From A Writer’s Notebook: At least once a month, there’s a big discussion online about something or other that has happened in publishing. It might be about where novelists find inspiration, or how authors use sources in nonfiction, or the research practices of journalists versus academics, or the intent of a memoirist, or how much … Read more
From Atlas Obscura: If “Harriet” could hear, she might pick up the sound of ping-pong balls skittering across a table. If she could smell, she might detect a range of lunches being reheated in a nearby microwave. If her eyes could see, she might let them wander a busted Pac-Man machine, a TV, and a … Read more
From Hugh Howey: Value listing is one of the more important thought exercises I’ve discovered over the years. I was introduced to this by a friend, and my first attempt was to list my top 10 overall values in the world. This sounds easy enough, but you have to do it in order. So what … Read more
From Slate: This as-told-to essay from Laurie Swift Raisys, the owner of Island Books in Mercer Island, Washington, has been edited and condensed for clarity from a conversation with Rachelle Hampton. It was the start of last week when the store just kind of became a ghost town. We live on Mercer Island, which is a town … Read more
From Book Riot: For more than a decade, we’ve been hearing about how Amazon has been the death of bookstores all across the country. And yet Barnes and Noble has been creeping along for years after the closures of other behemoth bookstore chains such as Borders and Crown Books. But in the last few years, … Read more
When the web started, I used to get really grumpy with people because they put my poems up, they put my stories up…they put my stuff up on the web. And I had this belief, which was completely erroneous, that if people put your stuff up on the web and you didn’t tell them to … Read more
From Crime Reads: Once again, the Edgar Awards are upon us—that august night of crime and mystery when honors are bestowed, traditions celebrated, and champions of the genre feted. . . . . Ahead of the ceremony, we caught up with 20+ Edgar nominees, including the nominees for this year’s inaugural Sue Grafton Award. We’ve … Read more
From Kristine Kathryn Rusch: If you’re a writer and, more specifically, if you’re an indie writer, there’s a lot of opportunity in the bookstore and library markets. Yes, indeedy, I’m talking brick-and-mortar stuff. First, a reminder: I’m doing a short series reviewing 2018 with an eye toward 2019. If you have not read the first post … Read more
From LitHub: In my twenties the question was never “What do I want to read?” but rather “Who do I want to be?”—and bookstores were shrines I pilgrimaged to for answers. I didn’t have much money and had to be intentional in my selections. I’d pull a book from the shelf and study its cover, … Read more
From Publishers Weekly: It’s funny what can happen when you throw around industry jargon assuming everyone is familiar with only to find that they are not, in fact, familiar. I’ve written here before about trying to phase out my usage of the terms “middle grade” and “young adult” in store signage and handselling. These phrases tend … Read more
From author/editor Jim Thomsen in 2009: To me, it was a mystery worthy of, well, a mystery novel. A Seattle mystery author publishes three novels. All are reviewed reasonably well; all sell reasonably well. She’s under contract to write two more. But that fourth book never materializes. In fact, the author disappears … and is … Read more
File under First-World Problems. From BookRiot: My partner and I have been together, more or less, for fourteen years. In that time, I have learned all sorts of odd things about him– some of which are charming, some of which are kind of gross (because ew, boys), and some of which are probably pretty normal. … Read more
From The Stranger: Independent bookstores are the best. You never know when you’re going to have a profound experience browsing the shelves, an encounter with a famous writer, or an unexpected flirtation with someone who has the same taste in books as you do. On April 29, nineteen Seattle-area bookstores are participating in Independent Bookstore … Read more
Anne R. Allen’s Blog… with Ruth Harris: THE OFFER I’m writing this guest post from behind two boxes of books just delivered from the publisher. When I pried one open, the cover of the novel I’ve labored over for so long was revealed, and I laughed out loud, like a schoolgirl. I couldn’t stop. The … Read more
From The Nation: It’s a common trope in movies: A mob enforcer walks into a shop, looks around, and then says to the owner, “Nice place you got here. It’d be a shame if something happened to it.” Every viewer understands that a shakedown is in the works. The shop owner can either pay up … Read more
From Jane Friedman: All hail the newly published author. Or not. A few weeks ago my new book came out, a collection of literary humor essays. You would think given this is my seventh book (from six different publishers), I would be well prepared for this momentous occasion. And in some ways I was. In … Read more
From Jane Friedman: Just two days after the Maui wildfires began, on Aug. 10, a new book was self-published, Fire and Fury: The Story of the 2023 Maui Fire and its Implications for Climate Change by “Dr. Miles Stones” (no such person seems to exist). I learned about the book from this Forbes article, but by then, Amazon had … Read more
