Tuesday, October 09, 2012
Nuevos Alfabetismos: A Gray Bartlett moment
When I was living in New Zealand and following music charts an Auckland guitarist named Gray Bartlett got one of his guitar instrumentals onto the NZ hit parade (as it was known then). Better than that, his song, La Playa, went to #2 in Tokyo.
I filed that away as an example of a nice thing that could happen to someone, and have never forgotten it. For me it's up there with Jimmy Buffett's concept that it's 5 o'clock somewhere.
Michele's and my personal history will record that in this second week of October, 2012, we enjoyed a small scale Gray Bartlett moment -- or, as Jimmy might have it, it was 5 o'clock in Spain.
For three days this week, doubtless peaking today, the Spanish translation of New Literacies -- Nuevos Alfabetismos, published by Ediciones Morata -- has been in the Amazon.es top 100 books. It reached #67 today.
Even allowing for the fact that relatively small numbers of sales can make for impressive numbers on Amazon lists, the fact is that on those occasions when we have checked the site the book is usually around 45,000. Still way better than the 6 figures it usually languishes in on Amazon.com
We have always had a particular liking for the Spanish language edition -- which our Spanish native speaking friends tell us has been beautifully translated by Pablo Manzano Bernadez, and may account for its fortunes in Spanish!! -- and treasure our association with Ediciones Morales. But this is a special moment for us in the life of this book.
We recorded the moment for our records and include it here:
It was nice while it lasted!!
I filed that away as an example of a nice thing that could happen to someone, and have never forgotten it. For me it's up there with Jimmy Buffett's concept that it's 5 o'clock somewhere.
Michele's and my personal history will record that in this second week of October, 2012, we enjoyed a small scale Gray Bartlett moment -- or, as Jimmy might have it, it was 5 o'clock in Spain.
For three days this week, doubtless peaking today, the Spanish translation of New Literacies -- Nuevos Alfabetismos, published by Ediciones Morata -- has been in the Amazon.es top 100 books. It reached #67 today.
Even allowing for the fact that relatively small numbers of sales can make for impressive numbers on Amazon lists, the fact is that on those occasions when we have checked the site the book is usually around 45,000. Still way better than the 6 figures it usually languishes in on Amazon.com
We have always had a particular liking for the Spanish language edition -- which our Spanish native speaking friends tell us has been beautifully translated by Pablo Manzano Bernadez, and may account for its fortunes in Spanish!! -- and treasure our association with Ediciones Morales. But this is a special moment for us in the life of this book.
We recorded the moment for our records and include it here:
It was nice while it lasted!!
