Books/Mags/Blogs

John Scalzi (Old Man’s War) has some thoughts about book piracy. Yes, it’s a real threat (as we’ve seen this week). Yes, new technologies are going to make piracy easier than ever before. Yes, he needs to take it into consideration. But he’s also a new author trying to sell his first novel to the public. This, as we all know, is harder than it should be. He starts by wondering what’s so bad about the Amazon sneak peek program. Let’s face it — readers can stand in front of the shelves in a bookstore and skim your entire novel […]

Though many of us have achieved proficiency in the art of rejection (that is, the art of being rejected), few of us can claim the title “Rejexpert.” Actually, as far as we know, only Cathy Wald has worn the crown. Not that she planned her life that way; things have a funny way of working out. Sure she could have sulked over her stack o’letters, but why do that when you can use them to your advantage? Her book The Resilient Writer practically wrote itself (thanks to the fact that finding an author without a rejection story is almost impossible),

We hope you’re sitting down. And not just because it’s not safe to compute and stand. The only thing worse is using a cell phone while reading blogs. So, seated? Comfy? Ready to have your mind blown? If that’s the case, probably you should hit another site. We’re tired after a long day of doing nothing much at all. The Da Vinci Code may be loosening its grip on hardcover lists. Like all champs, it put up the good fight, but is finally seeing the end of a long, productive career. It was only a matter of time — by

Over the weekend, we received word that a site out there is selling unauthorized versions of electronic books. Various authors have assured us that the bookseller has not entered into arrangements with their publishers to sell these titles (also, we did find it peculiar that the only electronic versions of the Harry Potter books and certain Michael Connelly titles were available via this site). The authors have assured us that their publishers are attempting to contact this seller. Sites like this one come and go with alarming regularity. Sometimes the problem is genuinely criminal; sometimes it’s the result of genuine

This morning, a very cheery MJ Rose tells us that, give or take, there are approximately 500 new titles being published each week. Let us make that more clear: 500 new books hit the shelves every week. No wonder we go to dinner parties and have no books in common with the person sitting next to us. What are the odds we’d ever find the same two titles? We agree with MJ that the problem isn’t too many authors — it’s a combination of things. First, of course, is telling the world you have a book. Or rather, telling the

Reagan Arthur, the editor of Case Histories, is guesting over the Litblog Co-op today. She talks about the book from the perspective of the editor, but more so from the perspective of being a fan of the author. It is heartening to read such enthusiasm for an author’s work, especially considering how many words an editor must encounter on a day-to-day basis. As a reader and as an editor, I’m always happy to encounter a gorgeous sentence but I’m happier still to find a novel filled with them when they’re all in the service of that tricky taskmaster: Plot. A

We don’t know what to day. The shutters were down all weekend over at The Happy Booker’s place. Now the doors are wide open and there’s commotion by the po–wait a minute. She’s not even home. Someone has walked right in to her blog and is taking over. Ah, yes, we see now. Kevin Smokler starts his Virtual Book Tour for Bookmark Now: Writing in Unreaderly Times today, and he’s making himself at home, drinking her fine wine and thumbing through her collection of first editions (he’ll be here tomorrow). Stop by and see what happens when new faces pop

Okay, so really this about how many books are being published each year, but that’s really beside the point. We have finally figured out how to work the new Publisher’s Weekly daily enewsletter. It all comes down to our old friend, RSS. We have been puzzling and arguing with the new format of the newsletter for some time now, so much so that we’d simply stopped bothering with the whole thing. Yet today, they sucked us in with a headline (below) and we gave it our best shot…and discovered that the newsletter now comes with a helpful RSS feed. You

We’ve been saving this article on hardcovers versus paperbacks for a rainy day. It’s never going to rain again, so we’re pretending a rather wimpy June Gloom is close enough for government work. It’s a roundtable (of sorts) discussion about the pros and cons of the various formats. We advise reading all the words — there are a lot, but we believe worth it. Because we’re feeling lazy this morning, we will recap some highlights: Consumers don’t really grasp the intricacies of the publishing formats. They tend to consider little stuff like price. Books compete for scarce entertainment dollars. Hardcovers