ARCHIVE FOR Books & Reading

For the inaugural Business of Books blog post, GrubStreet’s Founder and Executive Director Eve Bridburg talks to publishing expert Kristen McLean about the fate of physical books, the future of audiobooks and podcasts, and most importantly what this all means for writers like you.   

By Katrin Schumann

How long does it really take to write a book? From beginning the first draft to seeing it on bookshelves? It's generally accepted that more books = more success/ happiness. But what does being "productive" really mean, and does it make you happy as a writer? 

I used to think the solution to almost all writerly problems lay in having more time—a comforting thought since I had so very little of that particular commodity. Simple, I thought: when I have more time, I'll do more writing, and I'll be happy and productive.

On some level ...

Last year, I didn't make any New Year's resolutions. Frankly, I was tired of pushing myself so hard, and I thought: hey, how about I just try my best this year? It felt like a gentle enough goal given that I had just started a new job and my first novel was about to be published. While I knew quite a bit about what was ahead (I'd published nonfiction before), I had very little idea about whether the outcome for this book would be good, bad or indifferent, and how I would end up feeling about it all

Here at Grub HQ, we're always talking about the novels keeping us up at night, the poems that call to us over our morning coffees, and those unputdownable memoirs you'll find us reading while walking through four lanes of traffic [Ed.'s note: all walk-reading is performed by Grub's trained extreme readers; do not try this at home]. To round out the year, we're sharing the GrubStreet community’s latest literary obsessions to add to your own never-ending reading list.

We think that some of the best moments of the holidays are the ones where we share stories. With that in mind, our Write Down the Street team have each chosen a book that inspired them this year and that they hope to share with you. They recommend these titles as gifts to yourself or to your friends, family, and community members, and hope they inspire joy, laughter, reflection, and writing in your lives.