Books/Mags/Blogs

Okay, we have to admit we weren’t aware of the breadth and depth of our geekiness until a certain individual looked askance at our adoration of RSS feeds. Now we’re not suggesting anything, but some people seemed a bit unaware that RSS is poised to rule the world. Plus it’s like the best acronym ever. Regular readers of Publisher’s Lunch know they’ve added RSS pretty much anywhere it can be added. Probably this is a guy thing, but as it’s something we appreciate, that’s okay. All week long, MJ Rose has been RSSing letters to the Book Biz Santa (probably […]

Yes, yes, it doesn’t take much to get us all worked up — but this time, we have a good reason*. A few weeks ago, we participated in The Emerging Writers Network’s second interview with literary bloggers (hard to believe we fooled someone like Dan Wickett, but there you go). If you’re wanting a behind-the-scenes look at blogging, well, you’ll get some of that, but, more importantly, you’ll get many thoughtful answers and few that aren’t to everything from our ages to our technology to our secret desires. Oh, and our thoughts on how litblogs fit into the big picture.

If you’ve been writing for any length of time, you have realized a sad truth: it’s not necessarily a great get rich scheme. Freelancing, particularly, requires tossing a lot of balls up in the air and hoping one or two of them land on a rent check. It is common for freelancers to repurpose their work — why waste all that lovely research and effort? So, on one level it should make sense that a blogger would, uh, repurpose her work, or, as it appears in this case, create competing content for two sites. Yes, that’s what bothers us. It’s

We recently had a rousing discussion about bestseller lists, and we like to think our little effort influenced the Washington Post to dig deeper into this fascinating subject (we also like to think our constant nagging has lead to more people stopping for red lights). All of this learning and reading and, frankly, analysis has lead us to an unavoidable conclusion: they’re just making it up as they go along. Reading industry professional comments about bestseller lists is a bit like watching a White House Press conference. Much is said, but you don’t actually get any juicy information. In both

Now, we’re the first to admit we don’t know what’s cool with the kids today. But something tells us that even in the magical world of celebrity authors, there is a limit to name recognition. We believe we have found our benchmark: The New York Times recently reported that lawyers had attempted for [John] Gotti to be released on bail by informing the judge in his case that he “now prefers writing children’s books to extortion and racketeering.” Sure, we prefer pain and suffering to letting others do the dirty work for us, too. If you’re writing kids’ books, there’s

There was a sense of relief and disappointment the day we discovered the truth about Carolyn Keene. Naturally, the disappointment came from learning she wasn’t a real person. The relief? Well, we’d noticed a certain similarity between The Hardy Boys, The Bobbsey Twins, and Nancy Drew. We didn’t have a clue from voice in those days, but we suspected something was up. It’s about as close to detective work as we’ll ever get. Though we don’t recommend sharing this with impressionable children, our favorite childhood series were the brainchildren of Edward Stratemeyer, whose rags-to-riches story is filled with the kind

The novel is dead. It’s not dead. Gasping for air. Breathing on its own. Dead. Not dead. Buried. Wait, not so fast. Is it any wonder that we’re dizzy? Is the novel dead or not? Is this writing thing going to be like buying a brand-new Commodore 64? We do so hate to seem clueless, but it’s getting to be hard work, this trying to decide if we should be mourning or not. Given the fact there are no solid facts to back up either side of the argument, we feel it is time to lay down the law: future

Seriously, we tried not to comment on this. We really did. But we couldn’t stop ourself from clicking on the link. Reading the article (which was just like all the other articles). It was too much even for us. See, it’s like the bestselling book in the nation, yet: “We felt a majority of our customers would not be comfortable with the image in our stores,” Wal-Mart spokeswomen [sic] Karen Burk told the New York Daily News. Apparently it is up to us to state the obvious to Wal-Mart: yes, your customers are comfortable with full frontal nudity. They’ve seen