In praise of pockets

 HALLIE EPHRON: I recently started going to my local Y and working with a trainer. Weights. Balance. Cardio. The works. And because I pay for it whether I show up or not... I show up. On time. Bright eyed and bushy tailed? Not so much...

An unexpected challenge has been getting out the front door with all the stuff (I (think) I need. 

Glasses, datebook, driver's license, credit card, cash, gloves, and of course the ever-present cell phone. And then figuring out where to stash it all when I get to the Y. I don't want to lug my purse around the gym floor, and they don't have nearly enough lockers.

Which got me musing about how my husband never ever hesitated a moment leaving the house because he needed a place for his stuff. That's because HE HAD POCKETS! Pants pockets. Side pockets, butt pockets. Shirt pockets. HE WAS ALREADY WEARING HIS "STUFF."

Men have pockets. They can just get up and go. Guys are hands-free all the time. While I linger doing the What-am-I-forgetting-now and Where-am-I-going-to-carry-it Tango.

I've noticed that women's clothing with pockets is more expensive than clothes without. Makes sense. Fortunately lots of workout clothes come with pockets. And then there are fanny packs. Practical but oh so nerdy.

I don't need exercise clothes. I need getting-to-exercise clothes. So that every time I leave the house, I don't have to go through a mental list of what I need to have with me because I'm already carrying it.

Turns out there's a fashion design we have to thank for (finally) designing women's clothing with pockets. (She also invented the ballet flat!) Claire McCardell, who graced the cover of TIME Magazine.

Do you have rituals to get yourself out of the house without having to turn around and head home for something you need? Or do you have POCKETS?! 

What would you like to see in clothing design (men's or women's) that you don't see today?

Waving bye-bye to 2025 and singing the book publishing blues??

 HALLIE EPHRON: Last week, the New York Times ran a sort of autopsy on the 2025 book business, and it was not all gloom and doom. 

Here were some takeaways:

• Nonfiction and Y.A. are hurting 
• Genre novels (that's us) are booming 
• Books about sex and magic were blockbusters 
• A.I. disrupted online search flooding Amazon with poorly written books made it harder to distinguish them from books written by humans 
• Major retailers ordered fewer books 
• Fewer companies were providing distribution channels to bookstores 
• Book bans threatened to limit purchases
• YA fiction fell (down 12% from last year) but many of those readers moved on to different categories...
  BUT BUT BUT
• In toto, 🌟print book sales were mostly unchanged 
• Paper (as opposed to digital) books still make up about 3/4 of book sales
• Audio book sales held steady 
• Physical bookstores are hanging in there and 422 new bookstores joined American Booksellers Association  

So now for a look under the hood...

From our perspectives, as a long-time published authors...

? What's changed most behind the scenes, from an aspiring or published author perspective, about writing, pitching, publishing, selling...?

? And is there good news nestled within the not-so-good?

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Hmmm. Great question. I have heard: popcorn books. People want fast, SHORT, popcorn books. “I read it in one day” is the new best thing.

Genre blending is no longer anathema–anyone can blend genres and everyone understands it.

We all wish we had sprayed edges.

People are caring less about trade reviews. (Do you find this is true?)

As in: A star from PW is not as important as reviews from readers.

The industry says blurbs are dead, but authors (and readers?) do not agree. Even if they say they agree, it matters.

You better have a fabulous cover.

No one knows if in-person book tours work.

To quote WIlliam Goldman, no one knows anything.

JENN McKINLAY: The more I know the less I know seems to be my relationship with publishing. I think most things like the flood of AI generated books will get sorted through attrition. Readers will not tolerate bad books.

Influencers still seem to be publishing’s darlings for marketing and publicity (insert eye roll) and whether that works or not, I have no idea.

But I believe the one truth that holds is that a good book will find its readers and authors simply need to focus on their craft, write the best story they can, and the readers will find them. Like the movie Field of Dreams, “If you build it, they will come.”

RHYS BOWEN: I have never understood the publishing industry. Why they sink millions into a book while ignoring equally good similar books.

Having been with Lake Union ( an Amazon Company) for eight years now I can see what works there. Intense and ongoing marketing to those who buy similar books. They still promote a book I wrote in 2017 which means the titles stay on bestseller lists for ever. But the trade off is that they don’t make it to regular bookstores. NYT won’t include them in bestseller lists.

The big problem is that anyone can put their book up on Amazon and the reader has no way of knowing which books have had editorial guidance and which are half written by AI. A reader tries a mystery for the first time. It’s poorly written and the reader decides mysteries are not worth my time.

