Vanity Fair

Here’s more from the release: “[The book] tells the riveting story behind the publication of Chad Harbach’s highly anticipated debut novel, which is being released in hardcover and digital form on September 7, 2011. As author and n+1 co-founder Keith Gessen reveals in this 19,000-word e-book (expanded from his article ‘The Book on Publishing,’ appearing in the October issue of Vanity Fair), the passage from first draft to national book tour can be a treacherous, absorbing—and wildly unpredictable—adventure.”

Written by Harbach’s co-editor at N+1, the eBook follows the novel’s entire journey from MFA class to publication. It will include stories about Gernert Company agent Chris Parris-Lamb, Little, Brown editor Michael Pietsch and book designer Keith Hayes.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Bloomberg News has a long profile up about Chad Harbach, an n+1 editor who recently auctioned his first novel to Little, Brown for $650,000.

Little, Brown was not the highest bidder for the book, but Harbach went with it because he wanted to work with Michael Pietsch, who edited David Foster Wallace‘s Infinite Jest. Harbach, a Harvard grad with an MFA from the University of Virginia, doesn’t get paid to be executive editor of the Brooklyn-based literary magazine, so he lives in a three-bedroom in Brooklyn and scrapes together rent with part-time copy-editing jobs.

This paragraph is fun: “Of the five n+1 founders, Harbach is the third to publish a novel. Benjamin Kunkel‘s Indecision, sold 48,000 copies, according to Nielsen BookScan, which covers about 75 percent of U.S. retail sales. All the Sad Young Literary Men, by Keith Gessen, sold 7,000 copies.”

Harbach’s novel, tentatively titled The Art of Fielding, is nearly 500 pages and focuses on a baseball team at a fictional college in Wisconsin. It’s expected out in late 2011.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.