April 25th, 2010 by Brent Toderash
The first letter I got from J.D. Salinger was very short. It was 1988, and I had written to him with a proposal: I wanted my tiny publishing house, Orchises Press, to publish his novella Hapworth 16, 1924. And Salinger himself had improbably replied, saying that he would consider it.
Read: How a Book Publisher Failed to Get J.D. Salinger’s Final Book ‘Hapworth 16, 1924‘ Into Print — New York Magazine.
November 19th, 2009 by Brent Toderash
There’s an interesting post at Self-Publishing Review, where someone from the publishing industry gives his own reasons for self-publishing.
I’ve always been a publishing person, from the time I spent studying copyright pages in books around age 8 to creating what still look like sophisticated magazines as an adolescent using only a typewriter, pen and ink drawings, and Scotch tape, then photocopying the resulting layouts. I’ve worked in bookstores, typeset professionally, written for newspapers, compiled indexes (or indices if you so prefer), launched titles, designed and created reference works, redesigned magazines and journals, created web sites, and done a myriad other things in the realm of publishing. Continue Reading →