I’ve written previously about how the publishing industry are masters of exploiting any niche opportunity and recently I saw another example of their relentless quest for quick profit …
I don’t know if you can read the ‘headline’ but it claims to be “An Authorised Collection Of The Funniest Tweets Of All Time.”
Now that’s marketing for you.
OK, so they have got Mr “charisma by-pass” and founder of Twitter, Biz Stone, to write a forward which maybe qualifies it for ‘authorised’ status … but to say this is a collection of the funniest tweets of all time is wrong in so many ways.
To start with it breaches the trade descriptions act because quite frankly, I doubt Nick Douglas – the author, or should I say compiler – checked every bloody Twitter account in existence … secondly, with tweets such as “sometimes we wish Twitter was called ‘Ultimate Badass Report’” it’s hardly the sort of thing that requires you to put on a corset to ensure your sides don’t split … and thirdly – and most damningly – it’s not a compilation at all, it’s a book designed to help egomaniacs maintain their delusion.
What am I going on about?
Well, the fact is this book has been compiled with tweets that individuals have personally submitted for publication … individuals who wrote the tweets in the first place.
Jesus, that’s like asking Hitler to determine whether he was guilty of war crimes …
The thing is, these sorts of books sell by the bucketload – especially around Christmas time where ‘stocking fillers’ becomes a euphemism for ‘overpriced, slightly relevant, shit that on a normal day, you wouldn’t even wipe your arse with, let alone spend good money on’ – however if someone who didn’t know what Twitter was, were to flick through the book, they would be left with just one impression: Twitter is for twats.
And in many cases, they’d be right.
Anyway, as this blog seems to be the home for egomaniac twats [especially if your initials are A.B.] then you can claim to be a printed author by going here.