Thoughts on books and publishing

Let me start by saying that I think Goodreads is awesome. I think I actually had a Goodreads account before I had a Facebook account. I get bookish social networking more than I get traditional social networking because I’m a bookish sort of person. Being an author opens up a whole new level of Goodreads. More than ever, writers are easily able to connect with readers. Having an author account on Goodreads gives one the ability to see all sorts of stuff about their book and the people who are reading it. Now here comes one of the bad parts of Goodreads. When you’re a  Goodreads author, and you log into your account to update the books you are reading or add a new Goodreads friend, it’s impossible to not notice a little box in the corner that...

This past Saturday, I had a chance to attend the first ever Monroe County Book Expo hosted by the Eastern Monroe Public Library in Stroudsburg, PA. It was a fun opportunity to meet some local authors and to catch up with some I already know. I also had the opportunity to sit on a panel with two other authors. One of the things I found interesting about my fellow panelists, is that each of them had a different story of publication, and that along with me none of us has had what might be considered the “traditional” story of publication. I don’t know if there is any one traditional publication story, but in writing circles the the most traditional publication story is that after completing and polishing a manuscript one goes looking for an agent....

Earlier this week I headed over to Book Expo America. This annual trade show is a book lover’s paradise, and though the few hours I spent there are hardly enough to do it justice I enjoyed everything I was able to take in. Here Flux author Simone Elkeles signs copies of her book Leaving Paradise at the Llewellyn booth: And even though champagne and chocolate were on hand, the folks on the long line were far more interested in getting Simone’s autograph. Celebrities of all species were on hand for Book Expo But of course the big draw is finding out about all the new books out there like titles from the Class of 2k10: There were lots of giveaways available, and some bibliophiles had a hard time resisting the lure of so many free books. I had a view...

Douglas Adams would be 58 today, but sadly he left us too soon. I can remember as a teenager discovering Douglas Adams thanks to an omnibus collection of the Hitchiker’s Guide novels that I received as a birthday gift. It was love at first page. I can distinctly recall sitting on our kitchen floor (I honestly have no idea why I was sitting on the floor.) forcing my mother (here, Mom, I’m writing something about you, and there’s no picture, but you won’t read this anyway since you are in Hawaii) who was busy cooking dinner to listen to me read passages aloud while tears of laughter streamed down my face. It was a few years later when I accidentally discovered the Dirk Gently books in a bookstore. I hadn’t even known of their existence...

A friend of mine alerted me to a book review in this past Sunday’s New York Times of Beth Ann Bauman’s YA novel Rosie and Skate. The novel sounds good, but that’s not why the review was pointed out to me. It’s because it opened with this line: New Jersey is a teenage state: it looks awkward in places, has questionable ethics from time to time and plays perennial underdog to New York. Perhaps this is why it’s home to so much good young adult literature. All along I thought that the reason I was drawn to writing and reading books for teenagers was because I was immature and really just a kid at heart, but perhaps it’s because like Beth Ann, I am a Jersey girl. These days, I am back in the garden state after living in Pennsylvania for...

If you are writer, you are probably aware of the fact that many publishers will not even look at manuscripts submitted by unagented writers, and getting an agent can be a real challenge. My Wall Street Journal reading father, is always helpfully passing on articles he finds interesting, and the latest was this article on the death of the slush pile which appeared in yesterday’s paper. Among other things, it makes the case that the internet, which was supposed to level the playing field, may have actually made it even more difficult for new writers to get published, because the internet itself is like one big, overwhelming slush pile. That said, I know for a fact that the slush pile has not been killed off completely. There are still some publishers out there...