Big Publishing Killed the Author
newrepublic.com – Wednesday November 15, 2023
The suggestion that Beloved, Toni Morrison’s acclaimed novel about slavery and its afterlives, is also a parable about the publishing industry would be bizarre, even offensive—if, that is, Morrison herself hadn’t explicitly suggested it. For years, Morrison had felt not merely penned in by her career as an editor at the publishing giant Random House; she had felt indentured, “held in contempt—to be played with when our masters are pleased, to be dismissed when they are not,” as she declared in a speech six years before publishing Beloved. Upon leaving her job at Random House to focus on writing full-time, she felt “free in a way I had never been, ever.… Enter Beloved.” It was, she continued in the novel’s preface, “the shock of liberation”—liberation from the world of corporate publishing—“that drew my thoughts to what ‘free’ could mean.” In the novel itself, Morrison has Baby Suggs, the protagonist’s mother, describe freedom from slavery in strikingly similar terms.
How To Write A Query Letter That Makes Literary Agents Take Notice
livinggossip.com – Tuesday November 14, 2023
Writing a query letter is a crucial step in the journey of getting your manuscript published. Literary agents receive countless submissions daily, and your query letter is your first chance to make a lasting impression. To ensure that your work gets the attention it deserves, you need to craft a compelling query letter that stands out from the rest. In this guide, we will provide you with a step-by-step process on how to write a query letter that literary agents will find irresistible. Let’s get started!
How to Become a Short Storyist
By G. Miki Hayden
Instructor at Writer's Digest University online and private writing coach
firstwriter.com – Tuesday November 14, 2023
I wanted to become a novelist, but a friend of mine gave me a tip: “Write short stories as credentials you can mention in query letters for your novels.” I decided to follow her advice, plus I could write a short story in a couple of weeks for some quick satisfaction.
Since then, I’ve written and published generous handfuls of short stories, won a couple of short story awards, and made a little money at the game—mostly very little—but all coinage counts.
I want to herein present some revelations as to “how I do it.” But in addition to my having short stories published many times, I also have many worthy pieces not yet published, so don’t follow me there.
I don’t concentrate on just one element in the story when I write and then layer in other aspects—though you can do that. I also rarely restructure. I write and then polish. However, while I certainly think that writing everything at the same time produces a more cohesive piece, I also will suggest that my students (at Writers Digest’s Writers Online Workshops) can deposit in elements later on if they aren’t able to provide them in the initial draft.
The most common essentials that students will miss in their short story writing are emotion, setting, and point-of-view character internals.
The eliciting of emotion is definitely an important fundamental of fiction, but that’s probably the hardest thing for writers to do. So I don’t really mean that exactly, as creating suspense, tension, the onset of romance, or even reader sorrow is extremely difficult. If writers can actually trigger reader feelings—wonderful—they may make a lot of money selling their manuscripts. But if they can’t, then they can at least include the mechanical representation of these sensations. We are always able to write “His heart thudded in his chest, and he thought he would faint.” That will substitute for the real thing in many instances, and a writer does need to have at least elements of emotion to round out any story.
Indie Press Network launches to connect small indie publishers
thebookseller.com – Tuesday November 14, 2023
The Indie Press Network has launched with the aim of connecting independent publishers with each other, as well as with booksellers and readers.
The open network will offer promotion opportunities for established presses’ titles and authors, as well as free, open-access resources for those starting out.
The Indie Press Network was founded by Will Dady of Renard Press, and is launching with an inaugural cohort of 10 member presses. It is open to all small publishers with five or fewer employees and aims to encourage and support new "would-be" publishers.
According to Renard Press, the network seeks to build on the work being done by other membership organisations to "decolonise publishing and to raise the profile of smaller presses who don’t have big marketing budgets".
Faber chair Page says he is 'confident' publishers will adapt to AI
thebookseller.com – Tuesday November 14, 2023
Stephen Page, Faber and Faber chair, has said that he is "confident" publishers will find their way with AI, adding that "technology usually amplifies publishing".
In a public lecture delivered at the University of West London on Thursday 9th November, Page reflected on the "five revolutions" that publishing has undergone over recent decades and how the book trade can rise to future challenges instead of being "swept up" in them. He said that human, intellectual, social and financial capital are "at the heart of what has made publishing endure" and will be essential in future challenges like AI.
