December 2009

Booklife Essay: Luck’s Child by Marly Youmans

Marly Youmans has published young adult, genre, and literary fiction in a variety of publications and in book form for publishers including Farrar, Straus, & Giroux, Penguin, and many others. Her essay here, originally published in the appendices to Booklife, reminds us that some elements of a career are out of our control.

This week as the book tour winds up, I’m at the Fountain Bookstore in Richmond, Virginia, the Chapel Hill Comics Shop, and Manuel’s Bar in Atlanta. Check the schedule for more details. – Jeff

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Friday’s Links and Questions for Colleen Lindsay

As I promised on Wednesday, Colleen Lindsay is here to answer any questions you might have about the publishing industry. All you’ve got to do to participate is leave your question in the comments section of this post.

Although I provided a very brief introduction to Colleen in the prior post, I asked her if she would mind giving us a more detailed statement about her life and work. Here it is:

Colleen Lindsay is a literary agent with FinePrint Literary Management, LLC. Colleen’s first job in publishing was in Northern California as a mass merchandise sales assistant for Ballantine Books. For five years she served as Director of Publicity for Del Rey Books where she specialized in the creative publicity and marketing of science fiction, fantasy, pop culture, YA fantasy, graphic novels, manga and third-party licensed media. Some of the authors whose publicity campaigns Colleen had the privilege to manage at Del Rey include Terry Brooks, Sir Arthur C. Clarke, Stephen Baxter, Elizabeth Moon, China Mieville, Richard K. Morgan, Minister Faust, Matthew Stover, R.A. Salvatore, and Harvey Pekar. Some of the non-genre titles whose publicity Colleen has managed include the New York Times Bestselling Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light and Will Bowen’s A Complaint Free World. She has also worked as a freelance publicist, copywriter, and online marketer for several major trade publishers and as a book reviewer for the San Francisco Chronicle. Colleen also spent twelve years working as floor manager, backlist buyer and events manager at several San Francisco Bay Area independent bookstores. She joined FinePrint as an agent in March of 2008; her first book sale was Alan DeNiro’s Total Oblivion, More or Less. You can learn more about her at her blog (http://theswivet.com) or her Twitter feed (@colleenlindsay).

Read five of my favorite posts from The Swivet, as well as a few items of note from the publishing world at large, after the jump:

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Got questions about your booklife? Colleen Lindsay will answer them on Friday.

I’m very pleased to announce that publishing consultant Colleen Lindsay has offered to answer questions from our readers. Colleen has worked as a publicist for Random House, as well as other publishers, and is a successful literary agent with Fine Print Literary Management. In addition, she runs a very popular blog called The Swivet, and contributed sections on marketing and publicity to Booklife‘s appendix.

To participate, return on Friday and leave a question in that day’s links post. See you then!

Booklife Essentials: Chasing Experience? An Interview with Nathan Ballingrud

Nathan Ballingrud is a remarkable short fiction writer who has won the Shirley Jackson Award and had his work reprinted in year’s best anthologies. I first met him at the Clarion Writers Workshop in 1992. Pertinent to our discussion of “Chasing Experience,” I remember that the first day he locked himself in his dorm room and
typed furiously for a couple of hours. Suitably intimidated, we all thought Nathan was incredibly committed to his art. But, as he told me many years later, in fact he wasn’t typing anything: he was just nervous about meeting the other writers attending the workshop. Although Nathan talks about experience in the context of “genre” writers, I believe what he says is relevant to all writers.

(This week, by the way, I’m in the Carolinas speaking at Wofford College, Malaprops, and a Barnes & Noble in Burlington. Check out the full schedule for details.)

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