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
I Have a Mortgage
“Over three decades of almost constant composing and recording, he would amass over sixty LPs, running the gamut from early records with his band the Mothers of Invention that helped to create the milieu we think of as the Sixties, to caustic send-ups of that same counterculture, doo-wop pastiche, tape cut-ups, film scores, gonzo cabaret, big-band charts, way out prog, show tunes, music composed entirely on and for the Synclavier digital sampler, full-score orchestral music, and thousands of scabrous, exploratory guitar solos.” On Frank Zappa, music theory wizard and occasional public intellectual.
At What Age?
This week in book-related infographics: a look at “What Age Do Writers Publish Their Most Famous Works?” from Electric Literature.
Bracketologists: Apply Here
With the NCAA’s March Madness tournament winding down, and with The Morning News’s Tournament of Books drawn to a close, you can still indulge your bracketological yearnings by participating in Powell’s Books’s Poetry Madness or by checking out NPR’s Ides of March Madness.
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Kraus on Amazon
Exciting news: Jill Soloway (Transparent) is adapting Chris Kraus’s I Love Dick for Amazon. You could also check out Kraus’s Year in Reading.
Confessions of a Ghostwriter
“There are people out there who want you to write their novels for them,” observes professional ghostwriter Sari Botton. Over at Scratch, she shares some advice for breaking into the industry. Also, the magazine has made her longer article about “the spooky finances behind her gigs” free to read – all you have to do is register.
For the Cause
As the 20th century wore on, the Strugatsky brothers grew pessimistic about Soviet Communism, eventually turning their fictional worlds from socialist utopias to dystopias. Their most famous early novel, Noon: 22nd Century bears little resemblance to later works like Hard to Be a God, which implicitly criticizes the Soviet government. At The Paris Review Daily, Ezra Glinter charts their evolution.
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.