Booksquare

Only one thing happened to the publishing business in 2005. Google went public. Lots of pin action in the stock. All the broker dealers will have big bonuses in their Christmas stocking. Sure, two Googlebots left the farm and moved to Elko Nevada, a scandal that hasn’t garnered enough attention. But in terms of market […]

We’re off to explore volcanoes and massages and mai tais. Not necessarily in that order. A trio of trusty sitters will be feeding the blog and watering the posts while we’re gone. As always, treat them with the same dignity and respect you offer us. If that becomes impossible, keep the swearing to a minimum. […]

Long before Google was a glimmer in its founders’ eyes, years before Yahoo! made the scene, heck, possibly a decade or two before publishers caught on, there was a a digital revolution in publishing: Project Gutenberg. Way back when computers took up spaces the size the barns, a group of people were hand-typing (for the […]

It is rare that we point out the failures of the BS mother, but sometimes we must. Yes, we realize this incursion will lead to a longish catalogue detailing each and every transgression we committed under her roof — we are prepared to take our punishment. The mother missed a golden opportunity during our seventh […]

Such is our luck that our most sincere attempts at sincerity are often met with skepticism — still we persevere. We are very excited at the moment and pleased as punch with the publishing industry. We have been tingling with excitement about the recent digital warehouse announcement from HarperCollins. It’s like the great publishing gods […]

Even though we often disagree with his politics, we have a soft spot for Dana Rohrabacher. You gotta love a Congressman who surfs. And, sure, we’d rather he spent a little more time paying attention to running the country, but when a man’s gotta write, nothing’s going to stand in his way. Okay, so he […]

We realize (truly!) that there is a fundamental difference between the music industry and the publishing industry. The two industries also have much in common, and given that music moves faster than publishing, the technological growing pains faced by one industry provide lessons for the next. The challenge from satellite radio is the latest example […]

Word on the street is that Harlequin is discontinuing its Signature line. This is probably only important to you if you have a clue what the imprint was all about. The rest of us will likely not notice the demise. In unrelated news, a grand total of ten fewer books will be published in 2006, […]

Looking for a holiday gift? Never fear, BS is here. Over at Romancing The Blog, we discuss the gift of reading and how you can pass it on. The Gift of Literacy ProLiteracy

In an article in the New York Press, Sam Sacks takes exception with writing workshops. Where one once found creativity and free-flowing ideas, the experience now lends itself to to an inevitable sense of sameness. He cites Best New American Voices 2006 as Exhibit A of workshopping gone wrong. The question Sacks dances around is […]