Author name: Booksquare

Dissecting the publishing industry with love and skepticism.

More BEA Snark For Those Of Us Staying Home This Season

By •

We do not often fall prey to hyperbole, but do sometimes indulge our curiosity. Call it our little way of confirming everything we believe to be true. Like when Publisher’s Weekly claimed their BEA blog was the wittiest, most knowing, etc. coverage of the convention. Right, we thought. Sure. Been there, read that. But what do you know? They’ve actually managed to start off interesting. A Mystery Blogger (should be easy to identify — how many bloggers would notice pink metallic shoes?) and John Searles share blogging duties, and Searles starts his long weekend o’fun in disguise: The nice lady […]

Square Pegs

Pre-Book Expo Fisticuffs And Other Nonsense

By •

Setting aside, for the moment, the fact that Publisher’s Weekly is referring to today as “BEA Eve”, we are finding the coverage of the event fascinating. Yes, dear readers, that means grown-ups are behaving in manners unbecoming of publishing industry professionals*. It almost makes us wish we were in New York. Almost being the operative word — why fight the crowds and such when others can do it faster and better? It seems tempers were flaring at the first of the pre-show panels, and it’s all the fault of those darn young ‘uns who don’t read. What is a poor

Publishers and Editors

Los Angeles: Still The Destination

By •

Just a quick update: ReganBooks is still moving to Los Angeles. It is still cheaper to live and work here than in Manhattan. We have art and culture. We have flowers and great weather and cute shoes. Year round. We’re all good. The LA Weekly offers up its profile of Judith Regan, complete with requisite snark. Not that we’re opposed to snark — we just take issue with sexist snark. You never see them describing the color of a man’s bracelets, do you? Though the interview doesn’t reveal much that is new, unless you count Regan’s assertion that it’s called

Publishers and Editors

How He Learned To Stop Worrying And Think About The Future

By •

John Scalzi (Old Man’s War) has some thoughts about book piracy. Yes, it’s a real threat (as we’ve seen this week). Yes, new technologies are going to make piracy easier than ever before. Yes, he needs to take it into consideration. But he’s also a new author trying to sell his first novel to the public. This, as we all know, is harder than it should be. He starts by wondering what’s so bad about the Amazon sneak peek program. Let’s face it — readers can stand in front of the shelves in a bookstore and skim your entire novel

Books/Mags/Blogs

Lemons, Lemonade

By •

Though many of us have achieved proficiency in the art of rejection (that is, the art of being rejected), few of us can claim the title “Rejexpert.” Actually, as far as we know, only Cathy Wald has worn the crown. Not that she planned her life that way; things have a funny way of working out. Sure she could have sulked over her stack o’letters, but why do that when you can use them to your advantage? Her book The Resilient Writer practically wrote itself (thanks to the fact that finding an author without a rejection story is almost impossible),

Books/Mags/Blogs

On Lessons Learned in Kansas City

By •

Discounts offered by wholesalers could make it tempting for independent booksellers to blow off the publisher and buy directly from discount outlets like Costco because there is no real financial incentive to buy from publishers—the price turns out to be just about the same, minus the cost of shipping. Though the above practice could be detrimental to relationships between publishers and booksellers, it does hold a great deal of appeal for authors, whose book sales could count twice—once when a bookseller purchases said book from the discount outlet, once when a customer buys the book from the bookstore. The Adam

Quote of the Week

AgentSpeak: The Complete Life of A Book

By •

When we last checked in with Joe Veltre, he’d struck out on his own. No wait, when we last checked in with Veltre, Diane Bartoli had joined him at the Artists Literary Group. Has it really been a year? We could check the archives, but why? Time is construct for people who aren’t like us. Veltre and Bartoli have been busy, building a strong agency. As far as what they want, Veltre outlines his tastes in broad strokes: “It can be high brow, it can be low-brow, middlebrow, it can be fiction, it can be nonfiction, as long as there

Agents, Square Pegs

Da Vinci Code Hardback Death Watch: Day One

By •

We hope you’re sitting down. And not just because it’s not safe to compute and stand. The only thing worse is using a cell phone while reading blogs. So, seated? Comfy? Ready to have your mind blown? If that’s the case, probably you should hit another site. We’re tired after a long day of doing nothing much at all. The Da Vinci Code may be loosening its grip on hardcover lists. Like all champs, it put up the good fight, but is finally seeing the end of a long, productive career. It was only a matter of time — by

Books/Mags/Blogs

Release The Shackles of Influence, Or Something Like That

By •

Amy Hundley of Grove/Atlantic talks about what grabs her, editorially speaking, and what she’s looking for when she’s looking at your work. She also discusses the importance of voice, noting it’s important to write past your influences to discover your own style. And, of course, she addresses the age-old question of experience: I’d say it’s pretty irrelevant. I’ve learned over time that there’s no relationship between an author’s experience and their level of comfort with the publishing process—some come into it seeming like old pros, and some of the old pros need more attention. Many of my authors I’ve ended

Publishers and Editors

A Caution

By •

Over the weekend, we received word that a site out there is selling unauthorized versions of electronic books. Various authors have assured us that the bookseller has not entered into arrangements with their publishers to sell these titles (also, we did find it peculiar that the only electronic versions of the Harry Potter books and certain Michael Connelly titles were available via this site). The authors have assured us that their publishers are attempting to contact this seller. Sites like this one come and go with alarming regularity. Sometimes the problem is genuinely criminal; sometimes it’s the result of genuine

Books/Mags/Blogs
Scroll to Top