Do you have the New York Times Best Seller list memorized? Do you have a passion for books and want to get into the publishing business?

In this episode of “Score That Job,” career expert, author and mediabistro editor Vicki Salemi sat down with Andrea Weinzimer of Hachette Book Group to get the inside dirt on what they’re looking for in a candidate.

Here a few tips — know the industry and know which authors they publish (hint: rhymes with James Patterson, Nicholas Sparks, David Sedaris…). Or just watch the video.

You can view our other MediabistroTV productions on our YouTube Channel.

In the latest installment of So What Do You Do?, Mediabistro talked to Sara Shepard, author of the bestselling YA series Pretty Little Liars and The Lying Game. The prolific writer, who has published 20 books in eight years, talks about getting her series optioned as TV shows, how she got into YA and how any writer can get more words onto the page:

“I am a big outliner. For my adult book, The Visibles, I did not outline, and it took me two years to write because I just didn’t outline and I had no path,” she said. “The other thing is, because I have really crazy deadlines, I have to write everyday. So, I can’t just sit there and stare at the page. So what I usually do is, I write something. Even if it’s bad, even if I go back later, and I’m like, ‘This is such a bad chapter, and I’m going to have to revise it,’ having words down is better than having nothing.

For the full interview, read So What Do You Do, Sara Shepard, Author of Pretty Little Liars?

Novelist Iain M. Banks shared an update on his condition with fans this week. The novelist recently revealed that he is battling advanced cancer with doctors predicting he has ”several months” to live.

He has worked to write admiring letters to his favorite writers, including M. John Harrison and Alasdair Gray. He added:

I want to say thank you to all of you for your messages, your memories, your wit, your sympathy and your kind, supportive thoughts. It means a lot, almost more than I can say, and – whatever type or size of screen I read the comments on – I come away from the computer, laptop, iPad or phone with a happy smile on my face.

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The Fault in Our Stars author John Green delivered the commencement speech at the graduation ceremony for Butler University’s class of 2013. To read the entire speech, head to Green’s Tumblr page.

Watch the entire speech in the video embedded above (his talk begins at the 1:01:08 mark). Here’s an excerpt:

I would just note that the default assumption is that the point of human life is to be as successful as possible, to acquire lots of fame or glory or money as defined by quantifiable metrics: number of twitter followers, or facebook friends, or dollars in one’s 401k.

This is the hero’s journey, right? The hero starts out with no money and ends up with a lot of it, or starts out an ugly duckling and becomes a beautiful swan, or starts out an awkward girl and becomes a vampire mother, or grows up an orphan living under the staircase and then becomes the wizard who saves the world. We are taught that the hero’s journey is the journey from weakness to strength. But I am here today to tell you that those stories are wrong. The real hero’s journey is the journey from strength to weakness.

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Dan Brown‘s Inferno will be released tomorrow, and it is currently the top ranked book on Amazon. To help you prepare, we found a few clues buried in a sample chapter of the new book.

We read a short sample of the novel that shows Brown’s hero Robert Langdon dreaming about “a writhing pair of legs, which protruded upside down from the earth, apparently belonging to some poor soul who had been buried headfirst to his waist.”

This is clearly a reference to Inferno, Dante Alighieri‘s 14th century epic poem that inspired the new book. Thanks to Project Gutenberg, you can download a free copy of the Inferno complete with annotations. Read the relevant section of the poem below…

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Artist and author Allie Brosh returned to her popular Hyperbole and a Half website for the first time since 2011, writing an illustrated essay about her ongoing battle with depression.

Brosh will publish Hyperbole and a Half: Unfortunate Situations, Flawed Coping Mechanisms, Mayhem, and Other Things That Happened on October 29th. Here’s an excerpt from her essay:

I remember being endlessly entertained by the adventures of my toys. Some days they died repeated, violent deaths, other days they traveled to space or discussed my swim lessons and how I absolutely should be allowed in the deep end of the pool, especially since I was such a talented doggy-paddler. I didn’t understand why it was fun for me, it just was. But as I grew older, it became harder and harder to access that expansive imaginary space that made my toys fun. I remember looking at them and feeling sort of frustrated and confused that things weren’t the same.

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New York Times bestselling author Ellen Hopkins has launched a nonprofit called Ventana Sierra.

Here’s more about the organization: “Through their various careers in social work, the news media, and children’s publishing, the founding members of Ventana Sierra became acutely aware of the plight of young adults who desired college or career training, but were financially unable to accomplish their goals … Ventana Sierra was formed specifically to help highly motivated young people like these to build solid career paths toward a more positive future.”

In an effort to raise money, Hopkins will be hosting a writers conference set to take place from June 14th to 16th. This conference also has a one-day workshop for young writers on the schedule; there will be no charge for this particular event. The video embedded above features Hopkins talking about this social venture–what do you think?

Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg has annotated the introduction to her book on Rap Genius, the site where music fans, readers, legal scholars poets and authors can annotate writing.

Sandberg annotated part of Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead  for the site’s Poetry Genius literary annotation project.

Her annotations included background, recommended reading, personal notes and links to help readers find all the sources she used to write her introduction.

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To Kill a Mockingbird author Harper Lee has sued agent Samuel Pinkus, alleging that he received undeserved royalties from her book. Bloomberg has the scoop:

Lee, who has failing eyesight and hearing, was residing in an assisted-living facility in 2007 after suffering a stroke when she signed a document assigning her copyright to Pinkus’s company, according to the complaint. While the copyright was re- assigned to Lee last year after legal action and Pinkus was discharged as Lee’s agent, he was still receiving royalties from the novel as of this year, according to the complaint.

The Bloomberg story also noted that the lawsuit named Gerald Posner, the author and former Daily Beast writer who resigned in 2010 after he was accused of lifting passages. According to Bloomberg, Posner “incorporated one of Pinkus’s businesses.”