Pub Rants

The Importance of Leverage

This is definitely a rant-worthy topic. Publishing houses have implemented new corporate policies to pay advances in thirds—a portion of which must now be on publication. The Penguin Group implemented this last year and a recent Random House negotiation showed me that it’s new policy over there as well. It’s… MORE

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One Night of Queries

I read 150 email queries last night so I’m a little cross-eyed today. I did take some notes. Out of those 150 queries, about 30 of them were for young adult projects. About every other YA query featured a portal into another world. I kid you not. I said “no”… MORE

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Sucked Into The Portal

Last night I was watching the Olympics and reading sample pages. Yep. I like to multi-task. And to be honest, I shouldn’t be telling you this. What horrible agent has one eye on the Telly and the other on some sample pages she has requested? Happens more than you think.… MORE

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An Author Looks at Publicists

As you folks are probably gathering, I’m not one for answering questions. I just like to rant on random topics as they strike me. If you’ve got questions, why don’t you sidle on over to Miss Snark because she’s a hell of a gal for answering them. However, one of… MORE

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A New Clause in Town

Last week I was negotiating a contract with an editor over there at the Random House group. Color me pink when she mentioned that RH was adding a new clause to the contract that was going to be standard from here on out. RH would now like U.S.-only Spanish Language… MORE

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