Author name: Booksquare

Dissecting the publishing industry with love and skepticism.

So Not Breaking News

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As we approach our year-end close, the various Booksquare departments are clearing desks and revisiting goals. The Department of the Obvious has realized she hasn’t presented anything to management this quarter (nor the quarter before — and we’d had a little talk about her productivity). What with raises and bonuses and the possibility of a cubicle with a view, she scrambled until she found something. From her memo: “Publishers spent a lot of money every year trying to figure out what makes people buy books. They have focus groups. Sometimes they send spies into bookstores to observe buyers as they […]

Square Pegs

For Those Who Can’t Read In The Car (Or On The Train) (Or On The Treadmill)

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Never let it be said that libraries don’t keep up with the times. Or that they don’t care about their customers. The South Huntington Public Library on Long Island, New York is loaning iPod Shuffles to customers (we can only presume that the North Huntington Public Library, wracked with jealousy, will soon follow suit). If we were to attempt to latch onto Awards Season before it crawls to a conclusion (end of the season roughly coincides with the end of March Madness, but that’s more of a guideline than anything), we would nominate this idea for our Innovations in Encouraging

Square Pegs

And, Then, Six Hours Later

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The husband often tells us that someday we will have a wiki*. For a long time, we got away with pretending to confuse a useful tool with a frou-frou drink garnished with fruit and paper umbrellas. Our strategy was sound — we were testing the limits of his patience by making explain the same concept over and over and over. And over. It was about the time he declared that he couldn’t take it any more, he had to make an adjustment to the entry about the Pasadena parrots that we gave up the game. For the record, the entry

Tools and Craft

On Nightmares

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As it were, the fine writer Stephanie Hammer — she of the 3rd place finish below — is writer-in-residence at Pitzer and invited me to come speak to her beginning creative writing course, which was using Fake Liar Cheat as a text (presumably a text on how to forget the middle act of a novel). “Before you talk,” she said, “they’re going to take a short quiz on the work.” . . . She handed me a copy of the quiz — 10 questions, including a few two-parters — and what I realized is that, at best, I knew 7

Quote of the Week

Let The Games Begin

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Publisher’s Weekly tells us that Simon And Schuster will be entering the direct-to-consumer sales game later this year. This should be an interesting experiment, at least in part because it will let us know if consumers know their publishers. Also, it will let us know if publishing houses have a clue from e-commerce (given the average publisher website, we’re currently betting no — but we have been surprised before. Once.). In the silver lining department, we wonder if Simon and Schusters stated goal of making backlist titles more readily available will translate to more exposure for authors. Yes, there’s an

Publishers and Editors

On Realizing The Ugly Truth About Our Life’s Work

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A blog is a species of interactive electronic diary by means of which the unpublishable, untrammeled by editors or the rules of grammar, can communicate their thoughts via the web. Unfortunately for us, there are a lot of big words in the article, so this is the best we can do. It’s because our adoration of random facts and paragraphs has destroyed our ability to suffer sustained reading of complex texts (also, we only like books with pictures). Revenge of the Blog People! (Via Publisher’s Lunch)

Quote of the Week

It’s A Raymond Chandler Lifestyle

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Before we begin, let us state for the record that we never even considered the possibility of a character who a) lives in Altadena, b) is a gardener, and c) is a sleuth. We can easily imagine any two of the three, but the triple whammy blows our little mind. If you’ve spent more than twelve seconds in Altadena, you understand. Given that it’s pretty much our stomping ground, we do a lot of twelve seconds there. Of course we’re fully supportive of this character, and will be checking out books by Naomi Hirahara. We love a hometown girl making

Books/Mags/Blogs

Public Service Announcement #23

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If you want to witness a real-live rant, give us a couple glasses of wine, ask us about Yahoogroups, then duck. Now we like Yahoo!, and use the My Yahoo! feature 24/7. We utilize the baseball Fantasy service (though we’d like more options on cap and jersey icons…our team is special). We adore the integration of RSS feeds (okay, we adore RSS feeds in general). But the mailing lists? Well, we’re not so thrilled. As we’ve long suspected, Google has finally seen the mailing list light. It was only a matter of time, especially after the launch of GMail (also

Square Pegs

Luckily, Carrie Wasn’t Set in Kentucky

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Our Separation of Truth and Fiction Department alerts us to what is potentially a case of the world gone mad (this is the world where Midol possession is punishable by suspension). We acknowledge the fine line authorities walk when it comes to identifying potential problems. Nobody wants to learn the truth via a hail of bullets. However. If this is true, Even so, police say the nature of the story makes it a felony. “Anytime you make any threat or possess matter involving a school or function it’s a felony in the state of Kentucky,” . . . and not

Square Pegs

It’s Not A Waste of Time, It’s Research

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Oh sure, we meant to post this information earlier today. And, yes, we believe we have sufficient will to overcome the strongest lure of of the Web. This does not count active procrastination — that is more of a vocation, not an avoidance technique. We have met our match in the venerable New York Public Library. This is not the first time we have been vanquished by this particular foe, and we suspect it will not be the last. Hey, it beats losing face to, oh, Page Six. The NYPL has opened up its archives and placed, give or take,

Tools and Craft
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