Those excluded from the publishing industry can ultimately overwhelm its bigotry—if they all work together.
Tag: Publishing
What 35 Years of Data Can Tell Us about Who Will Win the National Book Award
We may never know what goes on in the rooms where literary prizes are decided, but thanks to data, we know exactly who was there.
The Frankfurt Book Fair and Its Cupboards
“In order to understand the multi-dimensionality of the global book industry, we urgently need to move beyond standard methods alone.”
Publishers and Scholars, Unite!
Universities have disinvested from their presses just as much as their humanities departments and libraries. Will working together stop it?
“Gestures of Refusal”: A Conversation with Sarah Bernstein and Daisy Lafarge
“Why do we want our characters to be innocent, as if we are innocent ourselves?”
Fool’s Gold
In the blurb-saturated present, authors can decry blurbs as corrupt and silly all they like. When they publish new books, however, they will be conscripted to marketing duties, obliged to solicit blurbs, and most will provide glowing snippets to hype their friends and colleagues too.
Finding Your “Voice”: Author-Read Audiobooks
Does the author-read audiobook offer a perfect confluence between person, authorial persona, voice, and aesthetic form?
Morrison and Davis: Radicalizing Autobiography
Don’t question Angela Davis’ manuscript, Toni Morrison warned her publishing colleagues. Davis was not “Jane Fonda” but, rather, “Jean d’Arc.”
“The Last Samurai,” Unread
“In a world where the imagined purpose of the novel is to entertain—not to teach or spark further inquiry—The Last Samurai dissents.”
Failure’s Gifts
Even the most successful authors—like Phillis Wheatley and W. E. B. Du Bois—fail to publish all they’d like. What can that reveal about literature?
The View from the Fiction of the “New Yorker”
America’s premier literary magazine promises to offer a cosmopolitan view of the world beyond New York City. Does it deliver?
What Counts as a Bestseller?
A fundamental truth about bestseller lists? They are not a neutral window into what the public is really reading.
Audiobooks: Every Minute Counts
People who use audiobooks are expanding what reading is and can be. But they are also incentivizing publishers to change, in unexpected ways.
Where Is All the Book Data?
Industry is already using data to remake culture. To reverse the tide—to make culture more equitable—we need to decode that data for ourselves.
From One War to Another—Ukraine Facing Russia: An Interview with Volodymyr Vakhitov
They claim there is a “People of Donbass.” There is not.
“Cheerfully Monstrous”: Dodie Bellamy on Writing and Grieving
“I didn’t pay much attention to what was being put in the archives… there are letters that, if I had been paying attention, wouldn’t be there.”
“No Words”: Refugee Camps and Empathy’s Limits
Empathy will not close the refugee camps, nor will it aid refugees. So what will?
What Is a Book?
The “papers” of Toni Morrison can be accessed through a Princeton computer terminal. But where do these digital drafts end, and Beloved begin?
Quizzical: Which Academic Press Are You?
We don’t judge books by their covers, but we do sort people based on which academic presses match their personality types.
The Feminist Press at 50: An Interview with Jamia Wilson
“There was something about the resilience of an organization like this. We are the longest-running feminist publishing house in the world.”