Booksquare

Though some authors seem to know instinctively the best, most expeditious, ways to get rejected, others require a primer. For those souls, Deidre Knight and Justin Knight of The Knight Agency have put together a helpful list of things to do to ensure immediate rejection: But we’ll confine ourselves to encouraging writers with ways to […]

Yesterday, we noted with interest that the Los Angeles Times hired a new book review editor. As these things often go, one person in our vicinity expressed (extremely) mild interest, which we took as encouragement to further the discussion. Said discussion quickly degenerated into a lively debate about men and white suits (a surprising number […]

We have a little secret: we have taken to picking and choosing literary journals to try based on editorial philosophy, believing that there is some sort of connection between editorial voice and journal voice (as opposed to just random voices in our head). As we have limited resources, we base our decisions on answers to […]

Reviews are funny things — or rather, the fact that they’re not funny is a funny thing. You have your dry recitation of the facts and figures of a book. You have your pretentious intellectual elite (our favorite!) analysis of homoerotic subtexts in Shane. You even have the biting, scathing, rip-roaring review. But it’s rare […]

Our dearest* Edward Wyatt (who went and got himself an excellent headline this time out) takes a look at a bad cover and how it was made right. We can only speculate about what was being smoked in the cover-decision meeting, but for the person who put Rick Moody and Conan the Barbarian together in […]

Looking for an etiquette primer for authors? Or just looking for a few behavioral guidelines? Or just wondering what makes the editor/author relationship work? Elizabeth Spiers spoke with a few editors about how things work in the real world (note: the real world bears no resemblance to what you see on television). First item of […]

Jill Schwartzman of HarperCollins is an editor just looking for a good time. Hmm, that didn’t come out right. Jill Schwartzman of HarperCollins is an editor just looking for a good read. Yes, much better. She’s looking for unusual perspectives on life (though not, necessarily, how to live it). Now that the Da Vinci craze […]

Hunter S. Thompson was one of those writers whose voice I always loved: even in his “decline,” the anger, wit and energy that fueled his writing came through loud and clear. I always stopped to listen to what he had to say, even if it sometimes seemed to be the same thing over and over […]

Someday, we might find that we’ve grown bored with the inevitable lawsuit trend, but until then, we watch the phenomenon with glee. Each day, we awake, wondering who will be sued next and what tack the suer will take. Now it is the television series Lost that is facing the time-sucking specter of litigation. Turns […]

James Fitzgerald and Anne Garrett believe in the awesome power of the Internet. So much so that their agency utilizes things like the web and email to do business. It’s almost enough to bring a tear of joy to our jaded eye. The agents like email, they like brief, action-packed pitches, and they like the […]