You’ve probably read about Amazon’s most recent promotion–they encouraged customers to use their price-check app in stores, scan an item, and then get an extra 5% discount for buying that item on Amazon instead. This promotion occasioned much ranting, including a piece by Richard Russo in the Times, and then a rant from an opposing [...]
We don’t need writers. Here’s the proof, via web comic xkcd:
The traditional model of publishing–for books, at least–has become a large(ish) upfront advance, followed by royalties: a small percent of the book’s sale, once the book has earned enough to pay off the advance. Here’s a counteroffer: as an author, would you trade a larger advance for a smaller payment upfront PLUS a bigger [...]
I admit it: when current events become a bit too much to handle, I turn to the Daily Show for some much-needed comedic perspective. Usually it’s politics that’s making me tear my hear out, but here’s Jon Stewart and John Hodgman (a fiction writer himself) finding the humor in the Borders closing.
The Daily Show [...]
Donald Lystra, who published his first novel Season of Water and Ice after retiring from a career as an engineer, talks about making the transition from engineering to writing, publishing with a small press, winning a Midwest Book Award, and what people get wrong about the 1950s.
We’re delighted to present another post by our awesome FWR editorial intern, Nicole Aber. Enjoy!
Going into the publishing industry now requires a whole new skill set from the days when American classics like East of Eden and The Great Gatsby were released in the early and mid-twentieth century. Now, those interested in the publishing field [...]
Should author readings be free?
That’s what the New York Times wondered recently in a story about indie bookstores that charge admission for author events.
Bookstores, including some of the most prominent around the country, have begun selling tickets or requiring a book purchase of customers who attend author readings and signings, a practice once [...]
Unbound allows authors to pitch book ideas and interested readers to fund those books. Says the site:
Unbound is a new way of connecting with writers. Most of the writers on our site will be well known, others will appear here for the first time.
What’s different is that instead of waiting for them to publish [...]
Over the past six decades, Iraqi writer Mahmoud Saeed has used his novels, stories, and nonfiction to deconstruct the political and social turmoil of his beloved homeland. In a wide-ranging conversation with Stephen Morison, Jr., Saeed describes the difficulties Arab authors face in getting published, the institutionalized barriers to freedom of expression, and his constant attempt, through fiction, to “solve the puzzle of man and his actions.”
Emily McLaughlin converses and laughs with author Mary Gaitskill, a fellow University of Michigan alum, on her visit to Ann Arbor. Gaitskill opens up about writing as a woman in 2011, her take on her own characters, writing sex, publishing her first stories, and lasting fifty years.
