Author name: Booksquare

Dissecting the publishing industry with love and skepticism.

Analyzing Penguin’s Marketing Strategy Because We Can

By •

We are admittedly a bit a slow side this morning — the coffee maker is taking its sweet time, the slacker! — so perhaps we’re completely missing the punch line here. But we doubt it. See, Penguin is seeing a return to the magic of serialized novels as a way to build online buzz. Naturally, our first thought was, “Cool!” That thought is long gone, replaced by a much more comfortable and familiar “Huh?” There are so many things to ponder here. First, of course, is the price. Glass Books of the Dream Eaters by Gordon Dahlquist (or, rather, G.W. […]

Books/Mags/Blogs, Marketing For Introverts

How To Sell A Book

By •

The BS household is celebrating a return to a life of DSL and electricity today. It is a thrilling, thrilling morning. You don’t realize how much you depend upon, oh, lights until you don’t have them. Turns out they’re quite useful, and the little pluggy thing that goes into the laptop serves a purpose. It is a magic device. We feel that we have learned so much — with more to go. But let us get into why you’re really here. You want to know how to land a book deal and an agent (not necessarily in that order). Let

Books/Mags/Blogs

Suspension Of Belief

By •

The current trend in the blogging community is analysis and discussion of lonelygirl15, and we are ever-indulgent of trends. Hmm, no, that is not true. The fact of the matter is that lonelygirl15 is an example of our current thought process. Hey, you said, “BS, we really want to know what goes on in your evil little mind.” We think you should be grateful that we’ve decided against sharing all the thoughts about laundry and whether or not to tell the husband that the vine has officially devoured the garage. So, lonelygirl15 is a bona-fide YouTube phenomenon. She is, ostensibly,

Marketing For Introverts, Non-Traditional Publishing

On Sour Grapes

By •

Stand back for a war of words – and of commas, apostrophes and split infinitives. One of Britain’s leading language experts has attacked Lynne Truss’s bestseller Eats, Shoots and Leaves for its ‘misconceived’ and ‘deeply unnerving’ zero tolerance approach to punctuation. David Crystal, a former colleague of Truss who once advised her that a book about punctuation would never sell, condemns the author for joining the ranks of ‘linguistic fundamentalists’. He also criticises John Humphrys, the Radio 4 Today presenter, over his book championing the rules of grammar. Truss’s publisher has hit back, however, insisting language rules are vital in

Quote of the Week

Linking Is A Virtue, Not Linking Is A Vice

By •

We have been understandably worked up about this whole online presence thing this week. Hmm, maybe it’s not so understandable — it strikes us that you are not privy to our lengthy debates with the husband. Trust us when we say that nothing makes an evening fly by like a discussion about making the web a better place for the world. Today’s topic is links. You are familiar with them, we trust, but just in case, here is an example. In this case, we are linking to Jill Monroe’s blog, mostly because we cannot believe that she puts pictures like

Back To Basics

On Tippling

By •

“We’ve been much drunker than this,” he said, “but the party was so nice that we were lulled into a false sense of security. Everybody was wearing jackets; there was classical music.We didn’t think anyone was going to steal our money.” He added: “Also, our office manager got into a fight with his girlfriend and had to leave the party, and he’s usually the guy who watches the cash box.” In the Haze of a Magazine’s Fund-Raiser, Someone Absconds With the Funds Raised

Quote of the Week

It’s The Story…And A Whole Lot More

By •

We have a friend (who shall remain almost nameless, but her initials are L.R.) who will be particularly interested in this post. Not that it won’t fascinate the socks off the rest of you, but this is really for her. Yes, our dear unnamed friend, we’ve found an interview with Stacy Boyd of Harlequin. Just for you. It’s our little way of making up for being a week behind on email. After a short introduction to the world of Harlequin and a brief primer on the company’s philosophy — it’s about building brand name recognition as much as author recognition,

Publishers and Editors

On English

By •

“I don’t know what they call ‘English’ now. I can understand the attractiveness of it. But I don’t hold the view that reading English is a soft option, or at least it shouldn’t be. It should be a severe option, restricted to those people who are qualified to do it. I’ve been out of touch with student life for a long time. But I don’t believe that many people nowadays get many visible benefits from studying English. It doesn’t do them any harm, of course.” The ideas interview: Frank Kermode: Britain’s foremost literary critic tells John Sutherland why the study

Quote of the Week

The Thinking Piece

By •

Once your domain name is secured, you can breathe easy. No need to worry about someone grabbing your precious name and forcing you to spend hard-earned cash on buying it back (by the way, if you do spend said cash, do not feel bad; it happens a lot…in your next life, go with an unusual name). Your inclination will be to throw something up on the Internet and wait for the traffic to start driving through. Okay, we’ll allow you to do this: throw up a blog and then come right back here. Many hosting services allow you to do

Back To Basics

Back To Basics

By •

This past weekend, we were reminded that, well, oh how to say this?, that while the Internet as we know it is an unruly teenager — no, Yahoo!, you can’t borrow the car, Google? You’re far too young to know about those things. Netscape? It’s great that you’ve decided what you want to be when you grow up, but you still have to clean your room! — and many folks out there are puzzled about this magical world. Thus we going to do some basic training. Very basic. This will be a sometimes, when the mood strikes us series.

Square Pegs
Scroll to Top