Aleen Kuperman is co-founder and CEO at Betches Media. The company has grown from a blog created in a dorm room at Cornell in 2011 to a sprawling media network including nine podcasts, New York Times-bestselling books and millions of Instagram followers. In this episode of the “Ad Block” podcast, Kuperman talks about growing up as the child of Russian immigrants who escaped the Soviet Union in 1988, a year before the Berlin Wall fell. In particular, it was a struggle to explicate what “Betches” was to her parents, who had always had high expectations for her future. “I had to explain to my parents, ‘I’m not going to medical school next year,’” she says. “I was terrified to have that conversation. They were like, ‘What’s a blog? How are you making money? What are you talking about?’” As with many new media startups, the business model evolved quickly, and as soon as she had gotten her parents on board, things would change. “They had just figured out Facebook, now they have to go learn Instagram,” Kuperman says. Tangible successes helped, like the book deal the team landed while still in college. “To my parents, that’s legit. A book, they understand.” Kuperman grew up hearing the stories of the family’s journey out of Russia, living in Vienna and Italy off the personal possessions they could sell before eventually being allowed into the U.S. and settling on Long Island. “Only now, I think back to all the things they instilled,” like her strong work ethic, she says. “It... Continue reading at 'Advertising Age'
[ Advertising Age | 2019-10-18 09:01:00 UTC ]
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Aleen Kuperman is co-founder and CEO at Betches Media. The company has grown from a blog created in a dorm room at Cornell in 2011 to a sprawling media network including nine podcasts, New York Times-bestselling books and millions of Instagram followers. In this episode of the “Ad Block”... Continue reading at Advertising Age
[ Advertising Age | 2019-10-18 09:01:00 UTC ]
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The two bestselling authors who both started in TV discuss writing as a second career, natural justice – and what they really think of literary fictionIn the four years since Richard Osman published his first Thursday Murder Club novel he has consistently topped the bestseller lists, and now his... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2024-09-14 09:00:23 UTC ]
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Sarah M. Broom’s The Yellow House is a feat—a memoir and historical narrative created amid governmental bureaucracy and resistance from some of her subjects. Continue reading at The Atlantic
[ The Atlantic | 2019-09-25 16:27:00 UTC ]
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Sarah M. Broom’s The Yellow House is a feat—a memoir and historical narrative created amid governmental bureaucracy and resistance from some of her subjects. Continue reading at The Atlantic
[ The Atlantic | 2019-09-25 16:27:00 UTC ]
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Earning a living as a writer is as likely as winning the lottery. Instead of writing books and persuading others to buy them, find out what people want to write, then do it for themPhilip Pullman: professional writers set to become ‘an endangered species’ due to low wagesI left school with a... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2016-01-06 00:00:00 UTC ]
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At Restless Books, Black Lawrence Press, and Academic Studies Press, first-generation American editors want to hear from writers with cross-cultural stories to tell. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2024-07-26 04:00:00 UTC ]
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The Suede bassist and author on writing without a safety net, terrifying himself for his next novel and which of the Thursday Murder Club books – by his brother Richard – he likes bestMat Osman is, along with Brett Anderson, a founding and current member of the band Suede, and the author of two... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2024-03-23 18:00:26 UTC ]
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95% of parents believe every school should have a library, but 60% also believe those libraries should have restrictions. Continue reading at Book Riot
[ Book Riot | 2023-12-20 13:21:21 UTC ]
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The much-acclaimed Irish author of Small Things Like These on her quietly devastating new story and why George Saunders wouldn’t read it aloud for a podcastClaire Keegan’s five books to date run to just 700 pages and some 140,000 words. “I love to see prose being written economically,” she tells... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2023-09-02 17:00:10 UTC ]
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Lifestyle and comedy publisher Betches, which chronicles dating and pop culture for a predominantly female audience, just introduced digital advertising to its newly redesigned website in late July. The move is part of a broader effort to diversify its business and signal a new chapter for the... Continue reading at AdWeek
[ AdWeek | 2023-08-03 11:50:06 UTC ]
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In addition to preparing television and sponsored ads, Kraft has also taken an interest in digital OOH and social media displays to account for how consumer shopping habits have changed. Continue reading at Digiday
[ Digiday | 2023-05-22 04:01:00 UTC ]
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In our monthly series Can Writing Be Taught? we partner with Catapult to ask their course instructors all our burning questions about the process of teaching writing. This time, we’re talking to Christine Ma-Kellams, who’s teaching an online eight-week fiction workshop. From improving narrative... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2023-01-20 12:00:00 UTC ]
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Jane Smiley is a master of plot, with multiple awards for her novels, including the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Critics Circle award for A Thousand Acres (King Lear as set on an Iowa farm circa 1979). She’s also distilled her years of teaching and cultural criticism into a superb writing... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2022-12-06 09:53:58 UTC ]
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If you have unprocessed trauma, $50,000, and a sense of adventure when it comes to your mental health, a new “wellness recovery program” created by Augusten Burroughs—author of the best-selling memoir Running With Scissors—may be right up your alley. The week-long program, called Focus-Directed... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2022-08-08 14:41:32 UTC ]
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For her first title with Farshore, Jennifer Killick has conjured an exciting, chilling tale of friendship. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2021-12-03 05:05:12 UTC ]
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Comedian Rosie Jones has added another string to her bow by authoring a children’s book series—the sort of titles she says she needed as a child Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2021-09-24 00:06:18 UTC ]
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Sarah Gilmartin admits "there has been a game-keeper turned poacher headline” in the Irish press in the run-up to the release of her début novel, after putting in eight years as a literary critic for the Irish Times. And she was a very specific sort of gamekeeper, as her brief for the Times was... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2021-09-10 12:32:50 UTC ]
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Here I am. Writing about mangoes, while eating a mango. I am a stereotype dream come true. “I try to avoid any mention of mangoes, of spices and monsoons,” said writer Jeet Thayil, in an NPR interview a few years ago. Yes, these are the stereotypes that we are often pigeonholed in. I debated and... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2021-05-28 09:09:52 UTC ]
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On the sunny spring morning that we speak, Harriet Evans has been going through the page proofs of her 12th novel, The Beloved Girls, with a forensic eye—long before she was a bestselling author, Evans was a highly regarded editor—and it has not met her exacting standards. “I’m actually... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2021-05-14 16:27:00 UTC ]
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"I have spent decades working with people who have caused horror and grief to others. I will tell horror stories in this book but I will also tell stories of change and recovery. It may surprise the reader that this is possible.” So writes forensic psychiatrist and psychotherapist Dr Gwen... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2021-03-19 19:46:17 UTC ]
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