The iOS app, pending improvements, still might catch on, but if it doesn’t, we’ll have to figure out how to try to keep those subscribers as we fold them back into the original distribution system. We’re also in talks with an established indie publishing house, trying to figure out whether doing a handful of print […]
publishing
Posted inNonfiction
Interview: Vela Magazine Founder Sarah Menkedick on Women Writers and Sustainable Publishing
An Q&A with Sarah Menkedick.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
‘Two-Thirds of Publishing Is About Failure’
My boss when I worked in London—someone who’d published Booker Prize winners, remember—used to say that two-thirds of publishing is about failure. I agree with that: it’s the nature of the business. And yet publishing is an industry that keeps attracting to it, in various ways, people who want it to be two-thirds about success. […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
The Pursuit of Writing and the Problem of Entitlement
Entitlement operates at a more basic and often unconscious level. It’s a kind of defensive snobbery, a delusion that the world and its constituent parts—whether a product or a piece of art or a loved one—exist to please you. This is why I often find it disheartening to eavesdrop on people at the annual Association […]
Posted inBooks, Fiction, First Chapters
'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 […]
Posted inBooks, Fiction, First Chapters, Story
'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 […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
The Financial Reality of a $200,000 Book Advance
In 2008 I sold a book-in-progress for $200,000 ($170,000 after commission, to be paid in four installments), which still seems to me like a lot of money. At the time, though, it seemed infinite. The resulting book—a “paperback original,” as they’re called—has sold around 8,000 copies, which is about a fifth of what it needed […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
There Are Three Types of People Who Can Afford to Write Books
Several editors, agents, and authors told me that the money for serious fiction and nonfiction has eroded dramatically in recent years; advances on mid-list titles—books that are expected to sell modestly but whose quality gives them a strong chance of enduring—have declined by a quarter. These are the kinds of book that particularly benefit from […]
Posted inFiction, Quotes
Charlie Chaplin's Lost Novel
“What happened?” “A nervous breakdown. I almost died.” “And you’re still drinking?” “Occasionally, when I think of things.” He smiled, “The wrong things, I suppose. However, I’ve talked enough about myself. What would you like for breakfast?” “What a sad business, being funny,” she said thoughtfully. The table was laid and now he was ready […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
The Winners and Losers in the Book Business
“It begins to dawn on me that if a company publishes a hundred original hardcover books a year, it publishes about two per week, on average. And given the limitations on budgets, personnel, and time, many of those books will receive a kind of ‘basic’ publication. Every list—spring, summer, and fall—has its lead titles. Then […]