Publishers and Editors

Harlequin, in its quest for world women’s fiction domination (and I don’t mean that in a bad way), is launching a new line called Prime Time, geared toward older heroines in July, 2005. They currently plan to release four books a month — given HQ‘s marketing genius, it’s just more evidence that certain segments of the fiction market have been chronically overlooked. The 75 – 85k word books focus on stages in a woman’s life (older, more mature women, by the way), but aren’t romances, at least in the traditional sense. In other words, you don’t have to tie up […]

Here’s the thing: if you don’t subscribe to Publisher’s Weekly (and I assure you I’m not a shill for the man), you don’t get their daily email newsletters. Which means you don’t know the fascinating story behind Dan (DaVinci Code) Brown’s editor. Peripatetic? Can that even be applied to a guy who hasn’t hit forty? Unless, of course, he hitchhikes a lot. Okay, bad analogy. You get the idea. Editor Jason Kaufman sounds like a dream come true: a champion for the lowly writer, a guy who puts art above profit (yeah, now I’m making stuff up). Our man Dan

Did I say I believe everything I read? Maybe I was too hasty. Or maybe this is true. I’m honestly not sure. Okay, first it’s saying there was a study showing that men who read books are more attractive to women. I’ll buy that. Then it turns out they’re giving away cash prizes to blokes (because this could only happen in Britain) caught reading…and cash prizes to chicks who chat them up. Penguin’s Good Booking promo

Maybe it’s me, but you’d think publisher websites would be a little more, well, useful. Like maybe they could have information that you want. So it turns out that Broadway Books has hired Amy Hertz (now formerly of Riverhead) to edit books on spirituality and that sort of thing. Hopefully writing about this will absolve my guilt for missing my yoga class while I tried to figure out the Random House website. Random House Website: Use At Your Own Peril

Bethany House, a leading publisher of Christian fiction, is no longer accepting unsolicited submissions. But you can fax them a query — okay, seriously, I don’t know why one is good and the other is bad, but suggest you get on the stick and hire an agent to figure it out.