In the kind of defeated sigh about the future of books that is increasingly commonplace, Sarah Weinman, the news editor at Publisher’s Marketplace, argues that in the digital age there’s no room for “serious nonfiction.” The gist of her argument is familiar, the kind of thing we’ve been hearing for years: without “traditional” publishers there will be no large book advances for what she calls “prestige” work, like Robert Caro’s multi-volume LBJ biography.

Her argument might have been a little more persuasive had she considered the fact that Caro actually went broke writing the first of his biographies, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York. Caro had to sell his house, and take a job teaching, to support himself and his family in the seven years it took him to finish the book. Plus: his wife worked. When I saw Caro speak at an event in Tribeca, recently, he was asked what kind of advice he’d give to aspiring biographers. “Become independently wealthy,” he said.  And that’s from one of the biggest names in the “serious” business, who grew up as a writer in publishing’s alleged golden years.

It’ll always cost a writer more to do serious work of any kind than it will to just dash off some crap-on-delivery thing. And that goes for fiction, too. And it is, much of the time, thankless, as far as the rest of the world is concerned. That’s just how writing like a motherfucker goes.

…more

At The Quivering Pen, Emily St. John Mandel remembers her first agent who, even in death, remains part of Mandel’s audience.

“She comes back to me at odd moments.  When there are small triumphs, I sometimes find myself thinking that I wish she could have seen this; when there are small disappointments I sometimes think of her too, of how dry and reassuring she was when things weren’t going quite as one had hoped.”

On the Media’s annual publishing industry episode covers a lot of ground with segments on this year’s Pulitzer fiction snub, e-books and changing reader behavior, fears of an Amazonian monopoly, copyright concerns, and more.

Salon takes a closer look at Amazon’s (quiet) practice of giving grants to small publishers and literary nonprofits, questioning whether Amazon is “backing book culture or buying off critics.”

“At a time when independent publishing is struggling to survive, in part due to the influence of Amazon, recipients say that these grants offer crucial — if ironic — life support.”

Susie DeFord and I both finished drafts of our books in 2007. My former dog-trainer and I had labored together at café tables side by side, but after the writing process, our paths diverged. I quickly found an agent, and starting working on a book proposal, while Susie submitted her manuscript, Dogs of Brooklyn, to first-book competitions (the most common way to get a debut book of poems published), and worked on building a readership for her blog, Dog Poet Laureate. …more

The Authors Guild argues that the book publishing “ecosystem” is in a precarious situation, largely due to Amazon’s growing industry dominance, which they put in the context of a more general abandonment of protections for non-consumer markets against monopolies.

You know Amazon? Our tax-evading (can someone please send them “The Throwaways”?), anti-union redefining, sweat-shop aspiring overlord. Remember how they tried to enlist us all in their war on local stores? They have a new trick up their sleeve. The online giant will begin distributing its adult books through Houghton Mifflin Harcourt’s New Harvest imprint. Here’s a bit more on the deal, including reactions from bookstores.

“The thing that really sad about this is they’ve asked one of our most respected publishers to do this.”

Rumpus contributor Roxane Gay details the ins and outs of starting a micropress based on the lessons she’s learned starting Tiny Hardcore Press.

“You have to be prepared to hustle. You have to be willing to promote your book, and do readings, and plan your own events because there’s no support staff at the micropress to do it for you.”

We also make an exception for a list if it’s really funny, and we’re on it. Hence: Paul Bogaards’ “Hierarchy of Book Publishing: The Top 100.”

Book Country, an online community created by Penguin this past spring, has announced the addition of a self-publishing component. Here’s an explanation of how it works.

“BC offers three publishing “packages” at three prices: $549 for the professionally formatted print/e-book package; $299 for the user-formatted print/e-book package; and $99 for the e-book only package. Each package provides the user with ISBN, distribution options, pricing and earning information, and marketing help.”

