Publisher’s Weekly

Being Seen: Latinx and Queer Visibility at Writing Conferences

Being Seen: Latinx and Queer Visibility at Writing Conferences

Visibility isn’t a vague term. You either see Latinx and Queer writers or you don’t. I don’t want to believe that literary conferences deliberately exclude writers, but I do believe that an oversight is made when a conference planning committee doesn’t try to represent every aspect of the literary community.

Round-Down: Author Solutions Faces Author Problems

Round-Down: Author Solutions Faces Author Problems

Back in 2013, three writers sued Author Solutions, a self-publishing service, citing a list of grievances against the company. Andrew Albanese’s article at Publisher’s Weekly notes that the authors claim Author Solutions “misrepresents itself, luring authors in with claims that its books can compete with ‘traditional publishers,’ offering ‘greater speed, higher royalties, and more control…

Round-Down: Penguin Random House Launches Its New Website

Round-Down: Penguin Random House Launches Its New Website

  It has been a little less than three years since the Penguin-Random House merger announcement was made, and the new company, Penguin Random House, just recently launched its new, joint website. The site is clean, highly functional, and features a home page that encourages engagement with PRH’s many excellent authors and titles. The house’s commitment to bridging…

Round-Down: the Cost of Higher Minimum Wage for Bookstores

Round-Down: the Cost of Higher Minimum Wage for Bookstores

A recent article in the San Francisco Gate announced the imminent closing of yet another bookstore–Borderlands Books, which exclusively sells, according to its website, science fiction, fantasy, mystery, and horror titles. It’s sad news, no doubt, but it’s also—pun unintended but liked—downright scary news. On its current home page, which you can visit here, Borderlands…

Round-Down: Is Evaluating Great Literature A Democratic or Elitist Prospect?

With many year-end best of 2014 book lists pouring out on the tail end of the National Book Award announcements last month, as well as with prize nominations opening up this month for the Pulitzers, I’ve been thinking a lot lately about literary merit prizes and how they influence the public’s opinion on what’s worth…

Crossing Over: Literary Fiction Writers Tackling YA

The other day I was browsing in a favorite bookstore, moving backward through the alphabet, when I noticed Sherman Alexie’s novel, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, toward the front of the As in Fiction. I stopped and looked around. Had I walked into the Young Adult/Children’s section without realizing it? No, there…