This week! Books!

Microsoft and OpenAI Workers Worry About ‘Largest Theft of Labor’ in History (gift link) – Karen Weise and Mike Isaac, New York Times – Microsoft and OpenAI workers were taking notes during a criminal conspiracy, namely Microsoft employees wondering whether OpenAI was busy committing the largest labor theft in history. (Yes! They were!)

The 2026 National Book Awards Longlists – The New Yorker – Congrats to the National Book Award longlisters!

EXCLUSIVE: Author Jerry Falade Reflects on Losing His Book Deal and Being Accused of Using AI. – Kathleen Schmidt, Publishing Confidential – Author Jerry Falade, whose multi-million dollar book deal fell through when his previous agents dropped him over suspected AI use, wonders whether his “Yorùbá-inflected voice” triggered AI-detection software.

Bourdain’s ’90s gangster novels couldn’t escape the kitchen – Francesca Giangiulio, Salon – Anthony Bourdain, crime fiction writer? Yes, indeed. His old crime novels are getting a re-release. The kitchen is never far away.

Execution is More Important than A Great Book Idea – Sean deLone, Dear Head of Mine – Your regular reminder, this time from a book editor, that execution matters way more than a good premise.

Can You Identify These Places That Nurtured Writers? (gift link) – J. D. Biersdorfer, New York Times – A fun quiz for NYC literary types about some fixtures in various lit scenes.

Syrian man uncovers library hidden behind wall for 15 years – Al Jazeera – Now that the Assad regime has fallen, a Syrian man was able to tear down the wall hiding his secret library.

In Memory: Author Jane Yolen – Gayleen Rabakukk, Cynsations – Legendary author Jane Yolen passed away earlier this year, and on Cynthia Leitich Smith’s blog, Gayleen Rabakukk rounds up some of the advice she dispensed over the years.

This week in bestsellers

Here are the top five NY Times bestsellers in a few key categories. (All links are affiliate links):

Adult print and e-book fiction:

1. Fury In Death by J.D. Robb
2. Theo of Golden by Allen Levi
3. Burn of the Everflame by Penn Cole
4. The Calamity Club by Kathryn Stockett
5. The Pirate Queen by Ariel Lawhon

Adult print and e-book nonfiction:

1. The Counterrevolution by Victor Davis Hanson
2. How to Eat an Elephant by Sarah Longwell
3. Plot Twist by Harlan Coben
4. American Scoundrel by Kai Bird with Susan Goldmark
5. Regime Change by Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan

Young adult hardcover:

1. Our Strange Duet by Erin A. Craig
2. Espíritu by Aiden Thomas
3. Barbie: Dreamscape by Alex Aster
4. Wings of Reverie by Anna Bright
5. Falling Like Leaves by Misty Wilson

Middle grade hardcover:

1. Wonder by R.J. Palacio
2. Kiki’s Delivery Service by Eiko Kadono
3. Kiki and the New Magic by Eiko Kadono
4. Wombat Waiting by Katherine Applegate
5. Forbidden Mountain by Brandon Mull

This week on the blog

In case you missed them, here are this week’s posts:

• How long does it take to sell a novel?

And keep up with the discussion in all the places!

• Follow me on Threads, Facebook, Bluesky, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter

And finally:

Susan Te Kahurangi King’s Way of Seeing – Laura Preston, The New Yorker – Artist Susan Te Kahurangi King doesn’t speak, read, or write, but her lifetime of work has attracted serious interest in the art world.

Have a great weekend!

Need help with your book? I’m available for manuscript edits, query critiques, and coaching!

For my best advice, check out my online classes, my guide to writing a novel, and my guide to publishing a book.

And if you like this post: subscribe to my newsletter!

Photo: “Rocks Amid Crashing Waves” by Yamaato Kakurei at LACMA, Los Angeles, CA. Follow me on Instagram!

How long does it take to sell a novel to a traditional publisher? About that long.

But in seriousness, while there aren’t statistics that track average time spent on submission, anecdotally it seems like it’s taking longer than ever.

In this post, I’m going to break down how long you can expect it to take, what accounts for the lengthy delays, and why all of those bottlenecks can be thrown out of the window at any time.

How long it takes to sell a novel

I often receive distressed e-mails from authors who have reputable agents who have sent their novels out on submission to editors. The authors really want to trust their agents, and they’re trying to be good and non-high maintenance, but, seriously, could the submission process really take this long?

