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Let us, for a moment, ponder the act of editing books. There are many in the publishing ranks who complain that they don’t so much edit as administer. Oh sure, every interview you read with an editor talks about the hands-on approach and collaborative process. . .given the continual output of major label publishers versus […]

We often find our curiosity piqued by clever names. We gaze upon them in wonder, trying to understand deeper meanings and whatnot. Some are obvious, some require the use of the dictionary. Such was the case of young adult publisher (or rather sub-division of Penguin, etc) Razorbill. Surely it had some catchy, oblique connection to […]

Before we begin, we must say something of rather major importance: ouch. Jason Pinter is 25. Is that even legal drinking age? Driving age? Shouldn’t he be off backpacking through mountains or finding himself or something? Or has that golden age passed? We feel so out of touch sometimes. That being said, he knows what […]

We have a little secret: we have taken to picking and choosing literary journals to try based on editorial philosophy, believing that there is some sort of connection between editorial voice and journal voice (as opposed to just random voices in our head). As we have limited resources, we base our decisions on answers to […]

Jill Schwartzman of HarperCollins is an editor just looking for a good time. Hmm, that didn’t come out right. Jill Schwartzman of HarperCollins is an editor just looking for a good read. Yes, much better. She’s looking for unusual perspectives on life (though not, necessarily, how to live it). Now that the Da Vinci craze […]

We’ve had the link to Dan Wickett’s latest interview with literary journal editors in the queue for almost a week because, as it turns out, there is an award for laziest blogger ever, and we’re in the running. However, our sense of public service has won over our desire for glory — and we know […]

In their continuing series of editors, MediaBistro talks to Julia Cheiffetz of Random House. And Cheiffetz talks about her current project, a book with the controversial title of This Is Not Chicklit* and why she believes it’s important for diverse voices in literature. One day when I was out for a jog, I started to […]

Just this past weekend, we found ourself in a bookstore, lost in the Young Adult titles. We remarked, quite casually, to the mother that the YA craze was bigger than we’d believed. She, being the smug type, assured us that we don’t know everything. Well, we know this: Dorchester is stepping out of the YA […]

If, perchance, you’re looking for clues about the legitimacy of your publisher, may we offer up the following: For one thing, some e-mails from Ivery were riddled with misspellings and bad grammar. For another, when Geniesse asked [Martha] Ivery to fix some typos in his manuscript, she told him it wasn’t worth bothering about, since […]

Okay, we don’t know that for sure, but it does remain a fact that editors are human, just like most of the rest of us. MediaBistro, in its continuing series of editor interviews, reminds us of that fact. The series also lets us peek inside the publishing business without the painfully awkward conversational lulls that […]