Most people have never heard of a manuscript auction, and even among writers, the details are surprisingly murky. I’ve participated in a handful from the publishing side, and the experience is nothing like what the word “auction” conjures. There’s no… Read more →

I have a confession: I used to care about literary awards. A lot. I’d follow the Booker Prize longlist announcements the way some people follow the NFL draft. I’d read the National Book Award finalists every year, form opinions about… Read more →

My grandmother read westerns. Paperback Louis L’Amour novels with cracked spines and sun-faded covers, stacked on the table beside her recliner in a house that smelled like coffee and wool. She read one every few days, sometimes recycling through the… Read more →

We get asked about literary agents constantly. Authors email us, pitch us at events, and corner us at bookfairs to ask: what do you look for in an agent? The question usually means something slightly different than what it says… Read more →

I walked into a bookstore in Portland last spring, one of those places where the shelves lean slightly under the weight of their inventory and the floorboards creak in a way that feels deliberate, like the building is trying to… Read more →

I started keeping a reading journal in 2018, mostly on a whim. A friend had mentioned she wrote down a few lines about every book she finished, and the idea lodged in my brain like a song you can’t stop… Read more →

I have a copy of Miles Davis’s Kind of Blue on vinyl that I bought at a record store in Chicago in 2011. I don’t listen to it very often anymore, but I keep it because the cover is one… Read more →

My favorite opening line in all of fiction is eleven words long. It comes from Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House, published in 1959: “No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality.”… Read more →

I gave a book five stars on Goodreads last year that I now think was probably a three. I’m not sure when the inflation happened, exactly. I finished the book on a Friday night, felt a warm glow of satisfaction,… Read more →

I spent a decade working at one of the Big Five publishers before starting ScrollWorks Media, so when people ask me how small publishers compete, I’m answering from both sides of the line. I know what the big houses can… Read more →