Publishing
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Don’t Worry Too Much About Goodreads, Says Steve Almond
Amazon’s buyout of Goodreads has a lot of people curling their lips in disgust, and Rumpus columnist Steve Almond is among them: “As a reader and writer I find all this pretty despicable.” But it’s worth zooming out and looking at…
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On Being Part of the Problem: A Personal Response to the VIDA Report
I’ve done the math and it turns out that I’m part of the problem.
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Tell Stories Better with Technology
Speaking of publishing innovations, SF Weekly‘s current cover story, “Storytelling 10110001101,” by Alee Karim, chronicles some recent forays into spinning narratives in the electronic age. Karim focuses on two enterprises. The first is Madefire, a company creating interactive comics for the…
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Writers from Vermont to Oregon and Everywhere In Between
“There is a tendency to place the center of the writing universe in New York City. This is understandable—countless writers live there. Have you heard about this magical place called Brooklyn? The media certainly has.” If you needed another reminder…
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“This Is Not About Quality Control”
The publishing industry is battling the Internet again. Or publishing stepped on the Internet’s foot and refuses to apologize. Or Maria Popova wanted to use more than three pictures in a post about My Ideal Bookshelf and Little, Brown said…
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A Postcard from David Foster Wallace
In the current age of Twitter and Facebook, some authors seem just one click away–a kind of celebrity that is still accessible to the common fan. Frank Cassese tells a story in Guernica about when he received a postcard from David…
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The Care and Feeding of Exotic Pets by Diana Wagman
The recent glut of apocalyptic novels has encouraged readers’ desires to become armchair spectators to doom. Our front-row seats at the end-of-days enable us to cheer for the scrappy protagonist survivors as we nurture fantasies of being singled out for…
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The Rumpus Interview with Michelle Tea
Michelle Tea is an author, performer, public speaker, event producer, educator, activist, and now, with her new Sister Spit imprint at City Lights Publishers, the editor of her own press.
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Where Things Stand
After the VIDA counts in 2010 and 2011, as well as Jennifer Weiner’s count she released on her blog in January 2012, I wanted to see where things stood for writers of color. Race often gets lost in the gender…
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Is Optimism About the Future of “Serious” Publishing Possible?
In the kind of defeated sigh about the future of books that is increasingly commonplace, Sarah Weinman, the news editor at Publisher’s Marketplace, argues that in the digital age there’s no room for “serious nonfiction.” The gist of her argument…
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First Agent
At The Quivering Pen, Emily St. John Mandel remembers her first agent who, even in death, remains part of Mandel’s audience. “She comes back to me at odd moments. When there are small triumphs, I sometimes find myself thinking that…
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“Publishing: Adapt or Die”
On the Media’s annual publishing industry episode covers a lot of ground with segments on this year’s Pulitzer fiction snub, e-books and changing reader behavior, fears of an Amazonian monopoly, copyright concerns, and more.