Some progress on work - not as much as I'd planned or hoped, but I also plodded through an unholy amount of dog-brushing, hair-hoovering, laundering, ironing, filing, and other chores, so I'm calling it a productive day.

From tonight's magazine gleanings:

While the professional publishing market is reporting sales increases, it still struggles with many of the same issues that have been affecting most book publishers. Several professional publishers said they are facing the challenge of finding fresh, new titles that will stand out in a market that some view as saturated. "Something to understand about the book publishing marketplace is that it's totally glutted. The number of new books being published in the United States has exploded," says Johanna Vondeling, editorial director for San Francisco-based Berrett-Koehler Publishers Inc. "It's really hard to put out a book that's just good content and expect it to sell."

- "Increasing Sales, One Chapter at a Time" by Janet Spavlik (Book Business, September 2007, p. 34)

["Professional publishing" = books to do with work (such as software manuals and business management guides), as opposed to "adult trade" (e.g., fiction and general interest) or "religious" (the two categories with larger increases in sales from 2005 to 2006).]

[Jan Nathan] persuaded the Book Industry Study Group (BISG) to recognize the impact of independent publishing. As a result, much to its surprise - but not Nathan's - the BISG found in 2006 that independent publishers, whose sales previously were not tracked, added $8 billion annually, by conservative estimates, to the $34.5 billion in net revenues by large publishers in 2005. It also estimated that the number of U.S. book publishers totaled at least 70,000 - many more than the 2,500 then listed in the "Literary Market Place."

- from Kent Sturgis' obituary of Nathan, BB p. 42

I like to think of food as my toys...I stay up until 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning working on new dishes to do in a few days or a few weeks. I have to think of the whole picture, keeping up with the cost of foods while improving constantly.

- Bobby Benjamin, executive chef of Flyte, in Nashville Arts Magazine, September 2007

[haven't eaten there yet, I just liked the quote]

Today's research tangent: the kites of Zama, which are so huge (one ton!!!) they've been known to cause mass injury when things go awry.