Author name: Booksquare

Dissecting the publishing industry with love and skepticism.

This Is How They Tell Us?

By •

So we’re tooling along, minding our own business, sort of thinking we should get started with work with this morning, then, thwap!, slap in the face. Buried in the lead of what was supposed to be a puff piece about Amy Tan taking over as literary editor of the Los Angeles Times Magazine is news that said magazine is, oh oh, changing its name. Can nothing remain the same anymore? Can’t we have a little stability in our world? Is this the result of the collective additional seconds afforded the LAT’s brain trust? Did they learn nothing from the millions […]

Books/Mags/Blogs

The Biggest Piece of Advice Ever Given A Bat

By •

A not-so-secret BS secret is that we have serious weakness for geeky guys. The dopier, dweebier, nerdier, the better. That’s not to imply that Edrants or his “friend”, Bat Segundo, are nerds, but, heck, they interviewed Chris Elliott. Yeah, that Chris Elliott. Subjects Discussed: Lack of sleep from both parties, the lure of money, the Chris Elliott persona vs. the real Chris Elliott, Jack the Ripper, parodies, Alan Moore’s From Hell, research, trying to read while acting, on being declared an idiot, Get a Life, on whether the Chris Elliott persona gets tiresome, Carrot Top, cross-dressing, atmospheres with disparate historical

Square Pegs

When You Must Tell The Truth

By •

The powers behind BS are cheap and easy (mostly easy), and when a friend says, “Hey, I’m teaching some online courses at Writer’s Digest, can you give me a shout-out?”, we say, “Uh, sure, what’s in it for us?” Nothing as it turns out, but that’s never stopped our fingers from posting, posting, posting. Longtime Friend-of-Booksquare* Cindy Wathen is teaching a series of courses of interest to non-fiction writers. Though recent news has been sketchy on this concept, it’s mostly about not Making Stuff Up. Cindy will be guiding you through “Writing the Nonfiction Book Proposal,” “Fundamentals of Nonfiction”, and

Square Pegs

Someone Else Counts So You Don’t Have To

By •

For those who were curious about 2005’s bestsellers but didn’t actually want to do research, we have come to your aid! Bookstandard has compiled the list and checked it twice. Now all you have to do is study the list and make some sort of sense of it all. We wish you luck — please feel free to explain it to us when you’re done. The Biggest of 2005: The 200 Bestselling Books of the Year

Books/Mags/Blogs

Arts and Crafts For Writers

By •

We are not going to name names, but we know some publishers, music labels, and studios who engage in a little game. The rules are simple: Locate a review of your latest masterpiece. Run around the house/office, trying to find your sharpest scissors. Sit down in a comfortable chair and read the review. Do not read for context as it is an unnecessary use of brain cells. Carefully — this is why the scissors must be sharp — cut out words and phrases that reflect you and/or your work in glowing terms. Put said words and phrases into something that

Square Pegs

Why We Love The Powell’s Newsletter

By •

It’s not just because of Fup. Store Cat. Though that would be good enough. It’s stuff like this that brings joy to our little black heart: This edition of our newsletter is sponsored by the semicolon. Friends, are you tired of all those surly periods, persistent question marks, and annoying exclamation points? Extend the life of your sentence; keep your readers hooked interminably (studies show that people stop reading more often at the end of a sentence than in the middle); win lots of literary accolades for having long, overly complicated sentences that critics just love; and best of all,

Books/Mags/Blogs

Still Bored With Frey

By •

Word on the street is Random House will be offering refunds to those who bought James Frey’s A Million Little Pieces under false pretenses. There is a catch (there’s always a catch): this refund is available to those who purchased from the publisher directly. Makes us wonder about those numbers… Frey’s writing career seems to be bumping along just fine, though it’s still early in the scandal. In other publishing news, Angelina Jolie is preg…wait, oops, wrong headline. Let’s start again. In other publishing news, Oprah Winfrey has broken her (day or two long) silence on the issue and come

Square Pegs

Soft Skull and PopMatters Sitting In A Tree

By •

We’re a little sad that we didn’t hear it from Richard Nash directly (nary a word on his blog even, but clearly a man can’t do everything all at once), but we know how busy publishing moguls can be. Besides the news is everywhere, it wasn’t like we were going to miss the announcement. Soft Skull Press has entered into a mutually beneficial alliance PopMatters. The new baby will be called PopMatters Books Imprint. But we’ll let them explain the union in their own words: The PopMatters Books Imprint will extend the discussion and documentation of global pop cultural matters

Publishers and Editors

Tips For The Self-Published

By •

As we’ve noted in the past, there are a lot of good reasons to go the self-publishing route. Most who choose this option don’t understand the sheer effort involved with this option — in fact, if you look around at advice for the self-published, it often seems overly optimistic with a bright red halo of unrealistic. Be prepared for hard work. Getting your book on the shelves of a major retailer can be done, but is that your best option? Before we look at the big boys, let’s look at another option. Claire Zulkey, writing at Media Bistro’s “MBToolBox”, suggests

Marketing For Introverts, Non-Traditional Publishing

On The Question You Cannot Avoid

By •

We dread this question because we know that readers are hoping we will relate some sort of mystical epiphany that we attained after years of meditation, or at the very least, an encounter with an elderly uncle who shared family secrets on his deathbed before swearing us to secrecy. And we writers will often oblige and invent a crowd-pleasing moment of revelation, or worse yet, refuse to answer by invoking the vow of silence we made to our uncle of blessed (and imaginary) memory. Mysteries in Plain Sight

Quote of the Week
Scroll to Top