After counting 180 job rejections, journalist Jason Paul took the "Living One Year Doing X" gamble--vowing to only conduct his life, from housing to jobs to friends, on Craigslist. Our sibling blog Media Jobs Daily posted an interview with the blogger behind LivingCraigslist about how he found work and friends by Living Craigslist.

Here's an excerpt: "Paul told us he's even made friends through Craigslist, which are part of the self-imposed rules of his term. 'I didn't know how possible that was, but I consider them normal friends.' This opposed to his early experiences, when he'd bring pepper spray or a third party whenever meeting anyone new. He said he did have one experience—his first housing experience in Denver (which you can read about here) didn't work out, and 'it made me remember that not everyone on the site is going to be perfect and you have to be careful.'"

There may be a book deal in his future. On his site, he notes: "I have been speaking with a literary agent. No contracts have been signed and no publishers have joined the team, but I am optimistic. On this front I promise to keep all posted."

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Publishing folk around the country are wondering what the iPad bookstore will look like, with a mix of excitement and apprehension. Based on a new report, the iBooks store will have a sprawling network of categories for iPad readership--a shopping experience beyond the App Store's simple interface.

Forbes explored a report by Busted Loop about the inner workings of the iBooks platform. Here's more from the article: "[It's] a highly organized approach to bookselling. Apple has designated about 20 'top-level' categories for books, including 'Fiction & Literature', 'Reference,' 'Romance,' 'Cookbooks' and 'Comics & Graphic Novels.' Below those categories lie more than 150 sub-categories, including some very specific genres, such as 'Manga' under 'Comics & Graphic Novels,' 'Special Ingredients' under 'Cookbooks,' and 'Etiquette' under 'Reference.'"

In addition, there will be extensive subcategories, according to the report. The "Sports and Outdoors" contains 15 different kinds of labels, while "Fiction & Literature" will have 13 subcategories.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

On the Internets, writers are now measured by page-views and followers--statistics that some fear will corrupt our literary integrity. At the Copyright Clearance Center's On Copyright conference yesterday, Gawker Media's COO of finance, legal, operations & business development Gaby Darbyshire directly addressed those fears.

Darbyshire (pictured, via) explained a controversial policy shift at Gawker: "When we started paying our writers by the page-view (bonuses based on page-views), everybody started talking about how there would be a race to the bottom--how we'd be writing about nothing except Paris Hilton sex tapes. The absolute opposite has occurred, because at the end of the day, you don't get a sustained growth in audience [and] in the success of your content, without producing quality."

She concluded: "What our writers discovered--even though they were scared to start with (they were like, 'oh my god, we have to find big scoop-y stories)--was that the diligently researched feature type good stuff that's original and new; that's what works. That's what they are incentivized to produce, and we can measure exactly what is successful and what is not--which newspapers, by the way, never could, because you don't know who is throwing away what section of the paper."

What do you think? Will page-views corrupt or inspire 21st Century authors?

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

A melodramatic trailer for the upcoming adaptation of Stephenie Meyer's The Twilight Saga: Eclipse surfaced today, giving publishing folk something to argue about all weekend. The movie comes out June 30.

Watch the trailer for the adaptation embedded above. Last year GalleyCat caught up with a number of National Book Award finalists, getting their thoughts on the Twilight publishing phenomenon.

Add your thoughts in the comments section--will the blockbuster series be the death or the salvation of publishing? Here is Jezebel's take: "While it includes the requisite shots of Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson looking sullen, Taylor Lautner's abs are only visible for two seconds. Unacceptable!"

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Last night two independent presses won the 2010 Best Translated Book Awards, rising to the top of a shortlist drawn from an impressive collection of publishers.

Gail Hareven won the fiction award for The Confessions of Noa Weber, translated from the Hebrew by Dalya Bilu and published by Melville House Press. Elena Fanailova won the poetry award for The Russian Version, translated from the Russian by Genya
Turovskaya and Stephanie Sandler and published by Ugly Duckling Presse. The complete press release is embedded after the jump.

Here's more from Melville House Press publisher Dennis Johnson: "[This fiction award] represents what we see as part of our mission at Melville House: Not just to publish both fiction and nonfiction in translation for the sake of essentially preserving it, as if it were something on the verge of going extinct. That strikes us as a way of further ensuring its obscurity. Rather, we see it as our mission to trumpet that work loudly, and to work aggressively to get that work in the hands of as many people as possible, especially those who would not normally encounter translated literature."

