AppNewser Appdata 10,000 Words FishbowlNY FishbowlDC TVNewser TVSpy LostRemote AgencySpy PRNewser MediaJobsDaily UnBeige SocialTimes

Source Code

spumante.jpgHow do you take The Da Vinci Code‘s mass appeal, and reduce it to the smallest possible — and least profitable — audience? Push its premise to the meta-, and then select, as your target readership, the only segment of the population that expects to get your book for free.

In other words, write The Asti Spumante Code, summarized by its author, Toby Clements, as a book industry parody, one which goes like this:

…The secret of the great blockbuster novel … has been passed down through the ages from great author to great author. These authors, I surmised, more of them women than one might expect and all of them directly related, pooled their knowledge in the hope that one day a descendant of theirs would write the perfect novel.

A sinister cabal of publishers hopes to steal the secret and turn it into a bestseller that would occupy the number one slot for ever and so destroy all competition. The two drippy heroes must solve a string of preposterous clues to rescue the secret from the dark forces.

Because “the secret of the great blockbuster novel” should never, God Forbid, result in a blockbuster novel. Is The Da Vinci Code also so confusing?

Mediabistro Course

Get 15% OFF Microsoft Excel 101

Get 15% OFF Microsoft Excel 101Learn the basics of the most popular spreadsheet software in our upcoming Microsoft Excel 101 course, taught by a 15-year Excel veteran! In this four-session course, instructor Jenn Shaw will review basic formatting, calculations, and charts, helping you to create useful worksheets, budgets, and more. Enter code MBTHANKU at checkout and save 15%. Hurry – offer expires 12/24! Register Now
http://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/source-code_b742
www.mediabistro.com
crawl=CC-MAIN-2013-48
45396
application/http; msgtype=response
sha1:34ZC25GAIOFAL6XXUUJSLU7DHAZLSBTT
<urn:uuid:26fac9d7-bc45-4116-a6ff-ee6e3843cfe5>
2013-12-21T15:05:18Z
38.126.102.81
sha1:UFD5VGD5BSPU5DYXULPA7JB7NIWHG5MI
<urn:uuid:951d83f9-3ff7-4bbe-91c7-e587550b18b1>
http://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/source-code_b742
length
response
<urn:uuid:f6cffcdb-6699-4d63-8b07-b09a0df79e60>
robots: classic
hostname: ip-10-33-133-15.ec2.internal
software: Nutch 1.6 (CC)/CC WarcExport 1.0
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2013-48
operator: CommonCrawl Admin
description: Wide crawl of the web with URLs provided by Blekko for Winter 2013
publisher: CommonCrawl
format: WARC File Format 1.0
conformsTo: http://bibnum.bnf.fr/WARC/WARC_ISO_28500_version1_latestdraft.pdf