I personally have only written books I want to read but are not on the shelf yet. I don’t follow trends or markets.

And as for the future: All I know is my family went to Barnes and Noble on Boxing Day and each retuned with a bag full of books. And these are my grandkids! There will always be readers.

LUCY BURDETTE: LOL on the sprayed edges Hank! I didn’t even know what those were until Jenn explained it to us, and then I saw tables and tables of them at Barnes and Noble. Gorgeous and I want them now!

As for reading the publishing tea leaves, no idea. I find I’m best off putting my head down and writing my pages and making them the best stories I’m capable of.

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: Not gonna lie, I envy those sprayed edges, glorious romantasy covers and the sets that make a picture when you line the books up on your shelves. Sigh!

It’s interesting that you say short books, Hank, because I’ve spoken to several readers who long to sink into big, JONATHAN STRANGE AND MR NORREL sized novels. I wonder if it’s kids who cut their teeth on the Harry Potter series growing up and wanting that immersive experience?

Publishers apparently don’t see the value of authors appearing much in public, but every indy bookseller I spoke with said they’re vital to their business.

Yes to young people loving paper books. My 20s-30s kids are all readers, as you might expect, and none of them do ebooks. Meanwhile, everyone old enough to have presbyopia LOVES the convenience of being able to change the font size!

My intuition says books that sweep the reader away into a different time/place/income level will be popular for the next couple of years. We’re still living in the bad vibes economy, and readers want to escape, not get their noses rubbed into How Bad Life Can Be. So I’m looking at beach reads, glamorous thrillers, historicals, fantasy and romantasy to be or continue to be hot in 2026.

DEBORAH CROMBIE: Julia, my daughter, who is a few years older than your kids, only reads paper books, preferably hardcover, unless she is desperate. So, yeah, I think "ebooks will kill print books" was probably a bit overblown. As was "reading is dead, no one can get published, etc., etc.," back when I was first contemplating writing a novel, mumble-mumble years ago. 

Basically, the business model of publishing has never made any sense, no one has any idea what actually sells books, and all you can do is the best job you can of writing your book.

HALLIE: So that's our somewhat-insiders view of the state of publishing. 

Turning it over to you, now... looking back over the year from where you sit, what's changing (or not) in book publishing??

(And for those of you who have access to the NY Times, here's a link to their 2025 autopsy of the book business.)

Meet Cute Time! by Jenn McKinlay

JENN McKINLAY: I have just started writing the next romcom which will come out in May of 2027...God willing and the creeks don't rise.

My process is to start on page one and write all the way through until the last sentence which will end with a happily ever after for our intrepid couple, fulfilling the unspoken pact I have with my readers. 

Now, in my opinion, the opening meet cute is the key to a solid romcom. It sets the tone for the entire book. In the past, I've had initial meetings that include an office dust up between work rivals in PARIS IS ALWAYS A GOOD IDEA, another was an incident on a ferry on the way to Martha's Vineyard where our heroine accidentally knocks the hero's book overboard in SUMMER READING. A recent opener was the heroine's very rocky first day of work at a bookshop in Ireland in LOVE AT FIRST BOOK. But my current favorite happens in THE SUMMER SHARE, coming out this May, when the heroine's Great Dane, Dude, knocks the hero off a fishing dock and then lands on top of him, knocking the wind out of him and forcing our heroine to jump into the water and save him from drowning. Despite the brush with death, it's hilarious. I promise.

But now I am staring at the blank screen, wondering how to throw my next couple together in a way that won't make them hate each other...permanently. And so I turn to famous meet cutes in books and films to inspire me. My job is brutal, I know.

For those unfamiliar with the term, it's explained brilliantly in The Holiday by Eli Wallach who plays Arthur the neighbor to Kate Winslet's Iris when she gives him a ride home. "Well, this was some meet-cute," Arthur observes. Iris doesn't know the term, so he explains, "It's how two characters meet in a movie. Say a man and a woman both need something to sleep in, and they both go to the same men's pajama department. And the man says to the salesman, 'I just need bottoms.' The woman says, 'I just need a top.' They look at each other, and that's the meet-cute." 

At the moment, my musician hero Chance Whitaker has arrived home to the Outer Banks to find Lorelei O'Malley has taken up residence in his long neglected cottage as she nurses his elderly landlord Tilly Goodwin back to health after hip replacement surgery. The middle of the night meet cute would likely be less fraught if Chance and Lorelei hadn't had a summer fling gone wrong ten years before which neither of them has managed to forget...

So, Reds and Readers, hit me! What are some of your favorite film and book meet cutes or even better, do you know of any in real life?