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Chabon's Love for Apple not Contractual
March 19, 2007
The last line of print in the galley for The Yiddish Policemen's Union, Michael Chabon's forthcoming Best Ever Speculative-History-Homage-to-Noir-Novel-About-Jews-in-Alaska, struck me as sorta odd:
"This novel was written on Macintosh computers using Devonthink Pro and Nisus Writer Express."
Sounds like a sponsorship, no?
Ehh, no.
After a few phone calls (those made to the book's publicist at HarperCollins were... not fruitful), the boringest of all possbile truths was revealed: Chabon just likes Apple, Devonthink and Nisus. Apple PR confirmed there's no sponsorship, endorsement or promotion deal, but they wouldn't chat for attribution, leaving me to merely speculate on Apple's feelings about the Pulitzer-winner.
Over at Nisus Software, things were a little jollier.
"He's just being nice to us, I guess," said Jolanta Lewak, Nisus Software co-owner. "Some people don't like to write in the other one." The "other one" being, of course, Microsoft Word.
Devonthink, meanwhile, has weird hours and I'd like to get this posted already.
Given Chabon's popularity and the frequency of questions like "What font do you use?" lobbed at writers during book tour Q&A's, it's not unthinkable that Nisus and Devonthink could see a sales bump after Chabon's 15-city promo tour. (A hundred bucks can get you Nisus Writer Express, a copy of Aspects of the Novel and a fifth of good gin. Alas, such is not the case when buying a computer.) Call it the Yiddish effect. Maybe next time Chabon can offer his endorsements with a 2% of verifiable bump tithing clause in the spirit of that guy who used to write about Brooklyn.
Posted by Jonathan Segura on March 19, 2007 | Comments (0)
