Most of the news lately is about print publishers moving to electronic publishing. So it’s refreshing to hear about the opposite: short story website Five Chapters will soon begin publishing print books.
In January 2011, Five Chapters will publish three short story collections by Five Chapters alums: Nobody Ever Gets Lost by Jess [...]

The UK’s Independent highlights their favorite new underground literary magazines “stemming from the edgiest enclaves of the book-loving universe”:
Indeed, the editors of these fledgling organs claim that low budgets spur inventiveness. While Five Dials’ inaugural issue contained an 1852 letter from Flaubert to Louise Colet, the first in a series of “exemplar letters”, in more [...]

You know a phenomenon has reached critical mass when it appears in the New York Times. And recently, the New York Times discussed the growing necessity—and, more often than not, awkwardness— of the book trailer:
But in the streaming video era, with the publishing industry under relentless threat, the trailer is fast becoming an essential [...]

The book trailer is a relatively new phenomenon, but innovation has quickly become the rule. Take the trailer for Gary Shteyngart’s new novel, Super Sad True Love Story, which features cameos by James Franco (a former MFA student of Shteyngart at Columbia), Jay McInerney, Edmund White, Mary Gaitskill, and Jeffrey Eugenides. It’s tongue-in-cheek, as to [...]

For many aspiring writers, that’s the big question: How do you get from #1 to #3? No one can guarantee that you’ll actually profit, of course, but certain steps make it much much much more likely that your work will get out there and find an audience. Though I’m certainly no expert, I’ve [...]

You may have already seen this essay by Ted Genoways, editor of the Virginia Quarterly Review, blaming too many MFA programs and their “navel-gazing” writers for the sorry state of fiction these days:
But the less commercially viable fiction became, the less it seemed to concern itself with its audience, which in turn made it less [...]

Hannah Tinti was raised in Salem, Massachusetts, a place she credits with having influenced the darker side of her fiction. Charlotte Boulay talks with the much-admired author and editor about the influence of art in her work, how writers find their subject matter, her editorial approach at One Story, and trusting your gut during the drafting process, among other subjects.

You may have missed it between the Times Square Car bomb and the giant uncontrolled oil spill that’s taking over the Gulf Coast. But last week, the Cumberland River flooded much of Nashville, covering the city with over 10 feet of water, closing institutions like the Grand Ole Opry House, and killing more than [...]

“For those of you who have yet to publish your first book, I can predict with about 96% certainty how it will go: It won’t happen when you want it to, or in the way you expect. Of course it’ll take longer than you want — you know that. It’ll take so long you could grow a tree, learn forestry and paper-making, then print and bind it yourself and carry it by hand to every last remaining independent bookstore in the country. That is, if you don’t succumb first to addiction, poverty, despair, humiliation, or suicide. In short, it will take longer than you think you can stand, and yet, in the end, as you struggle to make your last-chance, oh-my-God-this-is-going-out-in-the-world? revisions, you’ll inevitably feel rushed and wonder where all that time went.”

In the newest installment of Poets & Writers magazine’s Inside Indie Bookstores series, FWR Associate Editor Jeremiah Chamberlin profiles Chicago’s fabulous Women & Children First bookstore, featuring an interview with the bookstore’s co-owner Linda Bubon.
The online version (along with a slideshow of images from the store) is available at no cost on P&W’s [...]