Sunday Links

Stuff I read, stuff I liked.

Welcome back to the Sunday edition of Publishing Confidential. After a bumpy January, I am getting back into the groove of doing link roundups for paid subscribers. A quick note: I don’t use affiliate links, and I try to use gift links if they’re available.

Stuff I read:

Simon & Schuster’s flagship imprint will no longer require authors to obtain blurbs. I’ve previously written about how book blurbs don’t make a difference to most consumers. I never look at them before I read a book. After I finish a book, I glance at the blurbs to see if I recognize any names. Usually, I don’t. At one of my in-house positions, editors would email blurbs as they came in, and a flurry of responses would follow: “Great!”; “Congrats!” My reaction was more like, “Who is this person that provided a blurb?” Anyway, I hope more publishers follow suit.

Every couple of weeks, a media outlet reports the same story about Barnes & Noble. This time, Bloomberg continued the narrative about B&N's turnaround. However, these stories fail to mention that B&N severely cut orders (especially in the middle grade and children’s book categories), rarely takes chances on debut authors, and laid off staff with immense institutional knowledge. While it’s great the chain is opening new stores, it’s important to recognize at what cost.