Month: March 2009

The Dreaded Moment of Suck

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This piece, by Alison Janssen, originally appeared on the Hey, There’s A Dead Guy In The Living Room blog on 3/29/09. In it, Ms. Janssen talks about that dreaded moment of self-doubt many authors and, apparently, editors sometimes feel when looking back over a finished manuscript: the (hopefully) fleeting moment when you’re absolutely certain the work is horrible and you’re a fraud.

During the lifespan of a Bleak House book, I may read the same text seven or eight times. Sometimes a time or two more, sometimes a time or two less. (It depends upon my working relationship with the author and the way we work through revisions.)

Suffice it to say: I read each title *intensely* before it’s bound between hard covers and made available for mass consumption.

And over the course of those months, at some point after my initial acquisitions read but before my final check-all-tiny-last-minute-changes review, I experience a moment while reading when I think,

"Oh god. This book is terrible. Is this book terrible?!"

*Gasp*

I know! I’m almost ashamed to admit this. I certainly don’t want to give the impression that I think any Bleak House book is less than stellar. Obviously, right? What would that say about the company? Our authors? Heck, my own professional skill set?

But I want to talk about this because I sometimes hear authors address a similar feeling, and I find it fascinating. I hear them talk about the moment of self-doubt which seizes them — wholly unfairly — and convinces them that the ms they’re slaving over is utter crap. Some authors I’ve heard speak to this say the feeling creeps up just after they reach the halfway point of their first draft, when they’ve set everything up, invested a ton,and know pretty well where it’s all going, but still have to get it there.

That makes sense to me — having focused so much on a ms, worked mostly in solitude, and being essentially past the point of no return, I can believe that it’s easy to doubt yourself. No matter how many previous titles you’ve published, no matter how many bestseller lists you may be on. Bestseller status doesn’t fill blank pages for you.

My experience with a ms is much different from the author’s, of course. My work is not creation, but refinement. I still, however, spend a lot of time with the mss. And I certainly feel a sense of ownership when I usher a book from query through publication.

I want to be proud of the work that I do, and I want to be praised. (That’s natural, yeah?) I want Bleak House to be renowned for publishing great crime fiction. And I believe in what we do, and the titles and author in which we invent.

But, just like the authors I discussed above, I encounter that moment — when I’ve been shut up so long with a ms, trying to brainstorm a solution to some little character flaw, or soothe some plot hiccup, or elegantly replace some overused (but totally awesome) word. The dreaded moment of suck. 

Read the rest of the post on the Hey, There’s A Dead Guy In The Living Room blog.

read this b4 u publish :-)

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This article, by Max Leone, originally appeared on the Publisher’s Weekly site on 11/10/08.

A 13-year-old boy tells the industry what teens want.

I am of that population segment that is constantly derided as “not reading anymore,” and is therefore treated by publishing companies as a vast, mysterious demographic that’s seemingly impossible to please. Kind of like the way teenage boys think of girls.

The reason we read so little in our free time is partially because of the literary choices available to teenagers these days. The selection of teen literature is even more barren now that the two great dynasties, Harry Potter and Artemis Fowl, have released their final installments. Those two massive successes blended great characters, humor and action in a way that few other books manage. When they went for laughs, they were genuinely funny, and their dramatic scenes were still heart-poundingly tense, even after I’d read them dozens of times. 

And so, after weeks of brainstorming and careful consideration (three months of procrastinating and two hours of furious typing), I will now attempt to end this dark age of adolescent prose. I will start by stating the main problem with books aimed at teenage boys. Then I will give some examples of what teenage boys actually want to read.

The first problem with many books for teens is archaic language. Seriously. It is the kiss of death for teenage boy literature. Any book infested by it is destined to become an eternal object of derision around the cafeteria lunch table. It is a problem that applies not only to the “classics” (yes, I will use quotations whenever I use that word. Live with it.), but also modern teenage literature. “Methinks”? “Doth”? Really? So we are constantly ridiculed for “lol,” while these offenses go unnoticed? To all writers of books aimed at teenage boys, I beg you: please use only modern language, no matter what time period or universe your book takes place in.

Another giant, oily blemish on the face of teenage literature (that was entirely intentional) is whatever urge compels writers to clumsily smash morals about fairness or honor or other cornball crap onto otherwise fine stories. Do you not think we get enough of that in our parents’ and teachers’ constant attempts to shove the importance of justice and integrity down our throats? We get it. I assure you, it makes no difference in our behavior at all. And we will not become ax murderers because volume 120 of Otherworld: The Generica Chronicles didn’t smother us in morals that would make a Care Bear cringe.

