2012
May April March February January2011
December October September August July June MaySEE ALL ARCHIVES
ALL ENTRIES FROM October 2006
October 31, 2006
Dear Howard Schultz
This in The Seattle Times on Sunday, October 29 from Starbucks Chairman Howard Schultz:
Posted in: Publishers Blog,
October 19, 2006
In So Many Words
In November we will release Marc Estrin
Posted in: Publishers Blog,
ALL ENTRIES FROM September 2006
ALL ENTRIES FROM August 2006
August 02, 2006
We Aren
Many of you know about the current wave of admissions by the LitBloggers about what they look for in a novel. (Start here at Scott Esposito’s recent Friday Column.)
When I first learned of the discussion, I recalled that Greg and I don’t often speak in public about what it is we look for in a manuscript, beyond saying that we want to publish “unfamiliar stories well told” or using some other such phrase that we’re truly sincere about but that keeps agents from pigeonholing us — either together or separately.
Posted in: Publishers Blog,
ALL ENTRIES FROM March 2006
March 31, 2006
Swimming through the Currents
Here is something of the mystery and alchemy — and the real economic danger — of literary publishing.
Posted in: Publishers Blog,
ALL ENTRIES FROM February 2006
February 08, 2006
Pacing Ourselves
Like all good Vermont authors, Marc Estrin is a Dickensian. He travels those winding little New England roads from rehearsal to demonstration and home, accompanied by audiotapes of Dickens novels. I would be certain of a political underpinning to that happenstance were it not that John Irving apparently stands upon the end of the political seesaw opposite from Marc’s.
Posted in: Publishers Blog,
ALL ENTRIES FROM January 2006
January 25, 2006
Was All That Brouhaha Good for Us?
Is it over yet, the Frey fray? I see that representatives and patients of the Hazelden Foundation are commenting now about the truthfulness of that part of A Million Little Pieces. But isn’t it over?
I haven’t commented on this before. But I’ve thought about it a great deal. We have two memoirs forthcoming in our Fall 2006 list, so there’s good reason to think.
Posted in: Publishers Blog,
January 05, 2006
The Penultimate Night of the Year
My wife says I use “penultimate” as though people understand it. I tell her it’s just more efficient.
She and the rest of my family went out shopping again this afternoon, and so I had some time to focus on the manuscript that’s been chiding me for a few weeks — a story collection from an agent we haven’t worked with yet but an author I’ve read before. I read the first story and it made me sad. That’s good. Emotion is good.
Posted in: Publishers Blog,
ALL ENTRIES FROM December 2005
December 14, 2005
Is Fiction Necessary?
I know I’m late getting to this, but T’is the season, and things are hectic at my house.
I want to chime in about the December 7 article by Edward Wyatt in The New York Times that appeared under the headline: Publishers Assess the Fall Season's Winners and Losers.
Posted in: Publishers Blog,
ALL ENTRIES FROM October 2005
October 31, 2005
Who’s Minding the Store?
I’ve been reading and thinking a lot lately about book marketing and readership. I’ve come across lots of soul searching and hand wringing, lots of great advice, some of which I even subscribe to, about the virtues of author tours and creating buzz instead of reliance on dwindling—in both space and impact—reviews and on advertising and branding. I’ll admit to the hand wringing myself, if not to the soul searching.
Posted in: Publishers Blog,
October 05, 2005
The Quick and the Sharp
I just signed a contract for a memoir that has set me to thinking—not because of the subject of the book, not because of the nature of the writing (or maybe so, but I’ll get back to that), and not because it is an historically revealing memoir. Indeed, what set me to thinking was not the book at all.
It was the author.
Posted in: Publishers Blog,
ALL ENTRIES FROM September 2005
September 21, 2005
A Reader’s Response to Ed Falco
Finding some reading time on my hands this summer, I polished off Unbridled Books’ two Ed Falco titles in succession – Sabbath Night in the Church of the Piranha, followed by Wolf Point. From time to time, I found myself brushing this pesky fly from in front of my face: “Good grief—this guy is Carmella Soprano’s [Edie Falco’s] Uncle!”
If you think about it, the association doesn’t seem entirely frivolous. There is a dark necessity that drives the lives of the compromised characters in The Sopranos, the ones I find the most interesting, like Carmella. In order to survive, she is compelled to live in a delusional universe – to maintain a basic disconnect from reality. And woe to Carmella when she confuses the two and tries to divorce Tony, for instance, as she did this past season. Reality will out.
Posted in: Publishers Blog,