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When I consider my own future as a writer, I’m often drawn back to the idea of audience. It’s important to know who you’re writing for, why they should care, and whether or not you’re hitting the mark. The more I’m around, though, and the more I interact with human beings in their daily life, the more I realize that, as voracious readers, we liberal-arts children are exceptions to the general: people just don’t read very much.

Finding an appropriate market for your work can be difficult—there’s so much out there to be digested that emerging writers often end up confused, frazzled, and blindly submitting. The key to surviving the flood, is, of course, hard work—research, research, research. Duotrope and Poets & Writers are amazing resources on the market-search front: easy to use, full of information and (gasp!) entirely free, they’re difficult to ignore. They’re packed with potential markets, both online and print, that are just waiting for you to submit.

What about the weird markets, though? The new wave, the vanguard, the things that make you purse your lips before you give any real consideration? Yup, I’m talking about Twitter. Guess who announced a five-day fiction festival?

November is nearly upon us and alongside travel plans, turning leaves and embarrassing stories at family parties, we have National Novel Writing Month to stem the tide of winter depression (or happiness, I guess, if you're one of those people). If you're unfamiliar, NaNoWriMo is a sort of noncommittal worldwide writing group that encourages participants to begin and finish a 50,000 word novel during the month of November. That's roughly 1,666 pages a day. Since 1991, the group challenge has facilitated over 90 published novels, some you've even heard of. Last year there were 256,618 participants, 36,843 of which reached the 50,000 mark.

A few days ago The Millions posted a short article by Michael McGrath called "How to Write a Movie About a Writer." In the article, McGrath focuses on the literary archetypes that Hollywood so often relies on when immortalizing a writer, fictional or otherwise, on the silver screen; brooding and reclusive, self-destructive and socially-uncomfortable, quirky, dramatic.

It can be difficult to keep up with publishing industry news—contests, prizes, magazines and presses opening and closing, Amazon’s most recent debacle—but there are a variety of well-informed lit blogs that deserve your attention. Here you’ll find a list of the Publishing Lab’s favorite sources of industry news, speculation and consideration.

There are a lot of interesting things going on in the publishing world: Amazon got its mitts on some physical distribution and Barnes & Noble immediately refused to stock their books, an unpaid intern is calling attention to issues that “could shake the publishing industry,” and James Franco got a publisher for his first novel. All of that is well and good (except maybe the Franco deal) but in the interest of discussion, let’s ignore the news and talk about the viability of digital self-publishing.

Self-publishing is like religion or politics; most writers just don’t want to talk about it. It’s too risky. There are letters and message board comments waiting in the wings, so angry and poorly composed that we just keep our thoughts to ourselves. A particularly opinionated bookseller provided that title for this week's blog by putting it on the internet, which means we probably shouldn't take it seriously, but it does seem to be a fairly common view. That’s well and good, but in the era of affordable printing, e-books and a fairly ludicrous industry-wide publishing model, maybe it’s time to clean off our monocles and bring the discussion to the table.

With Borders having gone the way of the dinosaur, it was easy to imagine Barnes & Noble picking up the slack and filling the space that the #2 big-box bookseller left behind. The word from industry analysts and publishers isn’t so hopeful; low profits and stiff competition are pointing towards bankruptcy.

Monday marks the 25th day of Occupy Chicago, our own city’s branch of the now-global Occupy movement. While the connections are unofficial, the movement (now referring to itself, through unofficial organizers, as Occupy Together) draws its inspiration from the protesters who have made Wall Street difficult to walk down for the past month. The movement steers clear of pinpointing a stance. Instead, it lets the slogan “We are the 99%” sum everything up, forming a general umbrella under which each individual cause can agree.