And then there are the vampires and other supernatural creature that appear in many contemporary teen novels. Vampires, simply put, are awesome. However, today’s vampire stories are 100 pages of florid descriptions of romance and 100 pages of various people being emo. However much I mock the literature of yesteryear, it definitely had it right when it came to vampires. The vampire was always depicted as a menacing badass. That is the kind of book teenage boys want to read. Also good: books with videogame-style plots involving zombie attacks, alien attacks, robot attacks or any excuse to shoot something.

Finally, here is what I consider the cardinal rule of writing for young adults: Do Not Underestimate Your Audience. They actually know a lot about what’s going on in politics. They will get most of the jokes you expect them not to. They have a much higher tolerance for horror and action than most adults. Most of the books I read actually don’t fall under the “young adult” category. I can understand the humor in Jon Stewart’s or Stephen Colbert’s books as well as any adult.

Publishers can stop panicking and worrying that the teenage boy market is impossible to crack, that teenagers hardly ever read anymore, and that they have only a few years before books become obsolete and are replaced by holograms or information beamed straight into people’s minds. Okay, they probably do have to worry about that last one. But if they follow the simple rules I outlined above, they’ll be able to cash in on the four or five minutes each day that teenagers aren’t already spending on school, homework, videogames, eating, band practice and sports.

P.S. I have very good lawyers, so don’t bother trying to sue me if none of these suggestions work and your company goes out of business.

Author Information: Max Leone attends eighth grade in New Jersey.

The Dragon's Pool Preview on CreateSpace's new tool

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Since the 3rd Book of The Jade Owl Legacy Series – The Dragon’s Pool, is nearing publication in early May, I decided to use CreateSpace’s kool new PREVIEW tool to get feedback on the first chapter. Here’s the link:

https://www.createspace.com/Preview/1056199

Ed Patterson

Publetariat Joins The BookLife Network

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Publetariat is now part of Publisher’s Weekly’s BookLife network! 

 

From the BookLife site:

Welcome to BookLife
…a growing network for book lovers. BookLife is for people like you…readers, book buyers, authors, sellers, recommenders, illustrators, publishers, librarians, trade, agents, distribution and media. The partner sites reflect the passions of their founders. You get incredible depth, insight, informative blogs, links and connections to others who share your interests. Discover new book destinations that satisfy your love for books.

Your favorite authors – interviews – thousands of book reviews – videos – publisher news – insider information – book signings and tour dates – and, most importantly, communities of people like you who love books.

Other member sites include GoodReads, BookSlut, IndieBound, LitMob and Litopia.  Check out BookLife to get more information on these and other partner sites.

 

What Twitter Can Do For Your Pitch

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This blog post, by Angela James, executive editor for Samhain Publishing, originally appeared on her Nice Mommy – Evil Editor blog on 3/26/09. In it, she discusses how Twitter’s 140-character limit presents authors with an opportunity to hone a book pitch.

ETA: The first thing to say is that a pitch isn’t necessarily about selling your book to an agent/editor. Time to move out of that mindset! Read on…

Here’s another one to file under conversations from Twitter. This came up this past weekend in a conversation about Blood and Chocolate by Annette Kurtis Clause. It’s a great book and I highly recommend it. Someone (@lihsa, follow the link for her article on it) on Twitter asked for a review/description and the challenge was on. 140 character review for a book? It’s the “elevator pitch” at its most refined!

Now, it’s been a few years since I read Blood and Chocolate so even though it’s one of the books I recommend often when someone asks for paranormal YA, I still had to stop and think how to refine it in an interesting way. Years after I’d read it. Hard!

I came up with: teenage female werewolf struggles to find acceptance in a world that doesn’t know about the supernatural. Moody, dark and emotional.

I don’t think it’s the best review/pitch but it does start to refine the ideas. I could make it punchier, ramp up the hook, really get someone interested. Let’s see…

Rebelling against her society. Searching for love. Desperate for a chance. Can this teen wolf reconcile what she is with who she wants to be?

Hmm, I’m not sure. I’m actually over by one character but I figure if I delete a space, I’ll be okay. What do you think? Better? It took me 15 minutes of fiddling to come up with that versus the first one, which I just popped off the top of my head.

