It's time for another Ask Me Anything post!
Bring me (and each other) all your publishing questions, existential questions, and celebrity gossip blind items. (Especially that last one--oink, oink. #GleauxMoi)
Hello! Between the ongoing client work backlog, the couple of days I had to miss work last week for a nonprofit board meeting*, and it being Halloween, I just…guh. In the part of my brain that’s supposed to be getting it together and writing you that unhinged history of the Penguin Group I thought I’d write this week, there is naught but a cartoon cow playing the ukulele.
Fortunately for me, however, more than six months have past since my last AMA post, and I’m trying to do these open threads semiannually. So that’s what we’re going to do this week: an Ask Me Anything.
In the comments below, ask me—and each other—anything you’d like, within the limits of the following ground rules:
Do not pitch your book. This isn’t #pitmad.
Do not ask some thinly-veiled “question” that we all know is really a book pitch.
You’re free to ask questions about Life as well as book publishing, but I’m going to prioritize answering the questions about book publishing.
Be kind and respectful to each other (and me).
If you violate these rules, I’m going to delete your comment. Beyond that, I reserve the right to delete any comment for any capricious and arbitrary reason I want.
I’ll be in and out of here all week and will answer as many questions as I can—and by all means, feel free to start discussions amongst yourselves!
ASL x
*The AMA is only available to paid subscribers. For the rest of you, here are some fun vulture feces facts I learned at my board meeting, which itself had nothing to do with vultures but took place Dolly Parton’s American Eagle Foundation, a rehab facility for injured and captivity-bound raptors:
ONE: Vultures cool themselves down by pooping.
TWO: High in uric acid, vulture poop is naturally antibacterial. When vultures are eating a dead animal, they’ll generally poop all over their legs as they wrap up—you know, to make sure no dead animal bacteria leaves the dinner table with them.
THREE: Because vultures’ stomachs are so acidic, they’re natural sterilizing machines. If they eat a rancid or sick animal carcass—for example, an anthrax-infected deer on the side of the road—they’ll shit it out disease-free.
As such—and as the Tibetans know well—if one desires to “go back to nature” after death, vultures are the cleanest and least gross of the organic funeral directors. No maggots for YOU, Mabel!!