Writing for the Grave

As you all know the best selling author, Michel Crichton passed away last year. The famous writer wrote such books as “Jurassic Park” and also won various awards for his work on the concluded series “ER”, but for all you fans out there two more novels well be released posthumously by the author.

One of the books was writted before he passes away and the other will be completed with the help of his notes. The HarperCollins publishers stated that the completed novel (called "Pirate Latitudes") will be published this November.

“The second book, to be published in late 2010, is a technological thriller ‘which explores the outer edges of new science and technology,’ HarperCollins said in a statement…The book will be based on extensive notes and files that Crichton compiled before his death and will be completed by an author yet to be determined [and] the title has not yet been decided.”

Is The Economy Hurting Writers’ Wallets?

Authorial decisions lead to making economical choices that are in the best interests of their checkbooks.

Scott Turow has decided to switch publishers when it comes to producing the sequel to his bestseller “Presumed Innocent”. Grand Central Publishing, which has produced seven of Scott Turow books in paperback, will be publishing that not yet named sequel in May 2010.

“Mr. Turow said in an interview that it no longer made sense to have one house publishing his books in hardcover and another releasing them in paperback. Such arrangements were common when he first sold the rights to “Presumed Innocent” in 1986 but are much rarer now, especially for a bestselling author.”

Some authors reasons for changing publishers deals with unhappiness that they might feel with said published, but Turow insist that was not the case. He had no problem with his previous publisher, Farrar Straus & Giroux, but knew it would be more sot effective if he decided to only have one publisher.

“Gail Hochman, Mr. Turow’s agent, said splitting editions between two houses made it more difficult for an author to achieve the best possible financial arrangement.”

How long do you think it will take before other authors follow suit?

And a tool I should have known about

Search literary magazines here. It's not comprehensive, but it will allow you to limit by genre, state, reading period, and percentage of unsolicited manuscripts. I have a few possibilities for you already.

Site I should have known about

Wow, teaching this class from my limited perspective has been an experience. Here's a beautiful site I should have found by now: The Future of Publishing. Thad McIlroy, the author, offers a wealth of information and a comprehensive, up-to-date perspective on the whole industry. It's a thing of beauty.

Part 2: Opinions? Questions? Textbook Publishing

For some odd reason, interesting, facts about the world of textbook publishing continue to fall into my lap. My newest interest is how books are priced. Luckily, one of the people I am interviewing for my final portfolio, Sarah Williams Goldhagen, author of books such as Louis Kahn's Situated Modernism, recently returned from New York after pitching her new book to six publishers, two of which are Harper Collins and Random House.
Originally, the new book she is writing was meant to be a how-to on modern architecture, however, when HarperCollins asked her if she would be willing to make it a version of Ways of Reading for Architecture students she said, "Yes".
The next day an airplane ticket to JFK awaited her. Goldhagen then realized she should pitch Harpers idea to the other publishers she was planning on visiting anyway. To her surprise, four of the six all are currently pitching on the book, which, she says, will raise the price of the book altogether.
As college students that purchase books such as this, how do you feel about the fact that book prices are settled through the demand of, essentially, six dinosaurs in the publishing industry? Most of all, how do you feel about the influence the publishing industry has over your pockets as a college student, and how does your love for publishing/writing influence your opinion?

Software for Writers: yWriter and Sonar

Two nice freeware programs:

• If you're a fiction writer and you work on a Windows machine, consider yWriter. This is a nice writing platform that focuses on issues that fiction writers care about. Unlike Word, it is not about formatting. It allows you to organize chapters, keep track of characters and scenes, take notes that are important to background, and view a storyboard of your work in progress. You can export a project to various formats or print in a submission-ready format. Nice!
  

• For all writers, keeping track of submissions is important. I use ancient software built on a Microsoft Access framework but I'm thinking about switching Sonar or Writer's Database. Both are free. Sonar is built by the same person who did yWriter, which has gotten great reviews. At first blush, I like Sonar better. Why? No reason that will hold up: mainly I like a program on my own computer rather than one that's web-based. But that just shows my age.