Nathan Bransford | Writing, Book Editing, Publishing

Helping authors achieve their dreams

Libraries

An inside look at rampant publishing scams (This week in books)

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This week! Books! ‘Our Goal Is to Get Their Money’: Inside a Firm Charged With Scamming Writers for Millions – Brent Crane, Bloomberg (gift link) – A well-reported and wrenching look into rampant scams preying on authors. One reason so many of the scams originate in the Philippines is because some of the scammers cut […]

Copyright still requires human authorship, but read the fine print (This week in books)

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This week! Books! The Trump tariffs are tanking your 401k at the moment (if you’re lucky enough to have one), but how will they affect publishers, whose books are often printed in Asia and Europe? According to Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg at the WSJ, they don’t really know either. The U.S. Copyright Office, apparently one of […]

Librarians are struggling (This week in books)

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This week! Books! First up, please keep my favorite publishing sage Mike Shatzkin and his wife in your thoughts, as she shared news of his declining health on Facebook. Just a tremendous, extremely fun individual and font of knowledge. This morning, I loved revisiting my interview with him in the early days of the pandemic […]

The novel that predicted Putin’s war (This week in books)

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This week! Books! People have been searching for answers for Putin’s senseless war in Ukraine, and at least one intriguing piece of the puzzle comes from Mikhail Yuriev’s 2006 utopian novel The Third Empire: Russia as It Ought to Be, which starts with an unannounced war in eastern Ukraine, and culminates in the entire world […]

Jeff Bezos is now $24 billion richer (This week in books)

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This week! Books! Things might be feeling pretty apocalyptic outside but since the onset of the pandemic Jeff Bezos is $24 billion richer. So, uh, there’s that. In not-Amazon news, the co-founder of LitHub and Electric Lit is launching Bookshop, an online bookstore that supports independent bookstores and sports a rival affiliate program. You might […]

What Role Should Libraries Have in an Electronic World?

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Children’s book author Terry Deary stirred up some controversy last month when he said libraries have “had their day” but no longer make sense in today’s world. He cites the lack of compensation for authors and damage to bookstores, who have to compete with an institution giving away the book for free: “People have to […]