From cancelled books to ‘review bombing’, it might seem as though the website can make or break a career. But how influential is it really?Something dramatic happens on a social media platform every day. On Goodreads, the anachronistically designed website for logging, rating (out of five) and reviewing books, the dramas are more amusing, and they occasionally even draw attention from areas beyond the site’s supposedly book-loving users. The most recent featured Cait Corrain, the fantasy author who set up an elaborate network of fake accounts to post positive reviews of her own forthcoming book as well as negative reviews of authors she felt were her competitors. When citizen journalists uncovered her plot in December 2023, her book was cancelled, and she lost her agent and a future book deal.A juicy, postmodern story of self-sabotage, or a sad one about the intersection of the internet and mental health. Regardless, its stakes are relatively low: publicly harassing one’s colleagues is a sackable offence anyway, and it’s hard to find someone who really cares about the vicissitudes of the young adult literature world who isn’t part of the subculture. I’m not; I’m a professional critic, and an author of a literary novel. I’m a snob. I care about my book, and the authors I feel are my competitors. And while Goodreads has been around since 2007, its significance to the broader literary world remains steadfastly confusing. Does it sell books? Does it make and break careers?... Continue reading at 'The Guardian'
[ The Guardian | 2024-02-17 09:00:10 UTC ]
Author Salman Rushdie among those angry after some passages relating to weight, gender, mental health and race were rewrittenCritics are accusing the British publisher of Roald Dahl’s classic children’s books of censorship after it removed colourful language from works such as Charlie and the... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2023-02-20 04:05:42 UTC ]
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Family memoirs are never about one thing. There’s always a compelling domestic story; in her new memoir, The Critic’s Daughter, Priscilla Gilman tells a fascinating story about her dynamic parents and the literary world that they inhabited. But good memoirs always involve a secondary subplot (or... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2023-02-06 09:54:35 UTC ]
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Nearly six months after he was brutally attacked, Rushdie is recovering and releasing a new novel, with the literary world rallying to his side. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2023-01-25 16:58:49 UTC ]
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Filippo Bernardini impersonated agents and publishers to obtain works from writers including Atwood, McEwan and RooneyAn Italian man has admitted to stealing more than 1,000 unpublished manuscripts, including from distinguished authors, solving a mystery that had puzzled the literary world for... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2023-01-07 10:51:29 UTC ]
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Audio production company Audio Up Media and book publishing house Harlequin Enterprises are teaming up to adapt 52 of the publisher's romance titles into scripted podcast series, with an eye to also turn these into--more highly monetizable--TV series. Audio Up, also home to mental health and... Continue reading at AdWeek
[ AdWeek | 2022-12-06 12:42:46 UTC ]
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To further capitalise on the popularity of BookTok the social media giant will let users purchase titles through partnerships with publishers and retailersTikTok has proved to be a hugely successful way to promote books in recent years, with publishers attributing the popularity of books such as... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2022-11-17 16:49:24 UTC ]
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Anna Moschovakis is one of those unicorns in the literary world who manages not only to do it all, but do it well—more than well. She is a poet, translator, novelist, critic, publisher, professor, and community organizer. Her translation from French of David Diop’s At Night All Blood Is Black... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2022-11-17 09:51:50 UTC ]
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More than 250 literary figures rail against acquisition by Penguin Random House of book by conservative US supreme court justiceMore than 250 figures from the US literary world have signed an open letter protesting the acquisition by Penguin Random House of a book by the conservative supreme... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2022-10-27 06:00:22 UTC ]
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Literary world riven by conflict as trade union is accused of inappropriately taking sides in culture warIt is a literary row that threatens to consume the very organisation set up to protect authors’ rights. And, in spite of the involvement of three prominent names in children’s books, it has... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2022-08-21 09:00:05 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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Yep, you guessed it: “Barefoot Bookseller,” the greatest job in the literary world, is once again accepting applications. Would you like to run a bookstore on a desert island in the Maldives for a year? What if I told you that you weren’t allowed to wear shoes . . . or read the news? I […] Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2022-08-01 13:04:38 UTC ]
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Today in extremely niche literary world factoids: in case you didn’t know (I did not) Zadie Smith has a younger brother named Ben Bailey Smith, an actor and standup who goes by Doc Brown, admires Taylor Swift’s writing ability, and features in Netflix’s new adaptation of Jane Austen’s Persuasion... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2022-07-20 16:07:31 UTC ]
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In its fourth and final year, IPA’s Africa Publishing Innovation Fund will support publishers in accessibility. By Porter Anderson, Editor-in-Chief | @Porter_Anderson ‘Opening the Literary World to Everyone’ ur readers will recall that at mid-June, we had the announcement of the Africa... Continue reading at Publishing Perspectives
[ Publishing Perspectives | 2022-06-29 10:33:25 UTC ]
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In the memoir “James Patterson by James Patterson,” the best-selling author opens up — kind of — about how he came to be such a force in the literary world. Continue reading at The Washington Post
[ The Washington Post | 2022-06-06 11:00:41 UTC ]
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No disrespect meant to the downers of the literary world, but sometimes you just want a book that makes you smile. Continue reading at The Washington Post
[ The Washington Post | 2022-05-26 13:30:15 UTC ]
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Monique Roffey, the Costa-winning author of The Mermaid of Black Conch, on the lit-boom that’s happening on the Caribbean islandLast week, Trinidadian writer Lisa Allen-Agostini’s novel The Bread the Devil Knead landed a coveted spot on the Women’s prize shortlist. As a fellow Trinidadian... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2022-05-03 13:03:34 UTC ]
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The Hugo Award is the biggest science fiction award in the literary world, and it has just announced its 2022 finalists. Continue reading at Book Riot
[ Book Riot | 2022-04-07 16:12:38 UTC ]
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New hero alert: Wong May, the winner of this year’s $165,000 Windham-Campbell Prize in poetry, who expressed surprise at the award given than she has consciously eschewed the literary world in favor of the work itself. On the Windham-Campbell website, Wong May has one of the all-time great... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2022-03-29 19:56:25 UTC ]
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Last December, the literary world mourned the loss of essayist Eve Babitz—joyful, sharp observer of Los Angeles. Now, The Huntington Library in San, Marino has announced it has acquired Babitz’s archive, meaning researchers will be able to browse drafts of Babitz’s books and articles, original... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2022-03-11 18:11:06 UTC ]
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At the risk of seeming obnoxiously obsessed with ourselves, writers and readers do tend to love books about writers and readers—especially when those fictional writers and readers behave badly. (It’s no wonder, really, why the Bad Art Friend discourse hit a nerve; so many people were frantic... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2022-03-11 12:00:00 UTC ]
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