Never Underestimate the Power of a Book Review

Amazon Phenomenon: NYT Article Boosts Obscure Book to Bestsellerdom

By Matthew Kassel, NY Observer, 04/21/14

This past weekend, a little-known book called All God’s Dangers: The Life of Nate Shaw was resurrected from obscurity when it surged to the top of Amazon’s rankings and became the bestselling book in America.

The reason for the sudden boost in popularity was a New York Times article by the book critic Dwight Garner, which appeared online on Friday and on the front page of the New York edition of the Times arts section on Saturday. By Saturday evening, the book was No. 1 on Amazon’s best sellers list, and its sales numbers had surged by a staggering 1,542,000 percent, according to the website’s Movers and Shakers list.

All God’s Dangers is a 600-page oral history, compiled by Theodore Rosengarten, of a black Alabama sharecropper named Ned Cobb. (Nate Shaw was a pseudonym.) It won the National Book Award in 1974 and was well-reviewed. “But it seems to have vanished from the culture at large,” Mr. Garner wrote in his critical appraisal.

Until now, that is. Garrett Kiely, director of the University of Chicago Press, which has published All God’s Dangers in paperback since 2000, said the article—and the concomitant boost in sales—was a welcome surprise.

“We vaguely knew something about the New York Times interest in the book because they’d asked us for copies to check some details,” he told the Observer. “But we didn’t quite know what it was, and it was nice to see.”

Mr. Kiely said that most copies of the book are sold for courses at the university level: history and African-American studies, for instance. “It wasn’t off our radar,” he said. “It was just off everybody else’s radar.”

This isn’t the first time that academic books from the backlist have gained momentum due to a mention in the news cycle.

Friedrich Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom, a seminal book of economics also published by University of Chicago Press, had languished in academic circles until a positive mention by Glenn Beck sent it to the top of Amazon’s best sellers list in 2009.

Another book of economics, Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century, published by Harvard University Press, is the current best-selling book in the United States, according to Amazon. It appeared in the No. 2 spot alongside All God’s Dangers over the weekend, possibly boosted by Paul Krugman’s glowing review in the latest issue of The New York Review of Books. (As Mr. Kiely noted, it was a rare treat to see university press books at the top of the listings; All God’s Dangers, as of this writing, remains in the top 100, at No. 17.)

Mr. Garner, who, as one of three daily book critics for the Times, maintains what is perhaps the most influential perch in American literary taste-making, said he had never in his years as a reviewer seen one of his articles affect a book’s sales in this way.

“Being able to give a small boost to worthwhile books is easily the best thing about being a critic,” he said in an email to the Observer. “But no, I’ve never seen anything like this. We’re not talking about a new Michael Lewis book here; we’re talking about a 40-year-old autobiography of an illiterate sharecropper in the deep South. This is deep Americana.”

He added: “Ned Cobb is worth every bit of the attention, and I suspect he’d love it.”

2 Literary Agents Looking for Mystery, Romance, Women's Fiction, YA, MG and more

Updated 3/29/21

These agents are actively building client lists. As always, read the entire agency website before submitting. Submission requirements may change! Check to see what other writers have said about the agency on Absolute Write, and do a google search on the both the agency and the agent. It's always enlightening to see what pops up.

Michelle Richter is primarily seeking fiction, especially book club reads, women’s fiction, contemporary romance, literary fiction, and mystery/suspense/thrillers. Rebecca Podos is interested  in Young Adult and Adult genre fiction, with select non-fiction projects considered.

If these agents don't suit your needs, you can find a list of dozens of new and established agents seeking clients here: Agents Seeking Clients.

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Michelle Richter of Fuse Literary Agency

About Michelle: Michelle Richter was formerly an editor at St. Martin’s Press. Michelle has a degree in Economics with a minor in Russian from the University of Massachusetts at Boston and left a career in finance for publishing. She joined St. Martin’s Press’ editorial department in 2006 after obtaining a Masters in Publishing from Pace University. Find her on Twitter at @michrichter1.

What she is seeking: Michelle is primarily seeking fiction, especially book club reads, women’s fiction, contemporary romance, literary fiction, and mystery/suspense/thrillers. Her favorite authors include Ann Patchett, Emma Straub, Laura Lippman, Richard Russo, Tom Perrotta, and Gillian Flynn. For nonfiction, she’s interested in fashion, pop culture, science/medicine, sociology/social trends, and economics.

