It's bound to happen sometime.

When you become a freelance writer, you take on a lot of responsibility.  Each project has its own share.  The extent may change all the time, but it is still there.  A moment will arrive (or may be it already has) when you make a mistake that seriously complicates or even compromises your writing assignment.  

This post, by JA Konrath, originally appeared on his A Newbie's Guide to Publishing blog on 8/27/10.

I'm loving the ebook revolution.

Obviously, I enjoy the money I'm making (close to $500 a day).

But it's more than that. I'm able to do things I never could have done in the traditional publishing world.

Exactly a year ago, I wrote about how ebooks are the future. Today I read that the Oxford English Dictionary, the mighty volumes that record our very language itself, will only be available online. You can read a bit about that here.

There is one place in printed books were we look for all kinds of editorial, bibliographic, legal, promotional and production information: the copyright page. But among all this information, data, legal notices and marketing and contact information, there’s one piece of content on the copyright page that is obscure to most people who pick up the book: the CIP data block, issued by the Library of Congress’ Cataloging in Publication program.

I was about to post an overlong response in a comment thread on Joel Friedlander's The Book Designer blog, but on reflection, realized what I was about to post wasn't a response, it was a blog entry in its own right. The article associated with the comment thread is about Library of Congress registration information [Editor's note: the article is reprinted here on Publetariat today], and the subject of ISBN ownership came up in the discussion going on beneath the article, in the comments. And here's what I have to say about ISBN ownership:

For me, there has only been one story in publishing over the past few days, and it is this one, about Leo Hunter, six years of age, signing a 23 book deal with a US publisher. I didn’t get the chance to dig deep enough when the story first broke (supposedly) when I posted about it here and on also on Facebook on Friday.

Recently I wrote a post about why it's so important to offer RSS feeds on your author blog. Feeds enable your author blog posts to be automatically delivered to your readers' email inbox or feed reader, so you don't have to rely on people remembering to visit your blog periodically.

This post, by J. Daniel Sawyer, originally appeared on his Literary Abominations site on 8/27/10 and is reprinted here in its entirety with his permission.

If you want the background for this post, check The Binge post for a description of my recent unintentional astronomical word count adventure. Short version: I wrote one hundred twenty three thousand words in fifty days. Yow.

So, you may ask, what did I learn from writing 123k words in 50 days?

Plenty.

Two driving factors come to mind in discussing book trends:

1. How many books are written and published
2. Rapidly advancing technology

From the Wattpad site:

Wattpad Global Ebook Metrics Reports

Wattpad is the pioneer in ebook cloud services. With over 5 million downloads supporting over 1000 phone models from 600 mobile operators, Wattpad is also the most popular mobile ebook application. As a result, Wattpad can analyze every usage, read, search, click and uses this to optimize its services. These reports offer a snapshot of the data to provide insight into trends in the ebook ecosystem.

This post, from Jessica John, originally appeared on the Antbear blog on 8/25/10 and is reprinted here in its entirety with her permission.

Pricing among audiobooks varies as much as print books, but here are some averages and rules of thumb that might be useful.

Okay. You're going along with writing the same articles each and every month, taking some solace in the fact that your source of income was secured by fact that it was a repeat customer who seemed content with your work. You don't see any issues with maintaining that single income source, whether it is through a service like Elance or as a member of writing team. You haven't had any trouble getting freelancing work at all.

Then it happens.

Your source dries up.

Last week I caught up to the fact that Chris Kelly was having a blog carnival on Indie Publishing just as the deadline closed. However, after reading the blog posts of those who made it to the fair, and mulling over my reactions, I thought it would still be useful to post on this topic.

Creativity through dance is fascinating when writing is our main form of expression. Here are some lessons learned for writers from Spanish flamenco dancing.

Seth Godin's announcement yesterday that his future works will not be traditionally published seems, to me anyway, to have finally knocked over the "Tipping Point" domino in a chain that's long been poised to open the floodgates of true acceptance and respectability for indie authorship. For authors like Godin, JA Konrath, Steven Covey, and lesser-known indies like me, this is a wonderful development. It's a clear signal that going indie can be a big step in the right direction for any author, established or aspiring, who's got an entrepreneurial spirit and commercial sensibilities. But what about all those other authors, published and aspiring, who are more in tune with art than commerce? How would a Flannery O'Connor, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Camus, Dostoevsky or Salinger fare in this brave new world of indie authorship? Not too well, I suspect.

There is no more difficult question for a writer to address than the balancing of their intended communication. Readers are not clones. Logical ReaderG may be very smart about plot nuances, while empathetic ReaderT may be intuitive about character motives.

The news has been plastered all over the web: Seth Godin announced his most recent book, Linchpin, will be the last to be published traditionally. He blogged about it today:

The writing, publishing, and marketing landscapes of books is very fluid these days. They refuse to be nailed down to the “Tried and True” solutions anymore. Given that, how does a writer go about choosing a topic/genre to write in these days of shifting sands? Fiction or nonfiction, the problem is universal if you're going to write for any audience beyond yourself, friends, and family.

I was recently browsing the blogosphere for eBooks on self-publishing and blogging when I came across Kristen Lamb’s eBook We Are Not Alone: The Writer’s Guide to Social Media. It sounds like a very interesting read based on the blurb at Who Dares Wins Publishing. Will I buy it? Not without a lot of thinking and considering.