Lit Tips

More from the publishing hotline

Welcome to another edition of anonymous anecdotes concerning today’s publishing industry, from its own insiders, as told to me. For more, here and here.

Should I name this column? Is Lit Tips taken? Does it sound like an alley of cigarette-smokers outside a club? That feels right.

If you are an editor, critic, bookseller, author, publisher, marketer, agent, or literary publicist and have some insights you’d like to share with the group, please message me on the Substack app or reply to this newsletter’s email.

And: Emily Sundberg made a summer novel reading list, to which I contributed. My novel Grand Rapids, by they way, is set in the summertime.

Advance to Go

“The people I know who received between $450k or $750k book advances wouldn’t have turned down $250k.”

“Being in a position to offer enormous advances is more appealing to many editors than actually publishing books that sell well.”

“The cultural capital of being a writer makes more money than being a writer itself.”