Amanda Hocking, 26-year-old self-publishing wunderkind, earns a New York Times Magazine profile describing her road to a $2 million deal with St. Martins for rights to her ten novels including My Blood Approves and Hollowland.
Amanda Hocking Gets the Times Magazine Treatment
A Conch Republic Treasure Trove
A U.S. Navy commodore’s 1823 General Order announcing the imminent seizure of Key West – at the time known as Allenton – has been obtained, along with “1,000 other pieces of the island’s history,” by the Monroe County Public Library. The collection also includes a book from 1858 written by William Curry, “a penniless Bahamian immigrant who became Florida’s first millionaire.” Best of all? You can view some of the cache online.
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Call It Humanistic Indecency”
Recommended Reading: Katy Waldman on Jenny Zhang’s Sour Heart.
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The Life and Fashions of Elena Ferrante
Hannah Gold takes a closer look at the role fashion plays in the novels of Elena Ferrante as an instigator of action and deep symbolism.
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Adaptation
Check out the book trailer for Dan Chaon’s Await Your Reply.
Letter to Harlem
Over at Catapult, Morgan Jerkins writes on calling Harlem home. As she puts it, “Blackness is not one specific characteristic. It is many things, things that I have yet to discover. It means that different variations of blackness can find home in one another.”
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What’s a Literary Short Film?
Book trailers are one thing, but what’s a literary short film? According to Red 14 founders Adam Cushman and Mike Sandow, “it’s not advertising a product; it gives a cinematic glimpse into the book, one which will ideally make the viewer interested in learning more about the author, the author’s current book, and the author’s past and future work.” Together, the pair has launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund four such films about four worthy titles (Matt Bell’s awesome debut novel among them).
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I haven’t read any of Hocking’s books, so maybe I shouldn’t talk, but it disappoints me that her plots/characters/etc seem solely based off what would make her books more popular or gain more money–or that’s the impression I get from the article, anyway.
I’m glad that digital self-publishing has helped jump-start the careers of writers, but I don’t look forward to having to sift through less-than-desirable reading material in the future.
Shit always floats to the top.