Yes, it can.

But what if, one of these authors asked, a publisher expressed interest several months ago and then nothing has happened at all? Could they really still be interested? And if they were interested a couple of months ago, why in the heck haven’t they made an offer already?

Happens all the time.

I always assure these authors to just keep in touch with their agent, be patient, take up knitting, and go easy on the bourbon. Settle in for the long haul. (And start working on your next book).

A book might sell in a week. Or it might sell in a year. You never know. Three to nine months is a good range, but I’ve known books that have sold after several years on submission.

And, yes, sadly some books end up dying on sub.

So why does it take so long for an editor to make a decision anyway? Well, there are many reasons. Here are a few of them.

Bottleneck #1: Editors are besieged

Over the course of the last twenty years, there has been quite a lot of industry consolidation that has resulted in numerous imprints getting shut down, and an entire tier of mid-size publishers either absorbed into the Big 5 or shut down.

This means there are fewer places for agents to send projects. And yet there are more agents than ever.

The result? Editors are getting drowned in submissions. While reputable agents used to be able to count on a reasonably timely response from editors, “no response means no” is increasingly common, even for top agents.

Bottleneck numero uno is simply down to an editor slotting your book into a long, growing queue.

Bottleneck #2: It takes a long time to read a novel

Once the editor actually gets to your novel, well, they have to read it. And reading a novel is time-consuming! Six hours on average, if you are a speed reader (and you’d better be if you’re in publishing).

Editors receive multiple submissions a day. Do the math, and even if they quit reading as soon as it’s a “no,” there just aren’t enough hours in the day to keep up, especially when you already have a full-time job while you’re not reading.

But let’s say the editor does read the book, loves it, and wants to make an offer. What then?

Bottleneck #3: Quite a few people have to read the book before an editor can offer

Unless they are a serious publishing muckety-muck, editors have to get approval to make an offer, a process similar to unlocking a nuclear bomb.

They have to get it past their editorial board, they have to get more reads, these reads have to be good, they have to unlock the failsafe and contact the president to press a button on the nuclear football, the sales team gets a look, some higher up has to sign off on it… and all of these people have to read the book too.

Multiply those six hours by ten, and then maybe the editor gets approval to make an offer of a certain amount.

For more on what’s going on behind the scenes at the publisher, check out former Big 5 editor Christine Pride’s inside look.

Slow, then fast

Now, what’s funny about all this is that when there’s a hot project, all of this goes out the window. People can quickly lose their minds and the whole above process can be condensed to a couple of hours.

Frankly, it’s a good thing publishing companies don’t actually control our nuclear stockpile. One whiff of an aging rock star memoir and take cover.

I know it’s terribly frustrating to go months and months looking for an agent and then finally the book gets submitted… and then wait months and months while you’re waiting for editors to read it.

Welcome to publishing. You have no choice but to stay a while.

Originally published March 7, 2008

Need help with your book? I’m available for manuscript edits, query critiques, and coaching!

For my best advice, check out my online classes, my guide to writing a novel, and my guide to publishing a book.

And if you like this post: subscribe to my newsletter!

Art: Vanitas – Still Life with Books and Manuscripts and a Skull by Evert Collier

This week! Books!

The Nonfiction Book Market is Collapsing / Radical Ideas for Fixing the Nonfiction Book Market – Sean deLone, Dear Head of Mine – For a very long time, nonfiction was the stable, predictable, bread and butter of the publishing industry, outselling more unpredictable fiction. In the past decade, as overall sales have grown, that dynamic has now flipped. Simon & Schuster book editor Sean deLone digs into the roots of these trends, including a collapse in trust in authority, and considers some possible solutions.

Publishing Industry Sales Up in First Half of 2026 – Jim Milliot, Publishers Weekly – Meanwhile, along those lines, book sales are up in the first half of 2026, led by fiction.

Anthropic Copyright Settlement: Publishers Are Making Incorrect Claims on Authors’ Payouts – Victoria Strauss, Writer Beware / Authors Wrangle With Publishers Over $1.5 Billion Anthropic A.I. Settlement (gift link) – Neil Vigdor, New York Times – The first stages of the disbursement of the $1.5 billion Anthropic settlement have been chaotic, with competing rights claims between authors, publishers, and even some literary agencies. The situation seems to be mostly down to poor record-keeping by publishers (shocked! shocked I tell you!), but some authors will need to battle it out to protect their claims.

