It has come to our attention that despite the long weekend (hmm, our brain is asking, are we having a holiday…and why didn’t anyone mention that earlier?), news continues to flow. So, for the four or five of you who took the weekend off from your mailing lists and other news sources, Arabella magazine has ceased publication. Oh stop! You knew this was coming. Never fear — there will be another, better business model around the corner. We promise. Arabella Announcement
We’ve all heard the stories: far more books are written than published. The same goes for motion picture screenplays. Far more musicians than necessary. And probably there’s a huge surplus of poetry. So what gives? Why are so many people out there trying to get creative with it? Seriously, is the world filled with artists or is writing, to take one aspect of the artistic life, so undervalued and undertaught that people see it as an easy way to make a fast buck (yes, yes, we all get the lovely satisfaction of watching such folk fall flat on their faces,
Hard as it is to believe, sometimes we think being a published novelist is worse than being an unpublished novelist. After all, people sympathize with the downtrodden, and we’ve pretty much perfected hangdog expressions. Published authors face all sorts of trauma (which Jill has helpfully detailed…we’re waiting for her latest adventure and accompanying life lesson). It is assumed you are rich if you have published a book. It is assumed you are willing to share your agent with everyone you meet. It is assumed that your publisher is standing sturdily behind you, helping your career blossom like you’re the only
Richard Curtis continues his series on publishing in the 21st century with a review of how the paperback industry imploded in the mid-1990’s. What many perceived as streamlining and efficiency actually adversely impacted the entire publishing industry. As they say, not bad for a day’s work. Curtis details the previous manner of distributing books to illustrate the impact the change in distribution procedures had. What was once a personalized-for-your-community business became a numbers game — high score won. The industry thought the change would affect genre titles (those expendable little creatures), but: Although a growing number of traditional bookstores stocked
It was this Reading Experience post that sparked this new journey for us, and, after you’ve read it, we highly recommend reading other recent posts because Dan Green continues to explore the idea in different ways. While we find we’re more cynical than Green about the publishing industry, his questions are excellent. Rewards and Remunerations
Yes, we know, and in theory we’re in the car, driving to a client’s office. Here’s hoping they don’t check in here this morning. Here’s another post that started us on on our New Year’s theme (we’re still desperately seeking a catchy title, so anyone with title karma, feel free to chime in). While we’re not one hundred percent sold on the idea, this is something that caught our attention: Fiction, generally, doesn’t have enough change left in the P&L to pay for a decent marketing campaign. The way to solve the problem would be to waive the advance and
For a moment there, we thought we’d give Sara Nelson a chance to settle into her new job, make some changes, that sort of thing. And maybe it’s because, for some reason*, our well-used copy of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy was not where it’s supposed to be. The other four or five books in the trilogy were easily located, as were the Dirk Gently books. But the original is not to be found. At least before six p.m. this evening. So, we thought (recalling that our brakes are being surgically repaired), we have choices: a) punt — we’ve
It is our belief that lazy people accomplish far more with less energy than non-lazy people. Lazy people work efficiently. After all, one does not want to burn precious calories on effort, when those same calories can be put toward important activities like sleeping. So lazy people — the ones who invented the printing press and typewriter and word processor and are working to perfect voice activated technology — cut out the inefficient in the world and get things done. Yet some people don’t find this comforting. Put forward in the book, The Joy of Laziness – How to Slow
Over the past few weeks, we’ve read various articles and blog postings about the state of the publishing industry. While each author focused on a different aspect of the whole mess, a bunch of common ideas surfaced. At first, we thought we’d address the matter with one of our patented lenghty-beyond-belief posts, but have you ever written one of those? All those words take a lot of time. So, until we can gather our thoughts and achieve at least a modicum of coherence (which is really more than you expect from us on a normal basis), we’re going to start
While we have serious reservations about the CAN-SPAM legislation (but we’re a bit of an expert on the whole issue. Unfortunately.), we are happy when the government gets all tough. Finding spammers is not as hard as the press would have you believe, but it takes resources. And, sadly, much spam originates outside our borders (if you doubt this, we will graciously allow you to read the Booksquare spam archives…or as we call it, The Temple of Doom). But if you have a law like this, it needs to be enforced. Spam harms us all. It costs the spammers nothing,
