Jeffrey Round's Mexican Odyssey

Jeffrey Round, author of The P-Town Murders and its sequel Death in Key West, talks about his trip to Mexico to research his upcoming novel The Honey Locust, coming out in the Fall from Cormorant Books.

Read it!

Lucette ter Borg @ The Toronto Star

Lucette ter Borg, author of The Gift from Berlin, is in town for the Shift festival down at Toronto's Harbourfront Centre. Yesterday, she was interviewed by The Toronto Star - which you can read here.

Uh, yeah. I thought it ended a little ... abruptly. But still, you should see Lucette's resume. Visual artist? Filmmaker? Journalist? She's a fascinating woman.

The Young Rascal's Guide to Publishing: An Overview

Apparently I read submissions with a monocle.

Lately I've been mulling over ways to provide original content for this blog. Probably because I've been overthinking it, nothing really good came to mind - that is, until I stumbled across an old comment on the wall of the Cormorant Facebook group.

Briefly, it rather vehemently dressed us down for claiming to be

"... open-minded only to impose so many prejudicial restrictions towards fledgling writers, basically the next generation of Canadian authors you allege to support ... I speak for myself and any number of Canadian writers stonewalled by the little-tin-god politics practiced by you and your peers."

I answered, as courteously as I could, that the situation wasn't like that, wasn't like that at all - at least not at the small press I work for. I won't go into the details of my response here (although you better believe I'm going to address the topic of submissions in the future) but suffice it to say, there still seem to be quite a few misconceptions people have about the publishing industry that could and should be addressed in an informative, and, dare I say, entertaining fashion.

Which is where I got the idea for The Young Rascal's Guide to Publishing: a series of original posts in which me and my colleagues attempt to give you a behind-the-scenes look at the workings of a small literary press.

What'll make this series so awesome is that it'll be just as educational for us as it will be for you. We're still trying to figure out the ins and outs this industry ourselves - and in this ever-changing world of mass communication, there'll always be something new to learn.

Here are some of the things this series might cover:
- how to get into publishing
- submissions
- editorial
- marketing
- design
- book sales
- publicity
- production
- working with authors
- events!
- books and the internet
- more!

And just to get it out of the way now, life is decidedly not glamorous for the vast majority of us. Yes, there are perks - free books, an opportunity to meet interesting people, and a chance to help shape culture - but the business is nothing like the cigar-chomping champagne-sipping backroom-dealing Victorian tea party in a smoke-filled room that some people make it out to be.

We do it because we love books. Period.

-BJI

June Hutton @ The Globe & Mail

The current Tuesday Essay at Globe Books (Raising gems, together) is a collaborative piece written by the SPiN writing group (Underground author June Hutton, Jen Sookfong Lee, and Mary Novik). It's a neat little profile about three writers who've stuck together through thick and thin, and are now starting to experience success.

Go on, have a read.

cormorantbooks.com at The Globe and Mail Online Books site

I'm shocked I didn't pick up on this when it first came out. That's what I get for my lapse in attention - now I have to go print this out and show it to my parents:

Cormorant Books re-launches its website, and that makes me reflect ...

Big thanks to Peter Scowen, who works his butt off to support us online. Without people at major media outlets like The Globe and Mail to give us a platform, life for us marketing-types would be so much harder.

Mark Blagrave's The Implied Author series

With the news of Mark Blagrave's nomination for a Commonwealth Prize, I thought it would be a good idea to dust off his series of excellent posts for this very blog, describing his experience as a first time novelist:

The Implied Author
Part I - The Virtual Audience
Part II - Meeting the Relatives (aka You Can't Libel the Dead)
Part III - Non-non fiction: Alternative Biography
Part IV - Signings: The Agony and the Ecstacy
Part V - Readings: Rapt and Unrapt
Part VI - Editing and Dramaturgy: How Many Cooks?

Mark Blagrave shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writer's Prize for Best First Book

Rumble, young man, rumble.

Fantastic news for Cormorant author (and blog contributor) Mark Blagrave: his debut novel Silver Salts has been shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writer's Prize for Best First Book. Previous winners of the award include Anne-Marie Macdonald (Fall On Your Knees) and Mark Haddon (The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time).

Our congratulations go out to Mark, and we wish him the best of luck in the next round!