As Self-Publishing Matures… Well, I’ve never purchased or read a self-pubbed book and have no plans to do so, in part because they’re generally unedited and of poor quality and in part because you can’t trust the reviews. I think most of us know that if an indie book has all glowing reviews, they’re either… Read More
Picador Champions ‘Station Eleven’
“Hell Is Flutes” A writer who can pry that paraphrase from the jaws of Jean-Paul Satre’s “hell is other people” certainly has some chops. If she can then deliver it as a genuinely funny laugh line amid a global Huis Clos 20 years after the collapse of human civilization, she’s no slouch. Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven may hand her… Read More
Blog Sommelier: Pairing ‘Agent Orange’ And Howey
Orange To Writers: ‘Amazon is no big rock-candy mountain of authorial freedom’ The interests of the self-publishing cheerleaders have been well served by their subsidy from Amazon over the past few years but, from where I’m sitting, it looks to me like they are cheering the creation of a world where Amazon will turn the… Read More
Publishing's Future: When Editors Eat Robots
The Quantified Self Of Richard Nash He is a podium prowler. He moves around during a conference presentation. He sets up gazelle-graceful concepts and wounds them quickly, before you get too comfortable. Lots of articulate gestures. Give him two flashlights and he could land a Dreamliner onstage as he talked. And his talks? They tend to work like… Read More
Get Out Of My Face About Film
“Remember In That Movie When Tom Hanks…?” If you’re lucky, what follows is a well-chosen and interesting example of something the session leader wants a roomful of book writers to think about. But that session leader is missing his or her mark. If you’re going to teach novel-writing, teach novel-writing. If you’re going to teach… Read More
Corporate Blues: On Eoin Purcell’s Amazon Appointment
Bit Of A Bombshell My colleagues at The Bookseller broke the news in a report from our Benedicte Page: Eoin Purcell has been appointed head of the London division of Amazon Publishing. I’m both heartened and saddened by this news. Before the knees jerk, let me be perfectly clear: I am thrilled for Purcell: he is more than deserving… Read More
Don't Let Publishing Intimidate You
Messing With The Mystique You have the right to ask questions. You have the right to get answers. You have the right not to like the answers. To see your own publisher’s jaw drop? Phil Sexton recommends you ask him or her to let you review your book’s metadata. Then, with smelling salts ready for your… Read More
Running Smack Into The Garden Wall: That 'Perfect e-Bookstore' Project
What If The People Inside The Walled Garden Don’t Want Out? The problem with The Amazon Problem…is that to the customer, there are no problems. For once, Laura Dawson isn’t talking metadata. Bowker’s identifiers infanta is, instead, turning the precision of her observational gifts on a fundamental issue for the publishing industry in the shadow… Read More
The Authors’ Wish List Goes In: How Will The Guild Council Respond?
“Can The Authors Guild Become An Authors’ Guild?” That’s the Eislerian wit at work, sync-ing up both challenge and hope in one canny phrase, with which he kindly tweeted my recap of Friday’s #FutureChat on the issue of author advocacy. His phrasing captures the friction behind quickly but smoothly moving developments. For background, here is my piece from… Read More
Writer's Digest's Conference In New York: Sway With Me
Every Year, New Moves Staging national-class writers’ conferences has never been easy. Competing interests go with the territory. In the past, organizers could lose a lot of sleep over the question of “craft vs. career” — how many sessions did hundreds of authors need on the art and skills of writing, and how many on the… Read More