Author name: Booksquare

Dissecting the publishing industry with love and skepticism.

Stereotype Breakdown #9

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As it turns out, Los Angeles is not only teeming with writers, but it’s also teeming with small, independent presses. Sure lots of attention has been focused a certain big house packing up its red pencils and moving to the land of eternal sunshine and good cheer, but what about the publishers who already call our fair city home? The LA Weekly offers a tour of our town’s publishers. As it turns out, there are publishers outside of New York. Next: we debunk the myth that the 405 is a freeway. Small Press Is Beautiful

Publishers and Editors

Where No Post Has Gone Before

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This is going to take a bit of cleverness, but we’re going to try to work two entirely different concepts into a single post*. Making this a particular challenge is the fact that it’s Monday morning, and one should never attempt cleverness on a Monday morning. We shouldn’t even attempt spelling — our first post was rejected by our brilliant human spell checker three times. Even our corrections had flaws. The spell checker quit when we cried because she’s mean. HelenKay Dimon has admitted a sordid truth: she reads Entertainment Weekly. But only for the articles. Apparently the fine folks

Books/Mags/Blogs

Following Up On Our Lead Story

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For those of you who are eagerly anticipating the outcome of the recent Romance Writers of America graphical standards flap, you can breathe a sigh of relief. The RWA board has voted to temporarily suspend the standards. A committee will be established to study the issue and make recommendations. For regular readers, this means our brief foray into the world of profanity has come to an end. It was fun while it lasted, but we were running out of creative ways to work the seven banned words into our posts. Our only regret as we come to the end of

Square Pegs

Self-Promotion: The Wild Frontier

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Our friend Lauren Baratz-Logsted (whom we’re learning is incredibly shy and not one to heckle her fellow authors) is helping our other friend Dan Wicektt out at Conversational Reading. Lauren is preparing for the release of A Little Change of Face by reliving some of her favorite adventures in self-promotion, including her blitz for her debut novel The Thin Pink Line. This meant the only person there was a nine-year-old girl with a notebook. She told me she wanted to be a writer too, but we both agreed that her mother probably wouldn’t approve of her reading my novel just

Books/Mags/Blogs

Jill Monroe Is A Publishing Prognosticator

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All manner of exciting things are happening in the world of writing and publishing*. Banned words (this may be changing soon). Editors leaving for new opportunities. And major publishers publicly acknowledging something they’ve known all along: sex sells. For those who haven’t been paying attention, major publishing houses have been adding more sexually explicit imprints/lines to their business mix. Sure, most of these are aimed at women, but that’s really not the issue. It seems to be part of the dichotomy first brought to our attention by the brilliant Jill Monroe — opposites do attract (the other burgeoning area in

Publishers and Editors

Breaking News, Publishing Style

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Our dear friend Edward Wyatt (no really, we have built a full and unreciprocated relationship with the poor, unsuspecting man) tells us that Jonathan Karp has unexpected resigned from Random House. To pursue other opportunities. Now in any other situation, we’d equate this with being fired, but that simply doesn’t feel right. Karp is, was, a rising star. Though we hate to suggest such a thing, it is entirely possible that Karp is, indeed, seeking new challenges. How very strange. Mr. Karp, who has been at Random House for 16 years, said the decision to leave was his own. “Sometimes

Publishers and Editors

In Which We Revel In Our Ability to Recognize Satire, Despite Minimal Caffeine

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Our first reaction upon hearing about Blogrebity was “you’ve got to be joking.” As it turns out, they were. The world remains safe from two-page spreads on Nick Denton, but we will admit to a moment of fantasy where we flipped through glossy pages filled with fascinating tidbits about our favorite bloggers. Of course, then we wondered what they could possibly say to a print interviewer that hadn’t been said already. We anticipated articles on favorite pajama styles and the best way to blog while driving. It was a short-but-fun moment. Almost famous

Square Pegs

Creativity Counts

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It’s going to be one of those post-and-run sort of days. We have yet to comprehend why people hold meetings first thing in the morning, but, as we contemplate the alternatives, there seems to be little choice. You certainly can’t do it at the end of the day, what with people thinking they have personal lives. You can’t do it in the middle of the day, what with lunch being one of the three most important meals. You can’t do it at eleven in the morning, what with everyone figuring that to be the optimal meeting time. That leaves poor,

Square Pegs

Knocking A Slew of Summer Titles Off Our List

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Janet Maslin has surveyed the crowd and she’s not impressed. We don’t blame her. Reading her recap of the opening pages of the new Arnold Schwarzenegger biography made us want to take a shower. We can only imagine what actual hand-to-eye contact with the smarm might do. As we read through Maslin’s accounts of upcoming non-fiction reading, we saw a distinct thread: there are no books there. Except for Umberto Eco’s book; we’re sure he actually had a point and through-line. Far be it for us to suggest anything, but perhaps the trend of biographies and autobiographies of dubious pedigree

Books/Mags/Blogs

Adventures in Editing

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The first thing we thought when we read that Denise Roy of Simon & Schuster called her area of focus “Adventures in America” was that she was interested in everything. It is a pleasure to be right about these things. Roy looks for fun, different angles on the American experience, especially from a historical perspective. To our mind, Finding Betty Crocker: The Secret Life of America’s First Lady of Food fits the bill exactly. We, the people, need to know what’s behind the Betty story. But enough about us. Denise Roy is proud to call herself an old-fashioned editor. She

Publishers and Editors
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