Throughout this past year there’s been a persistent idea percolating around the literati: could literary fiction really be dead? No for real this time? No less an authority than Philip Roth wondered last year whether people still had the patience to read novels. Last month Lee Siegel wrote an article wondering “Where Have All the […]
Bestsellers
Writing vs. Storytelling
In the comments section of last week’s post about the one question writers should never ask themselves when reading (retroactive spoiler: the question is “do I like this?”), some people took the post to mean that I was essentially saying that if a book is popular it must be well-written, ergo the most popular books […]
This Week in Publishing 11/20/09
Lots of links this week, so let’s get to it. First up, there has been a huge controversy sparked by Harlquin’s announcement that they would be forming a self-publishing arm called Harlequin Horizons. Victoria Strauss at Writer Beware wrote a very helpful initial roundup of the plan and controversy, Kristin Nelson wondered if it was […]
Moving the Needle
Hi everyone, this was originally posted yesterday in the Huffington Post, where I will be blogging from time to time. I thought I’d re-post it here. During my meetings with editors, agents, sales assistants, marketers, and other assorted publishing types in New York this past week, there was a common theme that kept cropping up […]
Making Taste Overly Personal
In the annals of Great Ways to Annoy Literary Agents (TM), saying you wrote your book because you couldn’t find any good books to read (or, its crass corollary: because so many books are “trash”) may not be in the top 10, but it is at least in the top 5,000. (The list is infinite, […]
Interview With S.E. Hinton
I had the immense pleasure of meeting S.E. Hinton in Tulsa last month, and not only did I discover that she is a faithful lurker around these parts, she very graciously agreed to an interview. Her debut novel, THE OUTSIDERS, which she wrote when she was sixteen, revolutionized the children’s book world upon its publication […]