We’ve come to a point in publishing history where it’s not uncommon to scan headlines, blogs and industry news sources for presses and publications that have closed their doors. It seems that the old model can no longer support itself; writers are either wooed by advances and decent residual sales, then create subpar follow-up work which disappoints intended markets, or they never recoup their original advance and are left with one book published and a red mark next to their name, a warning sign against future publication. Unless the profit margins are high, presses can’t justify the cost of production. It is, after all, a business.

Summer is officially over, so it’s time to dust off the ol' keyboard and get back into the swing of things. It was an interesting summer, to say the least. We watched Borders Books close its (physical) doors while digital publishing gained some weight, and the NY Times Bestseller list continued to disappoint the pretentious among us. How about a brief summer recap? Everyone likes those.

It's easy to look at the financial difficulties of major booksellers like Borders as a sign that the publishing industry is suffering under the weight of its own structure, but the good people at McSweeney's beg to differ.

This holiday season wasn’t especially kind to Borders, the second-largest bookselling chain in America. They’ve closed dozens of Borders Superstores, hundreds of Waldenbooks nationwide and even some distribution centers. The Big Six of the publishing industry are waiting on payments and delaying distribution, and the company hired high-profile bankruptcy lawyers earlier this month. All signs point to the loss of one of the most popular ways to run out and grab the latest bestseller.

When Johanna Skibsrud was nominated for the prestigious Scotiabank Giller Prize for her novel The Sentamentalists, no one was happier for her than her publisher, Gaspereau Press. And yet Gaspereau Press - a small, independent press in Kentville, Nova Scotia - then turned around and did something that no one expected. They went back into their studio and continued printing The Sentamentalists as they had been all along: the old-fashioned way. (See a video of the process here). As Moby Lives reports: "Insisting on maintaining control of all aspects of the process, publisher Andrew Steeves and three employees produce all of their books in-house, operating their own press and bindery, and printing details like cover art by hand on Vandercook letterpresses. The process limits their output, with a typical first printing falling within 1,500 copies. So when a major publisher offered to take over production of the The Sentimentalists after its nomination, one might have expected Gaspereau to welcome the help. Not so: Steeves steadfastly refused, citing the need to stay true to the press’s founding principles of local economy and traditional craftsmanship."

Those crazy innovators over at Electric Literature have done it again. Company founders Andy Hunter and Scott Lindenbaum (the same publishers that have brought the world stories by such digital formats as PDF, Kindle, iPhone, iPad, YouTube, and Twitter) have now launched a separate service at electricpublisher.com where authors can create iPhone and iPad applications for their books. The applications serve as a sort of modern day version of the book club, where readers can meet to comment on the books they are reading and receive responses to their comments from the authors themselves.

It's Creative Nonfiction Week at Columbia, and there's plenty to do: from panel discussions and student and faculty readings to readings and lectures from Ta-Nahisi Coates, S.L. Wisenberg, and Bryan Smith. One of the guests this week that we here at the Review Lab are most excited about, however, is author David Shields. Shields' new book, Reality Hunger: A Manifesto (Knopf, 2010), is being hailed by critics and authors around the globe: "This is the most provocative, brain-rewiring book of 2010," wrote Alex Pappademas of GQ. "It's a book that feels at least five years ahead of its time and teaches you how to read it as you go." Chuck Klosterman called Reality Hunger "the most intense, thought-accelerating book of the past ten years"; Jonathan Lethem called it "an urgent book: a piece of art-making itself, a sublime, exciting, outrageous, visionary volume." And Albert Goldbarth wrote, "It tells us who we are and why we read and why the things we read exist and where it all might go tomorrow." So what is this "mind-bending" and "brain-rewiring" collage of 618 numbered paragraphs, more than half of them appropriated from other sources, all about?

American media theorist, writer, columnist, lecturer, graphic novelist and documentarian Douglas Rushkoff recently wrote a column for Arthur Mag in which the outspoken author explains in great detail exactly why he left Random House to publish his latest book with the small independent publisher OR Books. "Why would a bestselling author, capable of garnering a six-figure advance on a book, forgo the money, the media, and the mojo associated with a big publishing house?" he writes. "Because it would make my book twice as expensive for you, half as profitable for me, less purposefully written, and unavailable until two years from now."

