Your hot seat awaits at the Writer’s Digest Conference and Digital Book World Conference in New York. Not since Margaret Mitchell fanned those other flames has the industry gathered in so superheated a salon of controversies for the kickoff of its annual ConfabWorld season. Can’t be there? No problem. Keep these hashtags handy: #wdc12 and #dbw12. We’ll be sure some smoke gets in your eyes. Read More

Today, it wouldn’t hurt our con­gre­ga­tion of pub­lish­ing to catch a church-window reflec­tion of how we look engag­ing in one industry-wide panic after the next. Our ener­getic knees-up exer­cises of fever­ish fel­low­ship seem so fre­quent nowa­days that we might as well sched­ule them. Plus: Why “The Joy of Books” is joyless cuteness. Read More

In chatting with some year-enders as we watched that ball ex machina descend in Times Square to haul us all out of the mess that was 2011, it became clear that many authors today see the digitization of things as just such a handy lift, a chariot swinging low to carry us home (where the readers are) — to deliver everyone from the gatekeeping Eumenides of old publishing and into the stage-center jig-fest of DIY abandon. Mickey Rooney, that ancient thespian, called this “let’s put on a show!” Read More