Olson Out

Random House made it official this morning. Long-standing chairman Peter Olson will step down at the end of the month. Markus Dohle, the head of Bertselsmann's printing division, will replace him.

No Clubs Allowed in the Stores

Courtesy of Shelf Awareness, here is a link to some great advice on how to place your book at local and independent book stores.

Also via SA, The Economist provides an interesting review of international book clubs.

The Future of Publishing

Courtesy of GalleyCat, here's a link to an article from Sramana Mitra at Forbes about the publishing industry's backward ways and a suggested solution. Obviously I think the industry has its problems, but I don't agree at all with her answer. The amount of faith she has in Amazon doing the right thing as exclusive publisher and retailer is scary, and the numbers she quotes are misleading as well.

Running With Crazy

So I read a partial a few days ago. It was advertised as urban fantasy, but "not necessarily dark with excessive violence, rather playfully suspenseful with a tongue-in-cheek, satirical approach."
I thought it was cheesy, but I wrote an extremely kind rejection letter, telling her that it needed to be "darker to be a fit for my tastes." I do think there is a market for playfully suspenseful, but there has to be enough bite to keep readers interested, and I didn't think this partial had it. I went out of my way to emphasize that this was my own opinion.

I received a rude email in response, telling me that I clearly did not read her query letter. Offended, I told the author that this was my subjective opinion and that she should not take it personally. She wrote again, telling me to grow up.

This is the type of crazy that makes agents wary about email queries.

From the "No Duh" Department

Please don't describe your book as a fictional novel, science fiction novel, or autobiographical memoir. Pretty please.

Children's Cookbooks

According to The New York Times, cookbooks for children are the new rage.

Has GalleyCat Lost It's Meow?

I teach a contracts class for MediaBistro, and so I'm a bit biased when I say that I think they offer wonderful resources for media professionals. Despite this, I still feel compelled to comment on the recent drop in quality in GalleyCat, their daily newsfeed.

Since 2005 GalleyCat has been a staple of my daily reading. If you've never read it before, imagine Publisher's Lunch without the deals, but broader coverage. I was worried that there would be a drop in quality when Sarah Weinman left for greener pastures, but Ron Hogan continued to maintain a high quality.


It's only been in the past few weeks that I've noticed a drop - a smug tone has infiltrated a few of the posts, older stories are being recycled, and the overall writing quality has dropped a bit.

Here's hoping that the ship gets turned around soon.