In celebration of Banned Books Week, we look back to the bygone years of literary censorship, when the critics didn't bother hiding behind a thin veil of objectivity. These chaps didn't pretend to be receptive to new ideas, or any ideas that weren't their own, for that matter. They didn't stoop to the level of the "genuine and powerful" but "unworthy" and "grotesque" authors whose works they condemned. They came storming out of their offices bare-fisted, and pummeled the jaws of "the blood-and-thunder reading population" without even bothering to pocket their monocles first. Then they supported each other in letters to their editors, marching forward in unison on their quest to make all printed literature in the entire world fit their own strict moral codes. These men were brave. They were strong. They were righteous. And they never really went away. They evolved.

Every once in a while a columnist comes along whose attitude towards his subject seems so jaded that it becomes hard for his readers to realize that he's making some really good points. That is definitely the case with Anis Shivani. In an article written for The Huffington Post last month, Shivani takes his gloves off and goes to town on what he calls "The 15 Most Overrated Contemporary American Writers." Even more entertaining than Shivani's actual list, however, is his introduction to the list: an eight hundred word rant against against the reviewing establishment, the MFA writing system, conglomerate publishing, the academy, and, simply, "bad writing."

In an extremely shady and poorly-executed attempt to save face, the Pentagon recently purchased the entire first print run of Lieutenant Colonel Anthony Shaffer's embarrassing exposé of intelligence operations, entitled Operation Dark Heart, in order to destroy it. St. Martin's Press, the publishers of Shaffer's book, agreed to sell the U.S. Defense Department the first print run, but then found itself in a bitter dispute with them over what could appear in the censored version when it was finally released to the public.

For an excellent example of the effect that fame, topical issues, and the upcoming holiday season have on the publishing world, one need only look at the books slated for release this coming fall. In order to coincide with the midterm elections in November, a handful of studies of the Tea Party Movement, that old charmer Glenn Beck, and President Obama are scheduled to hit the shelves in the final weeks of October, along with memoirs from Tony Blair, Condoleezza Rice, Jimmy Carter, and Walter Mondale. A book by the Washington Post investigative reporter Bob Woodward entitled Obama's War will also be released in the coming weeks, along with Bill O'Reilly's latest rant, Pinheads and Patriots, and the highly anticipated memoir from George W. Bush, which is already being harpooned in the press because of its absurd title: Decision Points. The New York Times reports that Larry Norton, a senior vice president of merchandising at Borders, has proclaimed that Decision Points will be "the biggest book of the season."

Memorial Day has come and gone, and with daily temperatures settling somewhere around the eighty degree mark, Chicagoans can now rest assured that summer is here. Summer means clear, sunny skies, baseball games at the ballpark, barbecues in backyards, road trips, and more playtime for students of all ages. It also means more free time for writers and artists to accomplish all the independent work that is so vital to their emerging careers. While creating and revising their various works-in-progress, writers in Chicago can also take advantage of several literary events that take place in their fair city during the long summer months. Opportunities to network with fellow writers, hear great new stories, and read work of your own abound in the Windy City from June to September, and are just begging to be taken advantage of.

In the words of Lakshmi Chaudhry, a contributor to the magazine In These Times: "Unlike the gods of the literary establishment who remain predominately male—both as writers and critics—their humble readers are overwhelmingly female." Back in 2007, N.P.R. researched that claim for themselves and came to the conclusion that women read more fiction than men by a four to one margin. The N.P.R. piece quoted British author Ian McKewan, who had written in The Guardian that "When women stop reading, the novel will be dead." They also revealed research in which "cognitive psychologists found that women are more empathetic than men, and possess a greater emotional range—traits that make fiction more appealing to them." But now author Jason Pinter, writing for The Huffington Post, has spoken out against articles like the one that N.P.R. ran three years ago. Pinter claims that there are perceived to be more women readers out there in the world not because men don't read, but because men "are not marketed to, are not targeted, and are often totally dismissed."

