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 For years, someone has been tricking publishing employees into sending them unpublished manuscripts, from famous authors to the relatively obscure.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 […]
Politics
Audible adds a controversial new feature (This week in books)
This week! Books! There was some news that roiled the publishing world this week, as Audible announced a feature called Audible Captions, which would display text while an audiobook is playing. Ya know. Kinda like an e-book. Publishers and literary agents responded with alarm, noting that Audible had not come to them for permission for […]
Does speaking up online accomplish anything?
One of the things that has fascinated me most in these polarizing times is the extent to which people (including myself) spend so much of their time and energy trying to persuade others of their viewpoints. Nowhere is this more apparent than social media, a cacophony of people shouting into the void. As Mike Drucker […]
How are you feeling about Trump?
Around time of the election, I had some very interesting political conversations in the comments section of these posts: Trump supporters, can we make a deal? The end of truth How should authors navigate politics on social media? Has the writing community become close-minded to alternate viewpoints? Looking back at the conversations, Trump opponents were […]
Are people persuadable?
One of the things I’ve found fascinating throughout the election and beyond, is the extent to which people are, or aren’t persuadable. Is there really such a thing as a swing voter? What makes people change their minds? What are the lines in the sand that trigger reversals of opinion? When we sit around talking […]
The Mother of Exiles
Unless you are Native American, if you live in the United States you are either descended from immigrants or are an immigrant yourself. And unless you are, say, purely descended from the inhabitants of the Mayflower, at one time or another you or your ancestors were probably unfairly maligned, feared, discriminated against, or even openly […]
