Posts by author
Ian MacAllen
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(Attractive) Debut Novelists Earn Millions
Emma Cline received $2m advance for The Girls, due out in June, which puts her near the top of a growing list of first-time writers with advances in the millions. Last year, City on Fire earned Garth Risk Hallberg a $2m…
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This Week in Indie Bookstores
Saturday was Independent Bookstore Day and hundreds of shops across the country celebrated with discounts, events, and readings. The Bookworm Omaha is the only official bookseller at the annual Berkshire Hathaway shareholder meeting, and Warren Buffett personally approves the books…
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Notable NYC: 4/30–5/6
Saturday 4/30: Celebrate Independent Bookstore Day with your favorite stores: Greenlight Bookstore, Powerhouse Arena, Housing Works, BookCourt, Astoria Bookshop, Community Bookstore, Rizzoli Bookstore, BookCulture, or celebreate with the 1st Brooklyn Bookstore Crawl. Claudia Cortese, Sharon Dolin, Karen Hildebrand, Clark Moore,…
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Amazon Unintentionally Rewards Scammers
Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited product offers readers an all-you-can-eat model for book subscriptions. The books are mainly self-published titles (and Amazon pays authors by the number of pages read). The model sounds great in theory—readers download books risk-free, encouraging discovery of…
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Can Unions Diversify Publishing?
The publishing industry is very white—79% as of 2016. One way to change that might be to unionize publishing workforces, argues J.C. Pan at The Nation. Pan cites the unionization of The New Press, where workers included an affirmative-action clause in…
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This Week in Indie Bookstores
Independent bookstores are thriving because many are adapting technology and learning how to better serve their local community. A stunning new bookstore has opened in eastern China with dazzling displays and whimsical architecture. Bookstores in Barcelona are adapting as Spain…
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Notable NYC: 4/23–4/29
Saturday 4/23: Latasha N. Nevada Diggs, Jadele McPherson, t’ai freedom ford, and Val Jeanty read poems of surrealism and politics. High Line Park at 23rd Street, 3 p.m., free. Tonya Foster celebrates Swarm of Bees with Marcella Durand, Charles Bernstein,…
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Tech Companies Profit While Writers Starve
Digital media companies are suddenly worried about declining ad revenue, and the venture capitalists funding these companies have also turned off the faucet of cash as they realize that success stories like BuzzFeed and Mashable are not the unicorns everyone…
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Better Funding Boosts Library Usage
Library use has been declining, but that decline probably isn’t due to a decreasing interest in reading. Plenty of pundits blame the rise of digital technology, but even libraries that offer digital services like ebook lending have seen declines. The real culprit is…
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This Week in Indie Bookstores
The world’s largest bookstore is set to open in Iran. A pornography bookstore in Alaska is transitioning to a general interest bookstore with a sex-themed art show. Censorship is a growing problem in Thailand, warns a bookstore owner. North Carolina…
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Notable NYC: 4/16–4/22
Saturday 4/16: Stefanie Lipsey, Ann Prodracky, and Melissa Thomas join the Oh, Bernice reading series. Astoria Bookshop, 7 p.m., free. Jibade-Khalil Huffman and Gabriela Jauregui join the Segue Series. Zinc Bar, 4:30 p.m., $5. Sunday 4/17: Greg Purcell, Ish Klein,…
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A Library on a Horse
Ridwan Sururi had a horse. Indonesia’s small mountain towns needed a library. Now, several days a week he loads up his horse with books and travels from town to town, earning him the name “the Don Quixote of literacy.”