Suspend Your Disbelief

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Shop Talk |

26 years old. 100,000+ ebooks sold per month. The future of electronic publishing?

by Celeste Ng

Is self-publishing really a viable option for writers? It is for Amanda Hocking. USA Today reports on the 26-year-old self-published success story: Fed up with attempts to find a traditional publisher for her young-adult paranormal novels, Hocking self-published last March and began selling her novels on online bookstores like Amazon and Barnesandnoble.com. By May she was selling hundreds; by June, thousands. She sold 164,000 books in 2010. Most were low-priced (99 cents to $2.99) digital downloads. More astounding: This January she sold more than 450,000 copies of her nine titles. More than 99% were e-books. Internet-fiction site Novelr analyzes how […]


Shop Talk |

Help victims of the Japan earthquake!

by Celeste Ng

Authors for Japan has just launched an auction site to help those affected by the recent earthquake and tsunami. (Via.) Items up for bids include 200 UK pounds of teen fiction from Hachette, several opportunities to have a character named after you in an upcoming book, cover letter and first chapter critiques, query letter critiques, a book-themed blog or site of your own, freelance journalism mentoring sessions, and much, much more—far too much to list here. Click on over to the Authors for Japan site and place your bids (in UK pounds) in the comment section of the items you’d […]


Reviews |

My Name is Mary Sutter, by Robin Oliveira

by Helen W. Mallon

Robin Oliveira’s debut novel, My Name is Mary Sutter, tells the story of a woman hell-bent on becoming a surgeon at a time when no woman in this county had been admitted to medical school—during the Civil War. The novel’s richly described world both helps us imagine the setting and leads reviewer Helen Mallon to this question: How can research best represent a world in historical fiction?


Shop Talk |

Flipbook: "Teaching"

by Celeste Ng

Every few weeks, we launch a new Fiction Writers Review “Flipbook.” During the past two and a half years, we’ve featured more than 50 interviews with authors established and emerging. They’ve had such valuable insights into the writing life—from thoughts on process and craft to ideas about community and influence—that we wanted to find a way to further these conversations within our community. Each Flipbook highlights some of the very best of the conversations on our site, centered around a particular topic. Our latest Flipbook is now up on the FWR Facebook page, with an exclusive slide right here on […]


Shop Talk |

Beyond "Books by the Foot"… but to what?

by Celeste Ng

I adore this video of books arranging themselves by color. So why do I cringe when I read this? For the spa in Philippe Starck’s Icon Brickell, the icy glass condo tower in Miami, [designer Thatcher Wine] was asked to wrap 1,500 books in blank white paper, without titles, to provide a “textural accent” to the space. He chose mass-market hardcovers that flood the used book outlets — titles by John Grisham and Danielle Steel, or biographies of Michael Jackson, he said — because they are cheap, clean and a nice, generous size. For another Starck project, in Dallas, Mr. […]


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Quick, why do you write?

by Celeste Ng

Can you explain why you write in 140 characters or less? In response to a question by agent Jason Ashlock, hundreds of people have been trying with the hashtag #whyIwrite on Twitter. Here are some of their responses, which range from the humorous to the downright profound: ANaderGretly: #WhyIWrite Because it’s an excuse to do research on strange subjects, i.e. Serial killers and forensic psychology. ANaderGretly: #WhyIWrite Because I’d rather be a poor writer, than to be a wealthy engineer. RJSWriter: #whyiwrite 2/2 so by passing what we _can_ see through the lens of imagination, we hope that some of […]


Shop Talk |

Tick, tick, tick… BOMB Magazine's 2011 Fiction Contest now open

by Celeste Ng

BOMB Magazine is now accepting submissions for its fifth Fiction Contest. This year’s judge is Rivka Galchen, author of the novel Atmospheric Disturbances. The winner will receive $500 and publication in First Proof, BOMB’s literary supplement. The contest deadline is April 16, 2011. Don’t know BOMB? We’re pleased to introduce you. A quarterly lit mag, BOMB Magazine was founded in 1981 and features interviews, original writing, and reviews. Says the journal’s website: BOMB was named after Wyndham Lewis’s Blast, a 1917 journal edited by artists and writers. Following in this tradition, BOMB’s editors are also all practitioners of the arts. […]


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Busby Berkeley, meet Bookshelf.

by Celeste Ng

Ever wish your books would just organize themselves? This stop-motion animation by artists/designers Sean Ohlenkamp and Lisa Blonder Ohlenkamp shows the crazy hijinks that might ensue: I keep wondering: what happened to the banana at the end? The complete list of “credits” is at the end of the animation, but I bet you can name some of the books from their covers alone. Via.


Shop Talk |

Thursday Morning Candy: The Grub Street Daily

by Celeste Ng

“Grub” and “candy” probably don’t go together in your mind, but trust me, this week’s Thursday Morning Candy is delicious. The Grub Street Daily is the new daily blog from Grub Street, an independent, nonprofit writing center in Boston. (Disclaimer: I teach there!) The newly launched site offers quotes, prompts, and exercises; publishing success stories; and quirky blog posts like Tara Masih’s thoughts on a writer’s Oscar acceptance speech. There’s even a weekly advice column, “Friday Five-O,” which answers reader queries such as: Dear Friday Five-O: I have a timeless writing question: how do I make a writing schedule and […]




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