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Three Percent Podcast

Three Percent #148: The Hottest Trend

Sticking more or less to their biweekly schedule, Chad and Tom reconvene to talk about a couple recent articles, the challenges of being a literary nonprofit, interesting books they're reading, humblebrags about the Words Without Borders and PEN galas, and more. Surprising lack of sports talk this week, although there is a ...

Three Percent #147: Helping Listeners One Translation Heuristic at a Time

This week's episode is mostly inspired by an email from a listener about evaluating translations, and although Tom and Chad don't provide the hardest and fastest rules, they do have an interesting conversation about how they read and judge translated books. They also follow up on a few different threads from earlier episodes ...

Three Percent #146: The Conspiracy Theory Episode

An all-banter episode that touches on an array of topics, from ranking ideas on how to save indie bookstores, to The Great American Read's (embarrassing) top 10 vote getting books (are we sure Outlanders doesn't include people riding on dragons?), the Frankfurt Book Fair, self-censorship, QAnon + Marlins Man, a book scam, ...

Three Percent #145: Lobbying for No Celebrities

In response to a listener email, Tom expands on his comments from last podcast about the American Booksellers Association. Chad shares some data about genre works in translation and wonders about adding this to the Translation Database. He also has some curious info about Icelandic books in translation and then promotes one ...

Three Percent #144: The Perfect Publishing Award

Were the National Book Award longlists announced last week? Do Chad and Tom have opinions? YES AND YES. That conversation leads into talking about Penguin Random House, the "perfect publishing house," and then into a frank discussion about the future of small press publishing and the challenges of having a career in nonprofit ...

Three Percent #143: The Cocky Pod

This week, Chad and Tom return to basics--more book talk than industry talk, a promise to release a new episode every other Wednesday--but start off with something that's very, very Three Percent: #Cockygate. Although the #Cockygate lawsuit is interesting in its own right, it's the breakdown of the seedy underworld of gaming ...

Three Percent #142: The Great American Podcast

Back from their respective vacations, Chad and Tom talk about PBS's "Great American Read," the NEA's "Big Read," building a sustainable publishing model that puts readers first, the attempt to address the direct-to-consumer discount problem, books that they've recently read, and ones Tom refuses to stock. Tom also discloses ...