Why all the hostility? I posted a light-hearted, graphic re-rendering of the original in the coments section of the original Gawker post. Gawker saw fit to re-run what I put in my comment in a separate post.

This was not some kind of “attack” on Mr. Rayner — it was some light-hearted, graphical musing in a comment thread.

Judging from the anger in Mr. Rayner’s response, and among the commenter above, you’d think I’d spit on every core principle Mr. Rayner holds dear, while killing his pet puppy in the process. Some perspective, people. Please.

Although, I admit that I find your choice of font slightly unsettling. (That font reminds me of something, but I can’t place it. What is it? And why do I have vague 70s associations?)

It makes the presumption that everyone who reads a book by a blogger reads blogs, which is entirely unfounded as a presumption.

The actual Venn diagram, to be specific, would have the smallest circle fully inside the biggest (people who read books by bloggers are a subset of people who read books, rather obviously — which is what he was whining about).

But that smallest circle should *intersect*, not be fully contained in, the mid-sized circle “people who read blogs”.

While the overlap there is probably substantial, I am sure that, for every book out there written by a blogger, there are others who read it because of the review on Amazon.com, or because a friend who does read blogs bought it for them as a gift, or because they read the cover blurb at the bookstore — all of them people who may well *not* read blogs.

If you’re going to correct someone, you ought to make damned sure you’re right yourself when you’re doing it.

If I see fit to be so obnoxious as to correct someone’s spelling or grammar (it takes the right kind of provocation) in comments, you can damned sure bet I carefully vette the resultant post beforehand for both spelling and grammar.

And yes, I get the joke. ;o)

The comment thread at Gawker quickly brings to mind Eddie Izzard’s routine about Venn diagrams:

Who was Venn and his diagrams? Was he the most boring child ever? (upper middle class accent) “Father, I have my foot in your bedroom and also in the hallway. As you can see from my diagram I am not only in the bedroom, I am also in the hallway.” “Venn, fuck off out of this house!” “All right, father. But I am outside of the house but my hand is in the window and my foot is in a grapefruit…”

So, in order to get a book written by a blogger bought the answer appears to be: under no circumstances promote it on the internet.

And when it does get bought you’ve then only got a 50/50 chance that the person buying it is a person who reads books anyway. That’s a lot of beds that need a leg raised.