Posts by author
Ian MacAllen
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Publishers Risk Losing Writers
Rude rejection letters could cost publishers the next big author, warns Hannah MacDonald, founder of September Publishing. MacDonald told colleagues at the FutureBook conference that publishers need to be kinder, reports The Independent: Hannah MacDonald said the industry should be…
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Literary Fiction is Popular Fiction
Some authors feel insecure about writing genre fiction and consider literature a luxury brand. Genre fiction, after all, is supposed to be the goose that lays golden eggs and includes books people actually want to read—except that may not be…
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This Week in Indie Bookstores
Bookstores in Mumbai, India are losing customers from institutional sales as large buyers turn directly to suppliers, and though 700 existing retailers exist in the city, the last few years have no seen new stores open. A Syrian couple has…
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E-books Threaten Warehouse Jobs
The rise of e-books are threatening jobs in publishing once again—this time, it’s the warehouse workers that once distributed physical books. Penguin Random House is laying off warehouse workers, since electronic books are delivered wirelessly and never need to be…
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Notable NYC: 12/5–12/11
Saturday 12/5: Chelsea Hodson and Morgan Parker join the Segue series. Zinc Bar, 4:30 p.m., $5. Sunday 12/6: Heidi Julavits and Naja Marie Aidt join the Sunday Night Fiction series. KGB, 7 p.m., free. Monday 12/7: Athena Farrkhozad, Jennifer Nelson,…
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That New Book Scent
One joy of buying a new book is its distinctive smell. Thanks to modern science, we can now enjoy new book scent without the trouble of actually having to purchase a new book. BoingBoing takes a look at chemical-based new book…
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This Week in Indie Bookstores
To celebrate Small Business Saturday, President Obama shopped at Upshur Street Books in the Petworth neighborhood of Washington DC. Magers & Quinn, an independent Minneapolis bookseller, has been open on Thanksgiving for the last thirteen years—mostly to provide employees without family…
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Literature Is a Luxury Brand
They have a swish sounding publisher. They write for the New Yorker or the Guardian. They’re overwhelmingly likely to have attended an elite university such as Oxford or Stamford. They have an MFA. It’s all indicative of one clear message:…
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Saudi Arabia to Execute Poet
Saudi Arabia, an American ally, sentenced a poet to death for renouncing Islam, although it may have been retribution for posting online a video of police lashing a man in the street. Poets around the world criticized the execution. One…
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Notable NYC: 11/28–12/4
Monday 11/30: Simon Van Booy presents his story collection Tales of Accidental Genius. WORD Brooklyn, 7 p.m., free. Matt Hart and Darcie Dennigan join the Monday Night Poetry series. KGB Bar, 7 p.m., free. Molly Crabapple launches Drawing Blood with…
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Gawker’s Problem with Women
Gawker has been failing its female employees. Gawker may pay its writers, but as Evans found out after staffers voted to unionize, Gawker doesn’t pay its writers equally: The union effort prompted my discovery of an egregious pay discrepancy, which…
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This Week in Indie Bookstores
A Paris bookseller writes about the terror attacks. Parisians, meanwhile, are responding to the terror attacks by buying up all the copies of Ernest Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast. Iranian bookstores opened early on Thursday last week in a campaign to…