Up until this year, the last time a book from a small publisher won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction was when John Kennedy Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces, published by Lousiana State Press, took home the prize in 1981. But now, in 2010, Paul Harding's Tinkers has changed all that.

Long story short: In the opening years of the new millennium, Google got this great idea that people all over the world should have access to the books at university libraries, and they began pulling books from the shelves and making digital copies. In 2004, they launched Google Book Search, in which users could view snippets of those books, and download full versions of the public domain books. One major problem: millions of the books in the Google Book Search were copyrighted.

The New York Times is just as obsessed with the rising popularity of the e-book as we are here at the Review Lab, and today they looked at a more superficial aspect of the phenomenon: the book cover. "With a growing number of people turning to Kindles and other electronic readers, and with the Apple iPad arriving on Saturday, it is not always possible to see what others are reading or to project your own literary tastes," writes Motoko Rich. "You can’t tell a book by its cover if it doesn’t have one."

When attempting to wrap your head around the publishing industry, it's refreshing to have an experienced writer tell you about the process she had to go through in order to get her work published. It's even more refreshing when she does so without glossing over the whole experience or making it seem like it was the most terrible thing she's ever been through. In an absolutely essential interview with Bookish Us last summer, Story Week guest Bonnie Jo Campbell did just that.

Story Week is just around the corner, and Joyce Carol Oates is coming to town for a question and answer session with Gavin Cologne-Brookes, a couple of readings, a conversation with Donna Seaman, and a book signing. Oates is one of those authors who defines prolificacy, as she has published more than 50 novels, 32 short story collections, 8 volumes of poetry, and countless essays and book reviews in her career. In the introduction to Gavin Cologne-Brookes' Dark Eyes on America: The Novels of Joyce Carol Oates, the author states that his contention in the book "is that while many of Oates's earlier novels are chiefly valuable in revealing her path to artistic maturity, her novels since the 1980s suggest that she is the nearest America could currently have to a national novelist."

In yet another giant step forward for e-books, a new software program is being introduced that will allow college professors "to edit digital editions of textbooks and customize them for their individual classes." DynamicBooks will give instructors the power to not only reorganize or delete chapters and upload course material, but also to alter individual sentences and paragraphs without consulting the original authors or publisher.

When Steve Jobs unveiled the unfortunately-named iPad last month, publishers rejoiced that Apple planned on selling e-book editions of fiction and nonfiction at prices comparable to list prices. Apple appeared, at least temporarily, to be taking the high road, and refraining from engaging in a price war with Amazon by selling e-books in the sub-ten dollar range. Now, however, anonymous sources from Apple say that isn't exactly true...

Back in December, the New York Times reported the death of two Nielsen Company publications, Editor & Publisher and Kirkus Reviews. Now Kirkus Reviews, which has annually published thousands of reviews of new books since 1933, is back in action, and it's all thanks to an unlikely hero...

Tucked away in the subconscious of any emerging writer is the dream that one day their story will be plucked from the pile of unsolicited manuscripts in a celebrated publishing house. The story will receive a tearful ovation from the reader who picked it up, and it will be whisked away to the editor, who will publish it to great acclaim. Unfortunately, the Wall Street Journal reports, those days are long gone...

The nominees for the 2010 Academy Awards were announced this week, and among them were several films adapted from literary works. Sure, there's an award category for "Best Screenplay Based on Material Previously Produced or Published," but we're talking about the book-based films nominated for the grand prize, the coveted "Best Picture" award...

So in case you hadn't heard, tomorrow Apple will announce its newest device, the Tablet. The Apple Tablet has generated so much buzz that if you Google the words "much-hyped" or "much-anticipated" right now, the Tablet is the first thing to pop up...