Blog Archive
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Blog Action Day
Oct 15, 2007
Kate Douglas kindly notified me that today is Blog Action Day, a day when as many blogs as possible will be writing and talking about the environment in their own way. My plan is not to talk on a grand scale about the environment, but to talk about those things that we can do and […]
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More to Life Than Books?
Oct 12, 2007
Book talk. Day in, day out. Sometimes even us publishing professionals get tired of it. So when we stop jawing about the deals we’re negotiating or the article we read in PW, we veer into giggle sessions on Dwight Schrute’s recent antics to get ahead at The Office or debates on the practicality of Justin […]
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The Art of Editing
Oct 11, 2007
I was directed recently to this post on Salon and it made me think of an experience I had while I was still an editor with Berkley. As I’m sure many of you can relate to, whenever I visit family back in Minnesota, I find myself led around from event to event so parents and […]
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Bundling Advances for Revised Editions
Oct 10, 2007
My friend “Bob” wrote a book for a publisher that earned out his substantial advance and eventually sold tens of thousands of copies. After two years of sales, the book needed to be updated; the subject matter was topical and recent events meant that the first edition was no longer current. The publisher offered a […]
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Shop ’til You Drop
Oct 09, 2007
When I was in junior high school a friend gave me an atrocious T-shirt (I thought it was very cool at the time) that said “shop ’til you drop” and I loved it. Why wouldn’t I? I loved to shop. And I still do, but not in the way many of you are thinking. Now […]
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Market Update
Oct 08, 2007
Someone asked me recently how the contemporary romance market is doing and based on my recent trip the the NJ RWA Put Your Heart in a Book conference I’m pleased to say quite well. According to an editor with HQN they are looking specifically for big sexy contemporary romances right now and St. Martin’s is […]
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What We Represent
Oct 08, 2007
Despite the efforts we make to let people into the BookEnds world through our Web site and this blog, there seems to be some confusion as to what exactly we represent. To help clear things up we’ve made an even more detailed list of some of our specific interests. While reading, please note the date […]
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Houses Divided
Oct 05, 2007
I’ve been asked more than once lately how imprints function within publishing houses. Are they independent publishers or one entity within a house, and how should writers know at which houses and at which imprints you can submit to simultaneously? Last things first: Luckily writers don’t need to know because it’s damn confusing and there […]
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Pitching Projects of Not-Yet-Clients
Oct 04, 2007
I’ve been asked and I’ve seen many message board posts on whether or not agents pitch projects before even offering representation, and the answer is yes, sort of. As an agent I can only do my very best if I know exactly what the market wants and needs, and sometimes that means calling an editor […]
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Typos and Errors After Publication
Oct 03, 2007
I received an email question from a blog reader who had just finished reading one of her favorite authors and was dismayed by the “disastrous typos and spelling mistakes in the text, embarrassing things the author should have caught.” What she described to me were misspelled street names and store names, things anyone who is […]
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Query Recap
Oct 02, 2007
As I mentioned in my return from vacation post last week in the spirit of Nathan Bransford I tracked all the e-queries I received while on vacation and intend to give you a statistical breakdown of what happened to them. So here we go… Total equeries received: 142**keep in mind that this does not include […]
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Getting No Response
Oct 02, 2007
In a blog comment recently it was suggested that maybe I’m not as nice as my fellow Minnesotans because I haven’t responded to a query letter. So, Jessica, because you are so nice, should I assume that the two times I’ve queried you and received no response whatsoever (not even a rejection) it was because […]
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