Webster Younce is now senior editor at Houghton Mifflin. Our extensive research did not reveal Younce’s focus or desires (we did to do extensive research. How many of you knew that Younce wrote books? Thought so.). Proceed with caution. Houghton Mifflin Company
Editor and agent changes were so swift and fast this week, we couldn’t keep up. Oh wait, sorry. We could keep up, but that would have cut into our lounging by the pool time. Sometimes you have to keep your priorities straight. But when you play, you pay, and we have a few updates for you. As always, we recommend you use a pencil to update your org charts. First up: Sarah Crichton has been given her own imprint at Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Crichton has been waiting patiently for the perfect opportunity, and now FSG will allow her to
Or maybe it’s always been common. We don’t get out much. As authors move into alternative methods of publishing their work, they also need to look at alternative ways of selling their work (aka, the author as the shill). Handselling books comes naturally to some, as a teeth-gnashing necessity to others. We realize the outcome of most booksignings is, unless you’re on the National bestseller lists, a bit paltry. But this story about an author who purchased her own signing stock offers hope. Author buys her own signing stock Author buys her own signing stock (Original story)
We don’t know where to begin. Random House has announced it’s cutting royalty rates for ebook sales, effective May 31, 2004 (we were a bit bemused by the Author’s Guild comment “Random says it will honor its promise to pay 50 percent of net receipts on e-book sales for works under contract by May 31” as that should be a given — to do otherwise would be a breach of contract). RH previously had the highest royalty rates in the industry. As we noted previously, contrary to popular lore, there are hard costs associated with ebook distribution. However, the costs
And now we make a loose connection to another recent topic, and (how is this for convenient?), an argument about censorship we had with our mother (normally the most liberal of souls, but strangely puritanical on the subject of rap lyrics). Salon reviews, no, that’s not right…Salon discusses Nile Southern’s recounting of his father’s experiences with a novel called Candy. Written at a time when American Puritanism resulted in works of art being censored (think Tropic of Cancer), Terry Southern and Mason Hoffenberg created a story and character who would inspire all manner of legislation if written today. And perhaps
We have, over the course of our life, given away more copies of Strunk and White’s Elements of Style than we can count (it is a point of pride that we have singlehandedly kept the book on the bestseller list). In this excerpt from Ben Yagoda’s book The Sound on the Page, we are reminded that slavish devotion to all advice for writers (and there is more than we can catalogue) is the road to ruin. Yagoda suggests that not even E.B. White followed his dictates to the letter. Style and voice are, in our opinion, the essence of good
A long time ago, in a galaxy far away, romance novels had covers (not) affectionately referred to as bodice rippers. Now, some of you may know that romances are targeted primarily toward women — and we certainly don’t share the male fascination with the female bosom (we are, actually, a bit pragmatic about our body parts). Those lurid, awful covers were geared toward male buyers for book chains and distributors. Women were, to put it politely, ashamed to be seen in public with such covers. Then came Fabio, and, while women appreciate a good-looking man, the covers were still embarrassing.
The Reading Experience has posted additional thoughts on the state of publishing today. For us, it’s often a bleak and cynical world — then someone we know receives a call from an editor, and we rejoice because, despite the odds, the system works. There is no straight line from talent to publication. It’s often a combination of drive, timing, connections (yes), storytelling ability (which is not the same as writing talent), writing talent (which is not the same as storytelling ability), the state of the world, even coincidence (which should never be underestimated). We said before that this is a
As mentioned, writers are fascinated by the craft of other writers. We think it’s because each and every one of us fears we’re doing it wrong. Because, as we all know, there is a right way to do it. But nobody’s quite figured it out yet. Walter Mosley writes nude. In a weird way, it makes perfect sense. How many brilliant thoughts are lost between the sheets and sometimes fruitless search for the bathrobe? Not to mention figuring out the blasted coffee maker. So much better to leap straight from dream-land to writing (there is a difference — we’ll explain
Toward the end of the Chicago Sun-Times BEA wrap-up is a thought attributed to Margo Hammond about the astounding success of The DaVinci Code. It seems the book was beyond-belief successful without so much as a review from The New York Times. “How, Hammond wanted to know, could that have happened, and what does it tell us about the relevance (and long-term survival) of book pages today?” Hammond didn’t review the book either. The idea of a gulf between reviewers and readers isn’t new — every week we wrinkle our brow at the choices made by the book reviewers for