From Kristine Kathryn Rusch: I opened a can of worms in my own head when I wrote last week’s blog which I titled “Stars.” The post deals with the fact that there are no big names in entertainment any longer, except for legacy names, like Harrison Ford in movies and Stephen King in fiction. A … Read more
From Jane Friedman: This story starts about eight years ago, with the arrival of a much anticipated email from the publishing house where the first edition of my book, Good Naked: How to Write More, Write Better, and Be Happier, was in production. Wrote the marketing coordinator: Dear Joni, Attached is the final version of the … Read more
From Kristine Kathryn Rusch: [Note on 5/5/23: As most of my regular readers know, I’m dyslexic. I have a first reader to catch errors, but this post–which was late–went live without the assistance of that first reader. As a result, I made two typical errors for me, which have been discussed in the comments. Normally, I leave my … Read more
From Jane Friedman: The major self-publishing platforms have made the publishing process easy—perhaps too easy. We’ve been conditioned by our use of consumer technology to expect instant results. Errors are not difficult to fix. A change of heart or opinion? Re-upload the file or edit your book’s listing! But in practice, some things in publishing … Read more
From Anne R. Allen’s Blog… with Ruth Harris: A trendy word in publishing recently is “autofiction,” short for “autobiographical fiction.” The term isn’t new. It was first invented in 1977 by author Serge Doubrovsky when talking about his memoir-sh novel, Fils. And what about those Creative Nonfiction essays that fill literary magazines? (A goldmine for … Read more
From Publisher’s Weekly: There was a time when the words “please hold for Sterling Lord” could be a tricky moment for an acquiring editor. How do you reject a manuscript from a relentless agent who specializes in launching bestselling authors? When Sterling Lord died in Florida on Sept. 3, 2022—his 102nd birthday—the impact of his … Read more
From The Honest Broker: I’ve written too many negative stories about digital media platforms in recent months. I’ve started to worry. Am I turning into Dr. Doom and Mr. Gloom? In all fairness, my predictions have proven sadly accurate. After I served up these dismal forecasts for Facebook, Spotify, Netflix, and others, their share prices took a steep dive. … Read more
From The Creative Penn: What has changed in the publishing industry over the last few years? What can authors learn from the DOJ vs PRH court case? How can mid-list authors thrive in uncertain times? Jane Friedman talks about these things and more. Joanna Penn: How has the pandemic and increasing online sales changed the … Read more
From Writer Unboxed: The following is a writerly public service announcement. Or maybe it’s more like a report from the publishing trenches. No need to panic; there’s nothing here that amounts to an emergency, in the greater scheme. But my recent experience with my debut has taught me that Murphy’s Law holds sway over publishing. … Read more
From Jane Friedman: Like many authors, I had a book to promote during the COVID-19 pandemic and still today each one of us faces the threat of illness and too little bandwidth for a promotional blitz. Shilling our wares can be draining, so I decided to ask the unreasonable from my book promotion: that it … Read more
From The Literary Hub: When I was young, in a distant century, there was an odd feature of the literary community: celebrated authors writing essays for magazines or newspaper book sections chronicling the horrors of their tours. Usually amusingly, sometimes just trying to be. Laments about arriving at a bookstore to find many people waiting, … Read more
From Jane Friedman: Your book title, along with the cover, is a key marketing tool: it must prompt potential readers to pick up the book in a bookstore or click on it online because they want to know more. General nonfiction often makes its purpose explicit in the title or subtitle, but memoirs and novels … Read more
From Publishers Weekly: We’re used to the notion that bookstores are quiet, welcoming refuges, not the focus of state-sponsored kidnapping and detentions. But the mysterious disappearances of five booksellers from Hong Kong’s Causeway Bay Books and its eventual closure are reminders of how powerful ideas in books can be. In 2015, five publishers and booksellers … Read more
From MSN: During my interview with literary historian Mark McGurl, I glanced out the window to see an Amazon truck rumbling down my block. It was a fitting metaphor for our conversation about Everything and Less, McGurl’s provocative new literary history about how Amazon has reorganized the universe of fiction. “Amazon has insinuated itself into … Read more
From The New York Times: There is a sunny earnestness to Dawn Dorland, an un-self-conscious openness that endears her to some people and that others have found to be a little extra. Her friends call her a “feeler”: openhearted and eager, pressing to make connections with others even as, in many instances, she feels like … 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 The Wall Street Journal: The Bohemian literary colony at Carmel-by-the-Sea, Calif., gained notoriety in the early 20th century not only for its drunken bonfire parties, embrace of free love, and hosting of left-leaning poets and writers such as Robinson Jeffers, Sinclair Lewis and Jack London. It also became infamous in those decades for a … Read more
