“Publishing is a word that, like the book, is almost but not quite a proxy for the ‘business of literature.’ Current accounts of publishing have the industry about as imperiled as the book, and the presumption is that if we lose publishing, we lose good books. Yet what we have right now is a system that produces great literature in spite of itself.” Twenty-first century publishing works in mysterious ways.
The Business of Books
Blake Butler on Submitting Writing
HTMLGiant's editor Blake Butler, author of There Is No Year, has compiled a list of things he's learned from submitting his writing.
I Buy, Therefore I Write
"It makes you think you are just about to write, for once, something brilliant." Everyone knows that Moleskines don't really affect your writing, but they nevertheless represent a kind of literary standard. As we step into the future and doodling goes digital, will products like electronic writing tablets put the leather-bound versions out of business? Somewhere Hemingway is turning in his grave.
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PW on Author Podcasts
Publishers Weekly talks up author podcasts "as a viable and entertaining marketing tool," including Brad Listi’s Other People (which recently featured our own Edan Lepucki), Tom Lutz’s Los Angeles Review of Books, and Book Soup alum Tyson Cornell’s company Rare Bird Lit.
The Underground Railroad: The Series
Moonlight director Barry Jenkins plans to adapt Colson Whitehead's Underground Railroad as a limited-run series. In his review of the novel for our site last year, Greg Walklin gushed that "Whitehead’s brilliance is on constant display."
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“Hardly Shakesperean at first”
Recommended Reading: Ted Widmer on the miscellaneous writings of Abraham Lincoln.
Tuesday New Release Day: Gass, Dee, Gaddis
New this week: Middle C by William H. Gass, A Thousand Pardons by Jonathan Dee, and the Letters of William Gaddis.
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Asian American Literary Review Launch Party
The Asian American Literary Review is releasing their Special Issue Commemorating the 10th Anniversary of September 11 with a launch party this Friday at 7pm in downtown New York at Alwan for the Arts. The 350-page(!) issue has interviews, essays, and first person testimony on 9/11 by South/Asian and Arab American contributors -- including Kazim Ali, Amitava Kumar, and Khin Mai Aung from AALDEF (the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund) -- several of whom should be at the launch.