How to submit: To query Michelle, please use the form HERE.

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Rebecca Podos at Neighborhood Literary 

About Rebecca: Rebecca Podos is a graduate of the MFA Writing, Literature and Publishing program at Emerson College, whose own fiction has appeared in Glimmer Train, Glyph, CAJE, Bellows American Review, Paper Darts, and SmokeLong Quarterly. She represents YA books by talented clients such as Rin Chupeco, Jen Anckorn, Ryan Bradford, Sarah Nicolas, Jen Estes, Kenny Logan, and more.

What she is looking for: Rebecca is looking for Young adult and Adult genre fiction, with select non-fiction projects considered. Of particular interest in fiction right now: Character-driven fantasy rooted in folklore and culture; horror as a vehicle exploring otherness, identity, and trauma; fresh genre crossovers (cozy sci-fi, horror romance, etc.); queer contemporary and historical fiction; Romance and romcom with a strong commercial hook and upmarket prose. Of interest in non-fiction: Deep dives into nerdy topics (TTRPG's, cosplay, fandoms, etc.); a strong narrative voice paired with expertise, as in Why Fish Don't Exist; kid lit centering queer history.

How to submit: See submission guidelines HERE.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Dead at 87

Gabriel Garcia Marquez was one of my all-time literary heroes, and I was deeply saddened to hear of his death on April 17. The literary world will be all the poorer for his absence.

Even if you are not a fan of magical realism - which, after spending five years in Latin America, I can assure you is a misnomer; every word of Garcia Marquez' books is true - you should read his memoir, Living to Tell the Tale.

Garcia Marquez published his novel, One Hundred Years of Solitude, when he was 40. Prior to writing what would become one of the enduring classics of the 20th century, he worked as a journalist in Bogota. He wrote sporadic short stories, and a novella, but most of his time was absorbed by exposing government corruption.

During his years as a journalist, he spent every lunch hour in a cafe with a group of colleagues where they would pass the afternoon tearing each other's work to shreds. By the time Garcia Marquez was ready to lock himself in a room and write the epic of Macondo, he had been honed to a razor's edge.

That is how you learn to be a great writer.
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The magician in his labyrinth

The Economist, April 26, 2014

IN JULY 1965 Gabriel García Márquez—Gabo to all who revered him later—decided to lock himself away in a house on Calle de La Loma in Mexico City. He ordered his wife to sell the car and get credit from the butcher. For 15 months, using only his index fingers, he typed for six hours a day in a room he called “The Cave of the Mafia”. He survived on a diet of good Scotch and constant cigarettes. At five in the afternoon he would emerge into the fading light with his eyes wide, as though he had discoursed with the dead.

Inside the four walls of that room lay the immense delta of the Magdalena river, the grey frothy sea of Colombia’s Caribbean coast, the suffocating swamps of the Ciénaga, the interminable geometries of the banana plantations, and a long railway line that ran into the farthest territories of his heart. It ended at the village of Aracataca, now renamed by him Macondo, where his maternal grandparents had brought him up amid prospectors, fornicators, gypsies, scoundrels and virginal girls bent over their sewing frames. In that room where he had locked himself away he inhaled the sweet milk-candy and oregano of his grandmother and absorbed again the political venting of his grandfather, who had fought on the Liberal side in the War of a Thousand Days and who, at the book’s beginning, took him to discover ice, a great block of infinite internal needles that boiled his hand when he touched it.

“One Hundred Years of Solitude”, the fruit of his self-imprisonment, sold 50m copies in more than 30 languages. Critics observed that its style, magical realism as they called it, was not new: Jorge Luis Borges, a blind Argentine poet, had felt his way through those labyrinths before. But its fame was startling. The world was seduced by a Latin America where the Buendía family feuded internally and externally, with rifles or with silence, for generations; where death gave its female victims instructions to sew their own shrouds; where the blood from a suicide by shotgun flowed all through Macondo, carefully avoiding the carpets; and where Remedios the Beauty was taken up to heaven as she hung out sheets on the washing line.

And it was all true. So Gabo insisted, to those who found his world outmoded and impossible. What seemed fantastical and extraordinary was merely reality in its local guise. Between novels he kept up his first profession, journalism, fearlessly reporting government scandals and narcoterrorism. When he had become hugely famous the government of Colombia sent him to mediate with the FARC guerrillas. That was surely as surreal as anything he wrote in the house on Calle de La Loma.

