Search Results for: publishing

This Is Not a Startup Story

Longreads Pick

Lessons from starting a small publishing business.

Source: Fast Company
Published: Oct 10, 2014
Length: 8 minutes (2,028 words)

How to Spell the Rebel Yell

Elena Passarello | The Normal School | 2010 | 14 minutes (3,470 words)

The Normal SchoolOur latest Longreads Member Pick is a deep dive into the sounds of history, from Elena Passarello and The Normal School. The essay also is featured in Passarello’s book, Let Me Clear My Throat.
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“Yee-aay-ee!” “Wah-Who-Eeee!” -Margaret Mitchell

 

“Wah-Who-Eeee!” -Chester Goolrick

 

“Rrrrrr-yahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh-yip-yip-yip-yip-yip!”

-H. Allen Smith

 

“More! More! More!” -Billy Idol

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State of the #Longreads, 2014

Lately there has been some angst about the state of longform journalism on the Internet. So I thought I’d share some quick data on what we’ve seen within the Longreads community: Read more…

'Friendship': The Full First Chapter from Emily Gould's New Novel

Emily Gould | Friendship | Farrar, Straus and Giroux | July 2014 | 8 minutes (1,893 words)

 

Below is the opening chapter of Friendship, the new novel by Emily Gould, who we’ve featured often on Longreads in the past. Thanks to Gould and FSG for sharing it with the Longreads community. You can purchase the full book from WORD Bookstores

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Philip Levine’s Advice for ‘Making It’ as a Writer

When I was about nineteen I showed my poems to one of my teachers at Wayne. He said these were incredible poems, poems that should be published. I said, “Oh really?”—I was thrilled—“How would I go about doing that?” He walked over to his bookshelf and brought back a copy of Harper’s. He wrote down the name of the editor and said, “Send the poems to him. I met him once at a party, he may remember me. It doesn’t matter, the poems are so good. Just send them.” So I sent them. A month later they came back with a little printed note telling me they didn’t suit their present editorial needs. I was just shocked. I took it to the teacher and said, “Why, you assured me.” He said, “I don’t understand it.” He was a very sweet man, but he didn’t know the first thing about publishing. …

Many young poets have come to me and asked, How am I gonna make it? They feel, and often with considerable justice, that they are being overlooked while others with less talent are out there making careers for themselves. I always give the same advice. I say, Do it the hard way, and you’ll always feel good about yourself. You write because you have to, and you get this unbelievable satisfaction from doing it well. Try to live on that as long as you’re able.

-Philip Levine, in the Paris Review (1988).

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Photo: usdol, flickr

Citizen Bezos

Longreads Pick

Steve Coll examines Brad Stone’s The Everything Store, and Amazon’s impact on publishing:

Toward the end of his account, Stone asks the essential question: “Will antitrust authorities eventually come to scrutinize Amazon and its market power?” His answer: “Yes, I believe that is likely.” It is “clear that Amazon has helped damage or destroy competitors small and large,” in Stone’s judgment.

In view of Amazon’s recent treatment of The Everything Store, Stone may now end up as a courtroom witness. Yet there are reasons to be wary about who will prevail in such a contest, if it ever takes place. As Stone notes, “Amazon is a masterly navigator of the law.” And crucially, as in so many other fields of economic policy, antitrust law has been reshaped in recent decades by the spread of free-market fundamentalism. Judges and legislators have reinterpreted antitrust law to emphasize above all the promotion of low prices for consumers, which Amazon delivers, rather than the interests of producers—whether these are authors, book publishers, or mom-and-pop grocery stores—that are threatened by giants.

Author: Steve Coll
Published: Jun 23, 2014
Length: 17 minutes (4,294 words)

Making the Magazine: A Reading List

Magazine nerds, here we go: A starter collection of behind-the-scenes stories from some of your most beloved magazines, including The New Yorker, Time, Entertainment Weekly, Cosmopolitan, Vanity Fair and the New York Review of Books, plus now-defunct publications like Might, George, Sassy and Wigwag. Share your favorite behind-the-magazine stories with us on Twitter or Facebook: #longreads. Read more…

Without Chief or Tribe: An Expat’s Guide to Having a Baby in Saudi Arabia

Nathan Deuel | Friday Was the Bomb | May 2014 | 21 minutes (5,178 words)

 

For our latest Longreads Member Pick, we’re thrilled to share a full chapter from Friday Was the Bomb, the new book by Nathan Deuel about moving to the Middle East with his wife in 2008. Deuel has been featured on Longreads in the past, and we’d like to thank him and Dzanc Books for sharing this chapter with the Longreads community. 