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Last night Publishers Weekly reported that Amazon had removed buy buttons from graphic novels from major comic book publishers like Marvel, IDW, Dark Horse, and Image Comics--apparently to rectify a pricing problem with graphic novels. Amazon customers are already wondering about the situation in the online retailer's forums.

Here's the scoop: "A source knowledgeable about the situation told PW that Amazon has been forced to temporarily take down buy buttons for all titles supplied by Diamond in order to correct the problem. According to the source, Amazon has to do an audit to figure out which customers got books and at what prices."

We'll keep you updated on this story, but you can follow the buy-button status by checking the page for Daredevil Noir, a hardcover graphic novel collecting Alexander Irvine's series--as of this 10:23 a.m. EST writing, the buy direct button was removed. You can also explore Who Moved My Buy Button?, an Authors Guild service tracking Amazon's control over individual titles.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

In a world overloaded with 140-character tweets, it sometimes seems like the patient art of the long biography could become obsolete. Instead of complaining, one biographer took her subject straight to Twitter.

Today's guest on the Morning Media Menu was Marion Meade, the critically acclaimed biographer of Dorothy Parker, Woody Allen, and Buster Keaton. She spoke about her new biography: Lonelyhearts: The Screwball World of Nathanael West and Eileen McKenney. During the interview, she talked about how she created a Twitter page for the dead novelist, wrote her biography proposal, and built a career as a biographer.

Press play on the embedded player below to listen.

Here's an excerpt about her Twitter page for the author: "I was looking for a way for people to remember West. So last year around June, he opened a Twitter account. He's been Twittering ever since from his current location... in Mount Zion Cemetery [in Queens] ... A lot of publishing people followed him because they got the joke. But a lot of people followed him who didn't get the joke...I think he would have thought it was a lot of fun and crazy. He loved things that were crazy."

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

A standing-room only crowd packed the Copper Tavern in Manhattan earlier this week for the first mediabistro.com Book Club. The four featured writers pictured above read excerpts from their books and offered one-on-one advice to aspiring authors in the audience.

From left to right, the authors were: An Irreverent Curiosity author David Farley, Cemetery Road author Gar Anthony Haywood, Getting In author Karen Stabiner and Museum Legs: Fatigue and Hope in the Face of Art author Amy Whitaker. See all the photos here, all taken by Maggie Yurachek.

After the brief presentation, published authors, aspiring writers, agents, editors, and readers mingled--talking about books all night. The four guests each brought some practical experience for aspiring writers: Farley had turned his travel writing work into a book; Haywood had revived his writing career after years out of the game; Stabiner had turned her journalism into a novel; and Whitaker had built a do-it-yourself book tour to support her book.

Over the next few weeks, we will reprint the writing wisdom that these guests shared with the aspiring writers in the audience. The next Book Club is scheduled for May 12--email GalleyCat with your suggestions.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Quirk Books continued its pop culture spree that began with Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, recently acquiring Night of the Living Trekkies by Kevin David Anderson.

Here's the pitch: "It's Galaxy Quest meets Dawn of the Dead when all hell breaks loose at a Star Trek convention--and the world's only hope for survival rests in the hands of some very determined fanboys!" Quirk Books' associate publisher Jason Rekulak will edit, and the deal was negotiated by Scott Miller at Trident Media Group.

We caught up with Rekulak to find out why he picked the book. He explained: "I've always felt that a giant convention of fanboys (like the San Diego Comic Con) would be a delightful setting for some kind of genre fiction—mystery, romance, horror, something. Then the manuscript for NIGHT OF THE LIVING TREKKIES landed on my desk, and I knew I had my book."

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To celebrate the one year anniversary of the online journal The Second Pass, founder John Williams has published short essays by readers, asking them "to recommend their favorite out-of-print book."

His post reminds us of an often neglected side of book reviewing--helping readers find neglected books. The excellent list includes Killings by Calvin Trillin; Love is the Heart of Everything: Correspondence Between Vladimir Mayakovsky and Lili Brik edited by Bengt Jangfeldt; and Tropisms by Nathalie Sarraute.

