"As partygoers arrive, ask them to write their name on a slip of paper and place it in one of two jars labeled with the possible genres. Then at the end of the party, pick out a name from the “correct guess” jar and give the winning guest a small gift, a galley or two hundred bookmarks with the address of your website. Give everyone else instructions on how to write an Amazon or Goodreads review when the book is out. These can be printed ahead of time and folded into the shape of a crane."

Jessica Francis Kane, “How to Host a Genre-Reveal Party,” McSweeney’s

Ha! So clever and delightful.

"I did an Internet search for quotes about life, and what it’s like, and I found life is indeed like a box of sardines (according to Alan Bennett), but it’s also apparently like: chocolates (Forrest Gump), artichokes (Thomas Aloysius Dorgan), pasta (Fellini), pudding (W.S. Gilbert), soup (Flaubert), an onion (Carl Sandburg), and a bowl of cherries (Erma Bombeck). There is a pattern here."

Scott Cheshire, ”Buoyant and Blue: On Jessica Soffer’s Tomorrow There Will Be Apricots“  (via millionsmillions)

Jessica will be here on Sunday for the Slaughterhouse 90210 event at Downtown Literary Festival! Join us it will be the best.

(via housingworksbookstore)

(via housingworksbookstore)

"I think I’m still very aware of the influences of other writers. A great book, a great voice, still leaves a deep impression not only on how I write, but on what I want to write. It’s possible, though, that as I’ve become more experienced as a writer, I’ve become less malleable, or less willing to consciously write in another writer’s style, or just less able to change my voice."

author Ken Kalfus, interviewed by David Burr Gerrard for KGB Bar Lit

(Source: kgbbar.com)

"I start [writing] sentence by sentence. That’s the only way I know how to begin. There are plenty of writers who I suppose have it all in their heads, then they sit down and just execute it. I don’t have that kind of mind. What we pretend are aesthetic decisions or camps that we’re claiming place in end up really being questions of how your particular mind operates. I talked to Diane Williams once at Columbia, I think she’s a tremendous writer of very short fiction, and she said that if she could she’d write big, grand narratives. But she can’t. I don’t know how hard she’s tried. You come to terms with who you are."

Sam Lipsyte, author of Home Land and The Fun Parts

(Source: tottenvillereview.com)

Publishing Salaries: A Poll

Um, workers of the literary world unite?

lifeinpublishing:

The results are in!

RESULTS:

Average Salaries by position:

Assistant: $31,693

Senior Assistant: $35,282

Associate: $40,804

Associate Manager: $49,486

Coordinator: $35,159

Editor: $44,808

Manager: $53,634

Publicist: $39,463

Senior Editor/Manager: $54,717

Read More

"I don’t know if my style [has] changed. My discipline changed. You have to write so much crap to get the good stuff. They tell you that. I used to believe that intellectually, now I believe it internally. It’s a part of the process. It can be terrible, though. And sometimes you just go for it and it’s amazing and works."

Girlchild author Tupelo Hassman, interviewed by Zola Books

(Source: features.zolabooks.com)

"As long as you don’t have artists throwing down any kind of challenge or complicating the story, which I think is kind of the job of the artist, then we’re just going to have what certain powerful people think we should have, and do what certain powerful people think we should do. So I think that’s preposterous. That’s self-Stalinism."

Sam Lipsyte, author of Home Land and The Fun Parts

(Source: tottenvillereview.com)

"Tumblr is well suited for lots of niche communities particularly the literary one. You will find publishers, authors, magazines, you name it, there, and Tumblr lends itself to visual content and short or long form posts and is easily piped out to Facebook and Twitter so you don’t have to post to all three places."

Sarah Russo on How to Promote Your Book (and Yourself)

(via rachelfershleiser)

View high resolution

millionsmillions:

Now you, too, can take a tour of Philip Roth’s Newark.

View high resolution

scribnerbooks:

An action shot goes a long way

Demonstrate how a book works.

(via blackballoonpublishing)