Download as a .mobi ebook (Kindle)

Download as an .epub ebook (iBooks)

 

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Privacy Policy

As part of our commitment to transparency and data privacy, the Longreads is now using the same Privacy Policy as our parent company, Automattic.

Your privacy is critically important to us. Longreads is part of Automattic, where we have a few fundamental principles:

  • We don’t ask you for personal information unless we truly need it. (We can’t stand services that ask you for things like your gender or income level for no apparent reason.)
  • We don’t share your personal information with anyone except to comply with the law, develop our products, or protect our rights.
  • We don’t store personal information on our servers unless required for the on-going operation of one of our services.
  • In our blogging products, we aim to make it as simple as possible for you to control what’s visible to the public, seen by search engines, kept private, and permanently deleted.

Below is our privacy policy which incorporates these goals: (Note, we’ve decided to make this privacy policy available under a Creative Commons Sharealike license, which means you’re more than welcome to steal it and repurpose it for your own use, just make sure to replace references to us with ones to you, and if you want we’d appreciate a link to Automattic.com somewhere on your site. We spent a lot of money and time on the below, and other people shouldn’t need to do the same.)

If you have questions about deleting or correcting your personal data please contact our support team.

Automattic Inc. (“Automattic”) operates several websites including longreads.comautomattic.comwordpress.comgravatar.com,intensedebate.com, and akismet.com. It is Automattic’s policy to respect your privacy regarding any information we may collect while operating our websites.

Website Visitors

Like most website operators, Automattic collects non-personally-identifying information of the sort that web browsers and servers typically make available, such as the browser type, language preference, referring site, and the date and time of each visitor request. Automattic’s purpose in collecting non-personally identifying information is to better understand how Automattic’s visitors use its website. From time to time, Automattic may release non-personally-identifying information in the aggregate, e.g., by publishing a report on trends in the usage of its website.

Automattic also collects potentially personally-identifying information like Internet Protocol (IP) addresses for logged in users and for users leaving comments on WordPress.com blogs. Automattic only discloses logged in user and commenter IP addresses under the same circumstances that it uses and discloses personally-identifying information as described below, except that blog commenter IP addresses and email addresses are visible and disclosed to the administrators of the blog where the comment was left.

Gathering of Personally-Identifying Information

Certain visitors to Automattic’s websites choose to interact with Automattic in ways that require Automattic to gather personally-identifying information. The amount and type of information that Automattic gathers depends on the nature of the interaction. For example, we ask visitors who sign up for a blog at WordPress.com to provide a username and email address. Those who engage in transactions with Automattic – by purchasing access to the Akismet comment spam prevention service, for example – are asked to provide additional information, including as necessary the personal and financial information required to process those transactions. In each case, Automattic collects such information only insofar as is necessary or appropriate to fulfill the purpose of the visitor’s interaction with Automattic. Automattic does not disclose personally-identifying information other than as described below. And visitors can always refuse to supply personally-identifying information, with the caveat that it may prevent them from engaging in certain website-related activities.

Aggregated Statistics

Automattic may collect statistics about the behavior of visitors to its websites. For instance, Automattic may monitor the most popular blogs on the WordPress.com site or use spam screened by the Akismet service to help identify spam. Automattic may display this information publicly or provide it to others. However, Automattic does not disclose personally-identifying information other than as described below.

Protection of Certain Personally-Identifying Information

Automattic discloses potentially personally-identifying and personally-identifying information only to those of its employees, contractors and affiliated organizations that (i) need to know that information in order to process it on Automattic’s behalf or to provide services available at Automattic’s websites, and (ii) that have agreed not to disclose it to others. Some of those employees, contractors and affiliated organizations may be located outside of your home country; by using Automattic’s websites, you consent to the transfer of such information to them. Automattic will not rent or sell potentially personally-identifying and personally-identifying information to anyone. Other than to its employees, contractors and affiliated organizations, as described above, Automattic discloses potentially personally-identifying and personally-identifying information only in response to a subpoena, court order or other governmental request, or when Automattic believes in good faith that disclosure is reasonably necessary to protect the property or rights of Automattic, third parties or the public at large. If you are a registered user of an Automattic website and have supplied your email address, Automattic may occasionally send you an email to tell you about new features, solicit your feedback, or just keep you up to date with what’s going on with Automattic and our products. We primarily use our various product blogs to communicate this type of information, so we expect to keep this type of email to a minimum. If you send us a request (for example via a support email or via one of our feedback mechanisms), we reserve the right to publish it in order to help us clarify or respond to your request or to help us support other users. Automattic takes all measures reasonably necessary to protect against the unauthorized access, use, alteration or destruction of potentially personally-identifying and personally-identifying information.

