This week! Books! One of the great running mysteries in the publishing world appears to have at last been solved. For years, someone has been tricking publishing employees into sending them unpublished manuscripts, from famous authors to the relatively obscure. Why? No one quite knew. But this week, the F.B.I. arrested Filippo Bernardini, a Simon […]
Jane Friedman
The art of revision (This week in books)
This week! Books! First up, there are two great ways you can contribute to some worthy causes this week. I’m donating a query critique that you can bid on to support We Need Diverse Books! And please consider donating to my 13th annual Heifer International fundraiser! Now then, I have lots and lots and lots […]
The curious case of the midsized publishers (This week in books)
This week! Books! Now that Workman has been acquired by Hachette and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt has been acquired by HarperCollins, where have all the midsized book publishers gone? Jim Milliot at Publishers Weekly surveys this dying breed and cites the difficulty of building a backlist, the capital needed to grow into midsized publisher, and ongoing […]
Amazon to launch…department stores (This week in books)
This week! Books! In a bid to prove that time is a flat circle, Amazon is developing plans to launch…department stores. Yes, really. The first stores will reportedly be in Ohio and California and will sell all sorts of things and facilitate returns. In yet another step in the publishing industry’s long, long history of […]
RIP Eric Carle, creator of “The Very Hungry Caterpillar” (This week in books)
This week! Books! Lots and lots of links from the past few weeks, but first, in case you’re not a newsletter subscriber, a quick heads-up that I’m offering special “Get your writing back on track” discounts, including 25-35% off coaching sessions and a special editing package to get you unstuck. So if you’re not yet […]
Legislation introduced for a new Federal Writers’ Project (This week in books)
This week! Books! A brief scheduling note that I am going on a post-vaccination blog holiday for a couple of weeks, and I’ll be back with fresh content on May 24. Hope everyone who has access to a vaccine gets one and please consider donating to countries in need if you have the means. I’ll […]
