Scams! Diaries! Book Promotion!: Stuff to Read
I promised that I would share things I read in March that weren't books and that I thought you all would like. So it's not absolutely everything; there were things about technology and things about academic theory that you probably don't care so much about. But these are all about books, which you probably do care about because you are here in the Wingback Workshop working it out with me.
If you're a writer, you have certainly seen the onslaught of new scams in your inbox. They are targeting authors of books that aren't big sellers, and they're promising publicity or large book club purchases – for a price, of course. Literary Hub has a good article about how to recognize scams. I try so hard, as a freelance editor, to make clear what to expect from me, what they will get for what they pay. Publishing is hard, and assholes like this only make it harder.https://lithub.com/how-authors-can-protect-themselves-from-scams-according-to-a-book-publicist/
Some of you live in Portland, and at least one of you lives close enough that my library branch is also your library branch, but let's all get excited about library renovations no matter where we live! Libraries are life. https://www.pdxmonthly.com/news-and-city-life/2026/03/new-portland-libraries-design-justice
I have written a few times about the magic of RSS in a world where social media is either a. a nightmare or b. crumbling like a sad, dry, overcooked cake. I also try to include the RSS feed for the Wingback Workshop in every newsletter; I hope you're all using it! Here is Cory Doctorow on the topic too, if you haven't joined the RSS club yet. https://pluralistic.net/2026/03/07/reader-mode/
Everybody is talking about the reading crisis – whether it exists, if it's gendered, if it's our fault for having no attention or AI's fault for ruining our brains. Et cetera, et cetera. In France, they have a "15 minutes of reading" campaign where, on a day in March, everyone stops to read for 15 minutes. Doable! Communal! An excuse for the readers among us to read! But top-down initiatives to get people reading are often doomed; it needs to come from people themselves, not institutions. And as this article points out, in my on-the-fly translation, "Time to read is more meaningful than any slogan." https://actualitte.com/article/129796/edito/15-minutes-de-lecture-vaudront-toujours-mieux-qu-une-injonction-a-lire
Creative people of all kinds, but maybe especially writers, since we're not trying to stand on a stage playing songs in front of thousands of people, get serious ick from the idea of publicizing our work. Larissa Pham talks about the need to tell people that we wrote something versus the absolute embarrassment of telling people we wrote something.
There’s something so clownish about selling a book. It’s humiliating. You’re like, “I am putting on my little jester hat and I’m entering the public square. Look at this thing I made. Please buy it.” It’s so horrible. And I hate capitalism.
I have tried to keep a proper diary over the years, and I just can't. I am not interested enough in the events of my day after the fact to write them down. In related news, I don't read anything I've written once it's published. As some friend and I decided ages ago, this is real shark behavior: always swimming forward. If you look back, you die. Sharks are dramatic. I am, however, grateful for the diary keepers of the world, like Virginia Woolf. This essay on her diary entries regarding the advance of fascism leading up to and during World War II are enlightening. https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/dont-close-your-teeth/
This one is for my New Yorker nerds; it's about Roger Angell. Either you know this is for you, or you have no idea and can skip this link. https://www.newyorker.com/culture/personal-history/roger-and-the-smooth-fox-terriers
Oh look, another essay about the reading crisis. Here, Sam Haselby takes the stance that the problem isn't that books are boring, it's that our attention is being deliberately hijacked.
The fragmentation correlates not with screens in general but with specific design patterns: notification systems, variable reward schedules, infinite scroll. These are choices made by specific companies for specific economic reasons. They are not inherent properties of the medium.
https://aeon.co/essays/what-we-think-is-a-decline-in-literacy-is-a-design-problem
I'm always glad to find another person whose life basically revolves around books and writing, and I have been meaning to read more C. S. Lewis, and Joel Miller recommends his work on the medieval mind. You know I love anything medieval. https://thecreativeindependent.com/people/author-and-publishing-professional-joel-miller-on-making-an-effort/
If you've ever wondered how exactly a book gets made – and why they are getting more expensive, along with everything else – NPR's Planet Money made a podcast about its book being made, from the acquisition of the proposal to the printing and shipping of the physical object. https://www.npr.org/series/g-s1-112661/planet-money-makes-a-book
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