It’s a good thing for writers, but is it good for readers?
“Aspiring authors have never had more or better options for self-publishing the manuscripts currently gathering dust in their desk drawers or sleeping in seldom-visited corners of their hard drives.”
via Laura Miller – Salon.com.
Should you post your writing and queries online or not? Here are the arguments on either side by two publishing industry professionals. My advice on this — not that you asked — and in all writing and publishing matters: Listen, but make up your own mind.
Jane Friedman is the publisher and editorial director overseeing Writer’s Digest magazine, Writer’s Digest Books, and the Writer’s Market series. She says: Stop Being Afraid of Posting Your Work Online.
Chuck Sambuchino is an editor for Writer’s Digest Books and two annual resource books: Guide to Literary Agents, as well as Screenwriter’s & Playwright’s Market. He says: Be (Slightly) Afraid of Posting Your Work Online.
“…memoir, for much of its modern history, has been the black sheep of the literary family. Like a drunken guest at a wedding, it is constantly mortifying its soberer relatives philosophy, history, literary fiction—spilling family secrets, embarrassing old friends—motivated, it would seem, by an overpowering need to be the center of attention.” via The New Yorker.
Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. via HTMLGIANT
In a long bad-news article, this is the “good” news: “One slush stalwart—the Paris Review— has college interns and graduate students in the magazine’s Tribeca loft-office read the 1,000 unsolicited works submitted each month. Each short story is read by at least two people. If one likes it and the other doesn’t, it is read by a third. Any submission that receives two “Ps” for “pass” as opposed to “R” for “reject” is read by an editor. ‘We take the democratic ideal represented by the slush pile seriously, says managing editor Caitlin Roper.The literary journal publishes one piece from the slush pile each year. That leaves each unsolicited submission a .008% chance of rising to the top of the pile.” via WSJ.com.