From Writer Beware, an item PG thought he posted earlier. Last week, Bowker released its periodic report on ISBN output in the self-publishing field, updated with 2016 and 2017 figures. There are many interesting bits of information in the report–including CreateSpace’s hulking dominance of the field, with more than 10 times the output of its closest … Read more
From Writer Beware: I don’t think there’s much dispute that the many “imprints” under the Author Solutions umbrella are among the most negatively regarded of all the author services companies. From the predatory business practices that gave rise to two class action lawsuits, to the huge number of customercomplaints, to the relentless sales calls and deceptive recruitment methods, to the dubious and overpriced”marketing” services that are one of the company’s main profit sources, … Read more
From Book Riot: As we race toward the end of 2023 and book bans continue to be a major reality across the country, it seems worth pausing to think about some of the trends across the landscape this year. We have seen shifts in the kinds of books being targeted, thanks to the work of … Read more
From Publishers Weekly: In September 2021, our book, Designing Motherhood: Things That Make and Break Our Births, will be published by MIT Press. We’re two design historians, and between us we’ve had babies and books before. But DM, as our most recent offspring is affectionately known, has had the longest gestation of them all. This book sprung … Read more
From Publishers Weekly: It doesn’t take serious writers long to learn that we need to be fanatical about quality with every element of our stories. So why, when we demand quality everywhere else, do we embrace Hollywood hacker stereotypes when it comes to technology? We’ve all seen the tropes: bad guys breaking into important systems … Read more
From LawSites: I am not a dictator (although some in my family may at times disagree). But I know that, for many lawyers and legal professionals, dictation is the only way to go. If you are one of them, you may want to check out the integration announced today by Philips Dictation of Nuance Dragon’s … Read more
From Writers Helping Writers: Earlier this year, I received an email from Bret Wieseler, requesting, “I would love to see a post about writers with ADHD. If you’ve never struggled with it yourself, maybe you know someone who has and can share their thoughts, methods, management strategies, etc. You offer such great insight into the … Read more
From The Paris Review: What can’t be contained? Not much. We are given the resources, mental or physical, to contain our emotions and our belongings. Failing to do so often registers as weakness. The smallest container you can buy at the Container Store is a rectangular crystal-clear plastic box available in orange, purple, and green. … Read more
From Jane Friedman: You’re driving on a long stretch of highway when you have an insight about your main character’s childhood. Or you’re mid-hair-rinse in the shower, when you suddenly understand how to bring together the braided strands of your novel. Or you wake up at 2 a.m. with the resolution to that thorny plot … Read more
PG hadn’t thought about book cover design providers for indies. He suspects a great many indie authors use a friend or acquaintance who has the requisite graphic design tools and talents. The folks at MIBL.Art reached out to PG to ask about a guest post (he doesn’t do those). However, PG checked out the company’s … Read more
From Medium: In this post I will show you how you can increase your productivity 10x and get to better results faster in any creative discipline. We’ll uncover the essence of perseverance and the iterative process in the realm of design and creative problem-solving. We are all grownups here: We know the secret to success … Read more
From Publishing Perspectives: A key development in world publishing’s response to artificial intelligence technologies, today (October 31), four of the United Kingdom’s most prominent publishing-industry organizations have issued an adamant message to the government led by the prime minister, Rishi Sunak. The Publishers Association; the Society of Authors, a trade union; Association of Authors’ Agents, … Read more
From Writer Unboxed: The current self-publishing industry has its roots in the mid-1990s, when three startups–Xlibris, Trafford, and AuthorHouse–began selling digital publishing services to individual authors. (Bear with me: I’m getting to the subject of this post!) Along with similar provider iUniverse, these companies later incorporated under the umbrella of Author Solutions, Inc. (AS). A … Read more
From The Wall Street Journal: We’re in a terrible spot, and everybody knows it. Americans on the right and left detest each other, excoriate each other and, with every flaring of rage, move further from any sense of pluralistic common cause. Citizens have lost confidence in officialdom. Fashionable ideologies that brook no good-faith dissent have … Read more
From Automation Alley: The remarkably prophetic capacity of humans to imagine and harness the future has shaped the evolution of humankind. Straight-line extrapolations and nonlinear predictions based on present-day facts have helped civilization discover mesmerizing technologies first described in science fiction novels and cinematic features from bygone eras. Therein we encounter thought-provoking ideas similar to … Read more
From Publishers Weekly: Young adult fiction sales are in decline, and it’s a hot topic in publishing, where the internet is awash with questions of why. Are YA books really “New Adult” books in disguise? Are we still writing for teens, or for adults who read and review teen books—those who grew up in the … Read more
