Soapbox: Where Ideas Go to Die, Not Spread By Seth Godin - 10/05/2009
In this environment, independent bookstores have become the antithesis of the ubiquity of the long tail’s endless web. But they needn’t retreat from this new reality. They can thrive.
More
Soapbox: Embargoing... Going... Gone! by Laurence Hughes - 09/28/2009
Some consider the embargo a nuisance that has outlived its usefulness; others think it is a reliable marketing strategy. A surprising number think embargo is the French word for snails.
More
Soapbox: Meeting History by Simon Read - 09/21/2009
Following a signing for my book, I stood in a parking lot in South San Francisco and watched a man pull a small, copper-plated pistol from a shoebox in the trunk of his Audi.
More
Soapbox: E-structions by James P. Othmer - 09/14/2009
I am pleased to announce that I will be conducting an exclusive e-book signing of a limited number of first e-ditions of my latest title. Making eye contact with the author, while impossible, is discouraged nonetheless.
More
From BEA to Bake Sales by Caitlin Friedman and Kimberly Yorio - 09/07/2009
Here's a bit of irony: we had an editor, happily pregnant and obsessed with all things baby related, buy our working mom book. We figured it was perfect: here's a career woman, as committed to her profession as she is to being a mother, to help shape our book. But soon after coming back from maternity leave, our editor quit to raise her new baby.
More
Soapbox: Small Matters By Anja Schmidt - 08/31/2009
When I left my longstanding, secure executive editor job at DK Publishing, just three months after giving birth to twins, to become U.S. publisher (and the only U.S. employee) for Kyle Books, it might have seemed like a risky move. But just over four months later, DK is laying off more than 100 people and reducing its list by 20% from the 250 titles it currently produces—and I've just acq...
More
Soapbox: We'll Be Back by Douglas Rushkoff - 08/24/2009
The decline of oversized publishing conglomerates makes for some bleak headlines in the short term, but bodes well for the future of a publishing industry that operates on a scale more appropriate to the medium.
More
Soap Box: Preliminaries by Laurence Hughes - 08/17/2009
One of Elmore Leonard's celebrated 10 Rules of Writing states: “Avoid prologues. They can be annoying, especially a prologue following an introduction that comes after a foreword.”
More
Soapbox: No Smoking Whitefish by Rudy Shur - 08/03/2009
Running a nonfiction publishing house is stressful enough. When did paranoia become part of the job?
More
Soapbox: Critics Don't Need Free Books By Janice Harayda - 07/27/2009
Social commentator Ellen Goodman said writing a newspaper column is like being married to a nymphomaniac: “The first two weeks, it's fun.” If that's true, being a blogger is like going to a never-ending orgy. It can take more stamina, or so I learned when I created One-Minute Book Reviews after 11 years as the book editor of the Plain Dealer in Cleveland.
More
Front and Center by Donna Paz Kaufman - 07/20/2009
Walk into one of your favorite stores and chances are you'll walk away with more than you intended to buy. Shopping is more fun when you're enticed to wander around with your senses fully engaged. And you appreciate those moments when you not only see something new but are reminded of something you meant to buy all along—or needed at just that moment.
More
Soapbox: Reality Bites by Peter Mandel - 07/13/2009
If you are like me, your best shot at end-of-a-hard-day escape isn't TV. It's a book.
More
Soapbox: At Last by Sandra Dallas - 07/06/2009
Just a week after my book was published on April 14, I was #12 on the Times's fiction list. The book hit #11 on PW's list. But overnight success? I'm 70. I've been a writer for 50 years.
More
Anderson's Wiki-versy by Siva Vaidhyanathan - 06/29/2009
When Wired editor Chris Anderson found himself accused on the Virginia Quarterly Review blog of lifting passages from Wikipedia entries and other published sources in his new book, Free: The Future of a Radical Price, he inadvertently revealed some of the most awkward truths about reading and writing in a digital environment.
More
Soapbox: The Rights Thing by David Marlin - 06/22/2009
Publishers and authors must recognize that content has a limitless array of uses.
More
Soapbox: Path to the Future, Defend the Google Settlement by Tom Allen - 06/15/2009
Before authors and publishers filed their groundbreaking lawsuits, Google was on a path to scan millions of copyrighted books without compensating authors or publishers, or even considering their interests as the creators of this vast repository of intellectual property.
More
Soapbox: Come Out, Wherever You Are by Jordan McAuley - 06/01/2009
When I moved to New York City from Atlanta, one of the first things I wanted to do was visit the Oscar Wilde Bookshop in Greenwich Village, believed to be the country's first bookstore dedicated to gay and lesbian authors. I was dismayed to find a sign on the door announcing the store was closing, citing the down economy.
More
Soapbox: Double Duty By Julie Metz - 05/25/2009
I had been a book jacket designer for more than 20 years when I began a writing life. My first book, a memoir, tells of the revelations that followed the sudden death of my husband in 2003, my search for truth and the birth of my new self in midlife. After a career designing covers for other authors, I was thrilled as I imagined my manuscript typeset in pages between boards with a dust jacket.
More
