In my favorite episode of the now defunct, deeply pleasurable, and totally bisexual television series Dickinson, it's Christmas and Louisa May Alcott comes to dinner. Played by Zosia Mamet, Alcott has just made $35 from her first book, and she will not stop talking about money. Read more
Salman Rushdie, the Booker Prize-winning novelist, insists that he is not, like so many media members before him, going to Substack-at least not full-time. He won't be publishing his next book on the newsletter platform. Instead, he's taken an advance from the company to fool around with "whatever comes into" his head. This will apparently include a serialized novella. Read more
The subscription newsletter platform Substack announced on Wednesday it had signed an exclusive deal with Salman Rushdie - but he is just the latest in a growing number of authors making the leap to write serialised fiction delivered straight to the inboxes of subscribers who pay a monthly fee.
The first 400 words of my novel, Adjustments, were written mostly to prove to my publisher, who had asked for the story, that I had no novel to write. I was a non-fiction, just-the-facts writer who had read little fiction as an adult, let alone had any interest in writing it. Read more
It's often lamented that the art of deferred gratification has vanished from our instantly downloadable culture, but the increasing popularity of serialised novels suggests this may not be the whole story. Read more
The big new trend in digital publishing in 2016 is serialized novels that are delivered to you via an app or directly to the email inbox. Large publishers and a number of startups believe that most people do not read complete novels on their phone, but do have time to read a chapter a day.
As Alison Flood reported in The Guardian as the project got under way, it's been almost 200 years since Charles Dickens took Britain by storm with the serialization of his first major novel, The Pickwick Papers. And now, "American novelist Joshua Cohen is setting himself a larger target - of the internet at large - as he embarks on an a mission to reinterpret Dickens' debut live online." Read more
'I'm very reassuringly honest. It's a job as well as a calling. It's my living - I'm the chief breadwinner in my house. My husband is retired, he supported me through the two decades while I wasn't making enough to live on, and was doing all kinds of things to do with writing to survive - judging competitions, running workshops, appraising manuscripts.
‘My settings of Europe and English visitors weren't really doing it for them, so we decided Scotland would be good. I thought an island would be great, because it's a small community, and it's an opportunity for my main character to get away from it all. The team at HarperCollins have been so supportive and enthusiastic... Read more
For the past five years or so, I've read books on my phone. The practice started innocently enough. I write book reviews from time to time, and so publishers sometimes send me upcoming titles that fall roughly within my interests. Read more
The Guardian calls Irish-Indian poet Nikita Gill "Britain's most-followed poet on social media"-she has 780,000 Instagram followers and 180,000 TikTok followers, and her Instapoetry has been reshared by the likes of Khloe Kardashian, Alanis Morissette, and Sam Smith-and she has published seven volumes of poetry and two novels in the U.K. But she is far less known on this side of the pond. Read more
Nikkolas Smith knows a thing or two about book bans. The illustrator has created five picture books over the last three years-four of which have been yanked off library shelves. There's I am Ruby Bridges, about the civil rights icon; That Flag about the confederate flag; Born on the Water, which explores slavery; and The Artivist which features a child supporting trans kids.
Simon & Schuster has acquired the largest Dutch publishing group Veen Bosch & Keuning, including all of its publishers in the Netherlands and Belgium, as well as sister companies Thinium and Bookchoice.
The Publishers Association (PA) has criticised the government's response to a House of Lords report on AI, saying that it has failed to make "any tangible commitments to protect the creative industries against mass copyright infringement".
'If you want to be considered a poet, you will have to show mastery of the petrarchan sonnet form or the sestina. Your musical efforts must begin with well-formed fugues. There is no substitute for craft... Art begins with craft, and there is no art until craft has been mastered.'
'I'm very reassuringly honest'
‘My settings of Europe and English visitors weren't really doing it for them, so we decided Scotland would be good. I thought an island would be great, because it's a small community, and it's an opportunity for my main character to get away from it all. The team at HarperCollins have been so supportive and enthusiastic... Read more