Chelsea Green sues Elizabeth Warren (This week in books)

This week! Books!

Publisher Chelsea Green sued Senator Elizabeth Warren on First Amendment grounds for writing a letter to Amazon warning them about the role their search algorithm was playing in promoting books that spread COVID misinformation ($ link). Chelsea Green says they don’t have proof that Amazon demoted them, but they believe they did. The book in question is still a top seller on Amazon. Fun times.

Do your own research, as in see for yourself how easy it is when they inject the lifesaving vaccine into your arm.

I often hear from middle age and up authors who are worried no publisher is going to take them because they’re not a hot young thing. First of all, don’t sell yourself short, but secondly, there are definitely debuts by older authors. One such author Liz Alexander, talks about being a debut author at age 66.

The world lost a fascinating thinker last year when David Graeber unexpectedly passed away. Molly Fischer wrote a fascinating profile of the author of Debt: The First 5,000 Years and The Dawn of Everything.

In writing advice news, Disha Walia has excellent advice on how to manage a skip forward in time, and Kristen Lamb has a fantastic post on how wounds are an important tool for making your characters more complex and realistic.

And author and agent Kate McKean talks about how to actually finally like what you write.

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. Game On by Janet Evanovich
2. The Judge’s List by John Grisham
3. The Stranger on the Lifeboat by Mitch Albom
4. Better Off Dead by Lee Child and Andrew Child
5. The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles

Adult print and e-book nonfiction:

1. The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present by Paul McCartney
2. Immune by Philipp Dettmer
3. The President and the Freedom Fighter by Brian Kilmeade
4. The Storyteller by Dave Grohl
5. Going There by Katie Couric

Young adult hardcover:

1. Gilded by Marissa Meyer
2. One of Us is Lying by Karen M. McManus
3. The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas
4. The Hawthorne Legacy by Jennifer Lynn Barnes
5. Iron Widow by Xiran Jay Zhao

Middle grade hardcover:

1. The Christmas Pig by J.K. Rowling. Illustrated by Jim Field
2. Daughter of the Deep by Rick Riordan
3. The Official Harry Potter Baking Book by Joanna Farrow
4. Wonder by R.J. Palacio
5. Black Ballerinas by Misty Copeland

This week on the blog

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

• When describing characters, think more about capturing presence than details
• Don’t overstuff your sentences (page 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, we’ve all had a very unpleasant year and a half. Is there something to be derived from the pain? As always, it’s complicated.

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 guide to writing a novel and my guide to publishing a book.

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