Website of the Month - Editorial Ass

I have recommended - or at least referred to - this site quite a number of times on here, but I haven't formally accorded it the status of a 'Website of the Month' recommendation.

Editorial Ass is a wide-ranging personal blog, written by a young New York book editor who guards her anonymity with the unlikely alias of "Moonrat". It's mostly about the publishing industry, and is distinguished by the insight - and the thoroughness - of the opinions and advice that she offers on that business, nuggets that are of particular help to those hoping to work in publishing or those striving to get a book published. She has become one of the industry's essential resource pages, and has attracted quite a significant following of published, about-to-be-published, and still aspiring authors amongst her regular readers and commenters. (I like to think of her as 'my' editor - even though I'm never likely to write anything more substantial than a long joke.)

However, it's not all abstruse 'insider' stuff. She writes with enough zest and passion that it's usually very diverting for the lay reader as well. And she often strays on to other topics of more general appeal: favourite books, music and food; her sweetly monstrous English boss; her even more eccentric family (her Italian great aunt's dialogue is worthy a novel all of its own).

She's also from time to time run rather amusing 'audience participation' events like a comic sonnet competition, a novel blurb competition, the 'Celebrate Reading!' month (where her other 'regulars' and I each contributed an appreciation of one of our favourite books), and the recent favourite poem thread.

In more serious vein, she also recently staged an online raffle that raised nearly $5,000 to help with the medical fees of a friend who'd been diagnosed with lymphoma.

The onerous demands of her job (and her family?!) mean that she can be a somewhat intermittent poster, but she mostly keeps up a pretty good frequency - and she can be quite profuse when she gets a bee in her bonnet about something! It's a diverse, stimulating, and often very, very entertaining read.

So - if it's new to you - please do go and check it out.