From Esquire: “There is no such thing as a ‘nonpolitical’ bookstore,” Josh Cook writes in The Art of Libromancy: On Selling Books and Reading Books in the Twenty-First Century. In the age of book banning, publishing industry consolidation, and the pandemic’s lingering aftershocks, Cook’s words ring with frightening truth. The Art of Libromancy, new on … Read more
From Publishers Weekly: In their recently filed lawsuit to block HB 900, the controversial new Texas law that will require vendors to rate books sold to schools for sexual content, a coalition of booksellers and publishing industry associations insist that the law is both unconstitutional and impractical. “Booksellers do not see a clear path forward … Read more
From Publishing Perspectives: In England, the Independent Publishers Guild (IPG) has announced that it’s putting together an “artificial intelligence” training program, for independent publishers, set for early October, ahead of Frankfurter Buchmesse. There are to be workshops relative to the course at the organization’s autumn conference, which is set for September 20 in London. Much of the program, … Read more
From Publishing Perspectives: Today, we include in our rights edition an urgent story that’s not focused on translation- and publication-rights deals but on a crippling copyright fiasco that has damaged a major publishing market for more than a decade. The news, arriving today (July 14), is not good. And copyright, after all, is precisely at … Read more
For visitors from outside the United States, today, July 4, is celebrated as America’s Independence Day, a major national holiday with picnics during the day and large fireworks displays, ideally with firefighters nearby, at night. The sun is shining on Casa PG and this will be the only post (he thinks) today. Below, you’ll find … Read more
From Forbes: Violating someone’s copyrighted content can be quite costly. Whether you realize it or not, those popular generative AI apps can inadvertently lead you into the costly throes of copyright infringement. Indeed, that’s why some that are in the know are hesitant to use generative AI apps at all, especially in generating artwork or … Read more
From Writer Beware: Among the most common scams targeting self-published and small press authors these days are fake literary agency scams. These are slightly different from the agent/agency impersonation scams I’ve written a number of posts about, in that they don’t appropriate the identities of real people (most of the time). But that doesn’t mean they’re not … Read more
From Kristine Kathryn Rusch: I suspect spring in Las Vegas will always have reminders for me. In those first dark days of the pandemic, when we were wiping off our groceries and viewing our neighbors with great suspicion, when we were wearing cloth masks that were makeshift at best, and running out of toilet paper … Read more
From Publisher’s Weekly: The supply chain we use for book publishing is a lot like an old house. Bringing it up to date is a labor of love that takes a lot of planning, investment, and time. Only when you visit a neighbor who has reimagined their house, do you realize how far behind your … Read more
From The Paris Review: Around the time I realized I didn’t want to be married anymore, I started visiting Mary Wollstonecraft’s grave. I’d known it was there, behind King’s Cross railway station, for at least a decade. I had read her protofeminist tract from 1792, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, at university, and I … Read more
From Anne R. Allen’s Blog… with Ruth Harris: Well, to say a lot happened in publishing last year is a severe understatement. Simon and Schuster Merger that Wasn’t Among the legal news, the biggest merger in publishing history — Penguin Random House’s proposed acquisition of Simon and Schuster, aka the antitrust trial — got nixed … Read more
From Electric Lit: Growing up, the library was not just Amanda Oliver’s favorite place but also her “first beloved destination, first embodied center… it was absolutely sacred.” However, soon after Oliver began her career as a librarian at a Title I school and then in the D.C. public library system, she witnessed how systemic racism, … Read more
From The Wall Street Journal: Since Gilgamesh, apocalyptic prophecies have been a staple of human culture. These stories follow a familiar pattern: God will punish man for his sins by ending the world. But as faith has waned, the genre has taken a scientific turn, from Elizabeth Kolbert predicting mass extinction as a result of … Read more
From TechCrunch: Microsoft is making a major investment in DALL-E 2, OpenAI’s AI-powered system that generates images from text, by bringing it to first-party apps and services. During its Ignite conference this week, Microsoft announced that it’s integrating DALL-E 2 with the newly announced Microsoft Designer app and Image Creator tool in Bing and Microsoft … Read more
From Slate: Imagine you are in a foreign country where you don’t speak the language and your small child unexpectedly starts to have a fever seizure. You take them to the hospital, and the doctors use an online translator to let you know that your kid is going to be OK. But “your child is … Read more
From The Book Designer: Writing a book is one of the most meaningful projects you can dedicate your time to. Your book has the potential to entertain and inform people far into the future. It also sets an amazing example for those around you, showing them it’s possible to dream of being an author and … Read more
From Woman Writers, Women’s Books I wanted to move to New York from the time I first learned what New York was. I grew up on a farm and dreamed about moving to the city the way some kids dream about becoming marine biologists. Reading books like E.L. Konigsburg’s From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. … Read more
