Author name: Booksquare

Dissecting the publishing industry with love and skepticism.

On Taking Procrastination Up A Notch

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You only want to work on the stuff you’re not supposed to be working on. That’s how it always is. I’ll always be working on five things at once, usually with those documents open at the same time because if I get stuck somewhere I’ll jump over to something else. That’s how my head has always worked. I don’t know if it’s ’cause I watched too much TV as a kid or what. It really could be that. The believer: Dave Eggers talks about production by procrastination, how understanding book-selling can empower a writer, and what it’s like to be […]

Quote of the Week

With A Whimper

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Back when the story was hot, hot, hot, the world was rife with speculation about the fate of Miramax Books. What would happen to this fine publisher? Would it move in with step-parent Disney or stay with the Weinsteins? Even then, we knew the truth: you don’t lose assets without good reason. Disney didn’t get to be Disney by allowing high profile divisions to slip away. Sure, high profile producers get the boot, but, let’s face it, in Hollywood, you can always find another high profile producer (note: this type of thinking is dangerous and usually ends up in tears.

Publishers and Editors

And So They Said To Jonathan Swift, “You Have A Classic on Your Hands”

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So they’re sitting around the publishing office, worried. Young(ish) Swift has written his masterpiece, but the market is crowded. Books are everywhere. If you have a pen and a decent imagination (and can afford reams of paper to crumple into balls and toss), you’re writing and publishing. The classics, and our publisher knows he has one on his hands, are being lost in the mix. Swift’s book doesn’t stand a chance. Or does it? Robert McCrum wonders if rationality has been lost in the desire to label everything an “instant” classic (this is, after all, the world that has already

Books/Mags/Blogs

Are We Having a Cranky Day, Or Is The Headline Just Irritating?

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We do not make light of the events of 9/11. Nobody will forget what happened, and it is inevitable that all aspects of that day will inform the arts. And yet, for novelists, it comes down to “where have you been all these years?” We would argue that 9/11 informs most fiction written since that day. Certainly many novels have addressed the issue. Now that the literary end of the fiction spectrum is appearing in print, the first response suggests novelists were on the sidelines. After three years of near silence about the attacks of Sept. 11, the literary world

Books/Mags/Blogs

There Are Times When, No, It Couldn’t Be Worse

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Our Department of Writing, Business (everyone around here is scrambling to clear desks) alerted us to this article about authors suffering the rite of passage known as book tours. As we read through the story (verbatim accounts of human suffering and other things), it strikes us that not only must you master the synopsis and elevator pitch, but there will come a point where you are required to pull out a clever, possibly pithy, book tour anecdote. Reason number seven while we will hire someone (probably Jill as she was once a cheerleader and can spell) to pretend to be

Square Pegs

For The Obsessive, Or, Saving Hard-Working Writers Time and Energy

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Back in the olden days, you had to work to figure out who represented your favorite author. So, so passe. So last century. So hard. Who has time for such nonsense — after all, why else were databases invented*? Still, the fine folks at Publisher’s Marketplace love to innovate, and now you can do all the detailed research you want without hitting the bookstore. Not that we’re discouraging visiting bookstores. * – The thought that databases were created to increase productivity has been proven false; the rise of the database directly correlates with the increase of people spending hours scouring

Tools and Craft

Fine Art of Thievery

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In keeping with our discussion on reading, we bring you the concept of reading as it relates to writing. We have met very few writers who are not readers (and we have met more than a few writers who finally accepted their calling when they found nothing they wanted to read, and decided to write their own stories). Reading is as much a part of writing as pen, keyboard, paper, stamped, self-addressed envelopes…the article linked below explains it far better than we can, so we offer the thesis, picking up right after the author’s students confront an essay test where

Tools and Craft

Commercial Interruption

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We interrupt our steady stream of ranting and raving to, well, point you to another rant. This one comes with much inspired commentary. The Romance Heroine Next Door

Square Pegs

When Was The Last Time We Mentioned Standardized Tests?

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We have a confession to make: we failed our first standardized test. Boredom. As with many things, it backfired on us. This, we firmly believe, is because our mother was the school librarian. Things didn’t add up, and we (the victim in this story) were discovered to not be living up to our potential. In our defense, we’ve made a career of this, despite the best efforts of trained professionals. Back then (the olden days), reading was a part of our daily school day routine. We were the kid who sussed out the mother’s notes while walking to school (this

Square Pegs

The Great Chick Lit Roundup

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When Mary Bly told the world that she wrote romance, one thought stuck with us: shame. We cannot think of any other genre of fiction that comes with built-in shame for its readers. The covers, of course, don’t help, but they could be plain brown wrappers, and the comments would still come. Jill Monroe posted this week about how one woman asked Jill, to her face, if her book was crap (it isn’t — we would not allow Jill to write crap; that is our sole territory, and we protect it fiercely). For some reason romance novels aren’t considered “real”

Square Pegs
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