: there are no printing, warehousing or transportation costs, and unlike physical books, there is no risk that the retailer will return the bookfor full credit. But instead of using the savings to ...

Don't Hate Google for Reader — Award It the Nobel Prize for Books | Wired Opinion | Wired.com: "Given that literary fame is so fickle, it might make more sense to anoint a work that’s mutable—an all-encompassing text that changes at the pace of society itself. Today there is such a work. And that is why, in 2013, the Swedish Academy should award the Nobel Prize in Literature to Google. The idea isn’t as implausible as one might think. Consider that the Nobel Peace Prize—intended for “the person who shall have done the most … for fraternity between nations,” in Alfred Nobel’s wording, was awarded to the European Union in 2012. As Ulrike Guérot of the European Council on Foreign Relations told the BBC, “There is a symbolic component to the award, and also a promotional and supportive component.” That is, the prize was designed to remind Europeans, at a time when their unity was under siege, that the EU had a higher purpose in its peacekeeping mission."

Book Buzz: Puppies in print vs. Internet cats
USA TODAY
Sandra Cisneros e-book: Vintage books will release The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros in e-book form on April 30, as well as a Spanish-language version and three more of Cisneros' books. Mango Street was first published in 1984 and has ...

News pages weren't enough to contain Ebert's thoughts
Chicago Tribune
His prodigious output included 17 books. Here is a sampling of them. "Behind ... "I didn't intend for (my blog) to drift into autobiography, but in blogging there is a tidal drift that pushes you that way," he wrote in the book. "Some of these words ...

Workman Founder Sold Quirky Books
Wall Street Journal
Like many Workman books, it was a slow starter, but innovative marketing, such as selling the book at cat shows and giving away book posters, helped it gain momentum. Then Mr. Workman added licensing to the mix, with mugs, pillows and aprons.

Wall Street Journal

Nazi-Looted Books Spell Decades of Labor for Libraries
Bloomberg
“I got one book back from Berlin,” Bruce, a retired headmistress, said by telephone from Cape Town. “It doesn't sound like much, but it means a lot to me. My son says he would like to have it one day.” Most German libraries haven't even started to ...

Spain's future queen had abortion prior to meeting prince – book
Irish Independent
The author, David Rocasolano, a cousin of the 40-year-old princess, promises to disclose intimate details of her life before she married Prince Felipe in 2004. He claims in the book that the princess, a divorcee and former newsreader, had an abortion ...

Amazon backs down over Cornish-language children's book
The Guardian
O'Dornan added that KDP's official statement about the decision was: "The book is in a language that is not currently supported by Kindle Direct Publishing. At this time, you can upload and sell books in English, French, German, Italian, Japanese ...

The Guardian

What the Heck Does a Book Cost? | The Scholarly Kitchen
By Joseph Esposito
Filed Under Andrew Odlyzko, approval plans, Book, DDA, E-book, ebooks, library purchases, patron-driven acquisitions, PDA, publishing, Publishing and Printing. When I began to ... In my experience, this is how most people, including career publishers, believe librarians work most or all of the time, but in fact most books are purchased through approval plans, where the library works with a vendor to determine the kinds of books that are appropriate for the institution. The vendor then ...
The Scholarly Kitchen


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