Author name: Booksquare

Dissecting the publishing industry with love and skepticism.

Kate Atkinson Has Surfaced Over At The Co-Op

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As promised, and after many delays, Kate Atkinson, the first choice of the LitBlog Co-Op’s quarterly “Read This” read for her book Case Histories, has taken the reins over at the Co-Op. Cleverly, she posted in the middle of the night, thinking nobody would notice. We will not tell her about RSS… In her first post, she discusses controversy and reviews and the idea that to be British is to be controversial. Okay, not quite, but let us have our little fantasy. Second post addresses questions…in answer to the question of where she falls in the publishing spectrum, she says: […]

Books/Mags/Blogs

The Secret Life of Apostrophes

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Today’s first post comes courtesy of the husband. While in some households, his accompanying statement would be taken as a joke, we never jump to conclusions: “How come nobody told me about the rule where you’re supposed to put an apostrophe after words that end in vowels? That could come in handy.” Bob’s Quick Guide to the Apostrophe, You Idiots (Poster-sized version helpfully available at The Official Bob the Angry Flower Web Site)

Tools and Craft

If Your Marketing Guru Is A Spammer, Run Away. Fast.

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Have you been spammed by Bookman Marketing LLC? If not, it’s only a matter of time. The proprieter, one Brien Jones, apparently spends his days harvesting email addresses (based on our admittedly limited research, he trolls various websites; today’s spam was addressed to an address that has nothing to do with writing, via a website completely unrelated to writing and/or publishing). Mr. Jones seems to think he can help you! He can’t. He’s obviously clueless, not to mention irritating, not only because he’s indiscriminate in his spamming but because he believes Bookman Marketing is the only company in the publishing

Square Pegs

How To Lose Customers and Alienate Audiences

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Hmm, let’s see, one hand you have a product that dominates a certain market. On the other, not so much. You, a business, decide to utilize a particular technology to provide your services to your customers. It makes perfect sense that you would choose the less popular, less ubiquitous platform to deliver your goods. After all, you don’t mind setting yourself up for failure. Librarians say they had little interest in audiobook downloads just a few years ago, but they have since noticed what everyone else has: the ubiquity of people sporting earbuds on streets, buses and malls. Nearly 28

Square Pegs

Push, Push, Push

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Yesterday, we observed an interesting conversation about text messaging (observed because we, alas, do not play this game). One person lamented the fact that text messaging isn’t a true American sport; another noted that texting is great, something to do in those moments between breaths; and, yet another declared that a text message is like an email — it’s not necessary to respond in real time. The key component here is that each person accepted that text messages to their cell phones are a given. Now, as promised, more and more advertising is being done to cell phones. Sure, it’s

Square Pegs

Helpful Tips: How To Guarantee Rejection

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Though some authors seem to know instinctively the best, most expeditious, ways to get rejected, others require a primer. For those souls, Deidre Knight and Justin Knight of The Knight Agency have put together a helpful list of things to do to ensure immediate rejection: But we’ll confine ourselves to encouraging writers with ways to get themselves turned down by agents or publishers, and trust that you’ll understand how to apply these lessons in a broader context. Nor are we going to insult anybody’s intelligence by telling you about the really basic, simple ways that a writer can ensure that

Agents, Tools and Craft

New Editor For The Book Buying Capital of These United States

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Yesterday, we noted with interest that the Los Angeles Times hired a new book review editor. As these things often go, one person in our vicinity expressed (extremely) mild interest, which we took as encouragement to further the discussion. Said discussion quickly degenerated into a lively debate about men and white suits (a surprising number of men admitted they would consider wearing said white suits; women approved as long as the word linen was included in the description). Then our Internet connection took a sleep cure and we moved on to other topics. We will allow more learned souls to

Books/Mags/Blogs

Judging J0urnals By The Editors They Keep

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We have a little secret: we have taken to picking and choosing literary journals to try based on editorial philosophy, believing that there is some sort of connection between editorial voice and journal voice (as opposed to just random voices in our head). As we have limited resources, we base our decisions on answers to a series of questions. This approach has worked well around Booksquare — we’ve enjoyed a bunch of new authors in the past few months and reignited our enjoyment of short fiction. Of course, being lazy has its benefits. We could, in theory, go out and

Books/Mags/Blogs, Publishers and Editors

The Curious Case of The Inspired Review

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Reviews are funny things — or rather, the fact that they’re not funny is a funny thing. You have your dry recitation of the facts and figures of a book. You have your pretentious intellectual elite (our favorite!) analysis of homoerotic subtexts in Shane. You even have the biting, scathing, rip-roaring review. But it’s rare when the reviewer goes off and has a little fun, bringing the story to life in the process. Which is why Michiko Kakutani’s review of Indecision (by Benjamin Kunkel, though that may be in dispute) made the strongest case for a book we’ve seen in

Books/Mags/Blogs

If Only Romance Publishers Had The Same Epiphany

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Our dearest* Edward Wyatt (who went and got himself an excellent headline this time out) takes a look at a bad cover and how it was made right. We can only speculate about what was being smoked in the cover-decision meeting, but for the person who put Rick Moody and Conan the Barbarian together in the same thought, we salute your boldness. Of course, our salute means nothing when it comes to visceral reactions to bad covers. The He-Man pose didn’t work for the target audience, and, rather than standing back and watching the book sink into oblivion, the art

Books/Mags/Blogs
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