A little Wednesday post in March
What’s cool? Publisher profiles and “Becoming the A24 of Books?” Big books & little books, from Scandinavia preferably? BookTok is back; BookTok never left. Tables of Contents so cool the event I wanted to attend sold out day of announcement. Getting a galley still feels cool.
Blurbs are, decidedly, uncool, but necessary, and we don’t know what else to use.
What I’ve been reading:
I’m fully in Newfoundland with The Shipping News by Annie Proulx.
What you should be reading:
New Bryan Washington short story in The New Yorker, “Hatagaya Lore,” plus interview.
New novel out November 4.
My most recent post, on “The Call”
Substack posts I’ve been reading:
Interesting data and spreadsheets here in textCrunch, No. 2: Looking Inside the Slush Pile; I do certainly think that the online-wishlist-culture is tilted toward the agents looking for YA and commercial fiction. Agents looking for literary and prestige only might not, historically, have to advertise themselves so much online. I could certainly see this shifting, but then again, there is a real commercial shift across even the literary imprints these days…
“If the pitch for your book rests overwhelmingly on why you wrote it, you’re not effectively pitching your book.” From Agents & Books
“What is the Midlist?” Reclaiming ‘mid’…
Andrew Boryga in convo with Tell the Bees!
Thinking about cover reveals. Leigh Stein revealed her cover via Substack. Now that The Drift and Allure are on Substack, will this become more common?
Bryan Washington’s new novel cover revealed via PEOPLE.
Other recommendations:
These fancy gummies.
re: your remark about online wishlist culture, when I was exploring becoming an agent and already anxious THINKING about receiving hundreds of queries, one agent told me “Don’t be open to queries. Nicole Aragi is not open to queries.” !!!