Author name: Booksquare

Dissecting the publishing industry with love and skepticism.

The Product Name is Pure Coincidence

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They say that novel writing is a lonely business and all that — well, yeah, if we wanted to make it a party, we’d probably go into advertising or screenwriting or something. However, there are times when you want to write with someone else. The good news is that collaborative software has come a long way. The bad news is it’s for the Mac only (this is a problem for us as we’re multi-systemal). We’ve used SubEthaEdit for brainstorming first drafts of business documents with the husband — it provides an opportunity to correct spelling and deleting his ideas in […]

Tools and Craft

The Secret Lives Of Editors

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While we suspect that Dan Wickett of the Emerging Writers Network doesn’t sleep, which makes us a bit concerned for his health, we have no qualms about taking advantage of his hard work. After all, the alternative is too scary to mention. He’s been interviewing like crazy lately (probably by the time we finish this post, he’ll be telling us about another cool author…), and we can only suggest cruising the EWN site to catch up. Because helpful is our middle name (and, yes, this naturally led to much teasing in our misbegotten childhood), we’re giving you a start. Dan

Publishers and Editors

Earth: Truly One of the More Terrifying Planets

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Or maybe Los Angeles is one of the more terrifying towns. We often get this stuff mixed up. J-Fly (who’s un-on hiatus, and if we’d been playing more and working less, we’d know this) has decided to try a novel writing class at UCLA. We’ve done that, right down to the unfortunate runny nose (our conveniently timed allergy attack had a nice woman in a striped dress moving her desk away inch-by-inch. She never returned to class.). Based on our research, there are a few types who take these classes: earnest souls who really, really want to be published writers

Tools and Craft

Yes, Always Ask Someone Who Doesn’t Know For Information

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We admit to only a passing interest in the annual visit of a mysterious stranger to Edgar Allan Poe’s gravesite. Frankly, for us, keeping up a tradition for more than a week requires much effort. And, quite possibly, the most fascinating aspect of this year’s pilgrimage is that the nocturnal visitor eschewed top hat and white scarf. Clearly they have officially gone out of fashion. As for the cognac? Well, everyone has a theory, but for us, the only question is why not cognac? Mysterious fan marks Poe’s birthday with cognac, roses — for 56th year

Square Pegs

Seems Like Just Yesterday

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Time has a way of messing with our poor little mind, but we feel like it’s been mere days since we read the flurry of excited articles about Brigid Hughes taking over The Paris Review. Well, a lot of bits and bytes could have been saved (though, frankly, they’re not much in the way of endangered). Hughes is gone, the literary journal is soul-searching, and George Plimptom remains dead. There are likely other issues, but we think we’ve hit the major points. Plimpton’s Big Shoes Are Vacant Yet Again

Books/Mags/Blogs, Publishers and Editors

Ode to The August Author

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The distribution issues at the Penguin warehouse in Rugby, UK have received surprisingly little press outside a few blogs and Publisher’s Lunch. This surprises us to no end — for an entire quarter, shipments of books were pretty much not happening. For authors whose books were released during that period (or in the months just prior), countless sales were lost. If you know anything about publishing (and we know you do), you know that once the initial release period passes, you’re not exactly on your publisher’s radar. After careful thought and analysis (we linked to the story about the start

Publishers and Editors

On The Joy of Knowing The Guy Who Said That

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Or are the solipsists who once looked upon the internet as a fad, believing it would suffer the same fate as CB radios, and who once thought online news would never equal print. Alas, he’s still waiting to see if this email thing is going to stick as well. Like It or Not, Blogs Have Legs

Quote of the Week

We Like the Idea of Powerful Agents, We Do

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What with one thing and the other (mostly the other), we have about fifteen tabs open in Firefox, each representing something we meant to post on over the past week or so. If we were to stop and dwell on how pathetic this makes us, well, we’d never get around to posting anything. Our goal, today, is to make a concerted effort to close about half these tabs. For those who are unfamiliar with this tactic, our sudden desire to clean up our virtual desktop is a classic sign of avoidance. Also, we were thinking of rebooting the laptop sometime

Agents

We’re Always Behind The Times, But Somerset Maugham Is Our Fantasy Man

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Granted, the beauty of fantasy men is that they’re not real, but we never let that distract us. Probably every blog and its brother has linked to this story about Bookslut and its human, but we wouldn’t be us if we didn’t march really slowly because of days of email to slog through. Did anyone catch that blogs are over (see previous posts)? Really a shame, because, what with being easy to publish and all, blogs are the next big thing. Publishers are getting it: hey, these people read our stuff and like it. Maybe we can do some business.

Books/Mags/Blogs

We Idolize Few

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Being the child of a librarian is rough — you get to be a guinea pig, of sorts. The drawback is that your mother works in your school and things get dicey when you’re in the principal’s office. The upside is that you get your greedy little fingers on new books before the other kids. If we didn’t count it as one of our life’s major accomplishments, we’d have to admit we are so nerdy, it’s embarrassing. It’s amazing how clearly our childhood reading stands out in our mind. We can see the school library. Pinpoint the location of the

Square Pegs
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