Katherine Hill

It seems there's always a conference going on somewhere, offering a brush-up on skills and an opportunity to network and make new connections. Having just returned from our own conference, the Publishing Business Conference & Expo, I know how important these conferences can be to professional growth, so I want to give a shout out to a conference taking place tomorrow in our hometown of Philadelphia.

If you're doing what many Americans do this month, you're spending at least some of your time sitting on the beach reading a book. The "beach read" is an essential element of vacation planning, and we publishers work hard to get our books in those suitcases or on those not-quite-sand-proof ereaders. I suppose the quintessential beach read is a "trashy" novel, but for many it's just a good work of fiction, a compelling non-fiction read, or perhaps a trip back to the classics. Middlemarch, anyone?