On Diversity and ‘Those in Whiteness’ Thrall’ Whiteness is…more of a genre than anything else. This is the Erik Anderson, author of The Poetics of Tresspass. He’s writer in residence and director of the Emerging Writers Festival at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. In an essay at Salon, White bro reading: Yes, I’m reading men… Read More
Reaching for accord: Authors' Contracts and Controversies
Authors approaching accord Two venerable author advocate groups, the UK’s Society of Authors and the Authors Guild in the USA, have recently stepped into the limelight to announce that they are fighting for fairer contracts between publishers and authors. The impetus for these actions seems to come from reports that authors’ median incomes have dropped precipitously since 2009, while publishers have fared… Read More
Is Online Life Real Life? #AskELJames – No, Ask Chuck Wendig
One Big Gray (Not Grey) Area Of Rage Online is IRL. It’s all real. This is all really happening… It’s not a show, no matter how much we want it to be. That’s the author Chuck Wendig, wrapping up what he seems to have thought would be his one post on the PR hair-tearer #AskELJames. But a funny… Read More
Authors making $8,000 per year? Why write free? A #FutureChat recap
‘Question is, are you making money for someone else?’ That’s the historical fiction author Jane Steen, English, based in Chicago, during our live Twitter conversation at the end of last week. But not for nothing do independent writers like to “celebrate their diversity,” as they tend to put it on a good day. Views of… Read More
Should Authors Write Without Pay?
From anyone else, the advice might sound like right-headed rationality, itself. But as the author Roxana Robinson (pictured) can tell you, when you’re the president of the Authors Guild, nothing you say seems to fall on unbiased ears. This time, Robinson is talking about what authors may be doing to inadvertently diminish their own perceived… Read More
'It's discovery that's lagging'
“A difficulty in marketing something that has no physical presence.” That’s the author Stark Holborn talking with my Bookseller associate Sarah Shaffi (pictured) about the question of digital-first publishing and its potential for writers, in Authors debate digital-first publication. And that line, appearing among many enthusiastic comments from writers about digital-first in Shaffi’s story, echoes the strongest qualm… Read More
Is digital-first best for authors?
As our understanding of digital publishing evolves, how much holds true for authors? Publishing digitally first can help authors to learn about the publishing process, make writers more critical of their own work and help reinvent an author, but the format should only be used in the right context as there is “a difficulty in… Read More
In And Around London Book Fair: Authors, IndieReCon And ALLi’s Third Anniversary
And Spectacular Weather As if heeding a request from London Book Fair (LBF) director Jacks Thomas, the sun flooded Olympia London with bright springtime light all week. We weary stand-and-stairs brats now head back to planes, trains, and waiting families. Smaller by design — Olympia is a markedly more compressed space than Earls Court — the transfer went remarkably… Read More
From London Book Fair to an IndieReckoning
Where do we find authors this year, as London Book Fair closes? (This story was written originally as a walkup to the #FutureChat of Friday 17th April.) Authors have long attended book fairs, of course, primarily for reasons of publicity or to meet their international publishers—but now they come to do business and to be… Read More
Women in publishing — achievements and challenges
Here is an important and sensitive subject, one that can become emotionalised — for perfectly understandable reasons. As is made clear in The Bookseller’s 13th February edition, the UK publishing industry can be proud of a distinction many other businesses can’t claim: its women are in the forefront. In their lead story, Felicity Wood (pictured right) and Sarah… Read More