Every day Poets & Writers Magazine scans the headlines—from publishing reports to academic announcements to literary dispatches—for all the news that creative writers need to know. Here are today’s stories:
“To work at Amazon is to spend your days at the coalface of consumerism. To witness our lust for stuff.” Investigative journalist Carole Cadwalladr lands a temporary job in an Amazon [2] warehouse and reports on the retail giant’s challenging work environment. (Guardian)
Meanwhile, Amazon announced yesterday its second annual 12 Days of Deals [3], which lists select print and e-books at a steep discount. (Yahoo! Finance)
Oyster Books, the Netflix-like e-book service, is offering gift subscriptions [4] for the holidays. (GalleyCat)
In our nation’s capital, Busboys & Poets [5]—a business launched in 2005 that is a bookstore, restaurant, and performance space—will soon open a sixth location. (Shelf Awareness)
In the Harvard Business Review, Sarah Green suggests that with the average American looking at more content than ever before, the publishing industry is actually thriving [6]. However, Green concedes, “As in many rapidly changing industries, the right business moves are not obvious.”
Carolyn Kellogg reports that over forty thousand participating writers completed novel-length manuscripts [7] for this year’s National Novel Writing Month. (Los Angeles Times)
Did you know that Ray Bradbury was a descendant of one of the people sentenced to be executed during the Salem Witch Trials of 1692 [8]? Oliver Tearle offers this and other interesting literary tidbits at the Huffington Post.