BookBrunch

It’s not often a publisher gets to throw a cup of water in an author’s face (or, I hope, would want to, even if I know that isn’t quite true in all cases) but you can see why staff from US house Black Dog & Leventhal end up doing just that to David Pogue in this video here. The whole thing is staged of course, but is there some generalised wish-fulfilment going on here?

Pogue, a New York Times technology columnist and co-writer of many Dummies books, appears in a fun video which sends up the frustrations of the mass book-signing process, to promote The World According to Twitter (to be distributed in the UK in September by Orca). The book is based on an experiment where Pogue posted a series of daily questions on Twitter, with the best responses from his followers on the site (around 500,000 people at the time the book was compiled) now published.

The video also provides another example of how digital evangelists still appear to love having their work bound and printed, and how framing a debate of  "ebooks versus printed books" is often flawed. It may be more deliberately hammy acting, but Pogue looks genuinely proud when he sees the pile of his books on the table waiting to be signed. It doesn’t last, as you’ll see.

Those who have accompanied their authors to an anonymous room for an all-day stock signing session may have a tinge of recognition with this video. Watch and weep…