Destroying Books to Build a Mind – Francesca Mancino, The New Yorker – The case for being slightly less worried about AI companies destroying and scanning books, given old books are culled all the time.

This Hot New Buzzword Is Toxic and Bad For Culture – Charlie Jane Anders, Happy Dancing – Author Charlie Jane Anders makes an excellent case that romanticizing a collective “monoculture” is thoroughly misplaced.

Sweat the Technique: On Writing Process and Possibilities – Lincoln Michel, Counter Craft – A great roundup on different approaches legendary authors employed in their writing process.

Q&A Thursday! – Kate McKean, Agents + Books – Publishers want authors with a platform. It’s hard to build a platform without a publisher. How do authors escape this trap? Agent and author Kate McKean has some thoughts but spoiler, it’s not easy.

This week in bestsellers

Here are the top five NY Times bestsellers in a few key categories. (All links are affiliate links):

Adult print and e-book fiction:

1. The Knave and the Moon by Rachel Gillig
2. Theo of Golden by Allen Levi
3. The Calamity Club by Kathryn Stockett
4. Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman
5. Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke

Adult print and e-book nonfiction:

1. This is Me by Hayden Panettiere
2. American Scoundrel by Kai Bird with Susan Goldmark
3. Crossing the Wine-Dark Sea by Emily Wilson
4. Regime Change by Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan
5. Going Further by Ted Cruz

Young adult hardcover:

1. Our Strange Duet by Erin A. Craig
2. Blightfall by Brandon Sanderson and Janci Patterson
3. The Gods Will Sing Our Song by Autumn Krause
4. Barbie: Dreamscape by Alex Aster
5. Wings of Reverie by Anna Bright

Middle grade hardcover:

1. Wonder by R.J. Palacio
2. Flight by Alan Gratz
3. Kiki’s Delivery Service by Eiko Kadono
4. Kiki and the New Magic by Eiko Kadono
5. Wombat Waiting by Katherine Applegate

This week on the blog

In case you missed them, here are this week’s posts:

• All about perspectives in novels

And keep up with the discussion in all the places!

• Follow me on Threads, Facebook, Bluesky, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter

And finally:

You Can See Everything | Official Teaser HD | A24 – YouTube – I think I speak for all of us when I say the new Nathan Fielder documentary about (with?) Elizabeth Holmes cannot come out soon enough.

Have a great weekend!

Need help with your book? I’m available for manuscript edits, query critiques, and coaching!

For my best advice, check out my online classes, my guide to writing a novel, and my guide to publishing a book.

And if you like this post: subscribe to my newsletter!

Photo: The Huntington, San Marino, CA. Follow me on Instagram!

This week! Books!

Out of Circulation: Expanding Censorship in Public Libraries – PEN America – A new report from PEN America details the extent to which libraries are under unprecedented threat due to censorship challenges and librarian harassment, arguing the role of public libraries as essential democratic institutions is in “extreme jeopardy.”

New Study Analyzes the Impact of Library E-Lending on Commercial Book Markets – Jéssica Dutra and Robert Stoner, AAP and Authors Guild – Meanwhile, there’s a long-simmering battle between publishers and libraries around e-book lending fees, which has led to proposed legislation in some states that would force down e-book costs. The argument has a new salvo from a study sponsored by the AAP and Authors Guild, which argues that increased e-book lending results in reduced sales, buttressing publishers’ fears of cannibalization.

Libraries Are Not the Problem – Ron Charles – Don’t cry for publishers in this argument, argues Ron Charles, particularly after publishers were content to bemoan the decline of newspaper book sections without spending any ad money to support them.

Having been involved in some of the early negotiations around library e-book lending, while I too don’t cry for publishers, I believe authors suffer from unrestrained library e-lending and strongly believe in some form of restricted lending licenses. Libraries can support literacy and serve a democratic function in society without becoming endlessly free sources of downloadable content at the push of a button.

Pangram Has Emerged as the Gold Standard of AI Detection. Should You Trust It? – Lexi Pandell, Wired – Pangram has very savvily assumed a role as the leading company professing to detect AI writing. But is it actually any good? It claims a high success rate, but “humanizers” can easily bypass its detection, and critics continue to raise flags about bias.

