Publishing Pulse for April 29, 2011

New At QueryTracker:

Congratulations to QueryTracker's two newest success stories, Aislinn Macnamara and Michael Goins.

We've added two new agents to the database, Christa Heschke and Michele Mortimer, and eleven agent profiles were updated this week. As always, please double-check before you query to make sure the agent is still open to queries and has not changed his or her query guidelines.

Carolyn Kaufman is hosting a contest giving away a $20 Amazon gift card, a signed copy of The Writer's Guide To Psychology, or one of two other books. Take a photo of her book "in the wild" and you might win!

Publishing News:

A biologist and his grad students discover an out-of-print book about flies is insanely priced on Amazon.com, and with a little sleuthing, they determine why the price eventually reaches $23 million. If you click only one link from this Pulse, please make it this one, for the geek factor as well as the laughs.

Speaking of Amazon.com, the recently reported quarterly profits significantly lower than Wall Street's expectations, although their overall revenue had risen, at the same time that they expanded their employee base by 12%, adding 4200 employees.

Around The Blogosphere:

Jessica Faust gives a few, er, interesting lines from letters she's received.

Elizabeth Weed talks titles: books with their original titles and the titles they were published under.

Natalie Whipple discusses how to know when to rewrite your book.

Why writers need to avoid an interminable agency clause (and many examples of the wording to avoid.)

via Kym McNabney we have this gem:


Literary Quote Of The Week:

This book is not to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.

- Dorothy Parker

---

Jane Lebak is the author of The Guardian (Thomas Nelson, 1994), Seven Archangels: Annihilation (Double-Edged Publishing, 2008) and The Boys Upstairs (MuseItUp, 2010). At Seven Angels, Four Kids, One Family, she blogs about what happens when a distracted daydreamer and a gamer geek attempt to raise four children. She is represented by the resolute Roseanne Wells of the Marianne Strong Literary Agency.