What the world could not grasp about Latin American literature, he told his Nobel prize audience in 1982, was the presence in it of the ghosts of the disappeared, as many as the population of Uppsala, and of émigrés and exiles, as many as there were Norwegians. These shadows, with their different reality, were as persistent as the continent’s beauty, its violence and its pain. In the year after he was born a crowd of banana workers, their number as fluid and fleeting as memory, were killed by the army in Aracataca, the bodies taken so silently by train to the coast that the story at once became myth. It grew with him.

His sympathies stayed on the left-Liberal side of things. Under General Rojas Pinilla Colombia became uncomfortable; he took refuge in Mexico in 1961, and for years was refused entry to the United States. Fidel Castro and Hugo Chávez were proud to count themselves his friends. With Mr Castro he went fishing and talked books, he said, not politics. But he had a weakness for the “halo of power”, of whatever colour, and a soft spot for old autocrats still carrying, like Simón Bolívar in “The General in his Labyrinth”, their bullet scars, their memories of past glories and their faded battle tunics, with buttons made from the gold of Atahualpa.

Writing was difficult; the words came as painfully as kidney stones. Nonetheless, there was nothing else he had wanted to do in life. He burned “to write so I would not die”. The desire began with “The Thousand and One Nights” in childhood and the tale of the fish, slit for frying, with a diamond as big as an almond in its belly. It was reinforced in his cub-reporter-student days in the cafés of Barranquilla and Cartagena, where he discovered Kafka, Faulkner, Woolf and Hemingway. His strongest influence, though, remained his grandmother, who had told him with the most deadpan face that the strangest things were true.

Taking the steamboat

Those tales assumed no division between the waking and dreaming state. Like him, his characters were often insomniacs, terrified of the dark and plagued, as he was, by intrauterine memories and premonitory dreams. Their affliction was so acute that their days became seamless and infinite as winter rain. Yet his lovers too, in sheer happiness, were in the same suspended state. His last substantial novel, “Love in the Time of Cholera”, based on the forbidden romance of his own parents, ended with the aged lovers on the creaking Magdalena steamboat, pushing through purple lotus and past crocodiles with their mouths agape to catch butterflies, out to the mouth of the sea. But as his grandfather had told him, when they first saw that horizon, “There is no shore on the other side.”

This article appeared in the Obituary section of the print edition under the headline "The magician in his labyrinth"

Will Self-Publishing Exist in 10 Years?

Back in the days before the Internet made it possible to publish ebooks, self-publishing meant printing your own book and warehousing thousands of copies in your garage while you shopped them to local bookstores. It was tedious, expensive, and time-consuming.

Times have changed. Now you can self-publish on a number of platforms, advertise your book online, and choose whether you want it to appear in electronic or print-on-demand format - or both. And because of the success of self-published books like Wool, both agents and publishers are now interested in taking advantage of the new ebook-reading market.

Will the success and ease of different platforms - such as Amazon and Smashwords - mean that self-publishing will disappear as an independent entity in ten years? Will it merge seamlessly with traditional publishing until "self" publishing is subsumed within a larger framework?

My guess is probably not. Unlike Jon Fine (see below), I can't see a near future in which the largest publishing houses in the world will give up the ghost. Nor can I see a near future in which every self-published book has a chance to compete with the books backed by Random/Penguin. The problem is not just that the major publishers won't pick up the vast majority of self-published books, it's that the avenues for getting the word out on self-published books, even on Amazon, are becoming increasingly saturated.

No matter what the platform is, or how books are published, there will always be a great divide between those who have self-published and those who have the backing of university presses, well-established niche publishers, or major houses, with their access to national and international media networks. For as long as access to global advertising is restricted to the select few, those who go it alone will have to scramble to get noticed.
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Amazon’s Vision for the Future of Self-Publishing

Digital Book World, April 7, 2014

The term “self-publishing” may have outlived its usefulness, according to Jon Fine, director of author and publishing relations at Amazon, speaking at the Publishing for Digital Minds conference this week in London.

When asked at a recent past conference what “self-publishing” looked like in ten years, Fine, who is intimately involved in that business at Amazon, said that it probably won’t be called that anymore. In the future, authors will publish in a number of ways.

“If you’re an author in ten years, you’re going to have an array of options,” said Fine. “What we’ve done is provide the tools that make it possible to take a story and make it available to hundreds of millions of people around the world…and do it in multiple formats.”

