Author name: Booksquare

Dissecting the publishing industry with love and skepticism.

In Which We Confess to A Less-Than-Refined Sense of Humor

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We’re on the anti-piracy record, so we believe we can be forgiven for this transgression: Latin American literary giant Gabriel Garcia Marquez has won the last laugh on book pirates by finely tuning the ending of his latest novel. The launch of the Spanish-language version of the book, “Memories of My Melancholy Whores,” was brought forward a week to Wednesday because bootleg copies have begun appearing on the streets of his native Colombia. But the pirate copies are not the same as the final version of the book, 77-year-old Garcia Marquez’s first novel in 10 years, editor Braulio Peralta said. […]

Books/Mags/Blogs

Secretly, It’s A Clever Analogy

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We often hear about the power of the human spirit, etc, but what about the worm? Why is the worm so ignored? Talk about a species that goes to extraordinary lengths to survive. If you want perseverance*, we say go with the worm. We note this because it is inexplicably rainy (inexplicably in that it has persisted far too long for October in SoCal). There comes a point when even the worms cannot take the soaking. Inevitably and dangerously, they make the long trek from the lawn to the patio, up the back stairs — they always take the stairs

Square Pegs

Are You A First-Time Author? Have We Got An Agent For You

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At first glance (that’s Tim McCarver’s “I’ve been a sports announcer too long” hairstyle), RLR Literary might not seem hospitable to first-time authors. As MediaBistro tells us, if you’re writing a sports-related book, it’s possible — they pretty much have that area covered (but never say never). However, agents Jennifer Unter and Tara Mark go beyond the sports book (because, let’s face it, how many books does Don Zimmer have time to write?). A little smart chicklit here, some cool non-fiction there. Have a story about the entertainment industry? Hmmm, they might be interested. Unter gets extra credit points in

Agents

Things We Just Don’t Get

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Was it just last week that we were talking about how things that sell in the United States don’t necessarily translate to international markets? It turns out it’s true — we didn’t just make it up to fill server space. As it turns out (we suggest sitting, though leaning is acceptable), romances that do well in the United States don’t necessarily sell in Europe. Now we’re not saying anything, but it doesn’t take a lot of marketing research to guess that cowboys wouldn’t be big in Italy. Except perhaps as a curiosity. Makes us wonder if some declines in Harlequin

Books/Mags/Blogs

Say What You Will About The Decline of Western Civilization

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But we keep on adding to our dictionaries. None of that dead language thing for us. Nope, we believe the dictionary should never be done, only resting. We do derive some comfort from the knowledge that many words come and go — we remain hopeful the aurally displeasing bling-bling will enter the Abandoned Words Home. English has been the fastest-moving language for 100 years, says a new book, Larpers and Shroomers, the Language Report. The cool century – 100 years of being hip

Square Pegs

Legal Mumb Jumbo

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A long time ago, when we were young and innocent, we temped for a Major Hollywood Producer. Our major duties were to cut radishes and place them in a bowl of water in the office refrigerator (he never ate them, but we snuck more than a few), to carry his shoes from his office to the hallway when the shoeshine dude showed up (which is why we didn’t pursue full-time employment with MHP), and to return unsolicited screenplays unopened. We received very few instructions in the course of our employment, but one was a golden rule: they are not to

Tools and Craft

The Prize Fight That Never Was

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We’re going to be honest — we had high hopes for the Guardian article on the tensions at HarperCollins in Great Britain. Perhaps it was the use of the word “row”. We had visions of fisticuffs dancing in our head. Instead, we got rumor and innuendo. Nothing wrong with that, but it appears that the row is nothing more than a group of executives who don’t really like each other, have different styles, and, perhaps, the kind of poor judgment that comes with loose purse strings. At least we got a decent quote of the week out of it. Row

Publishers and Editors

It’s About Quantity, Not Quality

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For some, November revolves around food; for others, it revolves around the keyboard. You can tell who’s who by their approach to the Internet. Foodies search for a way to make green beans, mushroom soup, and little fried onions palatable. Writers obsessively check in at the National Novel Writing Month website. We’ll let the NaNoWriMo folks explain it : National Novel Writing Month is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing. Participants begin writing November 1. The goal is to write a 175-page (50,000-word) novel by midnight, November 30. Valuing enthusiasm and perseverance over talent and craft, NaNoWriMo is a

Square Pegs, Tools and Craft

All Of This For…?

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If you want to make people crazy, just mention that you attend school for the sheer joy of learning. But, they say, what about a job? A career? A resume padder? No, you insist, it is the learning I desire. Nothing more. Though we’ve taken formal writing classes, we’ve never really thought about entering a MFA program. It seems, to us, to be a plastic bubble sort of writing experience (though we know graduates of some programs, and they are not plastic bubble sort of people…but we know that you know what we mean). We read an article today that,

Tools and Craft
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