News Bits, In Brief

Via Bookforum, by way of BoingBoing: Revealed at last: Jack Kerouac's proposed design for the front cover of the paperback edition of On the Road. If it only took Kerouac three months to write the entire book, it couldn't have taken him more than three minutes to draw this.

Via WeberBooks.com: More competition! "Goodwill is diverting many of its best books to new book-only stores, where they'll be sold for about $3 to $8 apiece." If Goodwill was smart, they'd create an online store and sell them there. Everyone knows that that's where all of the book money is these days.

The New York Times examines the various methods publishers use to successfully roll out their newest books, and how today's news-in-an-instant internet culture is forcing a drastic restructuring of this.

Via Newsarama: DC Comics has announced the lineup for their newest condescending approach to kids' comic books, Johnny DC. Some the titles that will be appearing in 2008 are Billy Batson and the Magic of Shazam, Tiny Titans, and Super Friends. What the good-intentioned folks over at DC seem to be forgetting is that kids don't want to know that they're reading 'kids' comics.' They want to think that they're reading something aimed at teens. Hell, if DC would just make their regular line of comic books a little more accessible to the new reader -- child or adult -- I'm sure they'd find these silly, ill-fated experiments unnecessary. (Doesn't anyone else remember the quick crash and burn of Marvel's 'manga inspired' Tsunami line?)