This week! Books! The Great Resignation. Publishing style. Editors are creaking under chronically low pay, ever-expanding publisher expectations, publisher under-investment in support infrastructure like contracts departments… and oh yes, all of this is happening amid bonanza years for publishers’ bottom lines. This makes it accordingly more difficult for young agents to get their books read […]
coronavirus
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 […]
A year of COVID
Yesterday marked my one year COVID anniversary. A year ago yesterday afternoon I started coughing a bit, checked my temperature, and went….. “Uh oh.” What a year it’s been. It feels a bit strange to write about it, but I’ve found it oddly comforting lately to read other accounts of how people have experienced this […]
How to write for a changing world (This week in books)
This week! Books! As you may have noticed there’s a pandemic going on, and it’s upended many of our notions of “real life.” So… what do you do with that as a writer? Writer David James Poissant talked about the struggle (“delusion” in his words) of writing a timely novel in a constantly changing world. […]
Time to make fresh tracks
In these unprecedented, largely awful times, it’s tempting to look toward the distant future as a time when things will return to normal. When there’s a vaccine or the virus mutates into something less deadly or there’s a miracle cure. It’s hard to avoid looking at this time we’re in as a nightmare that will […]
Glimmers of hope for the publishing industry (This week in books)
This week! Books! So… I found out last week that I tested positive for COVID antibodies. I didn’t really talk much about how sick I was back in March, but I decided to tell my COVID story in the hopes that it might inspire some people to continue to stay vigilant. Really upsetting news this […]
