Elias Canetti’s Crowds and Power (Penguin Books in the UK, FSG in the US) has been with us for decades, but arrived too early to look at questions of what crowds can mean in publishing. And with the advent of the digital dynamic comes the idea — the ideal — of crowd wisdom, of crowd leverage, of crowd… Read More
Paywall Parkour: How to Rip Off Your Friends
Very pleased to have this essay made the first in a new “Dealbreaker” series at Jane Friedman and Manjula Martin’s terrific new quarterly Scratch — to which I hope you’ll subscribe. This piece is in the “Community” section, not behind the paywall, and you can read it free along with other sample posts at the site.… Read More
A Chuffed Market's Children's Conference: #PorterMeets Charlotte Eyre
If you walked into publishing right now and stopped one of us to ask, “What’s the healthiest, happiest part of the business to get into?” — the answer you well might get is “children’s books!” The exclamation point would be there, yes. They’re a generally exuberant lot these days, the children’s books folks. And why not? Thanks to Charlotte Eyre’s… Read More
Music For Writers: Caleb Burhans’ Leap Of Faith
Thinner Air “Between 1959 and 1960, Joe Kittinger went to the top of the atmosphere in a helium balloon three times and performed record-breaking sky dives.” So what were you expecting composer Caleb Burhans to talk about? Music? Actually, he is talking about music. His newly released Excelsior is named for Kittinger’s 1960 Project Excelsior. What Burhans has done… Read More
A Dim View Of Missing Books Data
Got a light?… Just as The Bookseller’s Philip Jones was aptly saying that the publishing industry is “looking at its market by candlelight,” I was reminded that, in fact, book publishing isn’t the only industry suffering this problem: Amazon never releases sales figures for any of the hardware it builds, but that isn’t stopping others from making their best guesses… Read More
Writer's Digest's Conference in LA: You Are So On
My address is 2025 Avenue of the Stars. This is as it should be, of course. 90067. With my sunglasses so firmly in place that I can barely read anything on the screen, I’m writing to you on the eve of Phil Sexton’s Writer’s Digest Novel Writing Conference in Los Angeles. It’s at the Hyatt Regency Century Plaza… 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
Running From Talent: And Your Next Chapter
Last month as BookExpo America and its Author Hub were about to convene in New York, I had the good fortune to be in Stockholm to speak at a conference called The Next Chapter. It’s produced by the very able Jonas Lennermo and his team at Publit, a publishing firm at the heart of Sweden’s highly literate, gracious culture. I say… Read More
Is Publishing a Class System?
What if we’re moving from what one revered observer calls an effort to transcend the idea of two classes of authors — to what another highly respected commentator says is a three–class system? Read More
What's Important in the Man Booker Prize Debate?
In a news conference today in London, officials of the esteemed Man Booker Prize have announced that the program, as rumored, will begin accepting entries from beyond its traditional range of the UK, the Republic of Ireland, and the Commonwealth. American authors and others working in English will be eligible for entry by their publishers. Read More