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During my time in graduate school at the University of Mississippi, I was lucky enough to work at Square Books in Oxford. So I was particularly pleased to see the news today that Publishers Weekly named the store as Bookseller of the Year. Check out the full article here. Congratulations to all the gang down [...]

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When I was in graduate school at the University of Mississippi, noted William Faulkner biographer Joseph Blotner visited campus. I met him in Square Books, the well-known independent bookstore where I worked at the time. I was heavily into Faulkner, stacking up class upon class, filling my transcript with as many Faulkner courses as possible. [...]

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Longtime entertainment and sports industry veteran David Fishof is appearing at Book Soup in Los Angeles today at 7:00pm. Once a sports agent to athletes like baseball slugger Lou Pinella and quarterbacks Vince Ferragamo and Phil Simms, Fishof switched his focus to the entertainment world in the eighties. He reunited the Monkees and started the [...]

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Add guitarist and singer Lita Ford to the burgeoning list of rockers with book deals. [Here's a round up of hard rock books.] Reports are that the former Runaways member and longtime solo artist has signed a publishing deal with William Morrow for a memoir called Living Like a Runaway. Joel Selvin is flying co-pilot [...]

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On Facebook today, the great Chris Offutt referenced a Forbes blog post today. His joking comment was, along the lines of, “But how will we get signed books?” The blog post itself brashly proclaims “How Algorithmically Created Content will Transform Publishing.” It’s an interesting look at the way that free, public source materials can be [...]

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Late this afternoon, Forbes writer Luisa Kroll estimated that Fifty Shades of Grey author E.L. James is on pace to secure a spot on next year’s top earning writers list. The article points out other estimates that claim James is raking in as much as $1.3 million a week. While the layperson reader sees these [...]

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My guitar hero book, Power Chord is being published on July 31. Be sure to follow along with all the high volume fun by ‘liking’ the official Power Chord page on Facebook or checking out the book’s website. More information is being added all the time and it’s going to get hectic in the next [...]

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Late yesterday, numerous sources reported that Dennis Lehane will lead a new imprint at HarperCollins. The bestselling mystery writer said that he hoped to help “worthy writers” get more attention to their work. Very few other details (such as the first book’s release date, the number of books published each year) have been released at [...]

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Recently, we noted the news that Anonymous was shopping a book. The loop on that particular thread has now been closed with a completed sale. According to Publishers Marketplace, the book was sold to Julia Cheiffetz at Amazon Publishing. The deal entry explains that the book is “the story of the ordinary people who became [...]

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Nick Davies, the publishing director for interesting article issued an interesting explanation of why the house is publishing WikiLeaks’ chief Julian Assange’s book against his will. Davies’s account is an intriguing look at what goes on behind the scenes with some of these celebrity books. The subject isn’t happy, can’t be made happy, the publishing [...]

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According to The New York Observer, a controversial and secretive group known for attacks on credit card servers, Wall Street protests, and other forays into civil disobedience is shopping a book. The group in question is Anonymous which reportedly (according to Wikipedia, and we know everything there is fact) originated in 2003. More recent targets [...]

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Please pardon our dust as we undergo some construction here at Slushpile.net. As you’ve undoubtedly noticed, we’ve installed a new theme and will be working out the kinks in the coming days. But we have some cool interviews coming up so be sure to check back regularly. Thanks for reading!

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Here’s an interesting article that says Stanford researchers believe bad book reviews may help lesser known authors. The key point here is that researchers “looked at the effects bad publicity had in well-known and obscure books over time. Some subjects looked at glowing and negative reviews for a well-known book by John Grisham and reviews [...]

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Some writers have fan forums dedicated to discussing their work. And some groups of aspiring authors have forums to chat about their emerging careers. But there aren’t many examples of forums that combine these two topics. Which is why I’m such a fan of The Velvet, a community that grew up because of a shared [...]

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