"Publishing is innately revolutionary in its makeup," Page said. "It takes the ideas that will change society [and] makes them public through putting them into the world."
New Literary Agent Listing: Anna Olswanger
firstwriter.com – Monday November 13, 2023
Has been an agent since 2005. Represents a wide variety of genres but is currently focused on illustrated books (picture books and graphic novels).
Loch Long crime writing residency launched
thelochsidepress.com – Friday November 10, 2023
A new two-week residency for crime writers has been launched by Cove Park.
The fully-funded programme is for Scotland-based writers developing new work in crime fiction and scheduled to run in late March next year.
The writer will receive a total residency fee of £1,100 (£550 per week) and a travel allowance of up to £75 from the arts centre on the Rosneath Peninsula.
To apply, writers must be based in Scotland and have published at least one book with a traditional publisher.
What's the Future of Books?
esquire.com – Thursday November 9, 2023
The publishing industry is in flux. One major publisher has been acquired by a private equity firm, editors are departing (and getting laid off) from others, there are fewer book media outlets than ever, and most literary discourse is happening online. But what does it all mean for the books themselves, and the ways that readers are discovering them? Here, we make some predictions about the future of books.
“Celebrities and tastemakers are becoming the new medium for discovery,” says Ariele Fredman, a literary agent at United Talent Agency who previously launched eight #1 New York Times bestsellers as a publicist. As a result, it will be more important than ever for debut novels to land on book club rosters.
A Reese Witherspoon, Oprah, or Jenna Bush endorsement can be enough to not only secure a spot on the bestseller list, but anoint an author with a fanbase that lasts. “If you don't get one of those coveted spots, it becomes even harder to break a new voice,” Fredman adds.
Outside of those chosen debuts, “we're going to see a continued investment in bigger-name authors” from publishers, says former editor Molly McGhee, the author of Jonathan Abernathy You Are Kind, “because they have guaranteed returns on investment.”
Has It Ever Been Harder to Make a Living As An Author?
esquire.com – Wednesday November 8, 2023
In early August, after Andrew Lipstein published The Vegan, his sophomore novel, a handful of loved ones asked if he planned to quit his day job in product design at a large financial technology company. Despite having published two books with the prestigious literary imprint Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, Lipstein didn’t have any plans to quit; he considers product design to be his “career,” and he wouldn’t be able to support his growing family exclusively on the income from writing novels. “I feel disappointed having to tell people that because it sort of seems like a mark of success,” he said. “If I’m not just supporting myself by writing, to those who don't know the reality of it, it seems like it's a failure in some way.”
The myth of The Writer looms large in our cultural consciousness. When most readers picture an author, they imagine an astigmatic, scholarly type who wakes at the crack of dawn in a monastic, book-filled, shockingly affordable house surrounded by nature. The Writer makes coffee and sits down at their special writing desk for their ritualized morning pages. They break for lunch—or perhaps a morning constitution—during which they have an aha! moment about a troublesome plot point. Such a lifestyle aesthetic is “something we’ve long wanted to believe,” said Paul Bogaards, the veteran book publicist who has worked with the likes of Joan Didion, Donna Tartt, and Robert Caro. “For a very small subset of writers, this has been true. And it’s getting harder and harder to do.”
Demand for creative writing courses outpaces supply
stanforddaily.com – Tuesday November 7, 2023
It might seem that putting words to paper is hard, but for those interested in creative writing classes, it might be more difficult to get into a class.
Many creative writing courses are known for their long waitlists and enrollment caps, but the root of the issue lies with a low supply of lecturers and courses to meet the high student demand for courses. The low supply of lecturers stems from an even larger problem: funding.
For Kathaleen Mallard ’25, it was incredibly difficult for her to get into the creative writing classes she wanted, even as an English major with a creative writing emphasis.
“I feel like the demand was obviously much greater than the amount of classes that there were, so it was hard to get into anything,” Mallard said. Some of her courses required course enrollment forms, but seniority remained a large factor of selection, making it difficult to enroll into the classes that were part of the core major requirements.
Mallard believes that this could affect students in the future who wish to pursue an English major with a creative writing emphasis or a creative writing minor, who may not get to explore classes in the department because of low enrollment caps. She also raised the waitlist experience for creative writing courses. Since most people are unlikely to drop their spots in class, it’s really hard to get off the waitlist for these classes, Mallard said.
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