Williams, Whitman, and Fitzgerald Inducted Into New Jersey Hall of Fame
Among the inevitable roster of athletes and entertainers inducted into the New Jersey Hall of Fame on Monday, three literary luminaries were recognized by the state for their contributions.
Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award
The submission period for the second annual Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award began yesterday and ends on February 8, or until ten thousand entries have been received. The grand-prize winner will receive a publishing contract with Penguin Group, including a $25,000 advance.
Entries may be uploaded through a link on Amazon’s site, which also includes information about the multi-tiered judging process. Amazon readers will vote for the winner from three finalists. During the finals, an expert panel—made up of novelists Sue Monk Kidd and Sue Grafton, Penguin Press editor in chief Eamon Dolan, and literary agent Barney Karpfinger, whose client list includes Bill Loehfelm, winner of last year’s Amazon Breakthrough Award for his book Fresh Kills—will post comments for customers to consider while voting. The winner will be announced on May 22.
Also included on the site are tips for submissions, such as this one about the importance of choosing an excerpt to post on the site: “The first ten pages of your book are some of the most important that you will write. Imagine a reader looking through the first few pages of a book to decide whether or not to purchase it: Something special needs to happen at the start—whether that's a sharp plot twist, the introduction of a fascinating character, or a beautifully crafted opening scene—to make the reader want more. When you select your excerpt text, choose where to stop judiciously: It doesn't necessarily have to be at word 5,000. Quality counts. Be careful that you don't leave readers hanging mid-sentence.”
The award is given for an unpublished, English-language work of fiction, between 50,000 and 150,000 words in length; there is no entry fee.
Blogger in Brussels Tries to Unite a World of Readers
A blogger in Brussels, Belgium, recently launched a collaborative art project that invites readers to create personalized yet anonymous bookmarks and leave them in random books in locations around the world.
John Updike Remembered
Pulitzer Prize–winning author John Updike had a profound impact on the literary community in the United States and abroad, and many authors, editors, publishers, and readers have come forward to reflect on the prolific writer’s life and work following his death from lung cancer last Tuesday.
House Approves $50 Million in Stimulus Funds for NEA
The House of Representatives approved on Wednesday fifty million dollars in supplemental grants funding for the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) as part of the $819 billion economic stimulus bill put forward by president Barack Obama.
And Then There Was One: Washington Post Ends Stand-Alone Book Review
The Washington Post announced yesterday that it will shutter the print version of Book World, the stand-alone book review section of its Sunday edition, and move reviews to two other sections of the paper.
Former HMH Publisher Hired by Riverhead
A little more than a month after Rebecca Saletan resigned as senior vice president and publisher of adult trade books at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH), the experienced editor has been hired as editorial director of Riverhead Books.
Poets Chronicle Obama's First One Hundred Days
As the nation watches president Barack Obama during his first one hundred days in office, poets from across the country have begun to contribute their responses—in verse—to the new presidency on the blog Starting Today: Poems for the First One Hundred Days.
Editor of Publishers Weekly Among Those Laid Off in Reed Restructuring
The magazine that has been diligently reporting the rising number of layoffs in the publishing industry has been hit with a high-profile layoff of its own. Sara Nelson, the editor in chief of Publishers Weekly, the industry's leading trade magazine, was recently laid off as part of a restructuring by the publication's parent company, Reed Business Information.
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