Author Archive

Round-Down: Are BOGO Books A Good Thing?

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Many businesses have sought creative ways to keep customers incentivized to return because there are so many options for shopping around. Publishers are no different. Harlequin, the famed romance novel imprint of Harper, is turning to a new reader rewards program as a way to keep readers loyal in the

Round-Down: A Year of Publishing Only Women

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In a surprising move, And Other Stories, an independent publisher in the United Kingdom, decided last week to take up novelist Kamila Shamsie’s call for publishers to take a stand against gender bias by publishing only women in 2018. Publisher Stefan Tobler said that he and his colleagues had realized

Round-Down: Extra! Extra! Paper Lives!

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Despite the endless negative news reports and doomsday forecasts regarding the rise of eBooks at the expense of paper books, recent studies and reports vindicate those of us who prefer pulp to pixels. According to the American Booksellers Association, independent booksellers are continuing to add new stores, which means there

Round-Down: eBooks on the Go

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Two new partnerships with digital media distribution platforms are allowing publishers to make it even easier to get electronic books in the hands of travelers this month. On May 6, Kobo, a Rakuten company, and Global Eagle Entertainment, Inc. launched a reading platform that will allow Southwest Airlines passengers to access,

Round-Down: Poetry, Memoir, and the Ever-Shifting “I”

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Recently, a trend has emerged: more and more poets are turning to memoir. In the last two weeks alone I have read essays by Tracy K. Smith about her new memoir and reviews of Elizabeth Alexander’s. Both detail the reasons for the authors’ switch in form, making me wonder, as Smith does in

Round-Down: Is the “Most Challenged Books of 2014” List Real?

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As anyone ever tasked with disciplining a child (or heck, even anyone who has ever been a child) can attest, telling someone they are forbidden from accessing something only makes that person more likely to want that particular thing. Case in personal point: when I was about thirteen, my

Round-Down: Young or Old, Why Do We Write?

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One essential question rises out of the hullabaloo of conflicting opinions broadcast in Cynthia Ozick’s philosophical essay in the New York Times on old vs. new writers and The New Republic’s Phoebe Maltz Bovy’s prickly response: Why do we write? Both essays are well written, thoughtful, and make excellent

Round-Down: A Failure of Responsibility

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Kenneth Goldsmith, writing professor at the University of Pennsylvania and self-proclaimed “uncreative” poet, came under fire two weeks ago for performing Michael Brown’s autopsy report as a found poem at a conference at Brown University—and, in the aftermath, the incident has caused artists in every genre to ask: is

Round-Down: Saludos to the Spanish-Speaking Reader

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Those in the U.S. who speak Spanish in the home can rejoice: now, more easily than ever in this country, Spanish speakers can also find books in their lengua materna—and not just translations from English to Spanish. Real, authentic stories from all over the Spanish-speaking world are in demand

Round-Down: Enough of Genre Debate Already

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I’m a little disappointed in Jennifer Weiner. And not in the way you’d think. Certainly not in the same way as Jonathan Franzen. Rather, I’m disappointed that she’s seemingly buying into the genre vs. literary distinction while she (admirably and very hilariously) defends herself on Twitter against Franzen’s latest attacks.