Nathan Bransford | Writing, Book Editing, Publishing

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Cormac McCarthy has two new novels (This week in books)

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This week! Books!

Cormac McCarthy has been quiet since The Road was published in 2006 (and no, he’s not on Twitter), but at 88 he has two new novels on the way this fall.

Retention of employees from diverse backgrounds has long been a problem in the publishing industry, and We Need Diverse Books is launching a program to support retention with a community platform and professional development seminars.

The Twitter pitch and mentorship program Pitch Wars has come to an end due to the exhaustion of the volunteer staff. Founder Brenda Drake estimates that 500 authors connected with agents as a result of the program, including Tomi Adeyemi, whose Children of Blood and Bone was one of the biggest YA debut book deals ever.

And in writing advice news, Anne R. Allen talks about working with a sensitivity reader, and David Corbett has good advice on translating backstory into current behavior.

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. Hook, Line, and Sinker by Tessa Bailey
  2. It Ends With Us by Colleen Hoover
  3. The Paris Apartment by Lucy Foley
  4. Verity by Colleen Hoover
  5. The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid

Adult print and e-book nonfiction:

  1. The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk
  2. Red-Handed by Peter Schweizer
  3. Comedy Comedy Comedy Drama by Bob Odenkirk
  4. The 1619 Project edited by Nikole Hannah-Jones, Caitlin Roper, Ilena Silverman and Jake Silverstein
  5. The Beauty of Dusk by Frank Bruni

Young adult hardcover:

  1. Gallant by V.E. Schwab
  2. One of Us is Lying by Karen M. McManus
  3. Loveless by Alice Oseman
  4. All My Rage by Sabaa Tahir
  5. The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas

Middle grade hardcover:

  1. New From Here by Kelly Yang
  2. Wonder by R.J. Palacio
  3. Refugee by Alan Gratz
  4. The Ice Cream Machine by Adam Rubin
  5. Daughter of the Deep by Rick Riordan

This week on the blog

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

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

And keep up with the discussion in all the places!

And finally, I think it’s fair to say that both experts and armchair analysts have been caught off guard by what’s happening in Ukraine, and the notion of being a “realist” is bandied about loosely. Adam Tooze recently wrote the most cogent article I’ve read on what being a realist today really means.

Have a great weekend!

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Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. abc says

    Was just reading Molly McGhee’s statement on leaving Tor. Was curious about your thoughts. You don’t have to share. I can remain curious. 🙂

    • Nathan Bransford says

      Being a young publishing employee is a difficult and archaic-feeling role, and that’s even before you account for how little people are paid, how few opportunities there are for advancement in a slow-growth industry, and how hard it is to even get in the door in the first place. I know quite a few people who rocketed to success in other fields when they left publishing. Advancement feels easier elsewhere.

      At the same time, I think publishing industry people congenitally overrate how difficult their jobs actually are.

        • Nathan Bransford says

          Stressful I think because the precariousness involved is rare for people with that degree of educational attainment and there’s a lot of industry cultural weirdness that adds to the stress, particularly for people from diverse backgrounds.

          I don’t want to minimize those stressors, but it’s also not brain surgery or minesweeping or backbreaking manual labor and people aren’t making minimum wage. The day to day work is about as low stakes of a job as you can get. There are no emergencies in book publishing.

          Everyone’s problems are their own, but I think publishing people complain about how hard their work is at a degree that feels pretty disproportionate relative to how hard it actually is.

          • abc says

            Maybe stressful wasn’t the right word. I mean stressful in feeling pressure to prove oneself and be moving up ladders. I like a non ladder kind of position. I would not want to work in a competitive world, which is how I’m reading it. But I hear you. There are seriously stressful and hard jobs out there. Exhausting and perhaps low paying and without much recognition or real support. Some even dangerous. Which is why we should all support unions!

  2. Neil Larkins says

    I’ve worked many a job in my 76 years – from janitor to farmer to bank computer operator to private investigator to truck driver (for a start) – and everyone in those fields believe they have the hardest job. And they are all right and wrong at the same time.

  3. Neil Larkins says

    Also thanks for the article “Do You Need a Sensitivity Reader For Your Book?” I really related to it and left an extensive comment. Anyone wants to read it can, but might be hard to find. There were A LOT of comments and mine is buried in there somewhere.