(Via The Book Bench)

An interactive map of the life cycle of a book lets us visualize the publishing process. Hear about each step, from writing to author publicity and everything in between.

(Via The Book Bench)

At the Atlantic, Marshall Poe discusses his attempt to write a “big-idea book” about Wikipedia, and how he ended up with a “book of ideas” instead.

“Years of academic research taught me two things. First, reality is as complicated as it is, not as complicated as we want it to be. Some phenomena have an irreducible complexity that will defeat any big-idea effort at simplification. Detailed research has, not surprisingly, cast doubt on the reality of wise crowds, tipping points, and long tails. Second, most of the easy big questions about the way the world works have been answered. The questions that remain are really hard. Big ideas, then, can only reinvent the wheel or make magical claims.”

(Via The Book Bench)

Amazon is introducing a new service that presents a noncommittal book-buying option for customers. The company is considering a Netflix-like rental service for ebooks, which unfortunately, only provides more opportunity to devalue books. And this devaluing has only caused publishers to be skeptical of this rental-based selling point for ebooks. Let’s hope it doesn’t do to booksellers what Netflix did to the video store.

It all started, as it so often seems to these days, with a blog post. …more

This Guardian piece challenges the notion that books are doomed, breaking down the “actual state of book publishing in Britain.” Separating anecdote from data, the piece is all about E-books and Amazon, and the impact of new formats on readers/authors/publishers. While acknowledging the uncertainty ahead in a transformed literary world, the author argues that there are reasons to be optimistic.

“So yes, the party’s still on. It’s not quite the same party, the drink’s a good deal cheaper and we’ve got crisps, not caviar. But there are more people invited, and some of them look pretty groovy. I’ll not get my coat just yet.”

Matt Runkle interviews Richard Nash for the Boston Review, who ran Soft Skull Press for eight years. Now he’s heading two other publishing ventures, Cursor (an online literary community where writers can post/discuss manuscripts) and their first imprint, Red Lemonade. It’s awesome to hear publishers say stuff like, “I’m tremendously optimistic about the future of the book as an object,” in these tough print times.

Nash was running Soft Skull at a crucial time for print and notes how the “shitiffication of the book as an object” is not about e-books as much as it is the result of a manufacturing supply chain. He’s bringing production back to book quality and away from simply cutting costs.

Book reviews sections in newspapers and magazines began shrinking a couple years ago, or being folded into other sections, even disappearing altogether.

In 2007, a band of culturally dedicated authors started the National Book Critics Circle’s Campaign to Save Book Reviewing and now “we remain a nation of passionate readers—even during a time when movies can be streamed on demand and countless distractions are built into every smartphone and tablet.” Nowadays, the number of books published per year is growing. In the context of this trajectory, what is the current state of the book review? Poets & Writers discusses here.

Editors, publishers and critics have their own industry-specific lexicon.

People in the industry are used to hearing words like “acclaimed” or saying that a book “brilliantly defies categorization,” but apparently this is only the surface level of description. Beyond the commonly used adjectives and phrases, there lies the truth—what they actually mean, decoded.

Longshot Magazine, the annual made-in-48 hrs publishing, internet-based whirlwind, just wrapped up their second issue and the theme is Debt, which proved limitless, submission-wise.

It’s got personal essays, both fiction and nonfiction, some photo-journalism—all compiled by around 100 people equipped with internet tools, within the Gawkwer offices. Check out what can happen in a two day time span.

There’s a lot of writing-themed rejection stories around, or at least ones about fleeting publishing fortune.

In the spirit of trying and giving up, publishing house frustrations and then reflecting on the whole emotional whirlwind of the publishing experience, there is this new Thought Catalog essay. It’s about one young writer’s personal experience attempting to get his novel published while being a reporter in Nebraska.

The Millions just published a personal essay on fleeting fame in the publishing industry. Alex Shakar writes on his novel that once reached six figures. His experience breathes insight into the world of editors, agents and ephemeral success.

