Square Pegs

We have never fully understood why the fine folks at National Novel Writing Month chose November for their annual endurance test — clearly someone in charge didn’t fully study the complext negotiations and processes involved with preparing Thanksgiving dinner. After dealing with family issues, who has the energy to write 50,000 words in a single month? Other than the thousands of NaNo participants, we mean. So it’s not quite game on, but it’s game ready. Time to sign up, make your excuses, learn to work the crockpot (our helpful tip: put the plug thingy into a nearby outlet). National Novel […]

Okay, not really. Others have far more energy for following the Wild World of Awards, and we leave the analysis to them. It is our job to find those nuggets of useful advice in the swirl of news. For example, Ron Hogan continues his guest stint at Galleycat (at what point does a guest become a permanent resident, if only by apartment-dwelling standards?) with a few observations about the Orange Awards, mainly relating to unfortunate photo moments. His final note, however, is the most important: I could also observe that the Orange Prize is black, and the Orange of Oranges

Remember the olden days when record labels (that’s what they were called back then — records) put the fear of Elvis in us by saying that home taping would bring about the end of the world as we know it? After a week of of considering the results of Book Industry Study Group’s survey, they’re wondering if used book sales are the home taping of publishing. And yes, by that, we mean there probably isn’t really a monster under the bed. Yet. Used media sales are going to continue to rise because technology makes it easier to find the product

It’s time for yet another Booksquare confession: to this day, we resent the birth of our youngest sister. Not because she was the baby. Nor because she was cuter with a better name. Not even because she’s tall, relatively speaking. Our resentment comes from the fact that she was born at the exact moment that Heather was on the hook for Diana’s murder. Like the day of the big scene. The Big Scene. And we (pre-Tivo) missed it. Anyone who has ever watched soaps for more than an hour knows that once the moment has passed, it’s gone forever. Yes,

While our world is fascinated (or perhaps agog) over the fast and furious* war between HD and Blu-Ray, dredging up long-suppressed memories of the Betamax/VHS skirmishes of the 80s, the world of books has its own little battle brewing. Yes, kids, in this corner, we have Google and its plans to digitize books. In the opposing corner, newly invigorated Yahoo! is looking to get its books digitized first. This will be a bloody battle. Google is known for its size and awesome opt-out punch. Yahoo, after years of meditating on mountains, has developed a right opt-in hook. This will a

Yeah, yeah, yeah, you’ve heard it all before, and, you know, you’re right. Used book sales still comprise a relatively small piece of the total book sales market. What are we so worried about? It’s going to be fine, it’s better to have readers than royalties, and so on. What me worry? Yes, worry. Not a lot. Don’t take up stress eating or anything rash like that. Simply look at the trends and ask yourself where you want to be on the issue five years from now. To get your started on your journey, let us quote our hero, Edward

It is rare that we brag*, but as part of our personal Banned Books Week celebration, we perused the list of the 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books, 1990 – 2000. You can imagine how our black heart swelled upon learning that we are aces when it comes to reading banned books. As it turns out, much of our misspent youth was spent devouring books that are bad for us. Perhaps the mother was right — we needed to trying playing instead of reading. Clearly reading A Wrinkle in Time lead to such deviant behavior as voting regularly and stopping for

Taking his Emerging Writers job quite seriously keeps our friend Dan Wickett very busy. In addition to reading like a fiend, discovering more new authors than one man should legally have time to do (no, Dan is not languishing in library-like prison, though that does sound lovely about now), and keeping tabs on the literary scene, Dan has convened a brilliant panel dealing with first-time authors and publicity. As MJ Rose notes in her introduction to the panel: It’s literally painful to read about authors going through the publishing process. Not the writing process. Or the agenting process or the

“I’m thrilled to death,” said Joyce Generali, 48, of Leawood, Kan., who paid $6,000 to appear in Michael Chabon’s next novel, due out spring 2006. “I was thinking of remodeling my bathroom, but this is a lot better than some Italian tile. The bathroom can wait.” She was even more thrilled to learn that Chabon’s dad lives in the same town as she does. Online Literary Auction Raises $90,000

Booksquare household hero, Tim O’Reilly, offers his thoughts on the Google libraray. O’Reilly has been a pioneer in publishing, making the full text of his books available electronically via a subscription service called Safari. He also supports the Google initiative. O’Reilly responds to one publisher’s statement that the opt-out option is unfair because he, the publisher, cannot possibly know what he published in the 60s and 70s. Heavens, those were the olden days and nobody’s bothered to digitize the records. They’re very dusty, allergies, you know. It’s kind of a fun argument: we don’t know what we have and we