Free Republic

I would like to tell you about the biggest lie in book publishing. It appears in the biographies and social media profiles of almost every working "author" today. It’s the word "best seller." This isn’t about how The New York Times list is biased (though it is). This isn’t about how authors buy their way onto various national best-seller lists by buying their own books in bulk (though they do). No, this is about the far more insidious title of "Amazon Bestseller"-and how it’s complete and utter nonsense. Here's what happened in the book industry over the last few years:...

By the time John Kennedy Toole won the Pulitzer Prize for his great American novel, A Confederacy of Dunces, he had been dead for 12 years. Toole reportedly killed himself in part due to years of frustration over unsuccessful attempts to get his outrageously funny book about New Orleans published. It was only after his mother browbeat author Walker Percy into taking up the cause that Louisiana State University Press published the book in 1980. The following year, it won the Pulitzer for fiction. It went from being considered a cult classic to a must-read: More than 1.5 million copies...

I’ve always tried to be brutally honest with y’all when it come to money in this space because: 1 – It helps you trust the content I create here 2 – Being transparent is more comfortable for me than being vague 3 – Too many people in this space have wild misconceptions about how much money is or is not being made here, which leads to gossip and bitterness that’s a complete waste of time Since I first mentioned last year that I was writing a book and then more so when it was published, people have been curious about...

It's been called a "cure for rejection-letter fatigue." Amazon on Thursday released new details about the success of its program for authors who want to self-publish on its Kindle e-reader devices. The company, which unveiled a suite of new e-readers and tablets at a press conference in Southern California on Thursday, says 27 of the top 100 Kindle books were created using a system called Kindle Direct Publishing. That system allows authors to bypass traditional publishers and instead deal directly with Amazon, which claims to be able to publish their books digitally "in hours." The authors receive 70% of the...

Had to do it. Mother-in-law came to live after dad-in-law died. We had the only available ground-floor, no-stairs apartment in good condition, and the landlady sold it out from under us. And then there was the fact that mom-in-law is too old to learn Hebrew and has nothing to do there. So we've moved to Efrat, a/k/a "Little America", where Hebrew is not required, and where there's free transportation to the senior's center in Alon Shevut near by. Oh, and the link is to a book I wrote that I highly don't care if anyone buys, except for the money...

This summer, Darcie Chan's debut novel became an unexpected hit. It has sold more than 400,000 copies and landed on the best-seller lists alongside brand-name authors like Michael Connelly, James Patterson and Kathryn Stockett. It's been a success by any measure, save one. Ms. Chan still hasn't found a publisher. Five years ago, Ms. Chan's novel, "The Mill River Recluse," which tells the story of a wealthy Vermont widow who bestows her fortune on town residents who barely knew her, would have languished in a drawer. A dozen publishers and more than 100 literary agents rejected it. "Nobody was willing...

Taxes, weight gain, depression, loneliness—book advances are like lottery payoffs For those who think they have a book inside them just waiting to be written—and, really, isn’t that pretty much everyone?—landing a book contract would be like winning the lottery. Dreams would come true; doors would open. Anything could happen. “You hear about these big contracts coming in, and it whets your appetite,” said Leah McLaren, a columnist for Canada’s Globe and Mail, who landed a book contract with HarperCollins Canada in 2003 for her chick-lit novel, The Continuity Girl. “You start to think, ‘This is my lottery ticket …....