I’ll be reading from A Field Guide to the North American Family this Saturday, as part of New York’s 20th annual Independent and Small Press Book Fair. The Indie Author Read-a-Thon runs from 10:30 a.m. to 11:45 a.m., and I’ll probably only be reading a couple of short chapters from the book; I can’t recommend that anyone schlep to 44th Street just to see me. That said, I had a blast at this book fair last year, trolling the beautiful wares of such publishers as Akashic Books, New York Review Classics, and Gingko Press. You know… the kind of books that don’t lend themselves to the Kindle. I emerged $40 poorer, but with half of my Christmas shopping done. My favorite find? An anthology of scam emails from Africa. So: Come for the books… stay for the reading!
The Promotional Train Chugs Along
Welcome Anne
Join us in welcoming our newest regular contributor at The Millions:Anne K. Yoder is a writer living in Brooklyn. She is the former books editor of KGB Bar Lit, and her writing has appeared in Tin House, BlackBook, and PopMatters. She moonlights as a pharmacist in the West Village.You may remember the two pieces Anne penned for us recently. Her next offering will be up shortly.
Introducing The Millions’ “Books and Reviews”
Today we’re unveiling an exciting new feature at The Millions. Over the last seven-plus years, we have written about thousands of books. Knowing that people like to dig through the archives to read about the books we’ve covered, we’ve tried to create ways to make that easier, but until now our efforts had proven unwieldy to use and to manage.
So, in an effort to solve this problem once and for all, we’ve spent several months putting together a new section that we are proud to show off today: The Millions Books and Reviews.
That main page is an exercise in serendipity. Hit refresh and ten new random books will appear that have been mentioned on the site at some point in our history. Click on any one of those covers and learn more — or hit refresh again.
If you are looking for something more specific, browse by author using the alphabetical navigation at the top of the page. From those pages you’ll be able to click through to any book and view The Millions’ coverage of that book.
You may notice that in some cases we have more than one listing for a book — this is because over the years we may have linked to more than one edition of the book (paperback and hardcover, most commonly).
We hope you find this new feature useful. Before I let you go check it out, I just wanted to thank our many readers who have supported the site. This support has allowed us to continue to innovate with features like this new section and hopefully provide a great experience for readers looking for book coverage online.
The Millions Membership Drive: Update
Late last year, we tried something new: we asked Millions readers for support. The response has been very positive and it’s a thrill to see that so many of you value what we’re doing here. We are grateful that many readers have decided to contribute to The Millions since November.
A very special thank-you goes to our two Sponsors at the $500-per-year level. Our Sponsors have the opportunity to dedicate their support to anything or anyone they wish, and we’ve created an acknowledgment area on the membership page.
The amount we’ve raised so far provides us with some helpful breathing room as we look to become less reliant upon the internet giants who, as sources of revenue, tend to control the destinies of places like The Millions. It also helps The Millions produce the big features that are highly valued by readers: Year in Reading and our Most Anticipated list.
If you’d like to learn more, see my original post, and here’s our member page if you’ve been thinking about participating but haven’t yet had the chance. And thank you, as always, for reading.
Welcome to the New themillions.com
The Millions, at any given time, has ten regular paid contributors and has been host to over a hundred guest contributors, including some of the literary world’s leading voices. With all this going on, we’ve long felt the great writing here needed a little room to breathe. With The Millions having outgrown its bloggy roots, and with needs that long ago surpassed my meager abilities as a web designer, we decided it was time to give The Millions a redesign that reflected the breadth of criticism, commentary, and reporting you’ve come to expect from the site.
So first, a quick tour. The new front page showcases two main headlines – these will be our two most recent essays or reviews – along with a dozen more recently published stories below.
Underneath that is a new section called Curiosities. Throughout the day, we’ll be sharing interesting links and tidbits here. Those of you who read The Millions via RSS will see Curiosities in the feed along with the rest of our content.
Also in the lower area are category-based links into our archives, as well as our monthly Top Ten. At the top right of the page, you’ll find a search box for the site and for Amazon.
If you you have any feedback or see anything broken, please let me know.
It’s not an easy time to be running an independent literature and culture publication that pays its writers, but we strongly believe that we can help fill the gap as coverage shrinks elsewhere. If you’d like to support this effort (or are just inclined to give a housewarming gift), please visit our support page.
Thanks for reading The Millions!
We Have a Winner…
…in the VQR Young Reviewers Contest. Our own Emily Colette Wilkinson was awarded the prize for her review of The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: A Shocking Murder and the Undoing of a Great Victorian Detective by Kate Summerscale. We’ll post a link if and when VQR puts the review online. Congrats Emily!