The Reading Life Most book clubs fizzle within a few months. The ones that endure get a handful of unglamorous things right — mostly about books, structure, and people. Book clubs are founded with enormous enthusiasm and die with quiet regularity. The pattern is almost a cliché: a group of friends or acquaintances, excited … Read more
The Reading Life With millions of books a tap away, the hardest part of reading is often just deciding what to read — and the deciding can quietly eat the reading. Here is a small, modern absurdity that many readers know well. You finish a book, feel that pleasant sense of accomplishment, and go to … Read more
The Reading Life The reading habits that last aren’t built on willpower or free time. They’re built on triggers, tiny minimums, and a plan for the days everything falls apart. Nearly everyone who wishes they read more has, at some point, resolved to do it — declared a goal, maybe joined a challenge, read … Read more
The Reading Life The half-read pile isn’t a character flaw. It’s usually a few fixable problems wearing the disguise of one big personal failing. Look at the nightstand, the shelf, the e-reader, and there they are: the books you started with real enthusiasm and never finished. A bookmark frozen at page eighty. A novel you … Read more
The Business of Publishing The gap between a book’s cover price and what the author keeps surprises almost everyone. Here’s the chain of hands the money passes through — and why. Almost every new author is startled, sometimes shocked, by how little of a book’s price ends up in their pocket. You see a … Read more
The Business of Publishing Readers really do judge books by their covers — in about a second, at thumbnail size. Here’s what separates a cover that sells from one that quietly says “homemade.” “Don’t judge a book by its cover” is excellent moral advice and a terrible description of how book-buying actually works. Readers judge … Read more
The Business of Publishing A query is not a summary of your book. It’s a one-page sales pitch with a brutally short window to earn a “send me more.” The query letter is the gate almost every traditionally published novelist has to pass through, and it’s where a huge number of good books die … Read more
The Business of Publishing Neither path is “better.” They’re two different businesses with different trade-offs — and the right one depends on what you actually want. The question “should I self-publish or go traditional?” gets asked as if there were a single correct answer waiting to be discovered, and most of the advice you’ll find … Read more
Writing Craft Beginnings are exciting and endings write themselves. The middle is where novels go to die — and where most of them are abandoned. There’s a reason so many half-finished novels live in drawers and hard drives, stalled at roughly the same place: the middle. Beginnings are easy and thrilling to write — … Read more
Writing Craft The fear that planning will drain the life out of your story is real — but so is the blank-page drift that strands most unplanned drafts. There’s a middle way. Ask a room of novelists how they plan their books and you’ll start a small war. On one side are the outliners — … Read more