As long as we're being picky about NIN "making" $750K...

(a) People regularly say "[blockbuster movie X] 'made' $Y million this weekend," without deducting the production costs from the gross, and without calculating the individual theaters' take from the studio's take.

(b) Seeing as how the sales of the limited edition is only one piece of the pie, and we have no idea how many other "paid" copies were moved in other formats -- there's no telling what the total gross is or what the net might be. If the other formats are moving as quickly as the instant sellout of the deluxe limited edition might suggest, would a $750 K net at this point really surprise anyone?

Sadly, I wonder if the preservation of the short story is as moot an issue as, say, the preservation of the Radio Play. The moment, if it has not passed, is slipping by us... and not surprisingly. The Short Story, like the Radio Play, is a Story-Containing Device that evolved in the popular marketplace to fulfill certain needs from both the packager and the consumer. The Short Story has proved hardier and more versatile than the Radio Play, which was vanquished utterly by the arrival of the Television Serial -- a form which the average story consumer agreed was superior in that it did virtually all the radio play could do, with the addition of Pictures.

The Short Story evolved from the primordial form of "the Tale," first manifesting as the occasional pieces that would find homes in 19th century newspapers and broadsheets, but finally the form was codified into the Short Story we now know thanks to the peculiar possibilities and necessities of the Victorian era: suddenly a large number of literate consumers were looking for entertainments to kill time during mass transit journeys, such as train rides from the suburbs into London. The Strand and other magazines of its ilk seized on the short story form as one of the ways to fill pages and provide amusement. Over the ensuing decades, the short story proved that it could fulfill other needs and opportunities ably. But now, like the Radio Play, it is quickly being reduced to the province of nostalgic die-hards and aesthetes who cling to the charms of its peculiar qualities -- while the consumers in the marketplace at large have found other amusements to fill the brief moments that the Short Story once satisfied.