This week! Books!
First up, I don’t usually do this but I really want to make sure you saw my post on head jumping from Monday, which is one of the most important posts I’ve written in a long, long time. Please please read it, take it to heart, and stamp out head jumping wherever you find it!
Pandemic-related capacity issues at printing companies are wreaking havoc on publishers’ fall schedules. The crunch has, ironically enough, been exacerbated by a surge in print sales and underinvestment in printing infrastructure in anticipation of increasing adoption of e-books. Reprints for hot-selling books now take a month or more and publishers are pushing back publication dates.
The New Yorker profiled Onikah Asamoa-Caesar, the owner of Fulton Street Books & Coffee, in Tulsa, Oklahoma, who has experienced an explosion of interest in anti-racist books and is envisioning establishing her bookstore as a community space. Oprah Magazine also released a list of 199 Black-owned bookstores.
My worst nightmare come to life: There’s an anonymous lawyer who lives for spotting typos in the NY Times.
Two shots across Amazon’s bow this week. First, the Authors Guild, AAP, and ABA wrote a letter to the House of Representatives Antitrust Subcommittee accusing Amazon of engaging in anti-competitive market behavior (PDF). And Powell’s bookstore announced that it will no longer sell books on Amazon.
Malcolm Gladwell wrote a brief post for Crimereads where he divided thrillers into four distinct categories as a unified theory. Do you agree with his breakdown?
Ocean Vuong, AKA one of the authors allowed to write in second person, has been selected as the seventh author in the Future Library, a curious art project where authors agree to write manuscripts that will only be printed and read in the year 2114. Hope you plan to live a while.
Ready to hop on Zoom to do a promo? Here are some tips.
This week in bestsellers
Here are the top five NY Times bestsellers in a few key categories. (All links are affiliate links):
Adult print and e-book fiction:
- Royal by Danielle Steel
- Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens
- The Jackal by J.R. Ward
- The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett
- The Guest List by Lucy Foley
Adult print and e-book nonfiction:
- Untamed by Glennon Doyle
- Live Free or Die by Sean Hannity
- Caste by Isabel Wilkerson
- Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson
- Too Much and Never Enough by Mary L. Trump
Young adult hardcover:
- Stamped by Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi
- The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas
- Avatar, the Last Airbender: The Rise of Kyoshi by F.C. Yee with Michael Dante DiMartino
- One of Us is Lying by Karen M. McManus
- Hawk by James Patterson
Middle grade hardcover:
- Rowley Jefferson’s Awesome Friendly Adventure by Jeff Kinney
- The One and Only Bob by Katherine Applegate
- Wonder by R.J Palacio
- Refugee by Alan Gratz
- Diary of an Awesome Friendly Kid by Jeff Kinney
This week on the blog
Don’t forget that you can nominate your first page and query for a free critique on the blog:
In case you missed them, here are this week’s posts:
- Third person omniscient vs. limited vs. head jumping
- Don’t start a novel with a generic gesture (page critique)
And keep up with the discussion in all the places!
Comment! of! the! week! goes to Cindy, who has a strategy for avoiding head jumping:
I’m also relatively untrained in creative writing, and I was amazed when a reviewer pointed out to me how often I do the head-jumping thing. I think we do this (or at least my tapeworm and I do this) because we are so ‘into’ our scenes and playing that God-role, and sometimes we just want to share all the interesting stuff we know is going on. But you’re absolutely correct – this is very disorienting to anyone less in the know. What I do now is just write the scene however I see it, then go back and note all the head-jumps. From there, I decide which perspective is most useful and rework it from that view. Sometimes, I really want the reader to see two sides, and in that case, I split the scene with each half from one perspective. I think this is working for me, and as I’ve become more keyed into this, I’m getting better at limiting the head-jumps in the first attempt.
And finally, I too thought I would have accomplished more today. And, uh, in other news does anyone have any cherries, pears, or oranges on Animal Crossing?
Have a great weekend!
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With the caveat that I haven’t gotten to read “On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous” yet, I do want to throw in that NK Jemesin and Tamsyn Muir have both done very cool things with second person narration. I’m still basking in my post-read glow from “Harrow the Ninth,” But that does not mean just anyone can get away with it.
My daughter is a “financial proofreader” for a large legal firm in Charlotte, NC. When I saw the article about the New York Times typo catcher, I sent it to her. Don’t know if she’ll have time to read it (it’s quite long and she’s usually overwhelmed with work) but I’m sure if she does, she’ll enjoy it. Thanks.
Ah I haven’t read those yet! Yeah there are very good counterexamples, and I think my hyperbole may come across the wrong way. I’m going to adjust the post. Thanks for pointing out the others.
So, we’ve reached Peak Paper! Yikes! Soon to be followed by the Great Electron Shortage and the resulting E-Book Famine!