Author name: Booksquare

Dissecting the publishing industry with love and skepticism.

How To Sell More Books

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There is an interesting phenomenon: literacy leads to increased book consumption. Probably someone with advanced degrees can draw helpful charts to explain why this is so, but we don’t need that information right now. If there is a cause that authors should strongly support (in addition to health care, etc), it is literacy. Without eager readers, you cannot achieve what we believe to be your goals. Pitney Bowes is celebrating Literacy Month with a special eBay auction. From September 22 – 29, celebrity-decorated and designed envelopes will be auctioned. Proceeds go to four literacy charities, including ProLiteracy Worldwide. Pitney Bowes […]

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On Quotas

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We find it hard to believe we’re linking to same article twice, but we liked this quote far too much to let it pass without comment: “Maybe we’re behind the times,” says [Jonathan] Galassi, who publishes such award-winning authors as [Shirley] Hazzard, Susan Sontag and Jonathan Franzen. “I just think there are too many words out there already. I hope our writers will be spending their time writing their books, not their blogs.” The husband believes each human is given a quota of pickles to be consumed in life. He reached his at the tender age of eight. Likewise, each

Quote of the Week

Heart-Stopping Excitement

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Seriously, you can take the girl out of the contracts, but you can’t take the contracts out of the girl. No really — earlier this week, we were reviewing a complicated acquisition deal involving several companies (where, if you ran your finger up the org charts, you’d discover there were really only two entities involved), one movie (or two, depending on whose perspective you took), and lots of shadowy figures (we were pleasantly surprised to encounter an old con artist from our past in the correspondence we read). And we were doing this for fun. Just moments ago, the husband

Tools and Craft

Makes Us Sniffle

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Okay, fine, it’s mostly the allergies. Love, love, love fall in SoCal. It’s when our investment in certain brand name tissues pay off. Stephen Fry is our kind of guy: tone deaf. His failures mirror ours. His successes do not. But that’s another issue entirely. For your amusement (and that’s what makes us so giving), we offer a glimpse into our soul — as portrayed by another human’s failure to hit a note. Any note. Rock me Amadeus: At school, when it came to playing two or more notes in tune, he had problems. Which partly explains why Stephen Fry

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Leave It To A Geek

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Now we’re not admitting anything here, but a rough (meaning: insufficient caffeine to think clearly) glance at the numbers tossed out in the article linked below tells us they’re reasonable. Reasonable being defined as they make sense to us. Being an author is a bit like being a celebrity (sometimes you can be both, but that would be another posting entirely). You get to do the work (for an author, it’s writing; for the celebrity, well, that depends), while all sorts of hands are out, palm up, along the route. You are not so much a creative genius as a

Books/Mags/Blogs, Tools and Craft

The Modern Thank You Note

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If you’ve ever spent time in certain conspiracy theory circles, the book Holy Blood, Holy Grail is mentioned. Curious, you might read it. Perplexed, you might wonder how it is that so much history went unreported. Well, there are lots of versions of history. One could spend many lifetimes tracing them all out. Not being any sort of scholar, we cannot advise on the historical accuracy of anything. We can say that sales of certain books are certainly increased by the sales of other books. As always, this joyful news is greeted with a lawsuit. We applaud modern courtesy, though

Books/Mags/Blogs

Help, We’re Juggling as Fast as We Can. Or Not.

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As we struggle with the first chapter of the new disaster, we have this sense of doom. Why is it that bad things always appears in the form of an analog clock? Is that truly our vision of impending disaster? We know we should devote every breath to writing fiction, but we’re feeling a bit like a Tinker Toy. At last count, we were broken down into seven pieces. It is just our luck that we are all the round parts, not the long, skinny ones. Every time we sit down to post here, a little voice reminds us that

Books/Mags/Blogs, Tools and Craft

Cause: Excellent

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Author Trish Jensen has been a friend of ours for many years — somehow (and we can’t say why) she gets our sense of humor. She has been unfailingly generous with her time and wisdom. She is also a victim of a circumstance facing many authors, musicians, painters, humans: no health insurance. When Trish was rushed to the hospital last week, nobody worried too much about the eventual cost; now that she’s recovering, it is inevitable that the hospital’s finance department becomes involved. Click on more to learn about a group of authors banding together to help Trish pay her

Square Pegs

Watching The Watchdogs

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We broke up with our local news a little over a year ago. It was painful — especially when we said goodbye to Mark Thompson, our beloved weather dude. We still long for glimpses of him, so much so that sometimes we see really bad movies because he’s often hired to play, well, weathermen. They say time heals, but we aren’t sure. We do know it was a relationship that had to end. We spent far too many nights shouting at the television. They say you shouldn’t go to bed angry; we did, far too often. We hear that this

Books/Mags/Blogs

Our Advice: Ignore Reviews

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We admit we’re easily amused. We count ourself lucky to be part of a species that takes itself so seriously — yet is so ridiculous. It is as if there was some sort of plan to keep us laughing. Like when noted author Anne Rice chooses to take on her fans in a tirade. You know the type — you, you…readers…you don’t get it. You don’t understand. This is art. I am going to take my toys and go home. Okay, fine, we’re paraphrasing. If we give Rice the benefit of the doubt, she didn’t do herself any favors (unless

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