Where has the week gone?

by Lauren

It’s been a busy week around these parts, with Sarah Palin’s book hitting the shelves; publishers ignoring potential breakout hits in a neverending search for obvious frontlist; and debate on Harlequin’s branching out into self-publishing territory. We answered questions on fiction credentials and platform building; admitted to guilty pleasure reading; explained publishing; practically wrote your letter to Santa for you; analyzed the reading habits of youth; asked for short story suggestions; and Chasya told you why she’s here in the first place.

Elsewhere in the blogosphere, the New Yorker’s Book Bench blog posted a covers contest so challenging that even previous winners Jim and I couldn’t get ‘em all. (Seriously, people, what are #2 and #4? They haven’t posted the answers yet, and it’s driving me a bit nuts.) They also interviewed a seriously awesome 4-year-old on his love of books and monsters. Everyone talked about the eminently deserving Colum McCann’s win of the National Book Award. Eric at Pimp My Novel pointed out that we’re writing a lot of books about people’s daughters lately. Michael Cairns at PersonaNonData analyzed e-book pricing. The author behind Belle de Jour, blog-turned-book-turned-TV-show about a prostitute in London, turned out to be a research scientist. And Nathan Bransford made a pretty compelling argument for the eventual supremacy of e-books because people gravitate toward efficiency (on the one hand, I dream about one day having a home library with rolling ladders to reach the higher shelves; on the other, I’m kind of an efficiency nerd).

And now I’m off to figure out how to efficiently fit a library large enough to require rolling ladders in a New York City apartment.