From Kristine Kathryn Rusch: This morning, a regular reader of my blog forwarded a tweet to me from a bookseller and writer about supply chain issues for books. He then suggested I blog about those issues. I had planned to, but I had a vague hope that they would improve. The bookseller’s tweet disabused me … Read more
From The Paris Review: “Ballet was full of dark fairy tales,” Megan Abbott observes in her new novel, The Turnout, noting that “how a dancer prepared her pointe shoes was a ritual as mysterious and private as how she might pleasure herself.” These mysterious and private rituals of young women—these “dark fairy tales”—are at the heart … Read more
From The Dubit Group: When I used to read fairy tales, I fancied that kind of thing never happened, and now here I am in the middle of one! – Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland When you think about it, Wonderland may have been the original ‘metaverse’. If that’s not a term you know, you’ll hear … Read more
From Writers Digest: The new book Book Wars: The Digital Revolution in Publishing documents in detail the changes in the book publishing industry in recent years. Author John B. Thompson gives a glimpse of three crucial changes. When I set out, around 10 years ago, to study the impact of the digital revolution on the … Read more
From Wired: WRITING A BOOK is a lonely pursuit, one that can take years of solitary work. Selling a book is another story. Authors give talks in cramped storefronts, schmooze at luncheons, and learn to casually discuss their belabored creative project as commercial content. The publicity circuit can be dispiriting, sleazy, and exhausting. It can … Read more
From the Associated Press: Book publishing in 2020 was a story of how much an industry can change and how much it can, or wants to, remain the same. “A lot of what has happened this year — if it were a novel, I would say that it had a little too much plot,” said … Read more
From Jane Friedman: It hasn’t been the best decade for Barnes & Noble, the biggest bookselling chain in the United States. As sales slowly eroded—and Amazon gained dominance—the position of CEO became one of the fastest revolving doors in the publishing industry. Each new leader trotted out a revised “concept store” to revive the fortunes … Read more
From Kristine Kathryn Rus ch: I adore a good gothic and a somewhat creepy novel (but not too creepy, mind you), so in June, when a reliable friend recommended Simone St. James’s The Sun Down Motel, I ordered a copy immediately, and read it the moment it arrived. Loved it. It’s in my recommended reading … Read more
From The New York Times: Addison Cain was living in Kyoto, volunteering at a shrine and studying indigenous Japanese religion. She was supposed to be working on a scholarly book about her research, but started writing intensely erotic Batman fan fiction instead. It happened almost by accident. It was 2012, and Ms. Cain — who … Read more
From Jane Friedman: As much of the retail world faces crisis, book publishing is positioned to grow in terms of unit sales when compared to 2019. In fact, 2020 may prove to be one of the strongest sales years in recent memory. A few factors are likely contributing to the resilience of sales: the prevalence … Read more
From Dave Farland, Story Doctor: Certain books don’t just sell well, they sell far more copies than there it would seem that they have audience members. They aren’t just hits, they become a “phenomenon.” You know their names: Harry Potter, Twilight, 50 Shades, etc. Before Harry Potter was released, I’d read an article talking about … Read more
From Writers in the Storm: When New Jersey went into lockdown on March 21st, I foolishly thought that I would get infinite amounts of writing done. During the day, I am the author acquisitions manager at IngramSpark and by night I like to write humorous personal non-fiction and romance novels. In my mind, I thought … Read more
From veteran publishing consultant Mike Shatzkin: One thing the pandemic has done is to make everybody more aware of “supply chains”: the path by which a thing gets made and delivered to its ultimate user. Many of us heard many times that a ventilator is constructed of 150 parts that come from all over the … Read more
From The Wall Street Journal: Amazon.com Inc. will begin allowing third-party sellers on its platform to resume shipping so-called nonessential items this week, a signal that the company is ramping up to meet broader consumer needs, according to people familiar with the matter. Last month, Amazon made a decision to prioritize at its warehouses those items deemed essential during … Read more
PG apologizes for not posting anything earlier. No contagion around Casa PG, however. From The New Yorker: When the plague came to London in 1665, Londoners lost their wits. They consulted astrologers, quacks, the Bible. They searched their bodies for signs, tokens of the disease: lumps, blisters, black spots. They begged for prophecies; they paid … Read more
From Our Windsor.ca: In 2010 or so I bought my first e-reader. A Kobo. I was intrigued by the idea of an e-reader; I thought it might be convenient. But I equivocated — should I buy a Kobo? Or a Kindle? Kindle was associated with the growing bookseller Amazon, the Kobo with the Canadian company … Read more