What Do Booksellers Make Of “The End Of Reading”? – Joel Pinckney, Defector – A much ballyhooed Atlantic article declared our era “the end of reading,” even if the actual article was just the latest iteration of the perennial “people aren’t reading as much as they used to” moral panic. Said panic is (mostly) not shared by actual booksellers, who are experiencing increased sales and foot traffic, and trace the problem, if there is one, to deeper cultural factors.

Union Square to Launch Novella Publishing Program – Sam Spratford, Publishers Weekly – Like short story collections, novellas have a reputation within the publishing industry for not selling well. But does that actually reflect consumer choice or is it a self-fulfilling prophecy? Hachette is about to test that proposition, as they’re launching a new imprint focused on novellas.

‘The Corrections’ Is 25 Years Old. Its First Paragraph Still Feels New. – A.O. Scott, New York Times – When I’m editing novels, at the start of chapters I often leave the note [WHERE ARE WE ENTIRELY?], as writers often neglect to adequately orient the reader around the setting and help us visualize where the characters are. Jonathan Franzen had no such problem starting off his classic novel The Corrections, which turns 25 this year. A.O. Scott has a wonderful deep dive unpacking the first paragraph, which every writer should read.

The Latest Literary Scam: Emailing the Long-Dead Legends of 20th-Century Literature – Adam Hochschild, Lit Hub – AI-driven publishing scams have gotten so bad, even the late George Orwell is getting them.

Rachel Cusk Tried to Caricature Natalie Portman. She Only Caricatured Herself. (gift link) – Parul Sehgal, New York Times – It’s been a little while since I’ve read a juicy pan, and Parul Sehgal did not disappoint.

Gloria Steinem, Personification of the Women’s Movement, Dies at 92 (gift link), Katharine Q. Seelye, New York Times / Wendell Berry, Writer Who Extolled America’s Agrarian Past, Dies at 92 (gift link), Robert D. McFadden, New York Times – Two very different but monumentally influential writers and thinkers passed away this week at 92.

This week in bestsellers

Here are the top five NY Times bestsellers in a few key categories. (All links are affiliate links):

Adult print and e-book fiction:

1. Theo of Golden by Allen Levi
2. Big Little Truths by Liane Moriarty
3. The Calamity Club by Kathryn Stockett
4. Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke
5. Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman

Adult print and e-book nonfiction:

1. Going Further by Ted Cruz
2. Regime Change by Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan
3. The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State by Jill Lepore
4. This is Me by Hayden Panettiere
5. Strangers by Belle Burden

Young adult hardcover:

1. Barbie: Dreamscape by Alex Aster
2. Wings of Reverie by Anna Bright
3. But I Hate Him by Page Powers
4. Thornbird by E. Kennedy
5. Ruinous Ends by I.V. Marie

Middle grade hardcover:

1. Kiki and the New Magic by Eiko Kadono
2. Wonder by R.J. Palacio
3. Kiki’s Delivery Service by Eiko Kadono
4. Growing Home by Beth Ferry
5. Wombat Waiting by Katherine Applegate

This week on the blog

In case you missed them, here are this week’s posts:

• For novels, reality is not all it’s cracked up to be

And keep up with the discussion in all the places!

• Follow me on Threads, Facebook, Bluesky, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter

And finally:

How Saudi Arabia’s Neom Megacity Dream Collapsed (gift link) – Eliot Brown and Todd Johnson, Wall Street Journal – I continue to find myself utterly mesmerized by Saudi Arabia’s dream of the Neom megacity, a fantastical science fiction vision that now seems to be collapsing.

Have a great weekend!

Need help with your book? I’m available for manuscript edits, query critiques, and coaching!

For my best advice, check out my online classes, my guide to writing a novel, and my guide to publishing a book.

And if you like this post: subscribe to my newsletter!

Photo: The Huntington, San Marino, CA. Follow me on Instagram!

Life. It’s deep, right? I mean, just look at the word.

Life.

Wow, man. Just, wow.

But here’s the thing. Real life is very often extremely boring. That’s one of the main reasons we read and write books in the first place.

Want to know one of the absolute worst ways you can defend yourself from criticism as a writer? “But this really happened!”

When you’re writing a novel, your job is not to transcribe real life. Your job is to tell a story.

