Suspend Your Disbelief

Posts Tagged ‘publishing’

Shop Talk |

The End of Oprah

by Celeste Ng

Oprah gave book publicists a collective fit of the vapors when she announced her show—and its high-profile book club—would be ending in 2011. Many fretted over the effects on publishing, calling it “a blow”: “Other than a book being turned into a popular movie nothing brings readers to a book like Oprah,” said Dawn Davis, editorial director of the Amistad imprint of News Corp.’s HarperCollins Publishers. […] “She brings a variety of readers to a variety of books. Her impact is immeasurable.” Another publicist mourned, “If it is the end of her daily talk show,we probably won’t see something else […]


Shop Talk |

Bestselling authors speak out against big-box discounting

by Celeste Ng

For the past few months, writers at FWR — like those across the literary blogosphere–have been responding to and critiquing the Target-Walmart-Sears-Amazon price-war kerfuffle. Yet outside the publishing and writing worlds, it’s not clear if anyone sees big-box discounting as a Bad Thing; maybe people are too excited about snagging $9 hardback new releases. Recently, though, two big-name authors spoke up about the scary ramifications for emerging writers. In a Big Think talk, John Irving discusses how much harder it is for first-time novelists to get started today, admitting that his first novel would not have been published today. (The […]


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The Rise of "Universal Authorship"

by Celeste Ng

Ever had the feeling that everyone is writing a book these days? Maybe it’s true. In SEED magazine, NYU psychology professor Denis G. Pelli and MacArthur “Genius” Charles Bigelow discuss the rise of “universal authorship”: We found that the number of published authors per year increased nearly tenfold every century for six centuries. By 2000, there were 1 million book authors per year. One million authors is a lot, but they are only a tiny fraction, 0.01 percent, of the nearly 7 billion people on Earth. Since 1400, book authorship has grown nearly tenfold in each century. Currently, authorship, including […]


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McSweeney's 33: Litmag Meets News

by Celeste Ng

McSweeney’s next issue will be packaged in the form of an old-fashioned newspaper. The New York Times‘s ArtsBeat reports: McSweeney’s No. 33 is to be in the form of a daily broadsheet — a big, old-fashioned broadsheet. The pages will measure 22 by 15 inches. (Pages of The New York Times, by comparison, are 22 by 11 1/2 inches.) Called San Francisco Panorama, the editors say it is, in large part, homage to an institution that they feel, contrary to conventional wisdom, still has a lot of life in it. Their experience in publishing literary fiction is something of a […]


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Rolling back prices, indeed—Wal-Mart and Amazon in preorder price war for this season’s new hardcovers

In the Arts section of today’s New York Times, Motoko Rich reports on the “tit-for-tat price war between Wal-Mart and Amazon [that] accelerated late on Friday afternoon when Wal-Mart shaved another cent off its already rock-bottom prices for hardcover editions of some of the coming holiday season’s biggest potential best sellers, offering them online for $8.99 apiece.” Originally the company had intended to sell these selected books at $10, but Amazon, perhaps feeling threatened by Wal-Mart’s foray into the online retail market, retaliated by lowering their prices on the same titles to a mere $9. So Wal-Mart responded in kind, […]


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P&W: Top 50 creative writing programs, and a conversation with Jonathan Karp

by Anne Stameshkin

The numbers are in…and the top 50 creative writing MFA programs are ranked in the new issue of Poets & Writers. Here’s an excerpt from the accompanying article by Seth Abramson, who compiled the list based on extensive research. (Note: The full article is available only in the print edition.) Abramson admits the difficulties of quantifying and comparing MFA program experiences: [T]he evils of educational rankings are indeed legion and do urge caution on the part of any prospective analyst of MFA programs. At base it is impossible to quantify or predict the experience any one MFA candidate will have […]


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Win A Critique From Nathan Bransford

by Celeste Ng

Over at his eponymous blog, literary agent Nathan Bransford (of Curtis Brown Ltd. in San Francisco) is running his “3rd Sort-of-Annual Stupendously Ultimate First Paragraph Challenge.” Post the first paragraph of your work-in-progress on the contest page, and Bransford will select those he deems strongest as finalists. Readers of his blog will then vote to determine the contest winner. Finalists get query critiques, and the winner will receive: “(1) Their choice of a partial critique, query critique, or phone consultation; (2) A very-sought-after galley of THE SECRET YEAR by Jennifer Hubbard, which will be published by Viking in January; (3) […]


Essays |

Quotes & Notes: In Praise of Perpetual Self-Reinvention

by Steven Wingate

“Every book I publish is an opportunity for me to reinvent myself as a writer.” — Steve Katz

The easy thing to do when we finish one writing project, the default thing, is to simply think about what we’re going to write next. Katz’s words, however, call us to engage in a deeper kind of reconsideration of ourselves, because what we write and who we are as writers are two crucially different things.


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TriQuarterly to be Shut Down after 45 Years

by Celeste Ng

Some sad news: recently, we heard that venerable literary journal TriQuarterly was transitioning to an online-only format. It’s sad enough to think that one of the oldest and most respected literary mags would no longer be in print, but there’s more to the story, as shown in this email from Ian Morris, TriQuarterly‘s associate editor: I just wanted you all know that as of spring 2010 after forty-five years TriQuarterly magazine will cease to exist. Susan Hahn and myself were notified of this fact yesterday just hours before the press release announcing the decision was sent out. After terminating TriQuarterly’s […]




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