A few weeks ago, we published a Soapbox column by Wendy Werris, our former West Coast correspondent, who spent two weeks working at Barnes & Noble and wrote about her experience. Though she started full of optimism—“I imagined helping erudite customers on the sales floor, expertly running the fiction and mystery sections”—she came to feel that “there was no room for creativity” at B&N. Many of our readers, current and former B&N employees among them, strongly disagreed.
“You know, as a B&N employee, I really enjoy recommending books to customers like the indie stores do. I actually know about the product I am selling and enjoy the job. I enjoy giving... recommendations and talking to customers about the genres I prefer.”—Sarah Thomas
“I also work at B&N, and it is easily one of the best places I have ever been employed at.... We are booksellers, no matter what bookstore we’re employed at.”—Brittany Colwell
From the Newsletters
Catching up with Glee’s Chris Colfer, whose fifth Land of Stories middle grade fantasy novel, An Author’s Odyssey (Little, Brown), pubs July 12.
What authors should—and shouldn’t—do to get a book bloggers’ attention.
Blogs
One bookseller marvels at the wealth of talent at Children’s Institute.
Podcasts
PW senior writer Andrew Albanese talks about fallout for publishers from the recent Brexit vote and recaps the low-attendance but high-energy ALA Annual Conference.
Bob Proehl discusses A Hundred Thousand Worlds (Viking), about a mother-son comic-con road trip.
The first annual BookLife prize for works of self-published fiction is open for submissions. Check out this page to read critiques of our current top scorers.
It’s the lucky seventh week in a row for The Loney by Andrew Michael Hurley (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), the most-read review on publishersweekly.com.
Biographer Arthur Lubow discusses his new book, Diane Arbus: Portrait of a Photographer (Ecco). and PW correspondent Liz Thomson explains how “Brexit” will affect publishing.
