Here comes “hot books fall?” (This week in books)

This week! Books!

We’re coming to the end of publishing summer, when those lazy summer Fridays give way to exciting fall submissions. Here are some of the best articles I saw from the past week.

Our hopes for a hot vaxxed summer may have been dashed by Delta, but in the book world, sales are up and lots of hot books are coming out in the fall (as long as pandemic-related supply chain issues don’t spoil that too).

We’ve had a rough couple of years that have exposed many divisions in our country, but PBS has a report on a group of writers who are coming together to try to bridge divides and find commonalities.

While the publishing industry is notorious for changing very little from year to year and sticking to outdated practices long past their shelf life, some things indeed have changed in the last twenty years. Agent Kristin Nelson sums up why agenting is harder than it used to be.

Novelist James Lee Burke had a fascinating interview with David Masciotra about the effect of capitalism on America and the balance involved in storytelling without proselytizing.

How do you send out new queries if you’ve previously had an agent? Jessica Faust at BookEnds has some tips.

And if you are, let’s say, someone who cut their teeth in publishing in the 2000s, you experienced the ubiquity of the literary Jonathans, who were in many ways throwbacks (intentional or otherwise) to an earlier publishing age. Emily Gould looks back on the era of Jonathans and how the literary fiction publishing landscape has and hasn’t changed.

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:

1. Bloodless by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child
2. Billy Summers by Stephen King
3. Complications by Danielle Steel
4. The Noise by James Patterson and J.D. Barker
5. It Ends With Us by Colleen Hoover

Adult print and e-book nonfiction:

1. American Marxism by Mark R. Levin
2. Woke, Inc. by Vivek Ramaswamy
3. The Reckoning by Mary L. Trump
4. The Long Slide by Tucker Carlson
5. The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk

Young adult hardcover:

1. One of Us is Lying by Karen M. McManus
2. Stamped by Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi
3. The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas
4. Realm Breaker by Victoria Aveyard
5. Lore by Alexandra Bracken

Middle grade hardcover:

1. Wonder by R.J. Palacio
2. Refugee by Alan Gratz
3. Ground Zero by Alan Gratz
4. Black Boy Joy edited by Kwame Mbalia
5. Ali Cross: Like Father, Like Son by James Patterson

This week on the blog

In case you missed them, here are this week’s posts:

• The “voice of god” from movie trailers is killing your query letter
• How interviews can help a book project
• Don’t give your plot description short shrift (query critique)

Don’t forget that you can nominate your first page and query for a free critique on the blog:

• Nominate Your First Page for a Critique on the Blog
• Nominate Your Query for a Critique on the Blog

And keep up with the discussion in all the places!

• Follow me on Twitter
• Follow my page on Facebook
• Join the Facebook Group
• Check out the Bransforums

And finally, The Body Keeps the Score has been an unlikely mega-bestseller, and I really enjoyed this fantastic interview with Ezra Klein and Bessel van der Kolk on the lasting impact of trauma.

Have a great weekend!

Need help with your book? I’m available for manuscript edits, query critiques, and coaching!

For my best advice, check out my online classes (NEW!), my guide to writing a novel and my guide to publishing a book.

And if you like this post: subscribe to my newsletter!

Photo: The Empire State Building. Follow me on Instagram!