My "Lecture"

I'm also posting this as an announcement to make sure everyone sees it, but I just tried creating a brief "lecture" in something called "Screencast-O-Matic" (stupid name). I think you should be able to check it out here:

Baby's First Online Lecture

If that link doesn't work, please let me know ASAP.

In it, I cover a number of things. I survey some of the headlines, and other things I wanted you to know. Those links are below.

A few other things I cover: I'm going to be interviewing my friend, the literary agent Clelia Gore, next Monday or Tuesday. She's the Vice-President at Martin Literary and Media Management, in charge of the Children's and YA Division. If you have questions for her, please send them along to me via email, or post them as comments on this post!

READ
In "What Editors Do," please read Chapters 7, 17, and 21. These are the chapters that touch on agenting, on children's books, and on illustration. I'd like for one volunteer to be the "discussant" for each of these chapters (the way Michael or Dayna were for Wasserman's essay on Amazon). Please volunteer by commenting on this post. First come, first served. If no one signs up by tomorrow afternoon, I will pick people at random.

PRESENTATIONS
I'd like you to give your presentations to some combination of your classmates. I'm not requiring any of you to be at a specific place at a specific time, but I'd like for you to have an audience. I'll offer some times during the second week in April, and try to get a critical mass of people signed up for each. I imagine these would take 10 or 15 minutes per person. You could do a powerpoint presentation (yawn, but fine), you could do some sort of creative crafting project (I once had somebody do collages as a way to discuss the problems she had in choosing which literary magazines to subscribe to). I've had people do podcasts and videos. If you do one of those, the "presentation" component would be you talking a little bit about how you made it and then us asking you questions.

By next Friday (3/27), I'd like for you to email me at least with a rough idea of the type of presentation and the topic on which you'll be presenting. But please feel free to email me before that with questions. Let's talk it out? What might work? What do you care about and/or are you interested in? We could also do some of this work/thinking during...

OFFICE HOURS
Right now my plan is to hold Zoom Office Hours on Wednesdays and Fridays from 10-11:30 a.m. As this is for all my classes, I'm going to ask, if possible, for folks in Publishing to try to come to the last half of office hours (so 10:45-11:30). I'm asking my first-year writers to come to the first half. Make sense?

-- There is probably stuff I've forgotten, but that's all for now!


Links to things I mentioned in the video:

Publisher's Weekly issues now available in full, for free, for everyone.

Amazon Deprioritizes Book Sales Amid Coronavirus Crisis

Specifically for Steven: You can "read" War and Peace with writer Yiyun Li!

A History of Oprah's Literary Controversies (Also, if you're at home and have Apple+, check out the shows with the American Dirt author and report back!)

And, Without Places to Gather, Debut Novelists Reimagine Book Promotion