Author name: Booksquare

Dissecting the publishing industry with love and skepticism.

Name Dropping and Public Speaking

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First the name dropping, Leslie Schwartz, our former instructor, has announced that her new book Angels Crest is a BookSense 76 pick for July. This is incredibly cool news because as she told us about her journey with this book, we learned a lot about the power of believing in yourself. She’s also doing a series of signings in the Los Angeles area (link to more information helpfully provided by us). And (we just love it when we actually have a halfway decent segueway), Leslie also emphasized the importance of preparing for reading your work in public (her advice to […]

Tools and Craft

Not Your Mother’s Kick-Ass Heroine

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We have a friend (she shall remain nameless) who collects pictures of girls with guns. She thinks Uma Thurman should do more movies like Kill Bill (so does our husband; perhaps we should set aside our aversion to violence and check this movie out). She likes tough, strong women. She’s not alone — and for readers who like their women assertive, Silhouette Books is unleashing Bombshell, a line dedicated to strong heroines and lots of action. In this article, Associate Senior Editor Natashya Wilson describes the line’s vision and what she’s looking for in a submission. Bombshell: Writing action-adventure that

Publishers and Editors

Physical Buildings: You Can’t Add a Hard Drive to Expand Them

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The most interesting aspect of this New York Times article on online research is, paradoxically, missing from the headline and the lead (is this what they call sexing up the news?). Of course college kids use Google to do research. It opens up lots of free time to download music. Seiously, why the “Gee Whiz” headline when the real story is that libraries are looking at ways to open up their vast trove of digital resources? You know, the stuff they’ve spent the last decade or so putting online but leaving inaccessible to most of the world (this is not

Tools and Craft

Doing It For The Kids

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Did we mention the highly commercial nature of children’s books? Not, of course, that we’re suggesting anything of the sort is the reason behind the new partnership between LEGO and Scholastic. That would be cynical. After all, it’s easier on the kids of they already have pre-written stories about their LEGO characters rather than making them up themselves. Scholastic and LEGO Company Announce Major Publishing Partnership Scholastic and LEGO Company Announce Major Publishing Partnership Scholastic LEGO

Publishers and Editors

From the Of Course Department

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We once attended a conference where, in separate sessions, Allison Dickens of Ballantine and Stacey Creamer of Doubleday suggested the publishing industry looks to other media for trends. This, by the way, should not be news, and they were talking about “hot” topics for fiction. But that’s another posting. Now it appears publishers (and agents — though we’ve found agents to be more modern in this respect) are seeing electronic submissions as desirable. Okay, not desirable, but maybe practical. It’s so much easier to skim queries on your Blackberry versus hauling reams of paper on the train.

Publishers and Editors

Beyond Reviews

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Book reviews are weird. We only have to look at the weekly review section in The Los Angeles Times to know this (yes, we are talking about the fact that they simply cannot review any of the books that appear on their bestseller lists…it’s like an allergy or something). And readers we know tend to skim reviews, looking for those bits and pieces that say “you want to read this book.” Authors, of course, obsess over everything down to the punctuation, seeking deeper meaning from the printed word. Of course, reviews being reviews, quite often, what you read is what

Books/Mags/Blogs

You Can Taste It

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“I want more than anything else in my life to be published – to read my reviews and to see people buying my book. That would be a thrill on a par with losing my virginity, getting married and getting my first job.” (from Pile ’em High by Simon Trewin, The Independent) Yeah, writers are that crazy. Emily Dickinson was an anomaly (and, heck, she submitted to publishers, too). We do this because we have something to say (not to mention voices in our heads) and, at some point, we really believe we need to share it with the world.

Agents, Square Pegs

We Don’t Know Where To Begin

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Okay, we do; we simply thought this story would die a rapid death. We never imagined it would flare back to life over the weekend. Let us begin with a tale of two books, both on our shelves. Both in distribution. Both sporting the same title. A rapid scan of Amazon reveals the title, in this case, isn’t particularly original. Copyright violation, coincidence, profiteering, or satire (as The Elegant Variation suggests in the specific case we’re discussing here)? Copyright for titles is a complex concept, and legal precedent suggests authors will not prevail on this point. Thus we find ourselves

Square Pegs, Tools and Craft

So We Weren’t Crazy

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We were hot on the trail of the Slate story on bestseller lists last week (we felt we had something to add to the knock-down-drag-out…oh wait, we never even read it). Imagine our frustration in being unable to access the story. Especially since everyone in the world had read it. It turns out the story was pulled due to, um, editing issues and such. The Literary Saloon makes us feel better about our inability to work the Internet properly. Slate on bestseller lists

Books/Mags/Blogs

Cheap and Easy Amusement

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Okay, seriously, we’re agog. Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman work in the same room. We would kill our husband if forced to endure such circumstances. That’s not true. We wouldn’t have the opportunity to commit murder. He would surely snap first. Unless the commencement of our room-sharing experiment coincided with the airing of Seven Second Delay, surely the worst radio show ever (yes, he loves it to distraction and frequently defends Andy Breckman; we’re Ken fans). We think it’s cute that the New York Times took the time to offer Bill and Hillary Clinton advice on living with a successful

Square Pegs
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