Booksquare

Given our natural modesty, we will not suggest that our brilliant plans to revamp the publishing business are seeping into the thoughts of industry professionals. We will suggest that, however they came to the fountain, it’s about time. Doug Seibold of Agate describes his conversion from a strictly-hardback kind of guy to a more flexible […]

This week, we guide you to an interview with Lorin Stein of Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Stein discusses FSG’s approach to acquiring, editing, and marketing books while taking a stab at his approach to finding new talent: I get about a dozen manuscripts a week, plus maybe a dozen proposals and foreign books. Anything written […]

While we applaud innovation and all that nonsense, we also live in the real world. Thus we believe that traditional booksellers don’t need to worry overmuch about direct-to-consumers sales by publishers. The entire premise centers around ensuring the customer knows who publishes a specific book, in addition to title and author. That’s a lot of […]

It was just over a year ago that Romentics, a publisher of romances targeted toward gay men, landed on the scene. We thought, sure, the market is pretty robust, they’re going to do fine. It turns out that Scott Whittier and Scott Pomfret are meeting our expectations (for which we thank them). After all, if […]

As it turns out, Los Angeles is not only teeming with writers, but it’s also teeming with small, independent presses. Sure lots of attention has been focused a certain big house packing up its red pencils and moving to the land of eternal sunshine and good cheer, but what about the publishers who already call […]

All manner of exciting things are happening in the world of writing and publishing*. Banned words (this may be changing soon). Editors leaving for new opportunities. And major publishers publicly acknowledging something they’ve known all along: sex sells. For those who haven’t been paying attention, major publishing houses have been adding more sexually explicit imprints/lines […]

Our dear friend Edward Wyatt (no really, we have built a full and unreciprocated relationship with the poor, unsuspecting man) tells us that Jonathan Karp has unexpected resigned from Random House. To pursue other opportunities. Now in any other situation, we’d equate this with being fired, but that simply doesn’t feel right. Karp is, was, […]

The first thing we thought when we read that Denise Roy of Simon & Schuster called her area of focus “Adventures in America” was that she was interested in everything. It is a pleasure to be right about these things. Roy looks for fun, different angles on the American experience, especially from a historical perspective. […]

As we and others suspected, BEA was hot, sweaty, and filled with far too much swag — a normal human could not hope to carry everything without a rolling suitcase. The halls were crowded, and though we’d give an honorable mention to Random House for stealth re-introducing the lad lit idea, it’s clear the best […]

Every now and then, we feel an overwhelming urge to state the obvious. We beg your indulgence for a moment because now is one of those times. It is 2005. If the publishing industry wants to remain viable (and there have always been questions on that point), it needs to think like a real business. […]