Add your suggestions in the comments section. Here's more from the post: "one of my main goals was to approach reading the way that readers do, not necessarily the way that publishers and even many other reviews do. Publishers naturally want to tell you about what's new or what's evergreen. But most readers know the pleasure of somehow discovering and falling in love with a book that has fallen from view. And no status is farther from view than the dreaded 'out of print."

Last week, GalleyCat Reviews readers helped Flashlight Worthy Book Recommendations create a list (adding more than 20 suggestions) of the Best Out-of-Print Children's Books

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Yesterday Samsung officially unveiled the E6, an eReader with a handy stylus for writing notes in your eBooks.

At the Consumer Electronics Show this year, mediabistro.com's editorial director Chris Ariens shot that video of Samsung's new eReader with a stylus. His commentary was skeptical: "I know, I know. You're getting your fill of eReaders, but mediabistro's publishing editor Jason Boog wanted me to check out the Samsung Reader, which is expected to launch sometime in 2010. As you've probably read, it's the one you can write on with a stylus. But honestly, I could write on my Palm Pilot in 1999."

eBookNewser has more details: "It's called the E6, will cost $300, and will be available this spring. Check out eBookNewser's exclusive video above for mediabistro.com's editorial director Chris Ariens' encounter with the device at CES. Samsung is taking a "page" from B&N's Nook: B&N will be the eBook store for the device, which has a WiFi, but not 3G connection. The E6 will also have some cool extras, including an MP3 player with front-facing speakers and wireless headphones. It'll have a 6" E-Ink display, and will support EPub, PDF and TXT files."

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Literary journals and major magazines topped the list of stories nominated for the National Magazine Award for Fiction, part of the annual "Ellies" presented by the American Society of Magazine Editors (ASME).

Overall, only 20 magazines received multiple nominations in 23 different categories. The New Yorker led the list with ten nominations--including two nominations in the Fiction category. In the fiction category, the nominated stories were published by The Antioch Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, McSweeney's Quarterly, and The New Yorker.

The complete list of stories and authors follows after the jump.

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Today Penguin's Portfolio imprint launched Current, a new imprint for science books--hoping to bring science titles to a general audience.

Portfolio and Sentinel publisher Adrian Zackheim will helm the new science imprint as well--using the marketing and publicity resources at Portfolio for the new imprint. The imprint expects to publish between five to eight titles a year.

Zackheim had this statement: "Our goal is to publish provocative, compelling books that explore the newest and most powerful ideas in a wide range of disciplines... Once Current gets ramped up, we aim to publish in every subcategory from genetics to quantum physics to neuroscience. Our authors will be some of the foremost pioneers and experts in their respective fields ... We've found that niche publishing has been very successful for Portfolio since 2001, and Sentinel since 2003. This is a logical next category to expand into."

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

As New York City enjoys another spring-like morning, we've uncovered six new publishing jobs for your resume-making pleasure--fresh off the mediabistro.com job boards.

Springer Science + Business Media seeks a Coordinating Editor to work from home and Oxford University Press is looking for an EPD Project Manager. Cambridge University Press needs an Inside Sales Representative.

Simon and Schuster seeks a National Accounts Manager and Meredith is searching for a Senior Editor/Books for More Magazine.

Finally, Hachette Book Group is looking to fill two positions: Director of Business Strategy & Development and Associate Director, Online Marketing. Here's more about that job: "This individual will be a key contributor to the companys innovative web publicity campaigns, and a driver of digital media opportunities for books and authors, conceiving of and implementing original strategies and activities to support visibility of new releases from adult trade publishing groups and imprints."

Visit GalleyCat's publishing jobs page for more listings. If you have any job leads, email GalleyCat to get them posted.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Author bios on glossy book jackets give the illusion that a writer climbed to the top of the literary profession in heroic, purpose-filled strides. One New Yorker staff writer turned that creation myth upside down in an interview.

Today's guest on the Morning Media Menu was David Grann, a staff writer at The New Yorker magazine and the author of and The Lost City of Z. Grann discussed his newest book, The Devil and Sherlock Holmes, and shared tips for aspiring long-form journalists--explaining how he ended up at one of America's greatest magazines after years of work.

Press play on the embedded player below to listen.

Here's an excerpt: "It was a very circuitous path. It was not very linear--I floundered about for many years. I had many different careers early on. I knew I wanted to be a writer. But, like so many people, I didn't know how to be one--other than just do it. I didn't know what form it would take."

