Can “Distraction-Free” Devices Change the Way We Write?
newyorker.com – Monday December 13, 2021
For a long time, I believed that my only hope of becoming a professional writer was to find the perfect tool. A few months into my career as a book critic, I’d already run up against the limits of my productivity, and, like many others before me, I pinned the blame on Microsoft Word. Each time I opened a draft, I seemed to lose my bearings, scrolling from top to bottom and alighting on far-flung sentences at random. I found and replaced, wrote and rewrote; the program made fiddling easy and finishing next to impossible.
I’d fallen into the trap that the philosopher Jacques Derrida identified in an interview from the mid-nineties. “With the computer, everything is rapid and so easy,” he complained. “An interminable revision, an infinite analysis is already on the horizon.” Derrida hadn’t even contended with the sirens of online life, which were driving writer friends to buy disconnected laptops or to quarantine their smartphones in storage bins with timed locks. Zadie Smith touted Freedom, a subscription service that cut off the user’s devices—a chastity belt for procrastinators.
From reporter to the corner office: a self-publisher’s maiden voyage
poynter.org – Monday December 13, 2021
Self-publishing, once derided as ‘vanity publishing’ reserved for losers who couldn’t find a traditional publisher, has gone mainstream.
Four simple questions recently changed my life, and I hope they’ll change yours, too.
As a journalist, freelance magazine writer and author, I’ve been working for publishers for 50 years. They were shadowy figures in suits, sometimes glimpsed in the elevator, but rarely stepping into the newsroom. Often, they were just a name on my paycheck.
Nevertheless, they controlled my life, and the lives of those in the newsroom, and not just through the wages they paid. While leaving editorial decisions to editors, (usually) they ruled over the business side: printing, marketing, promotion, distribution, and all the other work required for the daily miracle of newspapers, monthly deadlines for magazines, and those for books that may stretch for years.
This fall, dissatisfied with the marketing and promotion of my last three books, I decided that it was time for a change. I wanted to control my own publishing destiny.
Michael Pietsch Looks at Publishing’s (Near) Future
publishersweekly.com – Saturday December 11, 2021
The publishing industry had an unexpectedly good year in 2020, despite the many challenges created by the pandemic. In the essay below, Hachette Book Group CEO Michael Pietsch uses lessons from last year to make some educated guesses about where the industry may be heading in the near term.
The essay is part of a larger piece that appears in the Publishers Weekly Book Publishing Almanac 2022: A Master Class in the Art of Bringing Books to Readers. Published last month by Skyhorse Publishing and written in cooperation with PW, the almanac is designed to help authors, editors, agents, publicists, and anyone else working in book publishing understand the changing landscape of the business.
New Literary Agency Listing: Gleam Futures
firstwriter.com – Friday December 10, 2021
We represent a wide range of fiction and non-fiction writers and are extremely proud to have launched nearly 40 Sunday Times bestselling books to date.
Always on the lookout for original, brave, and exciting new voices who are looking to build and nurture an authentic connection with their audiences across social media and drive long-term value in their books across multiple media platforms.
Insider tricks that will help you find a publisher for your book
irishtimes.com – Thursday December 9, 2021
Lockdown offered many frustrated writers a key to unbolt the constraints of daily routine and an opportunity to work on the novel or work of nonfiction that has been gathering dust in their minds or in a bottom drawer for years. If 2022 is the year to take your book to the next stage, we asked authors and publishing professionals for their advice on how to make that happen.
Charlie Campbell agency renamed Greyhound as Edenborough joins
thebookseller.com – Thursday December 9, 2021
Charlie Campbell Literary Agents will be renamed Greyhound Literary, with Sam Edenborough joining the organisation at the beginning of January 2022 as director and co-owner.
Edenborough (pictured) is leaving The Intercontinental Literary Agency (ILA), where he has been a director and agent. Over the past 20 years he helped to develop the agency’s broad roster of client agencies and publishers, selling rights for a wide range of English-language authors, including prize-winners and global bestsellers.
Yeoh becomes associate agent at Madeleine Milburn
thebookseller.com – Tuesday December 7, 2021
Rachel Yeoh has been made an agent after interning at the Madeleine Milburn Literary, TV & Film Agency.
Yeoh has been appointed as associate literary agent, working alongside founder and director Madeleine Milburn, m.d. Giles Milburn and agents Hayley Steed, Hannah Todd and Olivia Maidment in the adult fiction department.
She will start accepting submissions on 8th December and is considering literary, upmarket, book club fiction and narrative memoir.
How a small publisher survived the digital age
spectatorworld.com – Monday December 6, 2021
In The Truth about Publishing, Sir Stanley Unwin writes: “It is easy to become a publisher, but difficult to remain one.” David R. Godine has accomplished the difficult task of remaining one for fifty years, and in the beautifully designed and set Godine at Fifty — would we expect any less from a Godine book? — he tells the story of the company’s beginning and survival and of each book he has published over the years, chock-full of reproductions of the company’s covers, woodcuts, and illustrations. This is a book about books for book lovers.
Raised in Boston, David R. Godine got his start in printing at Dartmouth, where he met the head of Dartmouth Publications, “a scholar of the history of graphic art, a fine teacher and a devoted mentor.” Godine worked with him for three years in his shop before spending a term at Oxford’s Bodleian, two weeks at France’s Bibliothèque nationale, and a week in Greece.
Tip: How UK freelance journalists can use ALCS to earn more money from their work
journalism.co.uk – Sunday December 5, 2021
If you have written for any UK-based magazines or journals in the last three years, you could be due a payout
Authors’ Licencing and Collecting Society (ALCS) is a membership-run organisation founded by a group of journalists and authors in 1979. The aim of the organisation is to help all types of freelance writers by collecting the money for secondary uses of their work. That includes photocopies, cable retransmission, digital reproduction and education recording.
New Literary Agent Listing: Michaela Whatnall
firstwriter.com – Thursday December 2, 2021
Strong interest in children’s literature, from picture books up through middle grade and young adult novels and graphic novels. In the adult fiction space, they are particularly seeking character-driven speculative fiction, sci-fi/fantasy, and other genre fiction that features historically underrepresented characters. They are also interested in nonfiction for both children and adults, especially narrative nonfiction in the areas of history, the creative arts, and lifestyle.
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