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Both Knopf and Doubleday and have joined Spotify, building hand-picked music lists for their authors. The site includes a number of playlists, including one by Colson Whitehead, Erin Morgenstern, Jennifer Egan.

Follow this link to get a Spotify invite for the free service. We also recommend you check our “How to Control Your Facebook Apps” post to make sure you are happy with your privacy settings. We’ve already built “12 Spotify Playlists for Writers.”

Here’s more about Whitehead’s playlist for Zone One: “The undead take Manhattan in this literary and literal feast from award-winning author Colson Whitehead. The author selected these 10 songs to set the scene for his postmodern meditation on exterminating zombies in Manhattan.” (Via K.B. Abele)

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In September, Erin Morgenstern will publish her debut novel, The Night Circus–a project that began as a National Novel Writing Month manuscript and endured 30 rejections from literary agents. The Wall Street Journal explored Morgenstern’s “high-six-figure advance” and her potential as a successor to J.K. Rowling, but we uncovered some practical advice for aspiring authors.

Here’s more from the WSJ: “In 2005, [Morgenstern] crashed out a manuscript during National Novel Writing Month … Very little from that early draft survived, but she had an idea that excited her. She worked in bursts over the next several years, writing a sprawling, plotless series of vignettes featuring magicians, acrobats, and a pair of psychic twins. Thirty literary agents rejected her.”

Writers can learn two important lessons from this story. Your National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) manuscript is only a first draft and needs months or years of editing before publication. Most importantly, don’t give up–keep trying to find an agent who loves your kind of story.

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Writers Veronica Roth, Marie Lu and Erin Morgenstern all landed movie deals for their debut novels.

Roth released Divergent in May; Morgenstern’s book The Night Circus is due out in September and Lu’s title Legend will hit bookstores in late November. Lu sold her book’s movie rights to CBS Films. Summit Entertainment snatched up the rights to Roth and Morgenstern’s novels.

According to Variety, Harry Potter film producer David Heyman is interested in The Night Circus film. Deadline reported that Twilight film producers Marty Bowen and Wyck Godfrey are looking at Legend. All three authors made an appearance at this year’s San Diego Comic-Con.

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To say THE NIGHT CIRCUS is atmospheric is an understatement, almost an insult to the strength of Erin Morgenstern’s prose.

From page one, the reader is immediately immersed in the sights and sounds and smells of Le Cirque des Reves, a magical world spun with from starlight and shadow. As we get to know the protagonists, Celia and Marco, we see the sweep of an elegant hem on the painted floor, we smell the smoky sweet scent of caramel, we hear the tick-tock of enchanted clockwork. Beyond the circus gates, the innumerable tents hold singular wonders–bottles filled with memory, ice gardens heavy with frozen blooms, deep rooted trees that burn with wishes and dreams.

The circus is filled to bursting with story.

And it’s all part of the game. A game in which two magicians pit their chosen proteges against one another. Cirque des Reves becomes the chessboard, the battleground from which Celia and Marco cannot escape. And they are not alone. The competitive work, their combined illusions form a fragile web in which many performers, friends and guests are precariously suspended.

The game does not end, the circus must remain until a victor emerges and a loser falls. But what happens when opponents become lovers? What happens when each side cannot bear to win?

THE NIGHT CIRCUS has the answer, and surely much more. The narrative twists back and again through time and many perspectives. One cannot help but search each new page for clues, for answers, for puzzle pieces to place on the table’s larger picture. The reader’s journey is part of the story–the tale feels complete only when the last revelations click into place. For me, that final clarity was satisfying beyond the last scene.

In the end, I flipped to the last page, desperate for a trapdoor into the novel’s world. Call me a red-scarved reveur, but I was not ready to leave the circus.

And I’m certain I’m not be alone in this. THE NIGHT CIRCUS beckons, secure your own admission. This debut will pull you into it’s sparkling, magical game.

Hungry for more? Try this recipe for *glorious* homemade caramel sauce. Maybe it will tide you over until the next time Le Cirque comes to town.

In a BEA tradition yesterday, six editors described their favorite book of the season in the annual Editors Buzz Forum. For ten minutes apiece, these editors advocated for a particular book in a room filled with booksellers.

The annual event can teach you a lot about writing blurbs, particularly how to write one or two glittering sentences about a book. We’ve included a few choice examples below–how would you  describe your favorite book in a single, perfect sentence?

“It’s huge but familiar at the same time.” Little, Brown and Company publisher Michael Pietsch on  The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach

“It gave me goosebumps. On my face.” Dutton senior editor Denise Roy on The Underside of Joy by Sere Prince Halverson
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