PJ at 19whiskeys has posted a great little piece on the two types of writers. I won’t tell you what the two types are, because I want you to be overcome with curiosity and click that link.
However, let’s just say that type B is where everyone is going to want to believe they are. So, considering cognitive biases, if anyone is unsure whether they fall into A or B, I’m thinking they’re likely just A.
The other day, having read one book described as “one of the best-selling books of the 20th Century” and another as “one of the best-selling books of all time,” my brain starting spinning in amateur research mode.
My first question was: what does “one of” mean? Does it mean the 3rd best-selling book of all time? The 22nd? Among the top 1000?
As one might expect, Wikipedia has a list of the best-selling books of all time, with various estimates of total sales. But, with books from the 19th and 20th Centuries on the list alongside ancient works, Analytic Me started to wonder about rates of sale.
After all a train that travels 100 miles in 10 hours is nowhere near as fast as a train that travels only 1 mile in 1 minute. Likewise a book that sells a million copies over a thousand years is not being chosen at the same rate as a book that sells two thousand copies in a single year.
And, to answer the objection that a book like the Bible wasn’t selling at a steady ready over time (particularly before the invention of moveable type), I would point out that it still had centuries during which to drum up support and publicity.
So let’s take a look at how the numbers crunch.
At the Huffington Post, Rebecca Serle interviews Newberry Prize winning author Kathi Appelt, specifically on the subject of American Fantasy. Not fantasy fiction written by Americans, but fantasy fiction that draws on American locales and imagery.
Regular readers know that I have been all over this like a bear on a beehive with my Story Behind the Story series, explaining how I wanted to step away from the elves and swords and write fantasy that drew on American imagery and textual artifacts the way Tolkien drew on northern European imagery and textual artifacts.
Appelt could not echo my sentiments more clearly than when she says: Continue reading
Today is the birthday of Charles Scribner, personal editor of author Ernest Hemingway, whose last name I heartlessly employ as a euphemism for booze sipped while writing.
Now, this might seem the perfect occasion to combine the literary agent links with the editor/publisher links like I threatened promised hinted I might do, last week.
But, no! You shall have your literary agent links, separate and per the usual schedule, and you shall like it!
Want to know how close we can be to the sort of conflict that drives good historical fiction?
For the residents of the coastal town of Mystic, Connecticut, it’s as close as their own front yards. On a hill that is now part of a quiet neighborhood, almost 400 years ago, a fort of the Pequot people was destroyed by English colonists.
As reported by the Associated Press:
Artifacts of a battle between a Native American tribe and English settlers, a confrontation that helped shape early American history, have sat for years below manicured lawns and children’s swing sets in a Connecticut neighborhood. A project to map the battlefields of the Pequot War is bringing those musket balls, gunflints and arrowheads into the sunlight for the first time in centuries.
It’s also giving researchers insight into the combatants and the land on which they fought, particularly the Mystic hilltop where at least 400 Pequot Indians died in a 1637 massacre by English settlers.
Often, Americans look for historical intrigue and suspense overseas, in the Highlands of Scotland, the Imperial Court of China, India under the Raj, or among the legions of Rome.
But, long before the familiar struggles of the Depression, Prohibition and its gang wars, the Old West, the Civil War, and even the Revolutionary War, the eastern shore of America was the setting for much romance, violence, friendship, and betrayal… all of the elements that make up a good historical novel.
Librarian and author Lawrence Clark Powell said, “Write to be understood, speak to be heard, read to grow.”
I would add this to his list: “Link to help others.”
In that spirit, on to the writer links!
Patrick Kiger at the Second Act blog published a list of seven literary one-hit wonders in honor of the 50th anniversary of the publication of Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird.
Since these are seven broadly praised books which also share the distinction of being their authors’ only work, I thought it might be instructive to take a look at them to see if I could find any other similarities. What I discovered was that none of these books followed the “way things work” process from an unpublished writer’s hand to the bookstore shelf.
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Tin House publishing has kicked off a mini-controversy with their plan to accept manuscript submissions from writers who can prove they’ve recently bought a book.
As Anne Trubek of Good puts it: “What we have is a glut of people who want to be writers, who do not buy the consumer products of the industry they are seeking to join.” Continue reading
Another week, another round-up. Or roll. Or soup. Whatever you like to call it.
Sadly, many publishing pro blogs are suffering the same summar blahs that have afflicted the lit agent blogs. (*Knock Knock* Mr. Rinzler? Ms. Kroszer? Are you okay in there?) But, I still have plenty of intriguing stuff for you to check out!
So, let’s get right to the publishing pro links: Continue reading
fret. (1) A frith, or strait of the sea, where the water by confinement is always rough.
(2) Any agitation of liquors by fermentation, confinement, or other cause.
– Johnson’s Dictionary : A Modern Selection by Samuel Johnson (1755), ed. E. L. McAdam and George Milne (1963)