In Congress, July 4, 1776 The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America, When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the … Read more
Preliminary note from PG: He was not familiar with the term, “Homiletic” prior to reading this article from a publication called Homiletic . After a short bit of online research, he discovered the definition: ”of, relating to, or resembling a homily.” PG thought he knew what a homily was, but again checked to make certain. Definition … Read more
From Public Books: I am a serial complainer within a history-plagued institution: a school that tells a story of being keenly interested in attracting more students and faculty of color; expanding diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives; and becoming less overwhelmingly white. What is it to be a serial complainer? In my case, it means that I … Read more
From Science News: When British artist Harold Cohen met his first computer in 1968, he wondered if the machine might help solve a mystery that had long puzzled him: How can we look at a drawing, a few little scribbles, and see a face? Five years later, he devised a robotic artist called AARON to … Read more
From Document Journal: In public libraries, information is truly free. And private. In many ways, libraries are the forefathers of privacy, and perhaps the greatest remaining champions of it. The books you check out are exclusively your business unless you choose to post a picture of the final pages of Infinite Jest to prove you … Read more
From The New Yorker: To write, first and foremost, is to choose the words to tell a story, whereas to translate is to evaluate, acutely, each word an author chooses. Repetitions in particular rise instantly to the surface, and they give the translator particular pause when there is more than one way to translate a … Read more
From The New Republic: In 1993, a young Jeff Bezos was contemplating a career change. He wanted to leave his executive job at the high-speed–trading investment firm D.E. Shaw & Co., and while he was mulling his next move, he happened to pick up a copy of The Remains of the Day, Kazuo Ishiguro’s 1989 novel … Read more
From Woman Writers, Women’s Books You undertook the grand adventure of writing and publishing a book. And now you’ve either learned, or will shortly learn, that the final page of your book is not the end of writing, but the segue from writing the book into writing about the book. Today’s publishing market is a media-content glutton. … Read more
From The Bookseller: HarperCollins owner News Corp has completed its $349m (£252m) acquisition of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt’s consumer division. The deal, first announced in March, sees the HMH Books & media business operated by HarperCollins in the US. HMH Books & Media has a backlist of more than 7,000 titles and a significant frontlist in … Read more
From Public Books: In her new book, What Can a Body Do? How We Meet the Built World, the artist and design researcher Sara Hendren describes an assignment her engineering students undertook to redesign a lectern. Hendren introduces us to Amanda Cachia, a curator with a form of dwarfism, who challenges the students to think … Read more
From The American Library Association: The freedom to read is essential to our democracy. It is continuously under attack. Private groups and public authorities in various parts of the country are working to remove or limit access to reading materials, to censor content in schools, to label “controversial” views, to distribute lists of “objectionable” books … Read more
From The Wall Street Journal: Sometime last August, five months into the pandemic lockdown, I had my first mask dream—I was in a crowded place and was the only person wearing a mask; it filled me with panic and I woke suddenly, scared out of my wits. Well into middle age, I still have nightmares … Read more
From Writers in the Storm: 1. Writer’s Block doesn’t really exist. It’s only in your mind. FACT The parts of the brain that use to function daily can trip up our flow in many ways. Research shows that we override our self-consciousness, worry and anxiety, and social expectations, we are more likely to experience Flow than when we … Read more
From SSRN: Abstract With the kind permission of the estate of Charles Dodgson (better known as Lewis Carroll), this article reproduces Dodgson’s 1883 publishing contract for his “Alice in Wonderland” books and offers a plain-language redraft. The author found the original 1883 contract in an archive of Dodgson’s personal papers in County Surrey, England, during … Read more
From Jane Friedman: While I was planning my current novel and annotating that plan, I asked myself a series of questions in the annotations. I know I’m not the only one to make notes on a draft in the form of questions, but until recently I wasn’t aware that I was creating problems for myself … Read more
From CrimeReads: If you were worried that popular fiction for women has too often been about finding Mr. Right, well, that time is past. It’s now just as often about finding Mr. Prosecutable DNA Sample. But what looks like a change in genre and readership betrays a deeper, older current. For women, psychological thrillers and … Read more
From The Los Angeles Review of Books: MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER WANTS US to believe environmentalists are impeding our ability to solve environmental problems. This has long been the position of Bay Area ecomodernists, who argue that technology and growth, not limits, will save the planet. Now, in his best-selling new book Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism … Read more