Publishers and Editors

According the rumor-machine (also known as the ”New York Times”), Sara Nelson has been “laid off” from ”Publishers Weekly”. Laid off is such a smarmy term. Why not just say “fired”? While PW has yet to comment, one could have seen this coming when Reed Business Information couldn’t sell itself. When times get tough and change is needed, it’s always a good idea to get rid of the forward-thinking, smart, connected staff first. It makes the inevitable shutting down of internal systems seem that much more, well, inevitable. In many ways, PW is a relic of the past (just as […]

Last week, I mentioned the new Spinebreakers website from Penguin UK. I noted that it was pretty much everything I wanted a publishing website to be. Or, if you’d prefer, it’s a publishing website that targets readers. The delightful message is less “buy buy buy” (or “sell sell sell”) than it is “stay stay stay”. With eyecatching colors and a mix of social networking features — video, audio, polling, discussion, and lots and lots of words to read — the site tells its target audience to stick around, read, and chat. Not necessarily in that order.

We have a former boss who liked to say that litigation kept America working — this was, somehow, supposed to bolster our spirits when Friday afternoons rolled around and, just as visions of going home and starting the weekend danced through our head, an attorney called to say he’d “forgotten” that he needed this, this, and this first thing Monday morning. It was also supposed to bolster our spirits when Monday mornings rolled around and the meeting we’d spent far too many hours preparing for was cancelled.

Once upon a time, you could write a book and that was that. Somehow — magic, probably — customers found the books and fortunes were made. Hmm, not entirely true. Authors have always been part artist, part salespeople; it’s simply that the marketing thing wasn’t mentioned in public. Bad for digestion, you know. At Three Rivers Press, Carrie Thornton likes books that focus on today’s culture (as long as said focus will be relevant tomorrow, see: Bob Marley example). She also like authors who come with a nice little platform, making it easy to launch the book into the cruel,

We do so love interviews with editors, but so often they are politically correct. You know how it goes: good story, strong writing, make me happy. Always helpful, but not always realistic. Publishing is, after all, as much a business as an art. Maybe that’s why we found MediaBistro’s interview with Richard Nash of Soft Skull Press so refreshing. It felt like a real person was answering the questions, not a corporate entity. For the one or two of you who are unfamiliar with Soft Skull, they are a New York-based small press. They focus on publishing books that other

We have a friend (who shall remain almost nameless, but her initials are L.R.) who will be particularly interested in this post. Not that it won’t fascinate the socks off the rest of you, but this is really for her. Yes, our dear unnamed friend, we’ve found an interview with Stacy Boyd of Harlequin. Just for you. It’s our little way of making up for being a week behind on email. After a short introduction to the world of Harlequin and a brief primer on the company’s philosophy — it’s about building brand name recognition as much as author recognition,

If we have learned anything from MediaBistro’s “From the Editors” series, it is that editors are scary young. Naturally, we also went for real-life verification of this fact, discovered that the ages noted in the articles largely correspond to what we’re seeing in the real editor world, and slumped into a mild depression. That is what you do when you realize you still haven’t figured out what you want to be when you grow up. But this isn’t about our emotional problems — today, we are excited to point you to a lovely interview with John Williams of HarperPerennial. Let

We have a soft spot in our little black heart for niche publishers. We like the fact that someone out there is making it by focusing on what they love. It’s probably safe to say that Seal Press, with its tight focus on feminist issues falls into that category, if only because it proves that feminism is alive, well, and incredibly relevant. According to editor Brooke Warner, Our most barebones mission statement is that we publish books that inform a woman’s life. Mostly this comes from the serious, non-fiction perspective. Warner doesn’t outright dismiss fiction that informs women’s lives, but,

This week, MediaBistro turns it fine eye to Tricia Boczkowski of Simon Spotlight Entertainment — one of those imprints we’ve never fully grasped, so we do appreciate the additional information. Spotlight is specifically geared to capture the attention of the ever-lucrative 18-to-34 demographic. All that slacking and lounging could be spent reading you know. Now, we think it’s fair to say that even when we were officially part of the 18-to-34 generation, we didn’t have a clue about our peers. Now that we edged (ha!) past that group, we feel our elder statesman-like viewpoint serves us well. Meaning, yeah, we’re