Author name: Booksquare

Dissecting the publishing industry with love and skepticism.

BS By Mail

In our continuing effort to provide, uh, optimum public service, we are proud to announce that Booksquare is now available by email. Yes, we’ll come to you instead of making you come to us. Which kind of sounds lonely, now that we think about it. But don’t mind us — it’s your life that matters. Subscription form is at the top of the page. Because we don’t have a generous bone in our body, your email address will not be shared, sold, nor given away, even if we are threatened with torture in the form of really bad poetry readings. […]

Square Pegs

On Placing The Blame Squarely Where It Belongs

Sure, just like everybody else I felt stupid that I’ve never really understood the difference between “that” and “which,” but I didn’t let this shame stop me from confessing my ignorance repeatedly to colleagues until eventually one told me to look it up. And this shame didn’t stop me from calling that same old friend a year later and announcing, in a panic, “I’ve got a copy-editing test tomorrow and I looked up ‘that versus which’ and I still need help.” That final humiliation seems to have done the trick, because by the end of the night I got it.

Quote of the Week

Stopping The Blook In Its Tracks

Before we get started on our topic, we must clear the air. In no way, shape, or form do we support the use of the word “blook”. We demand that this word be stricken from the nation’s vocabulary immediately — think of the children! Do not let this word perpetuate. And with that, we plunge directly into the going-on-years-now phenomenon that is bloggers writing books. Or is it blogs that become books? Nevermind — the source of the material is far less important than the fact that the Wall Street Journal got sucked into the might Lulu.com promotion machine (extra

Non-Traditional Publishing

A Lot of Conversation In A Very Short Amount of Time

Mr. Segundo has lured author Dana Spiotta (Eat The Document) into his cave to discuss (and we quote): Katherine Ann Power as inspiration, the ambiguities of terrorism, comparisons and similarities between Eat the Document and Lightning Field, witty political activists, the Billboard Liberation Front, cinematic influences, Don DeLillo, plotting, reader expectations, on stopping just short of September 11th, justifying pop cultural references, food as a Balzacian character indicator, the Beach Boys, literary influences, dialogue, how people talk in restaurants, the rise in contemporary novels dealing with 1960s & 1970s activism, innocence, and unanswered questions for the reader. Now, far be

Square Pegs

On Trends That Need To End

Whether due to the short attention spans of readers, the churn of the book-publishing world or some kind of writing meme, authors are slicing and dicing up their experiences and their studies into rapidly digestible, often bestselling 12-month packages. 365 days, gazillions of readers

Quote of the Week

The Cover Matters, And Other Truths In Publishing

To nobody’s surprise, the right cover for a book does matter. We note this only because we’re not sure what we find more fascinating: that a major publishing conference would have a session on this topic or that Publisher’s Weekly would do an article on the session. Then again, it’s possible that what really caught our attention was this: In closing [Walter] Weintz said publishers need to remember what he calls the ‘five Ps’ when it comes to moving books: knowing your Product, doing the right Packaging, giving it the right Price, doing the correct Promotion and getting the best

Square Pegs

Radicalism, Publishing Style

In what is an apparently radical move, Cindy Spiegel and Julie Grau will call their new Doubleday imprint “Spiegel & Grau”. After noting that publishing houses often name imprints after the male founders, the new name feels “both old-fashioned and radical”. Definitely beats some made-up feminine sounding word that makes no sense at all. Spiegel & Grau Land Orman & Company

Publishers and Editors

Revisiting The Second Novel, Again

We are most intrigued by the notion of a “first novel” versus a “second” novel, because, quite possibly, the first is really the second, or maybe even the third. It is the rare author who hits the big-time on the first effort. In the world of writing, that first manuscript is often viewed as a collector of dust bunnies — why else would you keep it under your (virtual or physical) bed? Thus we scratch our head when second published novels are dismissed a bit callously: Some critics say that it comes about because, having poured all their effort into

The Business of Publishing

In Which The New York Times Discovers TPO

Ah, prestige. So lovely, so heart-warming, so not likely to pay the bills. We will admit that if it weren’t for the higher royalties, we wouldn’t get the desire to publish in hardcover. After all, we count among our acquaintances only one soul who refuses to touch paperback books; everyone else is quite happy to read the printed word in any format. Naturally, we will not name names (Cathy) as that would be rude. So a year or two after the fact, the New York Times (we are going to miss Edward Wyatt when he’s gone) takes a look at

The Business of Publishing
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