Author name: Booksquare

Dissecting the publishing industry with love and skepticism.

This Is The Modern World

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We’re starting to think we don’t have any secrets left. This because we’re about to scrape the bottom of the Booksquare-secret barrel. Yes, we once had a (intellectual) crush on Robert X. Cringely. We think the infatuation was with the original Cringely, but we cannot be sure. All we know is we used to snatch copies of InfoWorld from the husband’s hands…oh no, the husband is currently lecturing, he’s waving his hands and acting all emphatic. We fell in love with the imposter. Damn. Something about personas and stealing and such… Which means we had a great lead and now […]

Tools and Craft

Too Much Time on Our Hands (and A Really Good Pavement Song on the Stereo)

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We cannot match Beatrice’s review of the always-puzzling Bookbabes’ review of the revamped New York Times Book Review (which we read online this past weekend, and have assumed the changes have more impact in real life — and yes, if you guess the correct number of times we said “review” in our first sentence, you win a prize or something), but we can add our always useful thoughts about their column. We realize making fun of the Babes is easy, but, darn it, shouldn’t there be some things in life you can phone in? We’ve read the Babes’ interview/analysis, and

Books/Mags/Blogs

Yes, Truly, In Over Our Heads

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A Booksquare operative read this story on Robert McKee and immediately thought of us. We’re not sure what this says about her. Nor are we sure what it says about us. Unless it’s that his rants so closely mirror ours: He was also not happy with the state of screenwriting — or fiction writing in general. “It’s a worldwide, cross-media crisis,” he said. He went off on politically correct language, sloppy structure, shallow characters and lazy work habits (and, over the course of the weekend, President Bush, the British Empire, the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, “American self-deception,” car pools, Wonder

Tools and Craft

Word Map

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Beatrice rounds up experiences at New York Is Book Country (is it us or does this sound like the slogan for one of the “M” states). Regular Beatrice readers know the blog frequently discusses chicklit — their fair appraisal of the subject is refreshing, especially because men often don’t write about women’s fiction with any sort of understanding. We often think it would be really cool if male book critics would spend more time learning the mores of women’s fiction before leaping into reviewing. Since, unfortunately, popular fiction isn’t taught seriously in most schools, and most boys wouldn’t be caught

Books/Mags/Blogs

Fight Against A Pirate Day

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In our previous life, we kept a secret file. Every few months, our boss would race into our office and ask to borrow “the file”. We’d hand it over, slip the pencil she’d accidentally stolen off our desk from her hand, and follow her as she carried our special collection of articles back to her office. Experience had taught us that letting the file out of our sight was dangerous. No, we weren’t spying on our peers. Much, much sadder than that: we collected articles on anti-piracy. Yes, you read it right. While others pored over Daily Variety and The

Square Pegs

Our Mood Is Too Good To Complain

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You know how hard we work for you — we get the news and then we start off researching to provide even more information. We want you to be well-armed as you fight your way through this industry. We do this despite the knowledge that publishing companies have really bad websites. There appears to be a lot of confusion as to who the target audiences are and how to best serve them. Just by way of example: authors (aspiring, etc) are target audiences. They seem to be forgotten or buried. Yeah, it’s possible this is highly intentional. But it’s also

Publishers and Editors

Meet The New Job

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Publisher’s Lunch tells us that Laurie Rippon of Harper Design International has added the title “publisher” to her resume. Because you never truly leave your old job behind (as we know far too well), she’ll keep on keeping on with her duties as SVP/Creative Director. Harper Design International

Publishers and Editors

Manga Manga Everywhere

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We hate to think bad thoughts (mostly), but we are getting concerned about the flood of manga publishers out there. Sure, we love the stuff, but is it possible that in jumping on a trend, the industry has, well, already hit the saturation level? We ask this in all sincerity as yet another manga publisher is established. We also ask this after our recent trip to a big ole bookstore filled with racks of manga…and we were the only person shopping in the section. Dallas Middaugh (Del Rey — he’ll be staying on with the company even as the venture

Publishers and Editors

Picking Our Way Through The News

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It took us a few tries, what with mornings not being our best time of day, but we think we have it: HarperCollins is changing the way it does business. Whew! All of those words for such a simple concept. If we have this straight (and there’s no way of knowing for sure), HC will be bringing more of the activities it traditionally outsourced, like ancillary rights, in house. This means these ventures have proven sufficiently profitable, mainstream, if you will, to merit the creation of internal infrastructure. For HC, this means they won’t be getting royalties from third parties

Publishers and Editors
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