ON THE second floor of Big Blue Marble, an independent bookstore in the leafy Mount Airy neighborhood of Philadelphia, Roz Carter plugged in her computer, popped in her earbuds, and turned on a playlist heavy on Prince and Janelle Monáe. At another t

REGINALD Dwayne Betts is the author of A Question of Freedom: A Memoir of Learning, Survival, and Coming of Age in Prison (Avery, 2009) and three poetry collections, including Shahid Reads His Own Palm (Alice James Books, 2010), Bastards of the Reaga

Age: Fifty-six. Residence: Washington, D.C. Book: White Elephant (Ecco, March 2019), a novel about the chaos that ensues when a developer moves into a quaint community and starts tearing down old houses. Agent: Suzanne Gluck of William Morris Endeavo

IMAGINE you finally sell that first book. For years you’ve been piecing together low-paying teaching gigs or toiling away at a dull office job, and then—miracle of miracles—an editor at a major New York house offers you a six-figure deal to publish y

Age: Over fifty. Residence: Charlottesville, Virginia. Book: Ridiculous Light (Persea Books, April 2019), winner of the 2018 Lexi Rudnitsky First Book Prize in Poetry, a collection that spans the arc of a life, from the poet’s childhood in Milwaukee

Age: Fifty-eight. Residence: Nashville. Book: Late Migrations: A Natural History of Love and Loss (Milkweed Editions, July 2019), a collection of essays, including illustrations by the author’s brother, that offer a lyrical portrait of a family while

Age: Sixty. Residence: New York City. Book: Cornelius Sky (Kaylie Jones Books, August 2019), a novel about a doorman at a posh Manhattan apartment building who wanders the city streets in search of life’s higher meaning while confronting unlikely ang

Feedback from readers Thank you for the innovative approach to the annual MFA Issue, in particular “My MFA Experience” (September/October 2019) by Kevin Larimer. I connected with the article not only as a Wilkes University MFA alumnus, but also as a

PUBLISHING is such an intensively collaborative enterprise, I find it surprising that we in the industry value independence above everything else. After all, none of us is ever working alone—except perhaps when we read and evaluate a manuscript that

The exterior of the Second Shelf bookstore in London resembles a K2 kiosk, the iconic red telephone booth that dots the city’s streets. The shop, which stocks modern first editions, manuscripts, and other rare and rediscovered books by women, is all

Age: Seventy. Residence: Lindenhurst, New York. Book: Idiot Wind (Canongate, August 2019), a memoir of the author’s journey from addiction to recovery while on the road from New York City to Portland, Oregon, and back again. Agent: David McCormick of

For nearly two weeks in 2018, poet Doug Van Gundy and photographer Matt Eich interviewed residents of Webster County, West Virginia. They talked with gravediggers and teachers and diner cooks. They had coffee with an ex-military man who sold sawmill

SEVERAL years ago the poet and publisher Matvei Yankelevich and I offered a conference panel audience the spectacle of an actual disagreement. Not a fierce one but a firm one. We hugged afterward, to make clear that it was partly for show, but it rem

IF YOU are lucky enough to encounter a group of two or more independent publishers in the wild—whether in their natural habitat behind the tables at the Brooklyn Book Festival or perhaps gathered furtively at BookExpo America, in the less hospitable

A BOOK is a timeless medium that can’t be hacked, surveilled, or used to co-opt movements—as political and insurgent now as it was when the printing press was invented. But too often the stories we’re allowed to tell are dictated by an exclusionary c

INDEPENDENCE comes at a price. While supply-chain optimization, technological innovation, and shifts in reading and buying habits have lowered operating costs for many in the book business, publishers included, the price of independence is still most

Finding the right words is a matter of a civilization’s survival in Heaven’s Vault, an adventure video game centered on translation. Released in April 2019 by the Cambridge, England–based company inkle, Heaven’s Vault stars character Aliya Elasra, an

MY HOPES for the future of independent publishing involve three major elements: stronger “channels” of interest that drive better visibility for writers, particularly fiction writers; more collaboration among writers to create these channels and gath

DISTRIBUTION. Format. Editorial. In publishing—as with almost all media—these three elements work in tandem to define the business models that allow creatives to be creative for a living. For over a century print publishing in the United States saw a