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Even as we get excited about innovative marketing campaigns, we find ourself wondering what stops reporters from asking the tough questions. Like, oh, “When did living off the grid start meaning becoming invisible to real-life surveillance networks? Have you never heard of spy satellites?” Yes, indeedy, folks. We have ourselves a situation where the publisher […]

We know many fine products of MFA programs. They are good writers with kind souls. Yesterday, we talked about the benefits of writing workshops. Like anything that’s good — potato chips, lo mein — a little workshopping is excellent. Full-time immersion can be destructive. Elizabeth Clementson talks about her experiences in a MFA program. While […]

We have survived Tod Goldberg’s class! Our brain is stuffed with useless pop culture trivia and ear worms looping really bad songs from the seventies. Really bad songs. “Sylvia’s Mother” bad. We’re quite sure that within a week, the entire class would have been tortured with snippets of “Seasons in the Sun.” Now, it wasn’t […]

Here it is, our problem in a nutshell: With him were two journalists (myself and the jovial novelist Sam Lipsyte, who was profiling him for GQ), as well as Sylvie Christophe from the French Consulate, dashingly attired in a formfitting white jacket and knee-length white pants. Well, we didn’t say it was a little nut, […]

If you want people to read, you need to deliver the material in ways that are convenient for the reader. As a general rule, many of us rarely have the luxury of time to sit down and read for hours at a time. This is actually very sad. What is the point of increasing efficiency […]

We have so much to get to today, and so little time. First up is something near and dear to our heart: easy access to the Internet. Across the nation, communities are looking at ways to provide low-cost, high-speed Internet access to citizens. Some have already achieved this goal. But there’s a bill pending in […]

Given our natural modesty, we will not suggest that our brilliant plans to revamp the publishing business are seeping into the thoughts of industry professionals. We will suggest that, however they came to the fountain, it’s about time. Doug Seibold of Agate describes his conversion from a strictly-hardback kind of guy to a more flexible […]

Such is our cynicism that when we saw a New York Times profile of Evanovich, Inc., we immediately thought, “Hmm, there must be a new Stephanie Plum novel out.” Lo and behold, our powers of prediction are undulled by the lack of caffeine. Which reminds us. . .would the intern in charge of coffee please […]

For books, and the people who love them, there is nothing more frustrating than failing to reach an audience. The poor book tries. It struggles to be written, forces itself to face humiliation in the form of rejection just because it believes it has something to say, it endures awful covers and misleading blurbs, and […]

This week, we guide you to an interview with Lorin Stein of Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Stein discusses FSG’s approach to acquiring, editing, and marketing books while taking a stab at his approach to finding new talent: I get about a dozen manuscripts a week, plus maybe a dozen proposals and foreign books. Anything written […]