Publishing
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The Era of Celebrity Bookselling
The Colbert Bump helped propel Edan Lepucki‘s California to the third spot on the New York Times bestseller list. Lena Dunham’s endorsement helped sell Adelle Waldman‘s The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P. Celebrity and celebrity endorsements have long played a role…
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Keep Failing
Don’t let that stack of rejection letters get you down. For writers of all kinds—would-be, struggling, under-appreciated, even critically acclaimed—failure is part of the job description. At the New York Times, Stephen Marche describes a writing profession riddled with disappointment and…
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Critics vs. Copies
Have you actually read Knausgaard or have you only read about Knausgaard? The sales numbers don’t seem to support the phenomenon that this Norwegian writer has become. For the New York Review of Books, Tim Parks tries to understand the correlation…
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Amazon Conflict Decreasing Sales
A new survey of book buyers shows that some customers are buying fewer books from Amazon as a result with the ongoing conflict with Hachette. The Bookseller reports that though only 61% of respondents knew of the dispute, 19% of…
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Why We All Can’t Be J.K. Rowling
After a panel at the House of Commons about copyright issues, author Joanne Harris writes in the Telegraph about the difficulty of being successful within the publishing industry. Among other factors, she attributes some of the failure to readers’ misconceptions…
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Amazon Attempts to Drive Wedge Between Authors and Hachette
The standoff between Amazon and Hachette has harmed authors more than either corporation. The corporations are surviving on massive war chests and alternate revenue streams. Authors, however, are far more adversely affected by reduced book pre-sales and the sale of…
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The Rumpus Interview with Françoise Mouly
Comic publishing pioneer Françoise Mouly discusses bringing comics to the mainstream, life at The New Yorker, and the burdens of being legendary.
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A Look Inside the Kenyon Review
If you’re wondering just how exactly the Kenyon Review chooses what it’s going to publish, Managing Editor Abigail Wadsworth Serfass writes on the journal’s blog about one story’s journey from the slush pile to the Summer 2014 issue.
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NYPL Hosts Panel on Amazon
The continuing battle between Amazon and Hachette was the focus of a panel discussion hosted by the New York Public Library last week featuring novelist James Patterson, publisher Morgan Entrekin, literary agent Tina Bennett, and several political theorists. Jason Diamond has…
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J.K. Rowling’s Literary World
A boozy editor; a powerful though closeted publisher who retreats to the countryside to paint naked youths; a jealous literary agent whose own writing is “deplorably derivative”; a much-revered but pompous and sexist novelist; a writer of “bloody awful erotic…
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We Respectfully Decline
At Guernica, Alexandria Peary observes a fine but lethal distinction between being declined and being rejected, a difference that had very real effects on the literary ambitions of nineteenth-century female writers. While to decline a submission implies thoughtful deliberation over that…
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Back to the Beginning: Why I Write
In the beginning the words flowed like honey, like maple syrup, like corn syrup; yes, the metaphors flowed just like that.