The Life and Times of a Navy Husband

I’ve linked to Tony Long, The Luddite, before. And I’ve posted about The Cult of the Amateur, too. Here’s Mr. Long on The Cult of the Amateur. It’s a classic:
OK, so the internet opens up the avenue of mass communication to everyone. So you get the blogs, be they good, bad or indifferent. You also [...]

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That’s what an annual subscription to Literary Marketplace goes for. Or $19.95 per week.
There is a free subscription option that gets users access to mailing addresses for agencies, but that is information is useless without info on what/who the agency represents.
And to think an e-rejection from Lippincott Massie McQuilkin was the source that led me [...]

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Obviously I’ve brazenly stomped into the world of online self-publishing. I haven’t given up on traditional publishing–in fact, I have news, but that’s a different post.
This is really just an experiment. No one has done any hard statistical research on the subject, but some writers, like Cory Doctorow believe giving their work away leads to [...]

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I have posted previously about the apparent absence of editors.
Mr. Purcell has noticed this, as well.

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David Louis Edelman blogs about his promotional efforts for his book Infoquake.
It’s an interesting look at how much of the publishing/marketing machine now depends on authors having a ‘do-it-yourself’ attitude. (Some agents suggest authors pay freelance editors prior to submission.)
(Via Galley Cat)

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I’ve been combing the submissions guidelines on several agents’ pages, and I have some questions.
1. Who’s to blame?
a. Agents who don’t really like writers?
b. Clueless writers?
c. The Man?
Perhaps I should explain. Many agents’ pages begin with a volley of statements designed to deflate authors’ expectations: “We receive a tremendous amount of queries”; “______ is an [...]

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The Big Bad Book Blog has a nice post about book placement at the big stores.
(Via Eoin Purcell.)

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My last post may seem a bit harsh. After all, as NY Times book critic Janet Maslin points out, while Calamity Physics starts out on shakey ground, she gets her story into the clouds and dazzles the reader well enough. And the reader eventually gets over some of her more obnoxious writerly tics, like ending [...]

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If this is what passes for good writing:
Perhaps the June Bug understood Dad had felt that way about all the others, but armed with three decades’ worth of Ladies Home Journal editorials, an expertise in such publications as Getting Him to the Altar (Trask, 1990) and The Chill Factor: How Not to Give a Damn [...]

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Mr. Dahlquist received $2 million for his efforts. No wonder there’s such a marketing push behind the book. Here’s the story.

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