By Emily Witt 9/16/11 9:13am

Book Parties

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Celebrating Hurricane Harbach, Publishing Trades Baseball Cards at Brooklyn Brewery

What was most remarkable about Chad Harbach’s book party at the Brooklyn Brewery last night was the bonhomie. An agent pointed it out to The Observer as we stood around the indoor picnic tables drinking lager from plastic cups: it helps that Mr. Harbach is a nice guy from the Midwest (there was a lot of Midwestern pride in the room last night), but it makes everybody in publishing happy when a work of literary fiction by a talented first-time novelist not only gets a big advance but also sells well. For all of publishing’s sometime dysfunction, something actually worked. Read More

By Emily Witt 5/25/11 12:18am

Novel Ideas

The Laborious (Boring?) Lit Life

“You should write about how boring BookExpo America is,” New York literary agent Ira Silverberg told Transom. “Yeah, right,” we thought.

But then there we were, at a BEA  kick-off party thrown by Flavorpill and Electric Literature at Le Bain, on the rooftop of the Standard Hotel, which someone remarked was like standing atop a Read More

By Molly Fischer 2/23/10 12:46am

n+Fun: Big Baseball Book Deal for Chad Harbach

Chad Harbach, an editor at n+1, has sold his debut novel to Michael Pietsch at Little, Brown. It’s called The Art of Fielding, and it’s about baseball.

Agent Chris Parris-Lamb of the Gernert Company shepherded Harbach’s book through what publishing industry sources say was “an old-fashioned auction”–stretching from Wednesday to Friday and involving eight imprints, Read More

By Leon Neyfakh 7/21/09 9:02pm

Hey, Look at All These Novels to Read!

Fall is coming.

In publishing, this signals the start of a season that many believe has the best chance of any in recent memory to redeem the industry after one of its darkest years, and to show that, even in 2009, big, beautiful hit books are still possible. 

Many publishers are saying their fall catalogs Read More

By Leon Neyfakh 3/03/09 8:38pm

Who Says There Isn’t A Great New Agent?

Ask him what makes a good literary agent, and 27-year-old Chris Parris-Lamb will reply in a tone of voice that suggests he has thought carefully about his answer and concluded that what he wants to say is sort of obvious and straightforward. He sounds exasperated and a little disappointed in himself as he does this— Read More