Regardless of who you vote for in November, you have a responsibility to yourself and your country to be as informed as possible. First off, get your facts straight. It’s bad enough that politicians lie and conceal their meaning behind half-truths, but allowing yourself to be lied to is worse. Consult nonpartisan fact checking organizations to verify any and all claims. FactCheck and PolitiFact are both great resources, but there are others.

Second, read books about politics. Know the players AND the game. Here is a list of some of my favorites, in no particular order:

• On Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville
• Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin
• Republic by Plato
• Dark Money by Jane Mayer
• The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli
• The Federalist Papers by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay
• The Fix by Jonathan Tepperman (just started but so far so good)
• The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B. Du Bois
• The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith
• The Clash of Civilizations by Samuel P. Huntington
• The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander
• Two Treatises of Government by John Locke

Some of these are difficult reads, but they should give you an outstanding foundation on which to approach political discourse. (And yes, I realize some of the above aren’t strictly about politics, but they’re relevant and revealing reads nonetheless.)

So now I ask our readers: What did you think of the first debate? What are some of your favorite political books?

But four or so years ago, I looked at my list and my slush pile and realized how heavily they both skewed toward a narrow range of voices. And as I looked for ways to fix this problem I listened to a lot of wise people (including the fine folks at We Need Diverse Books) on the perils of any system in which gatekeepers simply wait for things to come their way.  So now I try to actively participate in things happening outside my inbox, making sure that writers know that my door is open (and my list inclusive).

Authors looking for an agent have a lot of great opportunities now not just to seek an agent, but to reach out to the best possible fit for them and their work. Many wonderful agents participate in these new ways to find clients (and quite a lot of them were on the bandwagon before I got my head out of the sand). And for me, they’re a good way to proactively seek submissions from a diverse pool of authors so I can make sure that my client list supports a wide array of voices.

Twitter pitch parties like Brenda Drake’s PitMad still involve authors querying agents, but it means I get to find those projects that seem like a good fit for my list and invite the authors to send their queries my way.  And resources like Manuscript Wish List, co-created by Jessica Sinsheimer and KK Hendin, allow me to highlight book concepts that I’d love to see, which gives me a chance to proactively seek a broader and more balanced list, both via the Twitter hashtag and their fantastic website (for which you can find my profile here).  And I’m really excited about the upcoming Twitter event #DVPit, which Beth Phelan created to “showcase pitches about and especially by marginalized voices.”  If you’re a writer from a marginalized community looking for an agent, I strongly encourage you to check out that link before Tuesday, because it looks like it’ll be a great event!

I’d be lying if I said that I wasn’t overwhelmed by the sheer volume of emails in my Weekend Reading folder, many of which come from sources like the above. I look at my To Read list right now and tremble in fear. But I love knowing that the chances that I’ll find a gem that I have a vision for among those projects is far higher, since I’ve already done some of the work in getting authors who have written the kinds of books I’m looking for to reach my way.

Our list already includes many important industry resources. Like Publishers Marketplace, where you can research agents and editors, and GalleyCat, where you can find the hottest breaking news on digital and print publishing. We keep links there to big thinkers and sassy reviewers, to breaking news and conversation starters. You’ll even find our other agencies over there, because everyone’s better off when we’re all sharing what we know.

What are we missing? We want you to help us find the newest and most exciting literary sites on the web. So let me know in the comments below – where do you go for the most up-to-date book news? (BESIDES the fantastic DGLM blog, RIGHT?!)  Where do you find new books to read or catch up on the latest industry gossip? What sites offer the best fun for a bookish lifestyle?

Magazines are great for commuting. Flip through an article or two if you’ve just got a couple stations to go and don’t want to get lost in a book and miss your spot. And they’re certainly a lot easier to tote around than a book – I’m currently reading the second book in the Outlander series, which clocks in at 743 pages.

And staying up to date with magazines is important to our work as an agency too. Publishing every week or every month, magazines keep you in touch with the latest lifestyle trends, emerging political or economic thought, fascinating little-known stories, scandals waiting to explode – all potential book ideas, whether we pursue the writer of the piece or share a story idea with of our clients or promising At our bimonthly ideas meetings at least one person mentions “Well, I was reading in the New Yorker” or “I saw this thing in The Atlantic…”

So in 2015, I gotta keep up!

Ever seen an article and though that should be a book? Any tips for keeping up with your subscriptions? Or magazines I should check out?

Reserve against returns. Yes, most publishers don’t pay authors all the royalties they earn in the one period covered by a statement. The reserve against returns shows the amount withheld by the publisher for a limited period of time against the expectation of returns. This reserve is then released on later statements (assuming the book continues to sell).

Subsidiary rights. This is the section of the royalty statement that lists the revenue accumulated from rights that the publisher has sold to third parties. For example, this could include any earnings accrued by foreign editions of a book.