An enlightening Paris Review interview with Robert Gottlieb, a veteran editor/publisher whose editorial touch you have undoubtedly experienced.

The editorial process is after all, its own art form that is not wholly visible to readers. Esteemed authors (Toni Morrison, Joseph Heller and Michael Crichton, to name a few) and Gottlieb himself discuss the author-editor working relationship, the hidden intricacies of the editorial process and how the publishing industry has changed our understanding of the editor.

(via @nybooks)

I was on my way to Book Expo America on Tuesday when the C train, still in Brooklyn, experienced a preposterously long delay–even for the C train. At first we were told simply that a “situation” was being “investigated” at “another station.” …more

There is an excellent, and at times heated, conversation about publishing, writing, and nostalgia going on in the comments section of our response piece concerning Garrison Keillor’s recent NY Times op-ed.

Join the debate here.

I came across this piece in the NY Times by Garrison Keillor bemoaning the new world of self-publishing via the twitter feed of Austin Kleon, who suggested Keillor should “just put a gun in your mouth & spare us yr ‘you missed the good ol’ days’ monologue.” How could I not click on a link with that as an introduction?

It’s not surprising that Keillor would take this position, given his writerly persona, so it’s difficult for me to get angry at him. But I do get tired of this nostalgic crap in general, and if at some point in the future, I turn into a curmudgeonly “things were better in the old days” type of person, I hope someone will smack the hell out of me and tell me to wake up.

Because, as a general rule, things were never better in the past, not even if you were a white male. The privilege you gained by being in power was offset by poorer health, fewer economic opportunities, less flexibility in your career options, etc. I can’t think of a single way in which life in the past–even the recent past–was better than in the present. Advances in technology alone make the present better, and the future potentially better than that. …more

“Lane’s other invention, alongside the cheap, quality paperback, was the Penguincubator, first installed outside Henderson’s (the ‘Bomb Shop’) at 66 Charing Cross Road, which signaled his intention to take the book beyond the library and the traditional bookstore, into railway stations, chain stores and onto the streets. It is worth noting, given publishers’ frequent timidity in this area, that this really annoyed booksellers.

“(Lane’s lack of trepidation is an important part of this story; worth noting, too, that he was the first English publisher of James Joyce’s Ulysses, at the Bodley Head, despite the widespread contemporary fear of prosecution for obscenity.)”

Take heed from the fearlessness of a legendary publisher.

(viaBookforum)

“When a writer tells me they give up, or when they fatalistically declare they will never be published, I begin to understand how little people know about how publishing often works. One of the reasons I started the Q & A feature was to pull back that editorial curtain.

The weird mystery within which the publication process is often veiled does writers far more harm than good. That said, while I cannot claim to have all the answers I do know that if you’re not willing to persist in the face of rejection, the writing life is probably not the best option for you.”

At HTMLGIANT, Roxane Gay, editor of PANK magazine, discusses the challenges of getting your work published.

There is nothing quite like reading Little, Big, John Crowley’s epic and elegantly subtle fantasy novel about a New England family and their mystifying relationship with the Fairy World.

In language and style and vision, in action that veers from the curiously fantastic to the magically mundane, this book is unlike anything I’ve ever read, and something I’ll reread at least a dozen times more. …more

Submission Guidelines
by Jane Roper

Dear Writer:

Thank you for your interest in our publication. …more

Update: Amazon caves to Macmillan’s demands! Read on to learn more about the dispute:

After Macmillan Publishers challenged Amazon‘s pricing of e-books for Kindle users, Amazon retaliated on Friday by pulling not only all e-books by Macmillan authors but also physical literature by the publisher as well.

Macmillan is a large international publishing house with smaller  presses such as Farrar, Straus & Giroux, St. Martins Press and Henry Holt under its wing. Macmillan’s decision to pressure Amazon to raise its prices for e-books  has caused Amazon to render its digital shelves purposefully bereft of books by authors like Jeffrey Eugenides and Hilary Mantel. …more