The Daily Square
Daily links from Medialoper: booksquare
Finally, Our Ultimate Dan Brown Post
Jill — who helpfully stepped up to the plate yesterday with a rousing post on author branding and STDs — noted that we allowed a bit of wiggle room on the Dan Brown issue when we last mentioned the court case (also, anytime we can use the word penultimate in a post, we’re happy). Thus we can bring you today’s happy news without breaking any vows of silence. The verdict is in. Brown and Random House — already celebrating because both the trade paperback and mass market paperback versions of The Da Vinci Code debuted at number one this week,
Author Branding
Whenever authors talk promotion, usually author branding comes up. Let’s be honest, my writing career is in its infant stage. We’re still paying off the college student loans, so throwing a lot of cash into publicity is just not in the cards for me right now. I’m just doing the standards of booksignings at the local bookstore, postcards to the family and friends, the (hopelessly out of date) website. The usual. One thing I do is answer every e-mail someone sends me asking about publishing, writing romance, etc. When talking about my first book, Never Naughty Enough, I usually just
Same Old War, New Twist
Ron Hogan of GalleyCat is taking a deeper look at science fiction and fantasy. After this week’s column in Publisher’s Weekly (also featuring a column by the inestimable Gwenda Bond), Ron continues to explore the idea of science fiction, reviews, and respect. We will forgive you if you find that many of the pro and con arguments of reviewing science fiction in the New York Times sound familiar. Substitute “romance” for “science fiction”, or insert the word “mystery”, and you’ll realize it’s another phase in the genre fiction wars. Only…only this time, genre fiction has advanced the field. The New
The Difference Between A Website and A Business
Sheesh, barely a half cup of coffee into the day, and already we’re ranting. Tina Engler’s story is well-documented — girl can’t find a publisher for erotic stories (because, let’s be honest, good girls don’t), decided to strike out on her own, becomes publishing phenom while turning the model on its head. Also, if you’ve been missing our updates for the past few years, erotica remains the fastest growing segment of women’s fiction. So what has us frothing at the mouth so early on a rainy morning? The fact that MSNBC insists that Ellora’s Cave is a “website” rather than
Someday, Maybe, The End Of “If Only I’d Written It Down When I Thought Of It”
At last: the invention we would have invented had we an inventing kind of mind. Yes, kids, it’s brain-wave typing. You know how all the great lines are in your mind, but never quite translate via the fingers? No worries. Downloading your brain is just a few years away . Okay. Fine. So writers aren’t the primary targets of the technology — but surely there will be no better test group than a bunch of people who stream words and sentences and paragraphs like extroverts talk. And, fine, it’s not a streaming sort of thing. More like the brain-wave equivalent
Books Without Borders
It is an interesting concept, targeting publishing efforts toward major audiences. Rayo, an imprint of HarperCollins, is focused on providing good books to the Latino community — in both English and Spanish. Yes, yes, we know, such radical concepts require more warning before being dropped in your laps. That fact that it wasn’t until the year 2001 that this happened boggles the mind — and we do not possess an easily boggled mind. When we started back in 2001, I think we were one of the very few publishing houses out there making books for the Latino community. Although the
After 28 Years, Nothing But Memories
We cannot conceive of working the same place for 28 years — much less the challenges that arise when giving notice after said 28 years. Of course, if we ever find ourselves in that position, we’ll call Molly Friedrich, who is leaving the Aaron Priest Agency to open her place, The Friedrich Agency. Yeah, we’ll leave the wondering about creativity and agency names to another day. As of July 1, Friedrich will be sharing offices (and probably coffee makers — you know how these agency things go) with The Gernert Company. Joining Friedrich will be agent Paul Cirone and assistant
Counting The Unknowable.
This may be the most delightfully absurd story we’ve read in, well, hours. Paul J.J. Payack, an amateur something-or-other, has calculated that the English language will acquire its millionth word sometime this year. Of course, the experts, you know, the ones who count all the words and keep careful statistics, they say not so fast. Such knowledge is apparently, well, unknowable. Presumably that’s ’cause so many words have died deserved deaths. We have no clue where the vowels are buried. But still, it’s a wonderful thought — a finite number of words comprising the English language, if only for the
Copy Editing For Fun And Profit
For those of you who greeted the time change with aplomb, we salute you. Messing with time is a dangerous thing, and we are of the belief that no good can come from it. Except maybe the opportunity to drink wine in the backyards on lovely spring evenings. We figure that if you’re the type to rise early, then you’re the type to get all excited about copy-editing. And if you’re the type to get excited about copy-editing, well, see previous re: wine. It will help. It’s a nice article (transcript, actually, but why quibble?) that had us in almost