Warren Adler

For fiction writers in search of a publishing outlet, these are the best of times. For fiction writers in search of readers, this is the worst of times. For fiction writers in search of monetary rewards it is, for most, a disaster.

The challenges for genre fiction writers, those...

Fasten your seatbelts, boys and girls, we are about to embark on the most divisive, assaultive and malicious political campaign in American history. It will also be the most expensive.

Whatever your political affiliation, whatever one of hundreds of passionate causes you embrace, this election season...

Remember the title of that play, Stop the World, I Want to Get Off? Sorry folks, it's too late. The Internet has made our planet spin too fast. If you let go, you're a dead duck and if you manage to hold on, you never know where you are.

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Okay, so now we know where the e-book is going. Ever upward.

To have predicted that twelve years ago, when I had all my novels reversed from major publishers and launched all my writings in e-books and print-on-demand, was a no-brainer. People thought I was mad. No brownie points required....

Years ago I attended an event sponsored by Claude Pepper, who was then a Congressman advocating for the elderly. In the VIP room before the event, he invited me to meet a group of people who were all over 100 years old.

They were all people of extraordinary achievement,...

Don't believe all that hype about government interference that is designed to foster an Amazon monopoly of the ebook business. What the six major publishers were alleged to have done was collude in fixing prices that, if true, was a desperate act that they must have known would fall afoul...

The lack of picking a winner in fiction for the Pulitzer Prize was, in my mind, a serious lapse of credibility on the part of the judges.

It reminds me of a situation that I confronted a few years back when I was running the short story contest...

So now that the pricing structure of e-books has been resolved once and for all, where does that leave the authors, without whom the publishers, their employees, and agents might be on food stamps?

Once the gatekeepers of the printed word, the power of the publishing community has...

I no longer take anything at face value. Like Freud asking, "What do women want?" I find myself asking this question without regard to gender, embellishing it further with yet other questions like: "What does he or she really mean?" or "What is he or she thinking?" or "What...

It is no small thing to write a book. It takes dedication, concentration, discipline, singleness of purpose, long hours of isolation and, above all, ideas. Years ago, before the rise of the Internet and the ease of digitization and the proliferation of e-readers, those who self-published were considered the bottom...

I have been baffled for years over what constitutes the definition of a "literary" novel. Over the course of my career, I have heard numerous definitions, but none quite resonate for me as the one gold standard, definitive answer.

In search of this definition, I am tempted...

There are many ways to assess the content of Katherine Boo's remarkable book Behind the Beautiful Forevers which is about, in general terms, the disenfranchised, struggling, impoverished underclass of India.

Beyond the general however, is the harsh statistic that India contains one-third of the impoverished people on the...

Recently, I moved to another apartment in the same building in Manhattan where I have spent the past few years. While moving in itself is a traumatic event as everyone knows, my principal problem is books.

I have a huge collection of books. In the three or four major moves...

One can always find things to criticize at the Academy Awards television shows. Its blatant over-the-top orgy of self-congratulation and fawning, its contrived red carpet fiesta of excess, its simpering announcers whose nauseating flattery and butt-kissing is a shameless embarrassment, the contrived grandstanding of movie star worshipers, the general...

How many times have you faced the dilemma of the monologist?

You have begun a conversation with someone expecting a dialogue and quickly discover that the alleged partner in this dialogue is instead engaging in an interminable monologue. The discovery, while being an affront to your patience, is also a...

I have been trying to figure out how a movie reportedly costing close to two hundred million dollars has failed to find a paying audience. The reviews have been either glowing or certainly respectful.

The enormously talented Martin Scorsese directed the movie based upon a successful children's book by...

The current memoir by a middle-aged woman named Mimi Alford about her affair with President John F. Kennedy when she was a 19-year-old White House intern heralds a new genre in the book business, Lover Lit.

Mrs. Alford's "coming out" reveals her 18-month sexual escapade with President Kennedy who, she...

You've spent months, perhaps years, composing your novel. You've read and reread it hundreds of times. You've rethought it, rewritten it, and revised it, changed characters, dialogue, and plot lines. Writing it is the most important thing in your life. The writing of your novel has absorbed your attention, almost...

At the outset, let me state unequivocally that I have had a lifetime love affair with the movies. The affair spans the golden age of Hollywood films and as evidence of this heartfelt attachment, I can name most of the actors in black and white films, B movies included.

I...

For centuries, the author of a book has been a revered figure, a symbol of intellectual achievement, wisdom and wit, brilliance and, above all, prestige. Indeed, the book, whatever its contents, has been an item of iconic significance.

It is no wonder that a large percentage of people want to...