Publishing
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Bending Gender to Make a Sale
The process of selling writing can do funny things to people, like the male authors writing under female pseudonyms. Catherine Nichols went the other way, taking on a male persona to sell her novel: I sent the six queries I…
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By Any Other Name
Sometimes privilege can be confusing. Over at the Guardian, male writers explain why they decided to publish under female pseudonyms: Does it help to be identified as a woman, or to have no gender at all? Someone needs to tell…
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Writers’ Influences Skew Male
Independent Irish publisher Tramp Press requests that writers submitting manuscripts list their influences. Co-founder Sarah Davis-Goff had a suspicion that she was only seeing male names among the influencers, so she tallied up the influences of 100 submitters. Only 33 percent…
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Highest Grossing
Capital ruins everything. For the Irish Times, Fiona O’Connor laments the age of the literary blockbuster: “I like it, I like it”, the anti-critic’s jingling ethos in the celebration of banality.
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Dear White Men, Publish Responsibly
For Electric Literature, Adalena Kavanagh has a conversation with poet Elisa Gabbert on Google Chat about how to advise white male writers to publish ethically. Their conversation also explores topics related to power structures in the publishing industry, and the implications of white authors…
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A Tipping Point
These days, a trade nonfiction title that manages to sell probably does so by trafficking in broad questions and big ideas, often explored through pop science or panacea: From William Carlos Williams’ notion of “no ideas but in things”, we’re…
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Back to the Source
The percentage of literature in translation put out by British and American publishing houses is pretty dismal. Hispabooks, a new publishing company in Madrid, wants to bring the richness of Spanish literature to a wider audience through English translations.
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Do Governments Make Bad Editors?
When the Chinese government created a China-themed pavilion at this year’s BookExpo America, several writers protested the event. Writer Andrew Solomon argued that the Chinese government used that expo as a platform to present their “approved literature to the world.”…
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Otherwise Known as Judy the Great
Jami Attenberg: I feel like I could talk to you about vaginas all day, Judy. Is there anything you wish you could change about publishing? Is there anything where you think, god they’ve been doing this forever, why can’t they…
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Ursula Le Guin Eschews Amazon in Favor of Healthy Diet
Amazon uses the BS Machine to sell us sweetened fat to live on, so we begin to think that’s what literature is. I believe that reading only packaged microwavable fiction ruins the taste, destabilizes the moral blood pressure, and makes…
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The Rumpus Interview with Daniel José Older
Author Daniel José Older talks about his new novel, Shadowshaper, noir influence in urban fantasy, gentrification, white privilege and the publishing industry, and why we need diverse books, now more than ever.