Author Archive

My Idea of Will Self’s “My Idea of Fun”

I struggled with My Idea of Fun for a while, and nearly gave up on it when I got sent a more interesting manuscript to read1. I even got to the point where I had written a short note about where the book had gotten up to, and the reason I was abandoning it, so [ READ MORE ]

Why Getting Pole-axed Is Okay Sometimes

For some reason lately, every time I got out for some hair of the dog, I wind up getting drunk, and partying like it’s September 10 2001. I often go out alone, looking for interesting randoms. When this happens, and we strike up a conversation, I lose myself in the moment and I don’t want [ READ MORE ]

Hey There, Blimpy Boy!

Sam Cooney republished an article he wrote for Bookseller+Publisher about, well, the relationship between booksellers and publishers – and how this relationship is changing as publishers embark on direct-sales ventures, which, I guess, have the potential to undermine the traditional business models of booksellers. On the surface it seems like a superfluous debate, when compared [ READ MORE ]

Liberalism

Here is a Bertrand Russell quote that constitutes my favourite aphorism: The essence of the liberal outlook lies not in what opinions are held, but in how they are held: instead of being held dogmatically, they are held tentatively, and with a consciousness that new evidence may at any moment lead to their abandonment. I don’t know [ READ MORE ]

Ethics of Publishing

Something that especially inspires me about the young people I know in publishing is that they are, mostly, and for want of a better word, ’social justice natives’. Perhaps not in the strong sense that today’s teenagers are ‘digital natives’ compared to people my age, who can remember a time before computers could be bought [ READ MORE ]

Editing

I haven taken to writing aphorisms lately, in lieu of having the time to sit down and complete longer thoughts. The first one is about non-fiction editing: A good non-fiction editor is a non-specialist – one who has no previous knowledge of the subject, and therefore no preconceptions or predilections for facilitating the expression of a [ READ MORE ]

M@#$eting

I’ve been reading about marketing recently, because I joined the committee of Wet Ink magazine as Marketing Dude, and understanding what marketing means does not come as naturally to me as understanding how to edit a manuscript does. This seems to be a common sentiment in the small-press sector: there is an immense amount of production [ READ MORE ]

Soliciting Book Proposals

It’s time to give this blog a kick in the guts, by making it useful. I’ve been digging in at work and making the most of the cold summer I was welcomed with, and I’m ready to start soliciting book proposals or manuscripts, maybe, depending on the proposal. In particular I’m interested in challenging non-fiction by [ READ MORE ]

Youngest Newspaper Publishers Ever?

I got a copy of Harpers Magazine at the airport yesterday. It’s becoming a kind of personal airport tradition: I buy a magazine I wouldn’t normally read and take it with me on the plane, often as my only reading material, so that I’m forced to read it. It’s a good way to learn about a [ READ MORE ]

Have Atchu!

Again with the Monty Python, but this clip illustrates the following post as well as it did the post about my flesh wound: Brian Ward disappeared from Facebook the other day, while we were in the middle of a debate. I was surprised by this, because Brian runs a great-value blog, a lot of which is [ READ MORE ]

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Ryan Paine

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