November 20, 2023 Revising Reality: The Cover! The Blurb! The Release Date!
Very happy to report that Nathaniel Goldberg’s and my next book, Revising Reality, will be released on May 30, 2024!
We just got our cover too:
Plus part of the back cover:
Bloomsbury is still revising the font color. The title is supposed to be, and often is, white, but sometimes it’s red, we think either because of differences in Bloomsbury’s nation-based websites (US, UK, AUS) or between hardcover and paperback, which then feed into other websites. So at Amazon it’s (currently) red:
While the white/red variation is accidental, the hardcover/paperback variation is happily intentional. My last book, The Comics Form, was originally released in hardcover, before it earned a paperback printing (currently available as a January pre-order). Revising Reality is being released in both formats simultaneously — plus an ebook.
Nathaniel’s name vacillates too. I’m one of the very people who calls Nathaniel “Nathaniel” (the name he used when first introducing himself to me), but future readers will know him as “Nat” (the name most people use). Though now “Nat” on this cover, he’s “Nathaniel” on all of his previous book covers and currently in his book cover bio.
Revising Reality includes a chapter called “Naming Change,” which is about various reasons people revise their names (marriage, religious conversion, gender identity, etc.) and their implications: some name changes are retroactive, revealing what we call a Mandatory Character Trait. Nathaniel’s is probably only a forward-moving sequel — unless my co-author’s name was always “Nat” and the new cover reveals that pre-existing but misunderstood fact, and then it’s a retcon.
Revising Reality keeps revising its categories too. The Bloomsbury website started by listing it this way:
That’s probably because I’m a comics scholar who has published more than one book with Bloomsbury under “Comics and Graphic Novels,” even though Revising Reality is not one of them. That’s going to be revised to “Literature and Philosophy.” And yet the Amazon listing instead says this:
It’s a little mysterious why Amazon slotted it there — especially since it’s correct. Revising Reality does address both politics and social sciences. One of the categorical challenges of the book is its multi-disciplinary scope.
One of our external reviewers wrote last summer: “An accessible and engaging exploration of how storytelling frames our engagement with history and current events, through a lens that seamlessly combines literary theory, media studies, metaphysics, and historiography.”
Another said: “No one will be an expert in each of the topics addressed, so any reader is sure to come away with an improved knowledge of one of science, law, fiction, pop culture, and so on.”
And my favorite: “This really is quite an original book, which means that it competes in its own kind of field.”
Not surprisingly, the Amazon algorithm doesn’t include that category.
Nathaniel (AKA, “Nat”) and I just finished reviewing the page proofs, which go to an indexer next. We also just contacted a publicist. Revising Reality is a sequel to our Revising Fiction, Fact, and Faith: A Philosophical Account, presenting similar concepts to (we hope) a general interest audience.
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