But what I’m getting at is that it’s important to be able for authors to refine your book to its purest hook. The conflict, the angst, the info that’s going to make a reader, editor or agent want to pick it up to read, go find an excerpt, request a full or keep reading your query letter.

TV does this with what they call log lines. A one sentence hook meant to engage the viewer and get them to watch the show. Something that will easily fit in the TV guide or, for many of us now, on the guide channel. There’s no second chances when the viewer has only that guide to look at and base their decision off of. So the log line has to be good enough to convince the viewer to turn the channel right then and there, without a bunch of extranneous detail or someone saying “oh wait, that didn’t quite hook you? Well let me tell you just a little more”. The log line is it. The same should be considered true of the elevator pitch or, for purposes of my blog post, the Twitch (Twitter pitch. Ha! I’m funny).

At Samhain, we do something similar with each of our books’ blurbs, but we call it a tagline. If you go over to the website, the tagline is what you see on this page. Something to pique the interest of readers browsing our website, to entice them to click through to the book’s blurb and then excerpt.

I remember being at a conference a few years back and someone at our lunch table asking another author there about the book she wrote. I remember it was a historical but that’s all I remember because she spent the next 15 minutes talking, in depth, about the plot of her book and all the details. Ouch. Those are the times that I have to really struggle to pay attention.

It’s harder if it happens during a pitch session because, let’s be honest, it’s hard for any of us to be talked to for 8 to 10 minutes without drifting off and thinking about lunch (unless you’re at lunch, in which case you’re thinking about your post-lunch nap and how much you’d like one). But I can be hooked by a plot refined down to its most interesting conflicts and ideas. Something that either makes me want to ask questions and find out more, or go buy the book and find out more.

Read the rest of the post on Nice Mommy – Evil Editor.

The Future of Publishing, As Seen From The Future of Publishing

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This piece originally appeared on The Bookish Dilettante on 2/23/09.

Today – the Bookish Dilettante happily yields the floor to a new voice – Mr. Aaron Hierholzer. Aaron, a young gun in the publishing world, attended this year’s TOC conference, and has graciously offered up his observations. With no futher ado, Mr. Aaron Hierholzer…

Last November, former Collins publisher Steve Ross said, “It’d be absolutely terrifying to be starting out now, to be young and to not have the benefit of years, if not decades, of perspective . . . I would have seriously considered leaving book publishing." Days later, literary agent Esther Newburg said, “I would hate to be starting out in the [book] business.”

What’s a person with a passion for bringing books to readers to do when the old guard implies that running for the hills might be best? What’s one to do when you find out that neither MGMT, Diplo, nor a good chunk of your acquaintances even read books? What’s one to do when one could compile a lengthy volume of humorless “end of publishing” articles from the past four months, alone?

Attending "O’Reilly’s Tools of Change" conference isn’t a bad place to start. I got to go earlier this month, and the enthusiasm for the future of books both p- and e- was truly infectious, and helped dispel some of the gloominess I was feeling about Bookland.

Overall, TOC’s gloom-dispelling ability was directly proportional to its specificity: anyone who’s been paying attention knows that reading is increasingly a social act, that one can instantly access almost any fact on a mobile phone, and that Gutenberg invented the printing press in the 15th century. These harped-upon broad strokes grew tiresome, and when news that HarperCollins terminated its Collins division spread through the conference on Tuesday, it seemed there were more pressing questions to address. Questions like, "where’s the money going to come from when most of the knowledge of mankind can be found for free via Google?" Questions like, "should I run for the hills after all?"

Thankfully, many presenters did get to the nitty-gritty and the applicable, talking about things like how we’re going to get readers to value (and therefore be willing to pay for) digital content. I wish the “Success Stories and Failures in Digital Publishing” panel could have lasted all day—the skipped slides by rushed presenters were heartbreaking. Hachette’s Stephanie van Duin, Macmillan’s Sara Lloyd, and Lexcycle’s Neelan Choksi all talked knowledgably about the pricing and profitability of digital content, and about the fearlessness it will take to find a workable solution.

In nerve-wracking times such as these, staying focused on why we publish books in the first place is a good alternative to worrying about the end times of reading. And the point that kept striking me over and over was simple: readers come first. Publishers have got to treat the reader, the end user, with utmost respect. That can take any number of forms—not publishing absolute dreck; not treating the purchaser like a potential thief by imposing draconian DRM; not making digital offerings confusing, and frustrating, and messy, and overly expensive.

Read the rest of the article on The Bookish Dilettante.

