This Week In Books

September 3, 2023

This Week In Books: Publishing insider news with a healthy side of snark (like carbs, only you’ll still fit in your jeans).

Friday, September 8, 2023 Edition

Image by Ylanite Koppens from Pixabay

Hi, Hello, we’re back. You may remember us (Ariel and Marybeth from She Reads). For the decade that we ran She Reads, we shared the best novels and author essays that we could find. We had a book club and ran live events and did our best to connect authors and readers. We loved it. But in 2020 everything changed (boy howdy, didn’t it?) and we felt that She Reads (as it was) had run its course. So we retired the site and went about raising our families and writing our books. The one thing that never changed, however, was the core of what made She Reads work: our friendship. We still called and texted and gossiped about the world of publishing. And we still recommended all of the best books that we read to anyone who would listen. When the dust settled, we realized that we missed this. We missed you. So here we are as The Book Tide (think of it as She Reads 2.0). A bit more unfiltered and a whole lot more fun. But still dedicated to helping readers find books they will love. Only this time we’re also giving you a behind the scenes glimpse into the strange and wonderful and baffling world of publishing. Make it make sense. Please. So here is this week, in books:

Last week, CNN published what looks suspiciously like a hit piece on Colleen Hoover. The gist: she’s hugely successful, beloved by TikTokers, defies genre categorization, and has self-published in the past. Therefore she is controversial. All we know is The List don’t lie–with 6 different books on The New York Times Bestseller top 15 for a combined 387 weeks, Colleen Hoover might just be single handedly keeping the publishing industry alive. With books published across the Big Five, what that means is that every major publisher can afford to take risks on lesser known authors. Add to that the fact that CoHo seems to be a genuinely lovely person and we don’t see a problem here, CNN.

In slightly older but still relevant news, The Duke and Duchess of Sussex are adapting New York Times Bestselling author, Carly Fortune’s Meet Me At The Lake for Netflix. With protagonists that share similarities with the Sussex’s famed romance, Meet Me At The Lake, is about “two strangers on a daylong adventure where they make a promise one keeps and the other breaks, with life-changing effects.” Good for you, Carly, let’s hope Archewell Productions fares better with Netflix than they did with Spotify. We’re rootin’ for all y’all.

Elizabeth Gilbert, the New York Times Bestselling author of Eat Pray Love, just started a newsletter dedicated to teaching the art of writing love letters to yourself. This seems like good timing for Gilbert who pulled her own book from publication earlier this year after she was review-bombed on Goodreads. No one had actually read The Snow Forest because it would not have been published until February 2024. Her alleged crime? The novel was set in 1930s Russia and is therefore “romanticizing” Russia in the midst of its war with Ukraine. But the novel is actually about a family that, in Gilbert’s own words, “remove themselves from society to resist the Soviet government and try to defend nature against industrialization.” I don’t know folks, this stinks of Russiagate all over again. Are we sure it wasn’t Russian bots that review-bombed her? Back off Russia, it’s one thing to mess with our elections but keep your hands off our books! The Book Tide take: Goodreads needs an overhaul, review-bombing is a horrible practice, and Elizabeth Gilbert could use some extra love right now. Go check out her newsletter. 

Fifty Shades of Hay: Linda Byler, an Amish author, is drawing controversy within her ultra-conservative community for her tame romance novels. With such racy content that includes “their lips met in mutual consent” and “she gave herself to him in spirit”, we can certainly see why she is setting hearts to racing. Whether you’re mad at her for stirring up the youth or you’re secretly waiting for the next release, you can’t argue with more than a million copies sold. Especially since Byler writes her novels by hand in a notebook and mails them to her publisher in New York, computers being a modern convenience that is eschewed by the Amish. Is it getting hot in here, or is it just me?

Kathleen Schmidt, who writes Publishing Confidential, had an interesting piece about blurbs. The gist: nobody likes to give blurbs, authors really hate to ask for them, and it doesn’t matter anyway because readers don’t buy books because of them. But it does bring up an interesting question: do readers care? Have you ever bought a book based on blurbs? If you did, we’re betting it was when Stephen King blurbed American Dirt.

Speaking of American Dirt, we have this breaking news: Amy Einhorn just left her position as publisher of Holt to become publisher of Crown. The gist: they brought her in to revitalize their fiction program (Crown is currently only publishing non-fiction). Einhorn is best known as the editor of The Help, Big Little Lies, and American Dirt. The latter was published to great acclaim and great controversy. Its detractors were many.  But so were its defendants. Here at The Book Tide we suspect that this controversy was mainly limited to the publishing ecosystem given how well the book sold amongst the general public. But we’re curious: did you read the book? And if so, did you know anything about the controversy before you bought it? And did it matter to you? Regardless, it can’t be denied that Amy Einhorn has a gift for acquiring immensely successful books. We’re eager to see what she publishes at Crown.

Catch Up with Ariel over at I’m So Glad You Asked

See what Marybeth is up to at I Will Tell You This.