What Would Books Look Like If Big Publishing Collapsed?

What Would Books Look Like If Big Publishing Collapsed?

This last fall, Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster merged, creating a mega publishing house, the ultimate Rat King of publishers, if you will, that could be putting out about a third of mainstream, published books this year.

When something this huge happens in an industry, it often means that the industry is either thriving or dying.

What if we woke up tomorrow and big publishing was gone? What would the world look like? Would there be books?

What would happen without big publishing?

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10 Things Wrong with All My First Drafts

10 Things Wrong with All My First Drafts

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio

Toward the end of 2020 I decided to make a concerted effort to catalog all the stories I’d ever written, from flash fiction to novel length works. I wanted to know the submission and publication histories of everything I’d written. It’s an ongoing process that may warrant its own article. Not counting ghostwritten work, it came out to over 400 stories. Including ghostwriting, it’s over 1000 stories.

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Mckenzie Cassidy on Fact vs. Fiction and the Book You End Up With

Mckenzie Cassidy on Fact vs. Fiction and the Book You End Up With

I met Mckenzie Cassidy I want to say around 2014. I was a visiting alum for my low-res MFA program at Wilkes University. I love a good book pitch and his novel had such a great premise, based on a true experience—a young man learns his deceased father had a secret family. I was able to read the novel early and loved the story and style. It’s well-written and has a lot of heart. That debut novel, Here Lies a Father, has finally been released, through Kaylie Jones Books. 

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Storyville: Writing Horror in a Post-Covid World

Storyville: Writing Horror in a Post-Covid World

Things are still simmering, still escalating in some pockets of this country, and yet, we’re still trying to write stories, pour ourselves into our work, and create original, believable fiction that resonates with the public. How can we do this when truth is stranger than fiction? How can we tap into horror when we’re already surrounded by anxiety and fear? How can we rise up and continue to be creative when the pandemic still looms? Here are some ideas.

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Book Promotion Scams You Can Try From Home!

Book Promotion Scams You Can Try From Home!

Is there anything better than the story of a scam? I've got one to get us started.

My mom, to reduce her sewer bill, came up with a scam.

My mom’s sewer bill for the entire year is calculated by the city tallying how much she puts into the sewer for one month. They get that number, multiply by 12, bam, sewer bill set.

What the city didn’t count on was someone willing to go pretty far to save a few bucks. If my mom put as little as possible into the sewer during her bill calculation month, she’d save some dough.

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Black Bear: Aubrey Plaza, One-Piece Bathing Suits and Acts of Creation.

Black Bear: Aubrey Plaza, One-Piece Bathing Suits and Acts of Creation.

Scene: Aubrey Plaza is in a red one-piece bathing suit sitting on a dock somewhere in upstate New York. 

Her character is named Allison.

Allison makes movies.
She's headed to upstate New York to write.
She may be difficult to work with.
She may be married.
She's confident and sexy.
She has swagger.
She definitely lies a lot. 

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10 Thrilling Books We’re Anticipating in 2021

10 Thrilling Books We’re Anticipating in 2021

The door has finally closed on wretched 2020, and we’re all eagerly looking forward to what we hope will be a much brighter year. What better way to celebrate the start of 2021 than with a list titles we’re most excited to read? Here are our top 10 picks for upcoming books in 2021, in order of release date for your convenience.

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Goodreads Dumps Twitter Functionality

Goodreads Dumps Twitter Functionality


In early 2021, Goodreads is expected to remove a lot of its Twitter functionality, including the ability to share directly from within the social platform. Why is this significant? Let’s get into the meat and potatoes of it.

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What I Learned From Writing "A Return to Spring"

What I Learned From Writing "A Return to Spring"

Author photo courtesy of Gabriel Hart

Last month, Mannison Press released my riot-noir novelette, A Return to Spring — a fictionalized, alternate history of the 1986 Palm Springs Riots. The ’86 Riots were a true-crime event that altered that city as we knew it, putting an end to the Spring Break destination for Southern California high school/college kids, ushering in the town’s quieter, more civilized demographic that we see there today.

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Chad Lutzke & Tim Meyer on Writing Collaborative Horror

Chad Lutzke & Tim Meyer on Writing Collaborative Horror


I recently had the privilege of discussing the craft of writing in collaboration with two big names in the indie horror fiction scene, Chad Lutzke and Tim Meyer. Both are extraordinary authors who recently released their book, Wormwood, through Silver Shamrock Publishing (December 2020). Chad wrote Of Foster Homes and Flies, which is one of the most dark and compelling coming-of-age tales I have ever read. And Tim, he is the most exciting name in Horror.

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