Author name: Booksquare

Dissecting the publishing industry with love and skepticism.

Market Declared Dead; New Products Express Surprise

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You may find yourself wondering why we get so excited by ebook readers. It’s very simple: we see so much potential in them. College students could cut book budgets to the bone (yes, that’s our fantasy world slipping out again). We see potential in business situation, for commuters, for vacationers, and…for authors. Many authors are turning to epublishers, for a variety of reasons; many readers don’t like sitting at the computer or scrolling through pages on their PDAs. So, yeah, we’re excited as heck about the potential here. Now if we could only convince Sony (see previous stories on the […]

Square Pegs

A Little Skin Flaying

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We think we’re going to spearhead a little campaign. Still trying to come up with a catchy title (acronyms aren’t our thing), but it will be something like The Fund for Good Author Interviews. Well, probably not fund because who would get the money? We suppose it could be, hmm, an educational fund for journalists. But don’t they get student loans and such? Okay, regardless, we are campaigning for improved author interviews. It is our right as citizens of the world. Yes, we too are starting to suspect something was slipped into our Diet Coke. We linked to Sarah Weinman’s

Square Pegs

Our Last Illusion, Shattered

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We spent the weekend lecturing our cats (which, oddly enough, comprise the felines who live here and our neighbor’s outdoor cats) on fireworks and safety. You can probably imagine how well our wisdom was received. And with good reason…fireworks aren’t nearly as dangerous as books. Yes, your precious, coddled, beloved books are vicious and violent. And we’re not just talking about the thrillers. All books. Even those soft-covered baby books. Two stories today drove home this truth in ways our lectures cannot. Beware of books. Now we’re off to talk to the cats about the dangers arising from body slamming

Books/Mags/Blogs

Language as a Moving Target

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At one point in our storied career, we wrote what we considered a brilliant response to something or other written by William Safire as he lamented our ever-changing language (surely his original piece won’t be that hard to find, given our very specific clues in this sentence). We were young and full of ourselves at the time, but our original belief remains true: language is a living thing. Okay, not so living that you have to go all Cormac McCarthy on us, but it evolves at a nice tempo. And we think that’s just grand — as does Barbara Wallraff.

Publishers and Editors

Coming Out of the Closet

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This week, we were confronted with an ugly truth: we have slipped into Adverb World. We’ve never been particularly anti-adverb, preferring to think of our relationship as healthy and respectful . Much like our relationship with lo mein. But as with noodles, sometimes our encounters with adverbs grow more frequent and less justified (it’s not like there’s a secret prize in every carton of house special lo mein). Just like our fleeting flirtation with “looked” and on-again, off-again romance with “could see”, we need to re-evaluate our reliance on those lovely “-ly” endings. But we won’t give them up. Ever.

Tools and Craft

It’s Not Nice to Fool Mother Nature

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Sometimes we read something and it shimmers in our mind for a few days. Such as Stephany from MaudNewton.com’s recent post, an excerpt from Vladimir Nabokov’s Lectures on Literature. This small excerpt felt especially apropos in light of last week’s anti-reader essay in the New York Times Book Review. We were especially struck by this: Every great writer is a great deceiver, but so is that arch-cheat Nature. Nature always deceives. From the simple deception of propagation to the prodigiously sophisticated illusion of protective colors in butterflies or birds, there is in Nature a marvelous system of spells and wiles.

Square Pegs, Tools and Craft

Beneath The Surface

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We think we’ve figured something out — our dissatisfaction with most author interviews comes from the sameness they exhibit (as evidenced by the fact that we maxed out on Marian Keyes stories so quickly; it was as if each interviewer regurgitated the same talking points). It’s not that the authors don’t have things to say; it’s more that the interviewers barely scratch the surface. And (this is possibly the big part of our revelation) most interviews are for readers, not writers. Sarah Weinman of Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind, in her interview with Michael Connelly, brings this home because Sarah

Square Pegs

Wrapping Up This Week’s Editor and Agent News

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Alas, we’ve come to the end of our updates. Sure has been fun. We leave you with word that Keyren Gerlach has been named editorial assistant for Harlequin Historicals and HQN. We know a little about Gerlach’s new position — lots of fielding calls from panicky authors, lots of mail to be opened. However, her office is located in the gorgeous Woolworth Building (they really don’t make buildings like that anymore), so it’s not all bad. Harlequin/Silhouette

Publishers and Editors

Increased Workload

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Abby Holcomb was named associate editor at Avalon Books. Avalon focuses primarily on the library market with an emphasis on romance, mystery, and Westerns. The books tend to be wholesome adult fiction (we think you know what we mean by that — if not, visit the website). Avalon titles tend to run in the 60,000 word range. Avalon Books

Publishers and Editors

Moving Up

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We haven’t mentioned our adoration of MediaBistro in at least a week, so we start our next item with a shout out to their Revolving Door feature. While primarily a chronicle of magazine staff comings and goings (and we find ourselves more than a little surprised at how much movement there is in that industry), other editorial changes find their way into the very helpful newsletter (yes, this is a roundabout way of us saying we have no idea if this information is for the public or members only). Fun item from this week’s update: Jodi Davis was promoted to

Publishers and Editors
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