The limits of verisimilitude

If verisimilitude helps the story? Great. Drawing upon real life can add authenticity and immerse readers in a world they may never have visited.

But the story comes first. Just because something really happened in real life doesn’t necessarily mean it’s going to make a good story.

Look, I brushed my teeth this morning, then I rinsed with mouthwash. That really happened!

Anything can be made to work in a novel, but it would take world-historical levels of genius I do not possess to make you want to read a book about my morning dental routines.

In real life, people get depressed and don’t get off the couch for a month. They do a bunch of boring chores. They fall in love without getting into knock-down, drag-out fights and maintain friendships where everything seems easy.

In a novel, unless your voice is so scintillating you can get away with writing novels about paint drying (and there are about ten people like that on the whole planet), chances are your protagonist needs to stay active, encounter obstacles (interior and exterior), and experience change. If your protagonist is bored, your reader is going to be bored too.

The imperatives of storytelling just aren’t the same as real life.

Keeping characters active and giving them ups and downs

In real life, people really do stall out in spirals of inaction.

But when you’re telling a story, the best way to evoke idleness is by giving a character something insanely idle to act upon, like counting the number of red Froot Loops in his kitchen cabinet to win a petty feud while his apartment descends into squalor and he gets fired from his job.

In real life, some relationships really are easy and drama-free.

But there’s a reason Romeo & Juliet is one of the quintessential love stories, and nearly every culture on Earth has its own version of the archetype. Iconic relationships in fiction tend to have immense obstacles. Nothing is easy, which makes forbidden love feel “earned.”

Active characters encountering obstacles, experiencing ups and downs of increasing intensity, and emerging from the events in a new place. If you string together scenes where characters are trying to get what they want and face obstacles nearly as powerful as they are, chances are your readers will keep reading.

Even writers who famously home in on the quotidian elements of life and relationships (Sally Rooney, Karl Ove Knausgård, Rachel Cusk, etc.) usually center a character who is actively trying to figure something out or untangle specific questions. They’re active and coming into conflict with their worlds, even if they’re very internal quests.

You don’t need to have fireworks and explosions in your novel. But even if you’re writing something “quiet,” dialing up real life can help.

Dialing real life up to 11

Allow me to date myself with a tangent, but growing up, I was a big fan of The Wu-Tang Clan, who created an elaborate fantasy world based upon martial arts mythology, Al Pacino movies and, I’m told, cash ruling everything around me.

People call rap “real” because it deals with real life issues (i.e., the aforementioned cash ruling everything around me), but my favorite rap artists take those real issues and place them in a fantastical-feeling world, such as Deltron 3030, and, more recently, xaviersobased.

When you take the completely boring trials and tribulations of real life (i.e. cash ruling everything around me) and place them in a foreign surrounding (i.e., Staten Island Shaolin), things like credit card debt and student loans aren’t mundane, they suddenly appear poignant and powerful.

Now, my intention here is not to tell you to write Wu-Tang Clan-inspired fiction (although, actually, that’s not a bad idea).

But consider taking “real” life to the next level.

It’s totally fine to draw upon real life as it is actually lived. And at the end of the day, what’s most important is writing the book you want to write.

We don’t read novels about the 99.9% of planes that take off and land safely. We want to read about the 0.1% where nearly everything goes wrong. Even “quiet” novels tend to have intensely personal stakes.

What feels “real” in a novel doesn’t often correlate with real life

When you focus on real issues and engage with emotional truths in a strange world, a funny thing happens: your book seems more real.

Think about the unique worlds crafted by your favorite writers, even the ones that take place in “real” life. Great books are transporting. They take you away to a new place before they bring you back to what you know.

To put it another way still, when a sales rep goes to a chain and tells the buyer about the books on the upcoming list, they need something to point to that makes a book stand out.

They need to be able to say, “This is what makes this book different.” A unique character, a unique way of telling the story, a unique plot, a unique world. Something, anything that sets a book apart from the thousands of other books that are published every year.

And I’m here to tell you: Real life isn’t enough on its own.

Need help with your book? I’m available for manuscript edits, query critiques, and coaching!

For my best advice, check out my online classes, my guide to writing a novel, and my guide to publishing a book.

And if you like this post: subscribe to my newsletter!

Art: The Dragon by Kunisada II Utagawa