Judging J0urnals By The Editors They Keep

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We have a little secret: we have taken to picking and choosing literary journals to try based on editorial philosophy, believing that there is some sort of connection between editorial voice and journal voice (as opposed to just random voices in our head). As we have limited resources, we base our decisions on answers to a series of questions. This approach has worked well around Booksquare — we’ve enjoyed a bunch of new authors in the past few months and reignited our enjoyment of short fiction. Of course, being lazy has its benefits. We could, in theory, go out and […]

Books/Mags/Blogs, Publishers and Editors

The Curious Case of The Inspired Review

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Reviews are funny things — or rather, the fact that they’re not funny is a funny thing. You have your dry recitation of the facts and figures of a book. You have your pretentious intellectual elite (our favorite!) analysis of homoerotic subtexts in Shane. You even have the biting, scathing, rip-roaring review. But it’s rare when the reviewer goes off and has a little fun, bringing the story to life in the process. Which is why Michiko Kakutani’s review of Indecision (by Benjamin Kunkel, though that may be in dispute) made the strongest case for a book we’ve seen in

Books/Mags/Blogs

If Only Romance Publishers Had The Same Epiphany

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Our dearest* Edward Wyatt (who went and got himself an excellent headline this time out) takes a look at a bad cover and how it was made right. We can only speculate about what was being smoked in the cover-decision meeting, but for the person who put Rick Moody and Conan the Barbarian together in the same thought, we salute your boldness. Of course, our salute means nothing when it comes to visceral reactions to bad covers. The He-Man pose didn’t work for the target audience, and, rather than standing back and watching the book sink into oblivion, the art

Books/Mags/Blogs

How To Win Editors And Impress Marketing Staff

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Looking for an etiquette primer for authors? Or just looking for a few behavioral guidelines? Or just wondering what makes the editor/author relationship work? Elizabeth Spiers spoke with a few editors about how things work in the real world (note: the real world bears no resemblance to what you see on television). First item of note relates to the editing part of editing: “The worst sort of person who, when they give you a manuscript, is so exhausted and spent by it, they’re upset by any sort of changes you want to make,” says one editor. “They accuse you of

Tools and Craft

Looking For The Post-Da Vinci Nirvana

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Jill Schwartzman of HarperCollins is an editor just looking for a good time. Hmm, that didn’t come out right. Jill Schwartzman of HarperCollins is an editor just looking for a good read. Yes, much better. She’s looking for unusual perspectives on life (though not, necessarily, how to live it). Now that the Da Vinci craze is waning, she’s eager to get back to discovering great reads. . .if she can only get agents to play along: Also, maybe this is just me, but sometimes an agent seems to insist on reading a very long pitch letter over the phone, even

Publishers and Editors

Like a Champion

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Hunter S. Thompson was one of those writers whose voice I always loved: even in his “decline,” the anger, wit and energy that fueled his writing came through loud and clear. I always stopped to listen to what he had to say, even if it sometimes seemed to be the same thing over and over again. Whatever you might think of him, consider this: I think that one definition of a successful life how your friends and family react to your death. All that you can ask for is that they celebrate your life: how you touched them, how you

Square Pegs

Life Is Nothing But A Bowl of Litigation

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Someday, we might find that we’ve grown bored with the inevitable lawsuit trend, but until then, we watch the phenomenon with glee. Each day, we awake, wondering who will be sued next and what tack the suer will take. Now it is the television series Lost that is facing the time-sucking specter of litigation. Turns out the hit series is based on an idea developed nearly thirty years ago. And here the dude waited until he was assured of the show’s hit status before filing suit — when your hard work is at stake, always wait until you’re sure there’s

Square Pegs

AgentSpeak: Hard and Fast

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James Fitzgerald and Anne Garrett believe in the awesome power of the Internet. So much so that their agency utilizes things like the web and email to do business. It’s almost enough to bring a tear of joy to our jaded eye. The agents like email, they like brief, action-packed pitches, and they like the modern world, so much so, that, uh, Fitzgerald has developed an interest in the Old West. What interests us, however, was the way the agency works: The Internet also aids Fitzgerald in finding writers. About 50 percent of his projects start with Fitzgerald’s own ideas,

Agents

In Which Peter Pan Becomes The Bad Boy of Fiction

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We will freely admit that we held no high hopes for the much-publicized Peter Pan sequel (though we did enjoy the cheerful cynicism that accompanied the decision). After all, why did we need a sequel? Isn’t it enough to let the story end. Yes, we’re still processing the finale of Six Feet Under, a series we feel will not succumb to a reunion show. Geraldine McCaughrean won the chance to write the Pan sequel, thereby assuring that the Great Ormond Street Hospital continues to own the rights to the character. While the book isn’t finished, she’s suggested that we’re not

Books/Mags/Blogs

Number Eighteen In A Series of Self-Publishing Posts

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One day, we will find ourselves sitting in our cozy little office (though we are hoping it will be a bigger cozy little office with a couch), lamenting the attendant problems caused by the rise of print on demand. Because, we are sure, the problems will be legion. After all, how does one calculate the delightful reversion of rights clause without a final print date? (This is where, in another post, we’d note that now is a good time for all authors to start looking at how they can regain as many of their rights as possible as soon possible)

Square Pegs
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