An eight-year-old boy emerged from a medically induced coma with a remarkable story of visiting heaven and meeting a wide variety of people, including a literary agent who encouraged him to sell his story to a major publisher. Seems legit.
Category Archives: Publishing
Newly Discovered Literary Sequels
Harper Lee’s Watchman has captured the hopes of many readers, and now the author’s lawyer has announced the discovery of papers that may be yet another manuscript. Yes. That part’s true. Not even the lawyer appears to know what those papers hold, but The Onion has gotten hold of the title, “My Excellent Caretaker Deserves My Entire Fortune.”
Electric Lit reports that several publishers are now announcing newly discovered sequels to many of your favorite classics:
- Lunch at Tiffany’s by Truman Capote
- The Cul-De-Sac by Cormac McCarthy
- The Raisins of Wrath by John Steinbeck
- Moby-Dick 2: The College Years by Herman Melville
These look good, but when are publisher going find real blockbusters like these:
- The Big Bang Theory: A Personal View by Eccentrica Gallumbits
- Dreams Don’t Mean Anything by Richard Tull
- How I Survived an Hour with a Sprained Finger
- Highly Unpleasant Things It Is Sometimes Good To Know, a compilation
- Frank Recollections of a Long Life by Lady Bablockhythe
- Finding Love and Yeti, a memoir
- Keep the Home Fires Burning, by Nero Caesar
- When Mildew Awakens and Shouts, by Culdugger Smith-Smyth
Who Looks at Your Book Before It’s Published?
Bethany McShurley spells out the reasons a book could use multiple editors.
John Scalzi Lands 13-Book Deal
John Scalzi, author of Redshirts, which is being adapted for television, has scored a ten-year deal with Tor Books for thirteen new books.
The executive editor at Tor said that while Scalzi hasn’t had a top-of-the-list bestselling book, “One of the reactions of people reading a John Scalzi novel is that people go out and buy all the other Scalzi novels.”
Christian Book Awards 2015
“The highest honor of Christian Book of the Year™ went to The Daniel Plan by Pastor Rick Warren (with Daniel Amen M.D., and Mark Hyman M.D.). The New York Times bestseller with a strong and regular presence on the ECPA Bestseller list, is described as “creating a health plan” that adds faith, focus, and community to the usual “food and exercise” approach to weight loss and health. The plan is credited for helping 15,000 of Warren’s church members lose 250,000 pounds in the first year.”
The Christian Book Awards from The Evangelical Christian Publishers Association have been announced. Again from the press release: “The Christian Book Award® winners not only represent the best books in our industry, but in their variety they represent the transforming power of Christian content that impacts all of life,” explains ECPA President/CEO Mark Kuyper. “Our industry continues to produce ‘Good Books that Feed the Soul’ for all ages, seasons, and interests.”
Honoring Lane and Ebeth Dennis of Crossway
“On behalf of the ECPA, Crossway, and the entire Christian publishing industry, we thank Lane and Ebeth for their faithfulness to God’s Word; their love for the gospel of Jesus Christ; their service to his church; and their commitment to bear witness to God’s truth, beauty, and holiness through their lives and the publishing ministry of Crossway.”
The Evangelical Christian Publishing Association recognized the leaders of Crossway Books, Dr. Lane T. and Mrs. Ebeth Dennis, with a lifetime achievement award. Crossway Books emerged from Good News Publishers in 1979. They are the publishers of the English Standard Version of the Bible and published Frank Peretti back in the 80s. They’re good people, as we say.
How Important Are a Writer’s Connections?
The Blunt Instrument answers questions about the necessity of an MFA and how well-networked a writer must be to succeed. Among other things, he says,
Writing and reading and doing the rest of the administrative work required to get published take up a lot of time, most of which is uncompensated, especially at first.
You can do all of this (find a community, carve out dedicated writing time, etc.) without getting an MFA, but an MFA is a structured system that makes these things easier to achieve in a short time period. In my opinion, that’s what you’re paying for, more than the largely useless degree.
SCIgen Programmers Strike Back at Spammy Journals
Three MIT students decided to punk a computer science conference that published less-than-thoroughly vetted articles by speaking from completely bogus research. They developed a program that allowed them to produce random, “nonsensical computer-science papers, complete with realistic-looking graphs, figures, and citations.”
By drawing attention to “predatory publishers,” the students accomplished their goal, but their program went on to do far more. Their website still gets many visitors and the team receives emails from researchers who have used SCIgen to successfully submit papers to different conferences.
“Our initial intention was simply to get back at these people who were spamming us and to maybe make people more cognizant of these practices,” says [Jeremy] Stribling. “We accomplished our goal way better than we expected to.”
This is one of the ways more content is not better. Perhaps the publishers in question here are so far out of their league to begin with, they wouldn’t recognize legitimate research if they took the time to read it. On the other hand, maybe this is a sign that some scientific fields have advanced to the point of being indistinguishable from magic, and how do you analyze magic?
Publishers Sue Family Christian Stories Over Inventory
Family Christian Stores (FCS) is filing bankruptcy with the desire to claim several million dollars worth of inventory that they haven’t purchased. Publishers, who consigned that inventory to FCS, is suing to have their merchandise returned or purchased.
“As the nation’s largest retailer of Christian books and gift items with 266 stores in 36 states, Family Christian said it needed to restructure its debt in the face of sales that had fallen from $305 million in 2008 to $230 million in 2014,” reports Jim Harger.
No Plans to Publish ‘Jefferson Lies’
Though Lifeway still sells The Jefferson Lies, Thomas Nelson does not and after an investigation will not publish it. The author, David Barton, has stated Simon & Schuster will pick it this year, but that claim has been denied by the publisher’s spokesman.