Cookies

A cookie is a string of information that a website stores on a visitor’s computer, and that the visitor’s browser provides to the website each time the visitor returns. Automattic uses cookies to help Automattic identify and track visitors, their usage of Automattic website, and their website access preferences. Automattic visitors who do not wish to have cookies placed on their computers should set their browsers to refuse cookies before using Automattic’s websites, with the drawback that certain features of Automattic’s websites may not function properly without the aid of cookies.

Business Transfers

If Automattic, or substantially all of its assets, were acquired, or in the unlikely event that Automattic goes out of business or enters bankruptcy, user information would be one of the assets that is transferred or acquired by a third party. You acknowledge that such transfers may occur, and that any acquirer of Automattic may continue to use your personal information as set forth in this policy.

Ads

Ads appearing on any of our websites may be delivered to users by advertising partners, who may set cookies. These cookies allow the ad server to recognize your computer each time they send you an online advertisement to compile information about you or others who use your computer. This information allows ad networks to, among other things, deliver targeted advertisements that they believe will be of most interest to you. This Privacy Policy covers the use of cookies by Automattic and does not cover the use of cookies by any advertisers.

Comments

Comments and other content submitted to our Akismet anti-spam service are not saved on our servers unless they were marked as false positives, in which case we store them long enough to use them to improve the service to avoid future false positives.

Privacy Policy Changes

Although most changes are likely to be minor, Automattic may change its Privacy Policy from time to time, and in Automattic’s sole discretion. Automattic encourages visitors to frequently check this page for any changes to its Privacy Policy. If you have a WordPress.com account, you should also check your blog’s dashboard for alerts to these changes. Your continued use of this site after any change in this Privacy Policy will constitute your acceptance of such change.

Change log:

  • September 18, 2013:  Added that blog commenter email addresses are disclosed to administrators of the blog where the comment was left.
  • February 1, 2011: Clarified subpoena language and added Business Transfers paragraph
  • January 3, 2011: Added court order and subpoena clarification
  • July 1, 2010: Revised paragraph about IP addresses to explain when they are collected and that commenter IPs are visible to blog administrators
  • October 29, 2009: Added Comments paragraph to explain Akismet comment storage policy
  • March 10, 2009: Added Ads paragraph to alert users that ads from third parties may use cookies

Submissions

If You’ve Published a Story and Would Like Us to Consider It for an Editor’s Pick

To submit an already published story for Editor’s Picks consideration, the best way to share it with us is via  @Longreads on Twitter, or tagging a tweet with the #longreads hashtag. 

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If You’d Like to Pitch Us an Original Story for Publication

Longreads accepts pitches for original work and pays competitive rates. We’re not accepting any fiction at this time.

We are a very small team and receive many pitches and submissions each day. We only respond if we are interested in publishing your piece, so we strongly recommend submitting simultaneously to other publications. Please email story pitches, essay submissions, and other queries to hello@longreads.com. Adding a bit of detail and context in your subject line helps to make your message stand out.

Essays and Features

Our pieces typically run between 2,000 and 6,000 words, but can be longer or broken up into a series depending on the length and subject matter. 

Personal essays should be submitted on spec, and we pay $500 per essay. We look for smart, original angles and fresh, unique voices. Here are some of our favorites: 

We accept pitches for critical essays and columns. Rates start at $500, with the rate varying depending on the level of reporting and research required.  Here are a few examples:

Longreads features that require original reporting should also be submitted as pitches. These features are edited and fact-checked. We are interested in collaborating with artists and photographers on stories, and are open to working with partners you may have in mind. Tell us what makes your story incredible and urgent, why you have the goods to write it, and why Longreads is the place to tell it.

We pay competitive rates for features depending on the degree of reporting required and the complication of your proposal. Base payment begins at $1,500, and we will work with you to pay you a solid fee and also cover expenses. Here are examples of this type of work:

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Some Tips

It can take us a considerable amount of time to review pitches and read submissions, which means we are unable to respond to everyone. For this reason, we think it’s a great idea for you to pitch your stories to other publications in addition to Longreads — but please include a note to us if you are doing so.

If you do decide to pitch something exclusively to Longreads, give us a deadline to consider your idea before taking your pitch to other outlets.

If we don’t accept your initial pitch, pitch us again! We reject stories for a variety of reasons: a story may not be quite right for us, and sometimes it’s all about timing.