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Remembered as much for his vivid writings as his early death, Dylan Thomas may be the archetypal example of a poet who is vivacious, drunk,

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Considered to be one of the most well-known poetical forms in the English language, the limerick evokes a sense of humor, camaraderie and fu

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The rise of mass media – and printed media in particular – occurred roughly during the same time period that abolitionism began growing as a

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Words for Australia Day

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It may seem odd to many that the first UNESCO World City of Literature was not a major publishing hub like New York City, Portland, San Fran

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literaticat

How long do most picture books stay in print for? I would guess that they go out of print relatively quickly unless they become a classic or super popular in order to make room for all the new upcoming releases.

Obviously I can only give my own experience, YMMV, etc etc. But to answer this question, I looked at my handy list of every book I've ever sold, and figured out which ones are PB and if they are Out of Print (OP). This is obviously a limited selection of titles, BUT, it also covers a pretty wide swath of styles, publisher sizes, author-famousness, etc, so I do think it is probably a relatively accurate snapshot:

PBs of mine that are more than 10 years old but less than 15: (pub date 2010-2015): 50% are still in print. (10 in print, 10 OP)

PBs of mine that are more than 5 years old but less than 10: (pub date 2016-2020): 70% are still in print. (25 in print, 10 OP)

PBs of mine that are less than 5 years old: (pub date 2021 to present): I got bored looking these up after awhile and it was 100%, so let's say 90-95% are still in print just in case I missed a couple.

Mind you, that's the only data I have, bc I just don't have any titles that published before 2010! But if I had to make a fairly educated guess, I'd wager that if we were to keep going in this direction, the chart would look something like this:

So I don't know what YOU consider a long time or a short time. In my experience, though, children's book publishers tend to keep books in print longer than adult book publishers do. That's because they know that even if a book doesn't sell like crazy right out of the gate, there is ample opportunity for a children's book to catch on later through word of mouth, etc.

If a title wins awards, gets on state lists, gets added to curriculums, etc, it might continue to be a steady seller for years to come. None of that can happen immediately upon release, and none of it can happen if the book is out of print!

It is important to remember that, while it doesn't sound as FANCY as a splashy bestseller, a book that backlists well is really a prize! Let's say your book is, like The Outsiders, always assigned to a half a million high school kids, every year. Some will already have a copy, or get one used, but a lot of them will buy it from a bookstore. The rest of them will get it from the library - - but even then, the libraries will have to buy more! That's why The Outsiders sold over 300k copies in 2025. That's way more than most new books. And that happens EVERY year. You get the picture?

Consistent backlist sales are what keep the lights on at publishers.

So they are going to try and give most books a few years to see if they get any traction. If sales aren't picking up at all, or if it was selling OK for awhile but now has dropped, they'll let the stock dwindle, but still give it a little time before officially calling it OP -- just in case! And if it's been several years and there's NO demand, OK, then OP.

A novelist, journalist, and activist, Jack London was a pioneer of commercial and magazine fiction and one of the first American writers to

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Also known as the Federalist Period because of the development of America’s governance during this time, the Early National Period of Americ

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Words for National Bubble Bath Day

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One of the most influential figures of the Harlem Renaissance, the contributions Zora Neale Hurston made to African-American literature, ant

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mckitterick

V.E. Schwab's advice for creating memorable characters - works for both protagonists and villains

source post: X

dduane

This is really good advice.

It also ties neatly into the simplest version of the formula for getting people emotionally engaged with your characters: or how to build the moment in which your character starts moving from their initial state to the state in which they'll start changing their own lives.

First, you figure out the one important thing the character believes that they're wrong about. There's usually a core misperception that they haven't examined. Once they're forced to engage with it, it'll start to change everything about their perception of the world they're inhabiting and/or the people in it.

Then, as V.E. says, you identify the character's great desire and their great fear: the thing that character wants more than anything, and the thing or situation that terrifies them, and that they'll go to any lengths to avoid.

And having identified these two objects or situations, you build a situation in which the two forces will be in close, direct opposition to one another... then drop the character down in between them, and squeeze. Those two opposing forces become the jaws of a vise... and you crank the vise more and more tightly closed until the character has no choice but to acknowledge those opposing forces, and start (even in a small way) to deal with the pressure being exerted and push their way through.

This does not have to be, initially, a great climactic moment. In fact, it works better if it's not. It's more effective if your character has a brief low-intensity brush with these conditions-in-conflict early on. That way, when your big resolution scene comes along about two-thirds or three-quarters of the way along through the story arc, you'll have set up a resonance between that earlier hint or intimation of what's to come, and the really big blowoff. Your readers will recognize the resonance—the throb of tension between the two occurrences, like the vibration of a plucked string—and will find satisfaction both in the true resolution having been partially telegraphed earlier, and in how it's now being experienced and resolved in full.

This approach also allows you to set up more minor resonances between the realization of the conflict and its final resolution. These can serve to bind the structure of the work more closely together: to make it look (and be) less like a series of loosely strung-together plot events, and more like a unified whole, in which ripples of story business flow backwards and forwards, interpenetrating and influencing one another, and hinting at the big one to come.

But none of this can happen until the paired and opposing what-do-they-most-desire, what-do-they-most-fear axes have been defined. So that's a subject it's smart to spend some while thinking about (and for all your characters, not just the major ones), to be sure you're getting it right.

It's not unusual to get the wrong answers, or merely superficial ones, while you're still working out what's actually going on with the characters. So take your time. Eventually you'll find a set of answers that feel unquestionably right... and you can then nail those down in your notes and get on with making the kind of "good trouble" for your characters that will see them made complete.

The Age of Enlightenment brought Europe out of some of the darker days and older ways of thinking into a new period of scientific discovery,

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Books to get in the spirit of the winter months

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The city of Bath has become inextricably linked with Jane Austen, her characters, and various stories set in the same period in which Austen

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At one point or another, every writer has experienced it: either the feeling of sitting before a blank piece of paper or word document and c

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From the dumb blonde to the village idiot to the town drunk to the court jester to the foolish character that often spouts wisdom ignored by

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Reading recommendations for the prevention of genocide and the remembrance of victims of genocide

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