As Black Lives Matter protests take place across the world, the publishing world is rushing to support those ‘ignored by the mainstream’. Who is the mainstream, then?The publishing industry is stilted and archaic. I worked in it for seven years, and left due to reasons I can’t legally talk about. Though, in that time, I was able to enforce and oversee some steps towards sustainable change. At 4th Estate, an imprint of HarperCollins, I started the Guardian 4th Estate BAME Short Story prize (still going strong, five years later). Staggered by the lack of underrepresented voices, I knew I had to do something, anything to give those voices a way to permeate the industry.It is taken for granted that would-be writers will know what a literary agent is. But most have no idea how to structure a book proposal, or where to send it. This information is possessed by those in the know, and the people in the know often want to keep it to themselves. Let’s talk about literary agents for a second; they are, effectively, tastemakers. Editors trust them to deliver books and authors that adhere to their (sometimes limited) taste. And what happens when these arbiters continue to work within the circles of writers who they already know? The same thing that always happens: books that follow trends, that look the same, that are written by the same kinds of people. Continue reading... Continue reading at 'The Guardian'
[ The Guardian | 2020-06-11 09:44:22 UTC ]
Frontline booksellers are the first people customers see when they set foot in bookstores across America, and are among the most vulnerable workers in the publishing industry. This is what their world looks like now. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2020-06-05 04:00:00 UTC ]
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Cultural Cross Sections Taylor Hickney In this profile, one of Marie-Helene Bertino’s students at the New School provides a personal glimpse of the author, whose new novel, Parakeet, was published June 2. On the evening of the National Book Awards,... Continue reading at World Literature Today
[ World Literature Today | 2020-06-04 19:40:55 UTC ]
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Asking consumers to remember what booksellers mean to them, Spain's publishing industry associations roll out a campaign to reopen book retailers. The post Coronavirus Response: Spain’s Publishing Industry Mobilizes Bookstore Support appeared first on Publishing Perspectives. Continue reading at Publishing Perspectives
[ Publishing Perspectives | 2020-06-04 13:07:04 UTC ]
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Pandemic Dispatches Elena Poniatowska In this column that originally appeared in La Jornada, Elena Poniatowska considers the role of editors and talks with Diego Rabasa, founder of publisher Sexto Piso. Already precarious, the pandemic lockdown has made... Continue reading at World Literature Today
[ World Literature Today | 2020-06-03 21:05:48 UTC ]
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Cultural Cross Sections Elena Poniatowska In this column that originally appeared in La Jornada, Elena Poniatowska considers the role of editors and talks with Diego Rabasa, founder of publisher Sexto Piso. Already precarious, the pandemic lockdown has... Continue reading at World Literature Today
[ World Literature Today | 2020-06-03 21:05:48 UTC ]
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Three literary agents affiliated with Red Sofa Literary, a boutique agency in St. Paul, Minn., resigned this past weekend after its principal tweeted that she was calling police to report looting on her block. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2020-05-31 04:00:00 UTC ]
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Today sees the launch of South Asian LitFest, a free, live online festival I've created to show celebrate and showcase authors both from the subcontinent and the diasporic South Asian writing community around the world. Why do we need it? Well, even as the publishing industry talks about... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2020-05-27 22:25:54 UTC ]
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Having dropped up to 2.5 million units in its worst 'acute COVID period' week, Kristin McLean says the US publishing industry needs to assess, predict, and harden weak spots for challenges ahead. The post NPD’s Kristen McLean on the US Industry: Weathering the Pandemic appeared first on... Continue reading at Publishing Perspectives
[ Publishing Perspectives | 2020-05-27 12:33:49 UTC ]
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Recently, a colleague experienced an irksome response from a coworker when she could not meet with him at short notice. She felt frustrated that he seemed to show little compassion or understanding when she’s currently balancing a full-time job and homeschooling two young children. She’s not... Continue reading at Publishing Executive
[ Publishing Executive | 2020-05-27 12:00:06 UTC ]
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The Amazon Literary Partnership has announced $1 million in grant funding to 66 organizations across the publishing industry. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2020-05-27 04:00:00 UTC ]
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The Covid-19 pandemic has brought huge swaths of the publishing industry to a halt, but one channel remains open and thriving: mobile webcomics. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2020-05-22 04:00:00 UTC ]
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Quarantine may be a golden opportunity to finally read "War and Peace" — but it's not an easy time for the book industry. Continue reading at HuffPost
[ HuffPost | 2020-05-21 09:45:35 UTC ]
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Many months ago, when we all sat in our meeting rooms, sipping coffee and bouncing campaign ideas around, I don’t think any one of us marketing folk could have predicted just how much our plans would be forced to change. The effects of the national lockdown on marketing campaigns and the... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2020-05-20 21:41:29 UTC ]
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Interviews Veronica Esposito Emma Ramadan is a literary translator based in Providence, Rhode Island, where she is the co-owner of Riffraff, a bookstore and bar. She is the recipient of an NEA Translation Fellowship, a PEN/Heim grant, and a Fulbright... Continue reading at World Literature Today
[ World Literature Today | 2020-05-18 18:20:27 UTC ]
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Longtime literary agent and left-wing activist Frances Goldin died May 16. She was 95. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2020-05-18 04:00:00 UTC ]
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Offering what they call their ‘360-degree view of the potential as well as the shortcomings of the publishing industry,’ Italy’s literary agents are organizing during the ‘critical situation’ imposed by COVID-19. By Porter Anderson, Editor-in-Chief | @Porter_Anderson ‘For a New Start After the... Continue reading at Publishing Perspectives
[ Publishing Perspectives | 2020-05-11 03:29:40 UTC ]
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Offering a '360-degree view of the potential, Italy's agents are organizing during the 'critical situation' imposed by COVID-19. The post Coronavirus: Italy’s Literary Agents Form ADALI, Their First Association appeared first on Publishing Perspectives. Continue reading at Publishing Perspectives
[ Publishing Perspectives | 2020-05-11 03:29:40 UTC ]
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Every industry is experiencing a digital transformation. For some, the pandemic has accelerated this transformation. Others, like retail, travel and QSR, are trying to quickly adapt to the new criteria of our on-demand world. Consumers are permanently changing their online consumption habits,... Continue reading at Folio Magazine
[ Folio Magazine | 2020-05-07 14:20:39 UTC ]
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April 2020 found the publishing industry entering a period of unexpected change as bookshops closed and the focus turned to digital sales. The COVID-19 lockdown has forced writers to re-evaluate the future in this difficult time. As a narrative psychologist and fiction writer, I am interested... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2020-05-05 04:49:45 UTC ]
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Publishing industry sales rose 3.5% in the first two months of 2020 over the same period in 2019, according to data supplied to the AAP by 1,361 publishers for the organization’s StatShot report. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2020-05-01 04:00:00 UTC ]
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