This week! Books! We had a peaceful and inspiring inauguration day, and 22-year-old Youth Poet Laurette Amanda Gorman was a breakout star with her incredible poem “The Hill We Climb.” Penguin Random House is rushing to publish a hardcover edition the poem, which is already available for pre-sale. Speaking of politics, Ibram X. Kendi published […]
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The Mega 1 + Big 3 era arrives (This week in books)
This week! Books! Huge news dropped before Thanksgiving that ViacomCBS has agreed to sell Simon & Schuster to Penguin Random House’s Berteslmann. Assuming the deal survives antitrust scrutiny, it would essentially turn the Big 5 into one mega-publisher (whatever Penguin Random House + S&S ends up being called) and three major publishers (HarperCollins, Macmillan, and […]
Supply issues will disrupt the fall season (This week in books)
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 […]
Marketing tips for reaching your first readers from David Gaughran
It’s very daunting to launch a book in the current climate, but there are opportunities as well. I reached out to one of my favorite book marketing experts, David Gaughran, to talk about how authors can utilize digital ads to reach their first readers, the importance of Amazon metadata, the importance of your newsletter, and […]
The greatness of characters with bad ideas (This week in books)
This week! Books! It’s been a week of very bad ideas, but Gizmodo has a great post on how bad character choices in fiction can lead to some great work. To wit: Jurassic Park! In Amazon news, in the UK supply shortages resulted in book buy buttons being removed. And the New York Times profiled […]
Tips if you’re struggling to write right now (This week in books)
This week! Books! It’s really difficult to concentrate these days and few people I know are as productive as usual. Anne R. Allen has a great post on why it’s so tough to write right now as we deal with our collective grief, and she has some tips on how to keep moving forward. In […]
