John Naughton's daily posts are always worth glancing through. Today’s more than usually so, because it pointed to an essay1 by Justin E.H. Smith about the perils of hawking a new book. His point is that almost every conversation he has had trying to boost sales has been unencumbered by his inquisitor actually reading the book, and how dispiriting that might be.
Say it isn't so!
That must be what I'm getting wrong and why, despite massively enjoying the books I do read for my podcast, I seem so often to be so late to the game.
I also enjoyed Smith's conclusion about podcasts in general. If he ever writes anything about food or farming, I'll be sure to have him as a guest. I don't suppose he'd invite me to discuss What is Food.
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On Substack; I know that makes it a blog post in John's mind, but I remain unconvinced ↩
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