Today at 12pm EST, as part of Pandemonium U, Benjamin Moser, the author of Sontag and Why This World, will participate in a conversation titled “How to Write a Biography” with author Pamela Druckerman (There Are No Grown-Ups Around). Among the questions he will address: “What’s it like to be a man who writes about women? Why are women’s life stories different from those of men? How does Ben choose his subjects, and what’s it like to spend years immersed in their diaries and emails?” Anyone can “attend” using Zoom.
Sarah Manguso, author of Ongoingness and 300 Arguments, has sold her first novel, Very Cold People, to Hogarth.
Bookshop, which was started in January in an effort to help independent bookstores boost online sales, has seen a 2,000 percent increase in sales in the past month. As a Publishers Weekly article suggests, some booksellers have said that the site has not provided “a replacement for direct sales, as the profit margin on Bookshop sales is significant lower.” But as Bookshop founder Andy Hunter (who is also the publisher and COO of Catapult) notes: “We’re not claiming to be saving anyone. I do think that selling books online is going to be important to the survival of stores in the future, and we want to help stores make the transition.”
Brooklyn bookseller Spoonbill & Sugartown has started a GoFundMe in an attempt to stay in business during the coronavirus shutdown. And Small Press Distribution—a legendary force in the world of experimental and independent publishing—has started a GoFundMe for staff wages and royalties.
Geoff Dyer looks to books that make him laugh.
