I want to tell you about a comma. Specifically, a comma on page 214 of a book we published last year, in the middle of a sentence that read: “She stood in the doorway, watching him leave, and felt nothing… Read more →

The Frankfurt Book Fair is held every October in a convention center the size of a small city. You enter through hall after hall of publishers from 80-something countries, navigating crowds that peak at over 300,000 visitors across five days,… Read more →

People sometimes ask me, usually after a drink or two at industry events, what we actually say when we reject a manuscript. They’re expecting something dramatic, or at least something revealing. They imagine that rejection letters contain coded messages, hidden… Read more →

I ghostwrote my first book when I was twenty-six. The author, a retired surgeon with a fascinating life and no patience for sitting at a keyboard, paid me a flat fee that seemed enormous at the time. I spent four… Read more →

I ghostwrote my first book when I was twenty-six. The author, a retired surgeon with a fascinating life and no patience for sitting at a keyboard, paid me a flat fee that seemed enormous at the time. I spent four… Read more →

I read my first novella when I was fifteen. It was Kafka’s “The Metamorphosis,” assigned in English class, and I finished it in a single afternoon on my bedroom floor. I remember the specific feeling of closing the book and… Read more →

Last year, I read 67 books. The year before that, 41. The year before that, maybe 15. I didn’t get faster at reading. I didn’t take a speed-reading course or install some app that flashes words at me one at… Read more →

Every publishing house has a personality, whether they admit it or not. You can feel it in the books they choose, the covers they design, the way their prose moves on the page. Some houses feel cool and minimal. Others… Read more →

I spent an embarrassing amount of time last month adjusting the leading on a chapter opener. Leading, for the uninitiated, is the vertical space between lines of text. I was working on the interior layout of a forthcoming book, and… Read more →

I’m going to say something that might lose us some friends in the traditional publishing world: self-publishing is a legitimate path, and it’s often the smarter choice. Not always. Not for everyone. But the stigma that still clings to self-published… Read more →