Last year I read a book whose central argument I found completely wrong. Not offensively wrong, not morally repugnant, just wrong. The author made claims about economics and social policy that I disagreed with on almost every page. I finished… Read more →

Every book has an environmental footprint. This is uncomfortable to say as someone who loves books and whose livelihood depends on making and selling them. But pretending otherwise would be dishonest, and honesty about where we are is the only… Read more →

There’s a statistic that gets cited frequently in publishing circles: only about 3% of books published in the United States are translations. The number has improved slightly in recent years, but it remains startlingly low compared to most other countries.… Read more →

I used to read for three hours straight without looking at my phone. I know this because I remember doing it. I remember sinking into a novel on a Saturday afternoon and surfacing only when the light changed. Now I… Read more →

I’ve been collecting bookstores the way some people collect stamps or restaurant recommendations. Wherever I travel, for work or otherwise, I find the local independent bookshop. Sometimes it’s a planned stop; sometimes I just stumble across it while walking through… Read more →

I read a short story last week that has been living in my head ever since. It was eight pages long. I read it in under fifteen minutes, standing in my kitchen while waiting for water to boil. When the… Read more →

People sometimes imagine that publishing a book goes something like this: a writer finishes a manuscript, sends it to a publisher, and a few weeks later it appears on shelves. The reality is that the journey from finished manuscript to… Read more →

I have a confession. Until about three years ago, I read almost exclusively literary fiction. If a book wasn’t written in the style I’d been trained to admire in my MFA program (lyrical prose, unreliable narrators, ambiguous endings), I mostly… Read more →

ScrollWorks Media turns ten this year. We thought about throwing a party. Instead, we decided to write something honest about what the last decade has been like. Parties are fun. Honesty is more useful, and harder. Ten years ago, we… Read more →

Most of the people I work with in publishing don’t talk about money. Not in the personal sense, anyway. We talk about book pricing, advances, and royalty structures all day long, but when it comes to our own finances, there’s… Read more →