Thanks to the pro-bono efforts of the very generous Shawn E. Bell, Publetariat is back online and all of the original site posts were preserved. However, while the “bones” of the site and its content are here, most of the recovered content has yet to be properly categorized into the various Departments (e.g., Sell, Write, Design, [… Read More]
Many people have asked me why Publetariat has been repeatedly targeted by hackers, if this could be some kind of publishing establishment attack on indie authors in general, or if I feel I am being personally attacked. Let me reassure everyone: I have no reason to believe the recent problems were any kind of attack [… Read More]
This post, by Kristen Lamb, originally appeared on Kristen Lamb’s blog on 4/12/13.
I do a lot of reading of other blogs, particularly blogs that aren’t about writing. I think this keeps my information fresh. As many of you might know, financial blogger Steve Tobak is one of my favorites, and he regularly inspires my writing.
This post, by Clare Langley-Hawthorne, originally appeared on the Kill Zone blog on 4/15/13.
I read a recent blog post on The Guardian book blog about the 10 ways self-publishing has changed the book world and, after Jim’s post yesterday, it got me thinking about how I would explain the current state of the book world to friends and family who are neither authors, nor wanna-be writers, but who, as book readers, are nonetheless intrigued by all the changes going on in publishing.
Increasingly, we work and play in a digital world.
I read, write, publish, market and often interact with friends online, which I absolutely love and value highly. But recently, I’ve been craving some physical creation, so last week I went along to the London Centre for Book Arts and joined one of their awesome workshops.
Because I write in so many Moleskine journals, I decided to make a Travel Notebook, complete with concertina folded envelope in the back. I’d like to eventually make my own paper, print my own work on it and bind limited editions myself – but that’s a while away! (I got the idea from Cory Doctorow’s awesome limited edition work)
Publetariat Editor’s note: This post originally appeared on Alan Baxter‘s Warrior Scribe site on 4/11/13. Alan is a regular Contributor here at Publetariat, but due to the length of this piece, and its numerous references to related posts on Alan’s site that have not been reprinted here on Publetariat, we are reprinting only the first portion of the article and providing a link back to the rest at the end of our excerpt.
I’ve really enjoyed the recent run of guest posts from six of Australia’s most successful genre writers. Here I’ll try to collate the overlapping themes from those posts into one place (and have links to all the posts in one place too.) First and foremost, I’d like to thank the six respondents for giving their time and honesty to the idea. So here are the links to each individual post, with my heartfelt thanks:
This post, by Mike Masnick, originally appeared on TechDirt on 4/8/13.
from the old-man-yells-at-cloud dept
We’ve written more than a few times about Scott Turow, a brilliant author, but an absolute disaster as the Luddite-driven head of the Authors’ Guild. During his tenure, he’s done a disservice to authors around the globe by basically attacking everything new and modern — despite any opportunities it might provide — and talked up the importance of going back to physical books and bookstores. He’s an often uninformed champion of a past that never really existed and which has no place in modern society. He once claimed that Shakespeare wouldn’t have been successful under today’s copyright law because of piracy, ignoring the fact that copyright law didn’t even exist in the age of Shakespeare. His anti-ebook rants are just kind of wacky.
I abhor playing team sports. I presume I’m not alone in this dislike, but I do feel the need to share my reasoning. You see, it’s not that a bad teammate or anything like that. It all goes back to middle school: in 6th grade, I went from being the tallest person in my class to one of the shortest. The sudden height catch-up from my peers had an inverse relationship to my prowess in PE class.
Basketball was the particular bane of my existence. When you’re towering two or three inches above your peers, man, basketball is a BLAST. You come to think you have some sort of actual skillz (with a ‘z’) when all you really have is a distinct height advantage.
You may call me a sore loser if you wish (I freely admit that I’m WAY competitive), but when I stopped winning games, I started becoming a bit sour on the whole team sports thing. All of those height-blessed peeps had a total unfair advantage…how could I ever hope to catch up?
I see many fiction authors complaining about a similar unfair advantage, and I completely understand their point of view.
This post, by Nichole Bernier, originally appeared on The Millions on 4/2/13.
1.
“Why are they still bothering with paperbacks?” This came from a coffee-shop acquaintance when he heard my book was soon to come out in paperback, nine months after its hardcover release. “Anyone who wants it half price already bought it on ebook, or Amazon.”
This post, by Cheryl Pickett, originally appeared on The Future Of Ink site on 2/22/13.
If you’re going to go through all the effort and time to write an ebook, I’d be willing to bet you don’t want the response to be like a bored dog!
You don’t want people feeling uninspired, or worse yet, like they’re ready for a nap when they’re done reading your words.