Best-selling hybrid author Hugh Howey shared the stage with Fine. Howey could be an author from Fine’s future. He has self-published ebooks and audiobooks, traditionally published print books and translations, and has no definite plans in the future as to how he will publish his next title.

“Do you want to be a small business owner or work for a corporation?” asked Howey, referring to the difference between self-publishing, where authors are also entrepreneurs (the former) and traditional publishing, adding, “and there are advantages and disadvantages for both.”

In a typical example of the flexibility afforded authors today, Orna Ross, a hybrid author and founder of the Alliance of Independent Authors, who was also on the conference panel mentioned that she is publishing nine short books this year, about one every month, “and that’s not something a publisher would ever do.”

According to Fine, the next challenge facing authors, publishers and distributors like Amazon is how readers will discover the right books for them.

“We’ve created this tsunami of content,” said Fine. “It’s a high class problem to have too many stories. We, as tech companies, publishers, authors, service providers, have to find ways to help stories find the right audience. This discoverability problem is the next big challenge.”

Top 5 Resources for Publishing Poetry

Updated 8/13/24

Poets tend to be solitary creatures. With a few notable exceptions, they are rarely social butterflies. As a consequence, they often have no idea what to do with their poems once they have written them. (I used to tack mine to trees.)

If you would like to see your poetry published, here are some resources that will provide you with all the information you need to locate the most suitable literary journal for your work.

If you want to pursue poetry as a long-term occupation, then do please take a look at the Poetry Society of America's website and consider joining.

Also see: 47 Paying Markets for Poetry - No Submission Fees

25 Poetry Publishers Accepting Unagented Manuscripts

325 Paying Markets for Short Stories, Poetry, Nonfiction

32 Literary Magazines That Pay $100 or More

20 Magazines That Pay $500 or More

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Pushcart Prize List

Clifford Garstang is an award-winning author and lawyer. He is also extremely well organized. He keeps yearly lists of Pushcart Prize-winning literary magazines. (The magazines with the highest number of prizes are at the top.) There are 168 magazines listed, with links. For finding the top poetry magazines, you can't do better than this list.

Click HERE to see Garstang's list.
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Poets and Writers

The Poets & Writers Database is an indispensable tool for finding literary magazines. It provides such essential information as whether electronic submissions are accepted, if simultaneous submissions are allowed, reading period, if payment is offered, and circulation numbers. You can filter magazines by poetry or fiction. Magazines are not ranked. So, if you want to know a magazine's standing in the literary world, check it against Clifford's list.

Poets & Writers is the nation's largest nonprofit literary organization serving poets, fiction writers, and creative nonfiction writers. Aside from their database of literary magazines, they post contests, conferences, agents, jobs, and many other valuable resources for writers. P&W is worth joining.
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New Pages

New Pages keeps a huge list of blogs and websites of poets and writers. Blogs have become a permanent feature of the literary landscape. They serve to keep writers informed of the latest news and information, and to share valuable insights and inspiration. If you are just breaking into publishing, the blogs and websites of successful writers also serve as signposts. New Pages also has a comprehensive lists of literary magazines, calls for submissions (including poetry), writing workshops and MFA programs.

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Power Poetry

Power Poetry is primarily geared toward young people, particularly high school students. The website offers a list of 50 places to publish poetry, a map and list of local poetry groups, mentors, more than 50 poetry organizations, and other useful resources. Young people can also post their poetry on the site, and receive comments from readers. Some of these talented young poets have posted hundreds of poems.

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Poetry Society of America

Poets, hark! The Poetry Society of America is your organization! The PSA website features a comprehensive list of literary organizations, a huge list of poetry journals, poetry publishers, contests, interviews of editors of poetry magazines, and much more. Membership dues start at $25 (student rate).

Valuable Tips for Pitching to an Agent or Editor

Hi! I'm your new client!

The best thing you can do for your career as a writer is go to a conference. Conferences not only give writers a chance to talk to agents and editors, they allow people who are otherwise somewhat isolated to make connections.

No amount of texting, tweeting, or emailing can substitute for a handshake and a smile, even if they are virtual.

See Writing Conferences for a month-by-month list of conferences and workshops

See Shmooze or You Lose for how to find conferences in your area.

