Some pub tidbits

A short interview with Asya Muchnick on Mediabistro.com, editor at Little, Brown that has made a name for herself through acquiring The Lovely Bones. She is pretty young to have had the success she has had. Perhaps some inspiration for aspiring editors. Me, I think I am giving up that dream. Marketing constantly calls me.

Oprah has published a 96-page book that will be shrinked-wrapped in the next issue of her magazine. How brilliant is that? The magazine got Dove to underwrite half the costs, and the book is merely a collection of past wisdom-filled columns written by Oprah. Is she starting a trend? Maybe not, the project costed between 1 million and 2 million bones. So maybe this is just something that only Oprah can do.

According to Publisher's Weekly (i can't link to them), Amazon.com is in talks to start a new type of publishing program. They will publish, on the Amazon website, new short works (essays, short stories, etc) by famous writers and will charge for an electronic download. Now that is smart. These will be original works so they won't compete with anything currently on the marketplace. I was wondering how publishers felt about it, but apparently some publishers see it as a way to market their authors without having to do much. So I guess Amazon is really competing with literary journals?