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This summer has witnessed the reignition of the debate about pulpy reading, with much of the usual attendant hair-pulling and garment-rending. Should you do it? Should you feel guilty about doing it? Is it bad for you? And, oh goodness, once you open your mind to the corrupting tendrils of popular fiction, can your good-breeding and forthright character hope to survive for long?

Our preferred answers, in order: Yes. No. No. And probably not, which you should embrace.

In an interview in The Paris Review in 1958 Ernest Hemingway made an admission that has inspired frustrated novelists ever since: The final words of “A Farewell to Arms,” his wartime masterpiece, were rewritten “39 times before I was satisfied.”

Those endings have become part of literary lore, but they have never been published together in their entirety, according to his longtime publisher, Scribner.

The first Dear Sugar letter I read was from a woman who called herself Stuck. She had had a miscarriage when she was six months pregnant. Her doctor told her the pregnancy might have failed in part because she was overweight. She was caught in a spiral of grief and blame, and wrote to Sugar, the advice columnist at TheRumpus.net, to ask how she could stop feeling so ashamed and alone. The letter was heartbreaking, and so was Sugar’s response, which used her signature method of telling stories from her life to illuminate the

Zondervan has announced Zondervan First, a new direct-to-digital publishing imprint. The new imprint launches today with the acquisition of the first fiction title, Love in Three-Quarter Time by Dina Sleiman. Zondervan First will provide fresh and relevant content across all reading devices. Authors who publish under this model will have the same access to the Zondervan editorial and marketing teams as those published traditionally, which sets this program apart from other direct-to-digital publishers.

As someone who reads a lot of fiction books, and enjoys a good fantasy novel every now and again, I feel there is a great deal to be said about J.R.R Tolkien. Lord of the Rings has had a lasting effect on the genre. Best known, of course are the fantasy races other authors have used again and again.

However, one of the other effects has been the ubiquitous use of reference material. Fantasy, especially epic fantasy, loves its reference material the way a research paper loves its citations (of reference material).

J.R.R Tolkien's Lord of the Rings has had a lasting effect on the fantasy genre. Best known are the fantasy races other authors have used again and again. One of the other effects has been the ubiquitous use of reference material (maps, glossaries, etc). Fantasy, especially epic fantasy, loves its reference material the way a research paper loves its citations (of reference material). I won’t say it’s difficult to find a fantasy novel that doesn’t have reference material, but it does seem to be something that many authors do, given the chance.

The 2012 Publishing Business Conference & Expo brought together more than 1,300 industry experts and solutions providers for three days of education, idea sharing and opportunity at the New York Marriott Marquis. This year's conference theme, "Cashing in on Cross Media Content," highlighted emerging opportunities for magazine and book publishers. It also aptly described the optimism among speakers and attendees at this signature event for publishing professionals.

Maket segmentation is the process of dividing your overall sales opportunity into unique, defined, manageable groups of people. You know this as a fundamental marketing technique, but if you look at it in a new way it is even more likely to increase your sales, revenue and profits.

Locating opportunities that are not immediately visible is what I call “marketing in the white space”—the undefined area surrounding the segments, the places where you can create new sales in uncontested market space where your competition is irrelevant. Here, demand is created rather than fought over, and growth may be profitable and rapid.

Nation's reading habits may soon enter a new chapter, reports Zhang Yuchen in Beijing. When the first e-book readers appeared in the late 1990s, technology experts predicted a great future for the digital publishing industry, arguing that the development could provide a sea change in the way people consume literature. The United States currently dominates the sector in terms of popularity and, therefore, revenue, and

The story of P.K. Sindwani and his suburban Philadelphia bookstore is a saga of the beleaguered bookselling industry: good intentions, crazy times, and anyone’s guess as to how things will turn out.

For nearly two decades, Sindwani had done well at his shop near Ursinus College. But in 2010, with an anchor supermarket dying next door and the industry transforming at an exasperating pace, things got so tough that the onetime accountant and lifelong book lover was planning an exit strategy.