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7 Tips for Pitching to an Agent or Editor at a Conference

By Peggy Eddleman, Writer's Digest, June 1, 2015

I'll admit: I was scared to death to live-pitch my book the first time, and I almost didn't. I figured I was better with words on a page, so I'd just query the agents I met at conferences. I am a huge proponent of pitching your book in person to an agent, though, because it's incredibly beneficial.

Here are seven tips to keep in mind:

Tip #1: If you can get a pitch session with an agent/editor, do it!

Agents get tons of queries every single day, and a good 90% of them come from people who haven't worked very hard to perfect their craft. Agents know that if you go to conferences, you're likely in the 10% who have. If you go to a conference and pitch, you're likely a top 10% writer who has a book close to being worthy of representation. It also gives both of you a chance to meet each other, and that's invaluable.

Tip #2: If you don't register in time to schedule a pitch session, get on a waiting list.

Pitch sessions fill up quickly. People get nervous, though, or don't get their book ready in time, so they cancel often. They shouldn't, but they do, and this is good for anyone who is on the waiting list.

Tip #3: Figure out what you want to cover during your pitch session.

Don't memorize a script, but do memorize the points you want to cover. Then you can talk like a normal person about it. And definitely practice talking like a normal person about it to everyone who will listen. The more comfortable you feel when talking about your book, the better your pitch session will go.

Tip #4: Go with other questions in mind.

I speed-talked my way through my first pitch session, because when I'm nervous I don't ramble - I leave things out. So my pitch was done in less than 30 seconds. After asking me a few questions, the agent requested my full. Then she said, "Do you have any questions for me?" I hadn't thought about questions for her! I sat there, feeling awkward, said, "Um.... Nope?" then shook her hand and left, with seven minutes of our meeting unused.

Don't do what I did! Use that time to ask about their agenting style. Ask about the industry. Ask about the process. Ask about craft. Ask questions about your plot. Ask about anything writing related. Chat. See how your personalities mesh. Just don't leave seven minutes early. You paid for that time- use it .

Read the rest of these valuable tips here.

2 Established Literary Agents Seeking Genre and Commercial Fiction, YA, MG, Romance, Graphic Novels

Updated 8/11/24

Here are two established literary agents seeking clients. Taylor Haggerty is interested in YA, MG and Romance. Jennifer Azantian is open to fiction across all age groups: Action/Adventure, Children's, Commercial, Family Saga, Fantasy, Graphic Novel, Horror, LGBTQ, Literary, Middle Grade, Science Fiction, Women’s Fiction, Young Adult. Jennifer is open to middle grade and young adult graphic novels across genres.

Always check the agency website and agent bio before submitting. Agents can switch agencies or close their lists.

You can find a full list of agents actively seeking new clients here: Agents Seeking Clients

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Taylor Haggerty of Root Literary

About Taylor: Taylor is a graduate of the University of California, Santa Barbara, and received a master’s degree from Emerson College’s Publishing and Writing program. Prior to joining Root Literary, she worked at Waxman Leavell and at the Gersh Agency.

What she is seeking: I represent commercial fiction for teens and adults - particularly in the romance and book club spaces. My client list is the best indicator of my taste, but I gravitate toward smart, funny, voice-driven projects and welcome all the longing, pining, heart-breaking and heart-mending emotional rollercoasters you want to send my way. I have a tendency to fall for books that blur the lines between genres and am a big novelty seeker as a reader, so always love to be surprised by the fresh and unexpected!

How to contact her: To submit a project, please send a query letter via email to:  submissions@rootliterary.com.  You may include 10 pages of your manuscript in the body of your email. Do not send attachments.

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Jennifer Azantian of Jennifer Azantian Literary Agency

About Jennifer: Jennifer founded the Jennifer Azantian Literary Agency on February 1, 2014. Before starting her agency, she worked at the Sandra Dijkstra Literary Agency. She was the assistant for Elise Capron and Sandy Dijkstra as well as the office and submissions manager for the agency. After her time at Sandra Dijkstra Literary Agency, she worked with the Paul Levine Literary Agency for several months, and it is under his mentorship that she started her own agency.

What she is seeking: Fiction across all age groups: Action/Adventure, Children's, Commercial, Family Saga, Fantasy, Graphic Novel, Horror, LGBTQ, Literary, Middle Grade, Science Fiction, Women’s Fiction, Young Adult. Jennifer is open to graphic novels across genres.

How to contact her: Use her submission form HERE.