Suspend Your Disbelief

Posts Tagged ‘publishing’

Essays |

Drawing a Line in the Sand: Literature and Today’s Market

by Steven Wingate

I do not fear for literature, which has endured purges of all kinds, the death of the novel, the irrelevance of poetry, centuries without general literacy, and every other threat that has been hurled its way. Enough people hold it dear, and it is intrinsic enough to the human identity, for it to survive whatever problems plague it now. But I do fear for those young writers whose primary teaching in their craft is market-centered rather than literature-centered.


Shop Talk |

QueryFail Day

by Anne Stameshkin

I’m going to cave one of these days and join Twitter (rather than merely blogging about it), if just to listen in on the next QueryFail Day. Last month, a number of agents designated March 5th the first QueryFail Day, a 24-hour period devoted to Twittering 140-character summaries of the worst queries they’d recently received. The one ground rule was that no querying author could be referred to by name or any other identifying characteristic. That aside, the gloves came off! Did the day serve more to mock would-be authors (as “Positivity Week” agent Nathan Bransford claims) or to educate […]


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when will they ever learn?

by Anne Stameshkin

There have been scads of articles about the evils of high-stakes gambling by book publishers–the doling out of huge advances to one or two would-be-blockbusters while investing little in the rest of the list. The logic behind this impulse isn’t hard to understand: when a Big Book hits the jackpot, the publisher does, too–and in theory, the rest of a publisher’s list and personnel would reap the benefits. But even the glorious success of of one book can set unrealistic expectation for future titles–and rather than supplementing resources for less popular books, a Hit might wind up making those books […]


Essays |

AWP: Hope Takes Flight in the Basement of the Hilton

by Sarah Van Arsdale

At first, I didn’t care too much about the economic troubles of Wall Streeters, or people living off their investments, or people with things called “401ks.” Let them give up their limos and learn how to take the bus; let them eat at the table next to me at Ali Baba’s Kebab House. But then the publishing world followed. Has the prospect of getting a literary novel published plunged from very unlikely to totally unlikely to absolutely-forget-about-it-impossible with each drop of the Dow Jones average? Or is there hope?


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more (and more and more) e-reader and Kindle links

by Anne Stameshkin

In the latest The Quarterly Conversation, William Patrick Wend’s “Intro to E-Lit: How Electronic Literature Makes Printed Literature Richer” discusses N. Katherine Hayles’ book Electronic Literature: New Horizons for the Literary and defends e-publishing. Slate‘s Farhad Manjoo loves the Kindle but fears it’s bad news for the current publishing industry. Booksquare argues that the text-to-speech verdict, supposedly a win by Authors Guild (who aggressively pursued this issue), might (ironically) benefit Amazon the most in the end. Check out her earlier post on e-book pricing. The latest Kindle news is at Kindlebuzz, and folks are talking about nothing else at KindleBoards.


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recommended reading: Jofie Ferrari-Adler's Q&A with four young editors

by Anne Stameshkin

As previously mentioned, I adore Jofie’s P&W “Agents & Editors” features, and this latest installment should especially interest FWR readers: Jofie (himself an editor at Grove/Atlantic) talks to editors Richard Nash (who, sadly, just resigned from Soft Skull Press), Lee Boudreaux (Ecco), Alexis Gargagliano (Scribner), and Eric Chinski (FSG) about falling in love with books for a living, choosing authors and manuscripts, surviving the future of publishing, and more.


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bestsellers or bust?

by Anne Stameshkin

In this rather depressing Haaretz article (found via the Practicing Writer), Super-Agent Binky Urban remains “optimistic” about the future of publishing but expresses concern about the fate of “mid-list authors”: Urban: “So fewer books will be published, and those whom we call midlist writers will no longer get published. The major writers will keep publishing, debut books will always be published, and the ones in the middle will have a problem.” So you won’t be able to nurture writers. Urban: “That’s exactly the point. When I met Richard Ford for the first time, he already had published three novels, which […]


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lit and tech linkage

by Anne Stameshkin

Can Twitter help publishers and stores sell books? Check out Ann Kingman’s findings on the Booksellers Blog. David Pogue hearts the new Kindle and answers concerns about the end of print publishing with three words: “Don’t be silly.” But Tim O’Reilly offers this “bold prediction”: “Unless Amazon embraces open e-book standards like epub, which allow readers to read books on a variety of devices, the Kindle will be gone within two or three years. […] Open allows experimentation. Open encourages competition. Open wins.” Launching in March, Kachingle is a new online service that will encourage people to donate to newspapers, […]


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open letter from Karl Pohrt: How can we save Shaman Drum — and independent bookstores?

by Jeremiah Chamberlin

In the late 1990s, I ran a small, independent bookstore in Madison, Wisconsin, called Canterbury Booksellers. I knew I wanted to be a writer at the time, but I had no idea how to go about the process. Working at the store gave me not only shelter as a writer-in-progress, but also afforded me the opportunity to meet other writers, learn about the publishing industry, and to spend my days surrounded by people who loved nothing more than discussing writing and books. It was, in short, idyllic. But this was also during the era when chain stores were proliferating and […]


Essays |

A Review of One's Own

by Lee Thomas

Over the past decade, book reviews and newspaper book sections have faced, and continue to face, serious danger of extinction. Lee Thomas explores what our culture stands to lose if the edited book review is in jeopardy, positing that book lovers, writers, and critics might yet find a way to profit–rather than suffer from–the sea changes of the publishing industry and online review forums.




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