Writing Out Loud: Starting Over

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There is something comforting about writing a novel in secret. Nobody knows how often you trash the entire thing and start over. Nobody sees all your blips and bleeps and complete screw-ups. It’s a very nice feeling, this freedom. A while back, we brought Greg Sandow to your attention — he’s the guy who’s writing his book in public (well, on the internet; presumably that still public). While Greg’s subject, the future of classical music, is not the stuff of fiction, his process will be familiar to all. Including the part where he’s starting over: (This is the first episode […]

Square Pegs

On The Big Picture

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“I wasn’t thinking out of the book. That’s what the reader brings,” he [E.L. Doctorow] said. “Reading is a very creative act; until the book is read, it’s really not completed. Lines on the page are like a circuit that the reader’s life flows through.” Doctorow’s ‘The March’ Wins Top Honor: Pen/Faulkner Award Is Novelist’s Second

Quote of the Week

Desperately Seeking Dark Paranormals

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Wondering what May Chen of Avon/HarperCollins is seeking in a writer? We knew you were. We’ll give you a little hint: it starts with good, ends with writing. It’s really difficult to be specific about what qualities I’m looking for. It’s a synergy of several general components: the writing is clean, the voice is compelling, the premise is intriguing and different and the plot holds up. Then all of a sudden you realize that you have something special. Though depressingly young, Chen is a well-respected editor in the romance genre. While her focus is generally British-set historicals, she’s also desperately

Publishers and Editors

Worrying About Being Shunned By Society

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We are going to entertain a serious thought or two for a moment. You can come back later if you prefer. In certain circles, the notion of self-publishing is greeted with the same, shall we say, revulsion that the masses once greeted leprosy. You will be shunned, it’s whispered, you will not ever sit at the grownups’ table. Then there are those who sneer at self-published title. The quality, they moan, it’s all dreck. Actually, most people don’t use the word “dreck” in normal conversation. You may substitute the word of your choice there. Yet authors continue to self-publish, some

The Future of Publishing

On Crankiness

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Any number of my acquaintances excuse the bad writing and atrocious punctuation that proliferates in e-mail by saying, in essence, “Well, at least people are writing again.” Horse droppings. People have never stopped writing, although it’s reaching a point where you wish a lot of them would. Literacy Limps Into the Kill Zone

Quote of the Week

File Under: Evil Corporate Thoughts

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In a move that should strike fear into the hearts of all authors, Penguin in Australia is moving to cut author royalties on second, third, and subsequent editions of their work. Australian authors traditionally receive a 10% royalty on all editions — oddly, Penguin wants to penalize authors for selling lots more copies of books. The Penguin proposal will reverse the Australian publishing trend of granting higher royalty rates, or “escalators”, once book sales exceed a certain threshold. Penguin’s excuse — bringing their agreements in line with other international rates — is a bit precious. This is about cutting costs

Publishers and Editors

Distractions For A Slow Morning

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It is a slow morning here at the headquarters, and we have caught our mind wandering down strange paths. This is the sort of thing that happens when PW uses the word “viral” in a sentence and the subject is not infectious disease. Example: Though it’s too early to tell if the video will go viral. . . The video in question pairs novelist Lolita Files with pop singer Silena Murrell. Yeah, exactly our reaction. Of course, we do not claim to be in touch with what the kids are listening to these days. Nor can we speak to the

Square Pegs

The Mysterious Case of the Apparent Market

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By now it should be clear that we woke up slightly above cranky on our mood scale. It is the little things that will get to us today, and possibly we should give up now. No, apparently that’s not going happen, or it won’t happen until after we invite you to join us in banging our head on hard wood surfaces. Let us begin by saying that we are sure that Jeffrey Trachtenberg is very knowledgeable about the publishing industry. We have fairly good faith in the Wall Street Journal, and since he’s on staff, probably he knows his stuff.

Square Pegs

Our Huh Moment For The Day

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Maybe it’s that we got up too early, we don’t know, but we’re sitting here in BS Central, and thinking, “Huh?” Sure, the publishing industry moves slowly, but as we read an article on reviews at The Bookseller, we couldn’t help but wonder if we’d flipped back a year. Not that we’d complain on that score, nosiree, nothing like living through 2005 again to get a girl all excited. So, it’s all blah, blah, blah, too many reviews, readers don’t trust them, word-of-mouth, relationships, the usual, and then the kicker: Already John Murray has decided to canvass the views of

Reviewing Reviewing

The Book Swap Conundrum

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We know, believe us, all about the doctrine of first sale. We know that readers share books constantly. We, to nobody’s surprise, force books on unsuspecting guests all the time (“Thanks for coming over. Here take a book.”). But we still feel there’s something unsavory about online book-swapping clubs. Our discomfort centers here: The sites are free, but modest membership fees are ahead. At PaperBackSwap.com, Pickering expects fees to be $10 or $20 a year. McCabe, too, says, “At some point we will have to recover costs and get a revenue stream.” Sure, this is free enterprise at its best,

The Business of Publishing
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