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Liz Edelstein has been named the new digital content & marketing manager at Macmillan Audio.

Edelstein once served as senior program manager at America Online/Netscape Communications and earned an MBA from The Anderson School at UCLA.

Here's more from the release: "Most recently, Edelstein worked as an Online Book Marketing Specialist, designing and developing social media strategies and online promotions for a variety of authors. Under a pseudonym, Edelstein is also a published author of twelve romance/science fiction novels."

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

While publishers and social media experts focused on Twitter, the Facebook-based game Farmville collected an astounding 83,750,002 monthly active users.

In an essay comparing Farmville and Twitter, one web metrics blogger wrote: "The biggest take-away from this is not just that Facebook is bigger than Twitter, but that the interactivity made possible by the robust platform that is Facebook enables things like an [massively multiplayer online (MMO) game] such as FarmVille to be bigger than Twitter. Now, don't get me wrong, I love Twitter! We just need to keep it in perspective, so we don't act like media sheep giving Twitter more attention than it deserves."

After the jump, you can watch our video interview with Orca president Richard Caccappolo about how publishers can use virtual currencies and virtual goods to spice up their online bookstores.

Here's an excerpt: "They convert [virtual currencies] at prices that are not easily divided--one dollar gives you 33 credits [for example] ... People don't necessarily think, 'it cost me 42-cents to send my friend a virtual beer.' I think when the publishing industry starts thinking about how they chunk up content--whether it be articles or chapters--it shouldn't be a debate of whether an article is worth one dollar or three dollars. An article should cost 43 credits."

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The music blogosphere has been buzzing all day with the news that Radiohead guitarist and keyboardist Jonny Greenwood is writing the score for a film adaptation of Haruki Murakami's bestselling novel Norwegian Wood.

Music writer Adam Bowie attended a performance of "Doghouse," the piece that will "inform" the soundtrack for the Japanese film. Here's more from the post: "we heard the 20 minute or so piece which I felt was somewhat different to the other pieces we'd heard ... This is more challenging fare. Indeed it seems that this piece will inform the soundtrack to a forthcoming Japanese film, Norwegian Wood, based on the novel by Murakami."

If you are like this GalleyCat editor, you blurted out, "Wait a minute! What Norwegian Wood adaptation?" Spinner has more details on that: "Directed and scripted by Anh Hung Tran, Norwegian Wood is due for release in Japan in December 2010."

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Reviewed by Michael Paul Mason
Read more about GalleyCat Reviews

I learned my lesson after reading The Lost City of Z: use caution when approaching anything written by David Grann. It will take everything you've got to set down the work and walk away. Grann, a staff writer at the New Yorker, isn't so much a verbal acrobat as he is a mesmerizing storyteller, and his newest work, The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession solidifies his place among the best non-fiction writers of our time.

It isn't a perfect work--I'll offer a few gripes later in the review--but it's going to be one of the best story collections of the year. The opening story, "Mysterious Circumstances," for example, is inescapable. Grann introduces us to Richard Green, the world's foremost expert on Sherlock Holmes. Green isn't just an expert. He's a fanatic--and Grann somehow instills that zeal into the story, so that we're just as curious about the life of Arthur Conan Doyle as any other member of the peculiar Sherlock Holmes Society.

Before long, we find ourselves entranced in the curious characters that comprise the society, and then learn that Green himself has died, the apparent victim of a homicide. As we accompany Grann along on the investigation into Green's death, we're treated to a dive into the mind of Sherlock Holmes and his creator, Doyle.

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Actress and musician Hilary Duff inked a multiple-book deal with Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers today. The first novel is Elixir, scheduled to be published in hardcover October 2010. The deal also includes a nonfiction book about children of divorce--scheduled for a spring 2012 launch.

The series will focus on a photojournalist named Clea Raymond, the celebrity offspring of a politician and a doctor. In Da Vinci Code fashion, she chases a dashing boy "in a race against time to unravel a centuries-old mystery that could unlock the key to her soulmate's true identity." Duff (pictured, via) began her career on the Disney Channel show, Lizzie McGuire, and recently had a guest spot on Gossip Girl.

Duff had this statement: "I've always loved the escape of a great book, especially one that features a strong, inspiring female character you feel you really understand, someone who could be you, but living a more fascinating life. I'm hoping Elixir will be that kind of book--a novel that will transport readers and open new worlds for them."

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.