By Laura L. Griffin 8/22/12 8:00am

off the record

Mary Norris. (Photo by Roni Gross)

Veteran New Yorker Copy Editor Sells Book for a Rumored Six Figures

The Observer reached veteran New Yorker copy editor Mary Norris last week at Rockaway Beach, where she was taking a deserved vacation. She had, after all, just sold a book.

After three decades of red-pencil duties, Ms. Norris has, of late, been punchily defending the peculiarities of the storied weekly’s punctuation and house style for its Page-Turner blog. From these posts, which range in topic from the dreaded diaeresis (seen in coöperate and reëlect) to the mag’s prudish-but-evolving stance on the F-word, her forthcoming book, Between You and Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen, was born, with development help from her agent, David Kuhn. Read More

By Leon Neyfakh 8/04/09 11:17pm

Note to Authors: Make Your Deadlines!

There was a time not so long ago when authors never had to worry about handing in their manuscripts on time. Deadlines back then were a formality—something publishers took about as seriously in the course of contractual negotiations as they did the profit-and-loss statements they used to justify their acquisitions. If an author hit their Read More

By Gabriel Snyder 2/14/00 12:00am

Tom Wolfe Disinters “Tiny Mummies!” After 35 Years

David Kuhn, the new editor in chief of Steven Brill’s Brill’s Content magazine and editorial director of Mr. Brill’s Contentville Web site, has given a guarantee, of sorts: He says that both arms of Brill Media Ventures will keep their editorial integrity, despite the fact that Mr. Brill has struck deals recently with such media Read More