Kids, don’t try this at home. You’re about to read the worst advice a young writer can ever hear. For the past decade, or so, I’ve rarely submitted unsolicited writing to publications of any kind. I feel pretty fortunate some editors seek me out. The ones who do are the ones who’ve published me better […]
Hello, readers. Thanks for your kind emails during my half-year hiatus. We’ve had much happening at the loft, and outside events have essentially taken over my life for the past six months. They include family illnesses, freelance work, readings, radio interviews, a lot of spouse time, legal maneuverings, and a host of other matters both […]
2010 is wrapping up like a 77-0 football game. Many experts are sifting through endless spreadsheets, looking for patterns in the numbers which will help justify their relevance to both the publishing and computer industries. Others are checking their offshore accounts. Still others are drafting wills. The Association of American Publishers has reported e-book sales […]
The Egatz Epitaph has been accused of being a Barnes & Noble-bashing platform. We call them as we see them, albeit with a healthy dose of commentary you won’t find elsewhere. Here’s a story for the unbelievers. In Barnes & Noble’s smartest move since Len Riggio duplicated the super store concept of the original Fifth […]
The final trains are leaving the station for the land of prosperity, or, at least, survivability. Now it’s time to see if newspapers and magazines will climb aboard. Whether they’ll be left behind remains a question of choice for these industries which have operated largely without change for most of their existence. The exciting news […]
The publishing world continues to be as shaken as the Pope on his recent trip to England. The difference between that situation and the publishing world is that in the United Kingdom, citizens are avoiding the pews, and they don’t look likely to return to their former numbers in our lifetimes. With publishing, illicit sex […]
I’m in Los Angeles, and alone in this city for the first time in almost twenty years. I read at the beautiful Ruskin Arts Club for Red Hen Press to promote Beneath Stars Long Extinct. The woman I love, my wife Jenn, is a Los Angeles native, and she’s not with me this time around. The […]
Once, in 1994, I found myself in a car with some well-known literary intelligentsia traveling to a poetry conference. It was a seminar on a topic once considered very important. Like everything, what was once popular buzz eventually becomes trivia. This is something all artists should keep in mind, but I digress, as usual. I was […]
As the summer draws to a close, we see Amazon.com dropping prices of Kindle e-readers faster than wet bikinis in a Minnesota February. In its Microsoft-like frenzy for market domination, we’ve seen Team Bezos do everything from sell e-books at loss to multiple revisions of their kludgey hardware. Now, following the Kindle’s move into Target […]
Publishers I’ve spoken to are wary of many aspects of their business model in light of the transition the industry is undergoing. As dead tree books are replaced by their digital equivalents, a very practical question arises. As one old friend who wishes to remain nameless confided, “how do I know if Amazon or Apple […]