Unearned balance. An advance is simply that ladies and gentlemen. An advance. In order for a book to start earning royalties, it must first earn out the advance payment. Only then will an author see a positive balance. Negative balances are usually portrayed in parentheses.

Royalties earned. This amount depends on both the net units sold, as well as the terms stipulated in the author’s contract. Royalty rates range, but earnings are generally calculated based on the net or retail price of the book.

So those are some basics. Have more questions about royalty statements? Bring ’em!

So when Rachel sent me this link to a post on The Awl about books that teach you about the world, I was totally thrilled to find this:

“Before I read this book—I later came to realize—I had no consistent mental timeline for human history. Because everything I had learned in school I had learned in discrete sections: US history was separate from European history which was separate from “World” history, and I had no real idea of how the events I learned about in each of these classes interrelated with one another. But in this history, the Basques, who have maintained a stable society in the same place of the world, Euskadi, since before the Roman Empire, become the continuous line through which to view and analyze the events of Western history, as Kurlansky does a phenomenal job plotting the parallels between changes in Basque culture with what was going on elsewhere in the world.”

The answer to the question I’ve always been asking myself is apparently, “Read The Basque History of the World by Mark Kurlansky.”  Handy!  The only things I really know about Basque country relate to soccer and the perplexing anomaly that is their language, so I’d actually be kind of excited to find out more.  Conveniently, I’ve also long been asking myself “Which Mark Kurlansky book should I read first?”

Two questions: one answer.  Just the way I like it.

So what book have you always needed?  Maybe someone else can chime in with your perfect answer.

A friend recently passed on this article printed in The New York Times last week. The headline, “Analyzing Literature by Words and Numbers,” drew me in and I was immediately curious (well, also because I thought the accompanying photograph was pretty). I have always been fascinated by words in all senses. There are words I love because of how they sound or how they look written, words I find interesting purely due to their uses in colloquial speech, and all the ways that a single word can be used to represent so many different things.

Patricia Cohen’s article sheds light on a new computer process that is able to search every single British book published in English during the so-called Victorian era (language analysis and fainting salts? I’m in). This means 1,681,161 texts were analyzed and searched for words that will supposedly shed light on the sentiments and concerns of the 19th century.

Apparently, because of the prevalence of words such as ‘hope,’ ‘light,’ and ‘sunlight,’ the Victorian era was marked by a particular optimism not present in the precedent centuries. Uncovered was the rising secular skepticism of the Enlightenment as well as an unexpected decline in a focus on the idea of evil.

Of course, since this shows only a written record for analysis, there are mistakes to be made. One scholar thought that she had made a groundbreaking discovery proving a shift in focus towards literary debates and analysis after she noted a huge jump in the words “prosody” and “syntax” in 1832. Turns out, Prosody and Syntax were popular racehorses of the day and articles were merely noting race results.

I’ve talked before about words I use too frequently in my writing and that words themselves go in and out of fashion is an indisputable fact. No doubt, this sort of technology will advance to degrees we can’t even imagine, so I’m interested in what sorts of conclusions analysts will draw about life in the 20th and 21st centuries based solely on our written work. Are we optimistic or cynical? Do we tend to focus on ourselves or others? How well do we represent ourselves on paper, anyway?

Have you ever discovered that the exact information you were looking for was readily available online, but not found it until months after you first decided it would be of use? It just happened to me this morning, and it’s a reminder that no matter how hard you search, there’s still a lot out there that you might be missing. While Googling can get you far in life (and I firmly believe everyone should cultivate reasonably good search skills for their personal and professional benefit), sometimes the greatest sites are ones you’d never know to look for. It can be really helpful to know what sites others with similar interests and needs find handy.

Certainly, all authors should be sure to check out the website of the Authors Guild. Some of their resources are only for members (authors with publishing contracts should think about joining), but others, like the information on the Google settlement, are freely available. For anyone interested in the possibilities that the world of social media has to offer (and frankly, you should all be, because it’s not only personally fun and useful, it’s critical to a successful career in publishing these days!), Mashable is one of the best sites out there, including how-to guides both basic and advanced to get you started and then help you take it to the next level. If, like me, you’re a grammar nerd (or simply need the help), check out the Chicago Manual of Style’s free monthly Q&A. There’s also the option to subscribe to the manual itself online, though I’m personally partial to the hard copy on my desk with post-its flagging the issues for which I’m most likely to need reminders.

Which sites do all of you find useful? We find the blogs in our blogroll (take a look to the right!) to be pretty informative, but I think the best resources for authors, both published and aspiring, are probably those their fellow authors are already using. So share below your favorite resources for authors and publishing professionals! I’ll definitely be looking to add to my list.