Publishers Weekly
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The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #95: Gabe Habash
Gabe Habash’s Stephen Florida is a three-hundred page manic unraveling of the titular Stephen’s psyche, told over the course of one season of collegiate wrestling. In the opening pages, Stephen states his intentions in no ambiguous terms: he is going…
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This Week in Indie Bookstores
The Wild Rumpus (no relation), a children’s bookstore in Minneapolis, was named the bookstore of the year by Publishers Weekly. Minneapolis is also the third most literate city in the US, taking into account the number of bookstores per capita. Unrelated, its…
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This Week in Indie Bookstores
Revolution Books in New York City’s Harlem neighborhood is exploiting Trump’s election to raise money for a fight against fascism. People in Japan value neighborhood bookstores so much that local governments are opening government-run stores in an effort to keep…
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Profitable Poetry
Rupi Kaur’s poetry collection, Milk and Honey, has sold almost half a million copies since its publication by Andrews McMeel Publishing last year, according to Anisse Gross in Publishers Weekly. While that is the company’s best selling poetry collection, it isn’t…
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A Safe Harbor
Book clubs have long been a mainstay in literary and bookish circles. Claire Kirch, writing for Publisher’s Weekly, takes a look at how some indie bookstores have leveraged this to increase sales—thereby helping to ensure they will stay open to serve…
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The Literary Hustle
Even after authors finish writing their book, they have plenty of work to do to promote it. With so many books and limited space in media outlets, the literary hustle is a major part of any book launch. Over at…
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We Need Diverse Publishers
According to Publishers Weekly, publishing is so white because publishers—particularly the Big Five—have failed to implement concrete plans to diversify their hires. One publishing HR exec said that even though hiring quotas are risky and make people uncomfortable, an alternate…
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No More Book Shaming
It’s no secret that libraries have had a rocky relationship with publishers since the ebook boom began in the late aughts. Publisher’s Weekly suggests three ways the two could work to heal the rift, but one of the suggestions is…
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A Good Literary Agent Is Hard to Find
Finding a literary agent isn’t easy. It might just be the worst thing ever. Over at Publisher’s Weekly, Ken Pisani looks at the troubling process he went through until he found an agent—one he went to high school with.
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A Look Back at Amazon’s Twenty Years
Publisher’s Weekly has a retrospective on Amazon.com’s 20 years of selling books, DVDs, electronics, and everything else. The article cites the introduction of the Kindle and the Kindle e-bookstore as Amazon’s most important innovation, but is quick to cite the company’s…
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AWP Is (Apparently) Not Us
Publisher’s Weekly has a detailed breakdown of the AWP debacle that has consumed writerly conversations this past week.