In an intriguing move, Random House is giving away free downloads of Charles Bock’s debut novel, Beautiful Children. Go to this website to download a PDF of the complete novel. The offer runs through tomorrow, Friday, February 29. So get it while you can!
It was hard to be objective with this one. I first learned about Joe McGinniss Jr. through the much discussed news item on Publishers Marketplace announcing the sale of his novel to Grove/Atlantic. Then a personal and obviously time-consuming email appeared in my inbox from McGinniss. As opposed to most of the pitches I get that are […]
The Arizona Republic reprinted an interesting article about Steve Ettlinger’s Twinkie, Deconstructed: My Journey to Discover How the Ingredients Found in Processed Foods Are Grown, Mined (Yes, Mined), and Manipulated Into What America Eats.
“When Steve Ettlinger donned a hard hat, a head lamp and emergency breathing equipment before his alarming descent 1,600 feet into a […]
Mark Sarvas at The Elegant Variation provides a great look into all the things that are on a writer’s plate when it’s about two months away from the book launch.
In LA Weekly’s lengthy and detailed article about Laura Albert and the J.T. Leroy hoax, Nancy Rommelmann reveals that Albert was making up cover stories and personas decades ago. And she also explains how the Leroy persona was the perfect creation for the times.
“During the cultural relativism of the ’90s, if you wanted to sell your […]
Wow. Richard Ford is ending his seventeen-year relationship with Alfred A. Knopf and moving to Ecco. Big, big news.
This article is also useful because, as you know, I’m a bit obsessed by the mystery of sales figures. According to this article, Ford’s last novel, Lay of the Land sold “51,000 copies in hardcover, according to […]
Sell yourself.
Tell the truth.
Both very good advice. Both very necessary if you’re trying to get an agent or editor. The difficulty comes in balancing the two objectives.
Seth Godin writes about how marketing creates placebos in order to influence your opinions of a product. “The design of your blog or your package or your outfit is nothing […]
Zadie Smith “launched a blistering attack on literary prizes,” according to The Telegraph. This article quotes the author as saying literary awards are “only nominally” about the literature and instead are “really about brand consolidation for beer companies, phone companies, coffee companies and even frozen food companies.”
Smith is the recipient of several major literary awards so […]
Galleycat points to an intriguing articleabout author Robert Fisk learning of a Saddam Hussein biography that was published under his name. But he didn’t write it.
“No, this wasn’t plagiarism,” Fisk writes. “This was forgery. And it was clearly the moment for Detective Inspector Fisk to hunt down ‘The Mystery of the Cairo Forger’.”
So, with the New York Giants’s Super Bowl victory over the New England Patriots, how long before the football books start trickling out? Eli Manning is probably a shoe-in for an “as told to” book. Winning coach Tom Coughlin who was almost fired last season will probably get one of those coach-as-business-mentor books. And I’m […]