Publishers and Editors

Harlequin will launch a co-publishing partnership in Brazil with Record Publishing Group, beginning on April 1. The companies plan to issue 100 titles together in the first year. Okay, we don’t really have a kingdom, but we have a blog. Close enough. We look to you, our more intelligent readers, to provide information. As you can see, we have so little to go on, we don’t even have a link to a larger source (yes, yes, yes, we could go through the frustration of the Torstar corporate website, but, well, we’re lazy. And hungry. (Via Publisher’s Lunch)

Let’s just say that when Warner Books rsvp’d for the party, everyone assumed they’d show up before the last bottle of champagne was opened. We’re going to call it close — the foil was off, that little wire cage thingy was loosened, and we think Red Dress and Downtown Press were fighting over the honors of releasing the cork. Then Warner sauntered into the room, announcing, “Hey, look everybody! 5 Spot.” After determining it wasn’t a plea for helping paying cab fare, the others learned that Warner is launching a (wait for it) chicklit imprint. Or, rather, trade paperback line

Never let it be said that we don’t enthusiastically embrace new ideas. Oh sure, we make fun of them sometimes, but we understand that greatness comes from wacky ideas. How else does one explain the Pet Rock? And we do love to help, and so when it comes to making HarperCollins the brand readers request, we have some thoughts: Make HarperCollins bigger than the book title. Use a lurid font in hot pink. Except on hot pink covers — acid green should work there. Replace the author’s name with “brought to you by HarperCollins” The biggest thing on the spine

We know, we know, we’re about to take the lazy way out. As a follow-up to last week’s story about Publish America, it seems there was a small, shall we say, sting operation put into motion by a group of science fiction authors. The links below detail the project and related writings (the final link is to the Publish America message board). We remain convinced that authors need to make the best possible decision for their career, but we remain even more convinced that you need to know exactly what you’re getting into (while several on the PA board address

Let us just say that we have made not answering direct questions an art. We can, without breaking a sweat, dissemble until everyone present has forgotten the topic. Mostly this happens because we, uh, weren’t paying attention to the question, and find ourselves scrambling to make up stuff until a real answer comes to mind. We discovered this technique in the 8th grade, when the definition of “grassroots” came up on a U.S. history test. If we’d ever heard the word before, it wasn’t in this lifetime. However, writers write, and we wrote. At least two pages. And got the

Can we just say that we winced when we got to the point in this Washington Post article about self-publishining where an author who signed with PublishAmerica admitted she didn’t have a clue about the business of publishing. One part of us feels sorry for her; the other, the part we affectionately call our black-hearted soul, wants to slap her silly. And she wasn’t alone. If we accomplish nothing else with this blog, we will have made one thing clear: writing is your business, and if you don’t learn everything you can about this industry, you’re going to get screwed.

While we suspect that Dan Wickett of the Emerging Writers Network doesn’t sleep, which makes us a bit concerned for his health, we have no qualms about taking advantage of his hard work. After all, the alternative is too scary to mention. He’s been interviewing like crazy lately (probably by the time we finish this post, he’ll be telling us about another cool author…), and we can only suggest cruising the EWN site to catch up. Because helpful is our middle name (and, yes, this naturally led to much teasing in our misbegotten childhood), we’re giving you a start. Dan

The distribution issues at the Penguin warehouse in Rugby, UK have received surprisingly little press outside a few blogs and Publisher’s Lunch. This surprises us to no end — for an entire quarter, shipments of books were pretty much not happening. For authors whose books were released during that period (or in the months just prior), countless sales were lost. If you know anything about publishing (and we know you do), you know that once the initial release period passes, you’re not exactly on your publisher’s radar. After careful thought and analysis (we linked to the story about the start

In a move surely designed to throw us off our pace, Publisher’s Weekly has named Sara Nelson as editor-in-chief. Since Nelson has provided us much fun and amusement (plus actual usable information), we’re concerned that this move will lessen the New York Post’s commitment to journalistic exc….uh, anyway, we look forward to seeing Nelson’s editorial stamp on PW. New Chief Editor at Publishers Weekly Publisher’s Weekly