Starting Up

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As we previously noted, Michelle Tessler has started her own agency. In her MediaBistro profile, she highlights her biggest strength: a strong background in the business part of the business. Her self-described start-up agency follows the same process that made her successful at Carlisle & Company. Tesslers likes the smart fiction with a strong voice. Not so much the genre fiction. Likes non-fiction that surprises the reader and goes beyond what’s expected. Read the full profile for all the dirt on the agency. Pitching an Agent: Tessler Literary Agency (Note: AvantGuild members only) The Tessler Agency

Agents

We Often Dream of Blogs

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Imagine our surprise when we woke up this morning to discover that not only had we not posted about this New York Times Magazine article — we hadn’t even finished reading it before we fell asleep. Somehow, Emmylou Harris’s words about a record label being “piracy-proof” resonated in our dreams. The story of Nonesuch, a little label (backed by a corporate giant, which we’ll get to in a moment) that could, shows that art is valued in a world run by marketing and the inevitable projections: if it sells this many units, we’ll make x profit. If it sells this

Square Pegs

Also, Columbus May Not Have Discovered America

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We cannot say why this story amuses us, but there you have it. The problem with history is that it keeps changing. Totally, totally ruins reality, what with nobody ever knowing for sure what the real story is. We so prefer fiction — at least you know the ending’s not going to change. Right. Probably should caveat that as well. Okay. At least you know the ending’s not going to change unless the author goes all artiste on us and rewrites the damn thing. We are going to stop thinking about this subject as, like quantum physics, it’s giving us

Square Pegs

On Whetting The Public’s Appetite

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“[It] is an absurd distraction from Graham’s work. It is an utter misrepresentation. Norman does Graham a great disservice with his obsession with gossip … disappointing in someone who professes to be an academic, and a dereliction of Norman Sherry’s duty as a biographer. The biography is not only vulgar and poorly written but extremely dull. Norman Sherry is very like Inspector Clouseau. He doesn’t understand anything, he gets many things wrong – he is a fantasist.” ‘You’re like Inspector Clouseau, vulgar, wrong. A fantasist obsessed with sex’. ‘Bloody nonsense. Grow up’: As the world of literature met yesterday to

Quote of the Week

This Is The Modern World

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We’re starting to think we don’t have any secrets left. This because we’re about to scrape the bottom of the Booksquare-secret barrel. Yes, we once had a (intellectual) crush on Robert X. Cringely. We think the infatuation was with the original Cringely, but we cannot be sure. All we know is we used to snatch copies of InfoWorld from the husband’s hands…oh no, the husband is currently lecturing, he’s waving his hands and acting all emphatic. We fell in love with the imposter. Damn. Something about personas and stealing and such… Which means we had a great lead and now

Tools and Craft

Too Much Time on Our Hands (and A Really Good Pavement Song on the Stereo)

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We cannot match Beatrice’s review of the always-puzzling Bookbabes’ review of the revamped New York Times Book Review (which we read online this past weekend, and have assumed the changes have more impact in real life — and yes, if you guess the correct number of times we said “review” in our first sentence, you win a prize or something), but we can add our always useful thoughts about their column. We realize making fun of the Babes is easy, but, darn it, shouldn’t there be some things in life you can phone in? We’ve read the Babes’ interview/analysis, and

Books/Mags/Blogs

Yes, Truly, In Over Our Heads

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A Booksquare operative read this story on Robert McKee and immediately thought of us. We’re not sure what this says about her. Nor are we sure what it says about us. Unless it’s that his rants so closely mirror ours: He was also not happy with the state of screenwriting — or fiction writing in general. “It’s a worldwide, cross-media crisis,” he said. He went off on politically correct language, sloppy structure, shallow characters and lazy work habits (and, over the course of the weekend, President Bush, the British Empire, the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, “American self-deception,” car pools, Wonder

Tools and Craft

Word Map

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Beatrice rounds up experiences at New York Is Book Country (is it us or does this sound like the slogan for one of the “M” states). Regular Beatrice readers know the blog frequently discusses chicklit — their fair appraisal of the subject is refreshing, especially because men often don’t write about women’s fiction with any sort of understanding. We often think it would be really cool if male book critics would spend more time learning the mores of women’s fiction before leaping into reviewing. Since, unfortunately, popular fiction isn’t taught seriously in most schools, and most boys wouldn’t be caught

Books/Mags/Blogs

Fight Against A Pirate Day

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In our previous life, we kept a secret file. Every few months, our boss would race into our office and ask to borrow “the file”. We’d hand it over, slip the pencil she’d accidentally stolen off our desk from her hand, and follow her as she carried our special collection of articles back to her office. Experience had taught us that letting the file out of our sight was dangerous. No, we weren’t spying on our peers. Much, much sadder than that: we collected articles on anti-piracy. Yes, you read it right. While others pored over Daily Variety and The

Square Pegs

Our Mood Is Too Good To Complain

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You know how hard we work for you — we get the news and then we start off researching to provide even more information. We want you to be well-armed as you fight your way through this industry. We do this despite the knowledge that publishing companies have really bad websites. There appears to be a lot of confusion as to who the target audiences are and how to best serve them. Just by way of example: authors (aspiring, etc) are target audiences. They seem to be forgotten or buried. Yeah, it’s possible this is highly intentional. But it’s also

Publishers and Editors
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