Pages For Small Wages

The idea is to create an awful opening line for a fake work of fiction.

This year’s overall winner was University of Wisconsin Oshkosh professor Sue Fondrie, who submitted the following: “Cheryl’s mind turned like the vanes of a wind-powered turbine, chopping her sparrow-like thoughts into bloody pieces that fell onto a growing pile of forgotten memories.”

Notably, it is the shortest winner in the contest’s 29 year history.

Click the link above to read all of the winning … and losing, groan-inducing entires.

Every reader knows that the trouble is not finding something to read, but finding something you want to read.

Sometimes, it’s something familiar, something known.

Sometimes it’s something new, something unexpected.

SF Novelists proudly offers you twenty-five teasers, twenty-five first chapters across the spectrum of Science Fiction and Fantasy.

Twenty-five tastes, to tempt your appetite for adventure… to lure you into unknown worlds.

And give you something new to read.

And the best part is, it’s absolutely FREE.

Read more about this amazing collection at the link above, then download a copy in your favourite eReader format.

Clara Heyworth, the marketing director at the radical publishing house Verso Books and one half of one of the most beloved couples in New York publishing, died earlier this morning as a result of injuries received after being hit by a car in Brooklyn early Sunday morning.

More at the link above.

Awhile back I plugged one of my friends upcoming books that’s being published by Scholastic next year. I mentioned that they’d sent the manuscript out for review, with letter of recommendation.

Well…

Inside the front cover of this manuscript is a signed letter urging our store staff to read it, signed by a large chunk of the Scholastic publicity staff.

When it came to Alamosa Books, we all chuckled about it (how sweet…) and then put it aside in favor of more pressing issues. I can only say, I wish I’d taken their advice sooner.

I’m eagerly awaiting the next stage!

This is a book that everyone will read and read again. Teachers, if you have reluctant readers, put this in their hands and just watch how quickly they gobble it up. Parents, if you want a good read aloud for younger readers, take this one home. But be prepared for pleas to keep going. Fantasy lovers, if you crave a good adventure, it just doesn’t get any better!

Click the link above to read the rest of this amazing review…

Then wait patiently with me for next April to come around.

SIGH!

P.S. You can find out more about this amazing writer and her amazing books here.

And don’t forget to check out the spectacular art by Gideon Kendall 

Gollancz, the SF and Fantasy imprint of the Orion Publishing Group, announces the launch of the world’s largest digital SFF library, the SF Gateway, which will make thousands of out-of-print titles by classic genre authors available as eBooks.

Building on the remarkable success of Gollancz’s Masterworks series, the SF Gateway will launch this Autumn with more than a thousand titles by close to a hundred authors.

It will build to 3,000 titles by the end of 2012, and 5,000 or more by 2014. 

More at the link above.

There is definitely a place for bricks and mortar.

People want human contact. They want to be able to talk to knowledgeable booksellers, and they want to browse a range of books, which you cannot do on the internet. 

Browsing is entertainment, and you cannot replicate that online. 

Read the whole article at the link above.

By Catherine Ryan Howard

Amazon is effectively the adults’ table, and we self-publishers have been allowed to join. (And yes, I’m using the word allowed, because Amazon is a privately owned business who can sell what they want, not a democracy.) But the stunning success of a very few has imbued some of us with a rebellious over-confidence that seems to make us think we can put our elbows on the table, make faces in our food and throw peas at the other guests, and that we can do it ad infinitum without ever being asked to leave.

But that just isn’t the case. If self-publishers don’t buck up and start acting professionally, if we waste these opportunities that have been handed to us on a plate, if we insist on taking advantage of the situation without keeping up our end of the bargain – producing quality content – then we’re going to get sent back to the kid’s table.

And I can assure you, there are no opportunities there.

Read the entire article at the link above.

by Michael Dirda

TO START WITH, shouldn’t it be called the “better-seller list”? I suppose that doesn’t quite sing, but how can you have more than one best seller at a time?

However you refer to it, the list is a disaster for literary and general culture. This isn’t to say that good books don’t become best sellers. John Berendt’s Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil is a superb combination of memoir, journalism, crime reporting, and cultural history, as well as one of the most popular nonfiction works of the past twenty years. Stephen King is an astonishing storyteller, as are, in their differing ways, J. K. Rowling and Elmore Leonard. Come bedtime on a workday, few of us are ready for an assault on the Mount Everests of literature, philosophy, and history. A Maisie Dobbs mystery by Jacqueline Winspear will do quite nicely, thank you.

No, my dislike of the list is directed entirely at the thing itself. I think it’s bad for readers, bad for publishing, and bad for culture. Above all, despite appearances, the best-seller list isn’t populist; it’s elitist. If there are a dozen slots, six are filled by the same old establishment names. For every James Patterson novel on the list, that’s one fewer novel by someone else. This is a tight little clubby world.

More at Bookforum.com

Want To Share An Embarrassing Misconception? You’re Not Alone.

Sorry, but Art Deco is not a person.

“What would you do if you weren’t afraid?”

ANNALS OF COMMUNICATIONS

A WOMAN’S PLACE: Can Sheryl Sandberg upend Silicon Valley’s male-dominated culture?

by Ken Auletta

I’ve occasionally found myself playing it in my mind while browsing in used books stores, trying to discern a plausible opening line. I am invariably surprised. 

And although it might seem as if it belong on the procrastinators list of ways to avoid working on your own manuscripts, I must admit it has been a helpful tool in overcoming writers block.