We presented some hypothetical sales numbers two weeks ago in our “Does Literary Fiction Suffer from Dysfunctional Pricing?” discussion. In order to back up these hypotheticals, we also gathered real book sales data from a combination of sources including newspapers, business magazines and corporate financial filings. Most importantly, we asked Nielsen/BookScan, the organization that monitors book sales for media outlets and industry analysts, for some private information on a few selected literary fiction titles including The Echo Maker by Richard Powers, Tree …

1. The three-year-old Quill Book Awards don’t get a lot of respect in the book biz. Among my favorite litblogs, only GalleyCat begrudged last week’s ceremony at New York City’s Lincoln Center any attention at all, and the only print or online news outlets I found providing any real coverage are two organizations directly involved with the awards organization, Publisher’s Weekly (owned by Quills co-sponsor Reed Elsevier) and NBC, which broadcast a one-hour highlights show this weekend that I only …

I enjoy reading about music, but I still feel cheated to discover that this weekend’s New York Times Book Review has a “music theme”. Regardless of whether I’m interested in a particular theme or not, the very idea of a themed Book Review will always strike me (and, I think, other readers too) as a classic example of a category mistake. When I wake up on a Saturday morning to sink into my Book Review with my mug of hot …

John Updike, who is probably my favorite writer alive in the world today, is on my shit list right now.

In a fascinating John Freeman interview for Critical Mass, Updike answers a question about the future of the novel with this depressing whopper:

“My feeling of the book business is it’s on the decline, but there is an irreducible number of people who still find benefits and pleasures in reading that they can get nowhere else, and it is nonetheless an art very …

Here are some of my current fiction readings in progress:

Cion by Zakes Mda

I’m happy to discover a mature writer with a sly, powerful voice who I’ve never heard of before: Zakes Mda, lately of Athens, Ohio, formerly of Herschel, South Africa. Mda has had a long career writing novels with titles like The Heart of Redness and The Whale Caller (The Horse Whisperer meets Moby Dick?) and I may have to search them all out, because Cion, a satire about a “professional mourner” …

As background for our discussion of publishing practices for literary fiction, I’ve recently read memoirs by three publishing executives: The Business of Books by Andre Schiffrin (formerly of Pantheon and Random House), Another Life by Michael Korda (who spent his entire career with Simon and Schuster) and Book Business by Jason Epstein (of Doubleday, Anchor, and ultimately Random House). All three are riveting reads, and I recommend all of them to anybody interested in learning more about how this …

I don’t know if anybody else is seeing the book industry differently as a result of LitKicks’ increasingly gargantuan book pricing discussion, but I am. This past week’s examination of how different genres interact on a typical publishing division’s fiction list has inspired me to spend significant time visiting bookstores to gape anew at the mostly alien (to me) “popular fiction” shelves — the bestseller stacks and the romance, science-fiction, mystery, and horror sections — contemplating what on earth this …

Greg Fallis is the published author of four books and several short stories, and he teaches mystery writing for the Gotham Writers’ Workshop. I first encountered Greg on Flickr, where I became a fan of his photos, and soon enough learned that I was a fan of his writing, too, some of which I get to read on Utata.org, of which he is editor. I recently asked him some questions because I was geniuinely curious to find out the answers. …

[As we continue our “Does Literary Fiction Suffer from Dysfunctional Pricing?” discussion, Mary is taking us through our third year with a hypothetical publishing company].

Although the general tone of yesterday’s post might have indicated that a 10% year was a disappointment, I assure you that Simon Collins & Random Day’s board of directors were pleased. We were just coming down from our high of Season One’s 30% profit. But, a profit is a …

[As part of our ongoing “Does Literary Fiction Suffer from Dysfunctional Pricing” conversation, we’re looking at a hypothetical publishing company’s fiction frontlist. Our goal is to better understand the financial factors that drive the fiction market. Last week Mary Delli Santi presented an ideal first year’s results, and today we look at year two. –Levi Asher]

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