Final Media Response

For the final media response of the semester I thought it wise to go ahead and continue discussing some of the blogs I follow here on You Should Have Seen Your Face. In light of hearing professor Becker discuss her literary agent Janet Reid, I decided to take a closer look at her blog this past week and read more of what she has going on in relation to the literary world, turns out, its alot. As a literary agent though, this isn't much of a surprise. Her latest post as of today talks about a shout out one of her clients received from a bookstore about one of their recent appearances. It is first off nice to see simply how accessible she seems and secondly how much she supports her writers and genuinely seems interested in their work. It is clear she enjoys her job, on a post from Thanksgiving Ms. Reid tells us how thankful she is to do a job she enjoys and live in a city she never wants to leave. Only to go on a few posts later to tell of her holiday trip out of the city in more detail. This is a fine example of why Janet Reid, Literary Agent is such a fun and easy read. She gives short, quirky and fun insights into her literary life while at the same time giving us links to new authors and articles about them that she believes her followers would find interest in.

Another of the quirky, funny blogs I have been following is Pub Rants, the "pub" in the title refers to "publishing rants" that there is no Irish pub involved unless we would like there to be. After reading this in the short description I knew I would enjoy agent Kristin's little rants myself. She always begins the post by informing us what she's listening to on her iPod at that moment, which is always fun and offers us a little insight into the kind of person she is, not to mention we can listen to it at the bottom of that post if we so choose. Kristin places it conveniently there for us to indulge in. Most are rather eclectic and soothing so it works as we read. As for her literary insight, much like Janet Reid she offers a lot of little things that have to do with her job, but mainly we see what her life is actually like when doing this job. She offers pictures of her trips to the Kennedy Space Center and the Wizarding World of Harry Potter as well as telling us about how when she would like to gain a client and they usually pass it is most of the time because another agent with very similar tastes to her own. I enjoyed this post in particular because it shows a completely different side to getting an agent and a publisher than the bigger than life idea of them we have in our heads, or at least that I have in mine. Some things in life simply feel unreachable sometimes and to have a book published?!?! Holy Cow!! How crazy would that be? In Pub Rants though, Kristin makes it seem as if they are wanting authors just as bad as the authors need them. It is a comforting feeling.

Finally, in a less "fun'" move I have been catching up on Lyons Literary LLC, which is as its title indicates a literary agency that posts "tips and quips". I say fun because this blog is nowhere near as personal as the previous two I've discussed. Lyon gives quick and short little updates into the literary world as well as into his personal files, but the news on the literary world is what draws me to this blog the most. It has been hard for me to find a good bit of publishing world news in one area that also stays up to date. Lyons hasn't posted in a while as of today but usually it is every few days that he will give us a little blurp. Examples would be constant updates on ebooks and how they are affecting everything as well as Dan Brown's latest release. Most of the time, if not always, these short posts include links within the text to longer stories explaining the blurp in greater length and detail. I enjoy Lyon because he is basically the home page of yahoo for the publishing world. This is a good thing, its compact and informative. Nothing more, nothing less.