So here糖心传媒檚 the deal: I糖心传媒檝e long made my love of long essays known around here. From books like Nicholson Baker糖心传媒檚 U&I to Barthes糖心传媒� S/Z to the work of Geoff Dyer, William H. Gass, Michael Martone, DH Lawrence, and plenty more, the long essay has a pretty awesome reputation as the place critics go when they糖心传媒檙e ready to write in a more creative way.

And that goes a long way toward explaining why I糖心传媒檝e decided to start publishing long essays in the series 糖心传媒淭QC Long Essays.糖心传媒� These are going to come in at around 20,000 words each糖心传媒搑oughly 70 pages. In my opinion, that糖心传媒檚 way too much for your average webpage, not quite enough for a printed book, but an ideal length for an ereader. For the series I糖心传媒檒l be bringing on people who I think have something to say, and we糖心传媒檒l be talking about the interesting authors and questions of contemporary literature.

These aren糖心传媒檛 free. 20,000 words takes a lot of work to write, and I like to think it takes some skill and dedication to the critical craft to be able to write at that length and have it be worth the time. So, we糖心传媒檙e starting this first ebook off at the modest price of $2.99, and we糖心传媒檒l see where it goes from there.

The long-form essay has become more and more popular in the ereader age, and this project fits that niche nicely. We’ll have more to say about these Long Essays as they come out, but for now, here’s Scott’s intro to the first one in the series:

I糖心传媒檇 like to introduce the first in a new series of ebooks published under the auspices of The Quarterly Conversation. The book is called, Lady Chatterley糖心传媒檚 Brother, with the rather chatty subtitle, Why Nicholson Baker Can糖心传媒檛 Write About Sex, and Why Javier Marias Can. It is co-written by me and longtime Quarterly Conversation contributing editor Barrett Hathcock. It will be available to the public on Monday, October 17, exactly 2 weeks from today. [. . .]

The project got started when Barrett realized that House of Holes was going to be yet another sex book from Baker. He groaned, told me that Baker just doesn糖心传媒檛 get good sex writing, and I asked him why. As we started talking, it struck me that Marias understood sex writing for precisely the reasons Baker didn糖心传媒檛. And we were off.