I like to Twitter. Really, I do. But sometimes I have these dark, nightmarish moments that the little Twitter bird is going to peck out my eyes and feed on my soul. And in these dark, nightmarish moments, the Twitter bird looks like this.
Literary agent Rachelle Gardner knows that selling your book is as much the challenge, pleasure, burden and fight of authors as of publishers. And this is why.
Titling is key for any book, but methinks these celebrity memoirs were much more focused on memorable kitch value then brilliant book names.
The Abbeville Manual of Style presents a wonderful interview with Ed Champion, host of The Bat Segundo Show and book blogger. And because he likes Victorian literature and mint juleps, I’m automatically a shameless fan.
Maybe Chris Anderson of Wired shouldn’t have named his new book FREE (subtitle: The Future of a Radical Price). He was certainly thinking ‘free’ when he cribbed several of his ideas from Wikipedia and then did not edit or change them, leaving word-for-word passages in the final copy of the book. Whoops.
With the recent debacle regarding J.D. Salinger’s attempted copyright of his character to prevent J.D. California’s publishing of a sequel at a standstill (a federal judge has placed a restraining order on publication of the sequel), people are asking… who cares? Apparently, Holden Caulfield is not quite as captivating to today’s teenagers as he was in yesteryears. Yes, I thought he was angst-filled, snobbish jerk too.
Just when you thought book censorship was becoming a pastiche, angry citizens demand books be pulled from a summer reading list… or burned at the stake. In Illinois, Sherman Alexie’s THE ABSOLUTELY TRUE DIARY OF A PART-TIME INDIAN is remaining on the summer reading list for freshman at Antioch Community High School despite protests from several parents, while in Wisconsin Francesca Lia Block’s BABY BE-BOP nearly got a library sued over its accessibility, which has LGBT groups and free speech committees fighting to keep it from being burned.
Erin Miller of About.com gives us the first half of her “Best Books for 2009.” Agree? Disagree? I’m happy, but that’s because Guillermo del Toro’s THE STRAIN is sitting happily on said list.
Dick Cheney has just signed a deal with Simon & Schuster to write his memoir, which is anticipated to be published in spring of 2011. One might be curious if certain news-making incidents involving hunting companions will be included, but that doesn’t exactly fall into the realm of Washington politics.
Please don’t talk about sex… write about it. Times Online asks us: Who writes best about sex? Discussed? Taboos, full-frontal, the Kama Sutra, fantasies, the erotic lexicon, and more.
And not only that, but provides some tailor-made articles:
- How to write sex: a woman’s tips
- How to write sex a man’s tips
My new favorite agent-blogger, Chip MacGregor (what a name!), gives us an overview of ten items detailing where the publishing industry will be in 5 years. I don’t know about you, but I’m willing to put money on most of these.
The Royal Society is offering a £10,000 prize to writers of science books, proving that popular science is, well, popular. The shortlist is out, so if you haven’t started already, illuminate your mind.
A blog we recommend for all you comic, graphic novel and manga readers, one of the best resources out there is Publishers Weekly’s The Beat, the News Blog of Comics Culture by Heidi MacDonald. Chock full of news, links, YouTube videos, comic reviews and recommendations, this is an excellent resource for the casual reader and avid collector alike.
Perhaps it is not quite literary, but in an age of democracy, there are still kings. And when those kings pass, the elegant ways in which we remember them are worthy of any book. The King of Pop is dead, and TIME presents a beautiful article on the glory, the revulsion, the sadness and the eccentricity surrounding the rise and fall of Michael Jackson by means of a literary reference—the endearing but heartrending man-child, Peter Pan.
Tags: book news, literary news, michael jackson, publishing news