Hello from a newcomer

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I’m enjoying turning my stories into books which are softcover and self published.  My best seller is an Amish Story titled "Christmas Traditions – An Amish Love Story"  ISBN 143824889X sold by Amazon or through me at booksbyfay@yahoo  210 pages

When readers get back to me with the great reviews about this book, I have made some great Internet fans and friends.  So look for my book about Margaret Goodman and Levi Yoder.  Follow along as they fight the urge to love each other after years of being apart when Margaret visits the Yoder farm to see Levi’s son.  A heartwarming story with Amish farm scenes and rural background.  The story puts you at a school Christmas program, ice skating on Yoder pond, rescuing a drowning girl in an icy creek, nursing Margaret after a cow nearly kills her and watch Margaret and Levi wrestle with hidden feelings that keep coming to the surface.

Copyrighting Your Work 101

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This post, from the Open Publishing Lab at New York’s Rochester Institute of Technology, originally appeared on the OPL’s Open Publishing Guide site on 1/25/09.

Something we get asked about a lot is copyright.  As creators, we want to make sure our work is protected from intellectual property theft, and ensure that we control the publication, distribution and adaptation of what we’ve created. The problem is that copyright can be confusing and there are a lot of misconceptions about it.

Hopefully, I can help clear some things up and give you some resources for more information on copyright if you’re interested in that sort of thing.
 

Please note that this information is focused on copyright in the United States. For more information on International copyrights, please check out the links at the bottom of the post.
 

What is Copyright?
To begin with, I’m going to get the easy stuff out of the way. With a quick Google search, you can find the basics of what copyright is as well as in-depth discussion and even some analysis. As such, I am going to keep this as simple as possible. Copyright protects the rights of creators of literary, dramatic, musical, and artistic works. Specifically, it gives the owner of the copyright the exclusive right to, and to authorize others the right to, reproduce, distribute, perform, or display the work. It is illegal for anyone to violate any of the rights provided by the law to copyright holders.

For more information on what copyright entails, check out the US Copyright Office’s Copyright Basics.
 

How Do I Protect My Work?
The good news is that a work is considered copyrighted as soon as you create it. So, as I’m typing these words, they are simultaneously copyrighted under the law. As a result, you don’t have to do anything beyond creating your work (which, sadly, is the hard part). However, holding a registered copyright is extremely helpful if you find yourself in litigation if you have to deal with a copyright violation. With a registered certification you will be given a certificate of registration, will be eligible for statutory damages and attorney’s fees in successful litigation, and if the registration occurs within 5 years of publication, then it is considered prima facie evidence

The US Copyright Office now allows online registration of copyright, making the process even easier. Of course, you can still register using paper forms, but doing so is a little more expensive, and can take longer to process. Filing for registration online is $35, and you can get started here. If you choose to file online, then you can upload your work to the copyright office or mail copies to them.
 

Some people claim you can create a “poor man’s copyright” by mailing a copy of your work to yourself via certified mail (or another trackable system). However, copyright law does not cover this type of protection, and as a result does not confer the same protections as registering your copyright.
 

What Other Options Are There?
If you are interested in protecting your work in some ways, but want to allow others to build upon and share your work, then you may be interested in using a Creative Commons license in place of a standard copyright. Creative Commons works alongside copyright, and allows you to apply a series of free attributes to your work, which you can choose whether or not to use. The license options are Attribution, Share Alike, Noncommercial, and No Derivative Works.
 

By assigning Attribution to your work, you give others the right to copy, distribute, display, and perform your copyrighted work as long as they give credit the way you request. Share Alike allows others to distribute derivative works, but only under the same license you have assigned to your work.

Noncommercial allows others to copy, distribute, display, and perform your copyrighted work as long as it is for noncommercial purposes. Finally, No

Derivative Works allows others to copy, distribute, display, and perform your copyrighted work, but not derivative works. These licenses can be combined into six licenses, which are covered on the Creative Commons site.
 

There you have it, the basics of copyright. I hope this was helpful. If you are looking for more information on the subject, these links are a good place to start:
Where to Copyright – Global Copyright resources
10 Myths About Copyright by Brad Templeton (Chairman of the Board of the EFF)
Copyright Essentials For Writers By Holly Jahangiri

Visit the Open Publishing Guide for a wealth of additional resources related to self-publishing.

Interview With Doyce Testerman – Twitter As A New Medium In Authorship, Pt. 3

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Parts one and two of this series offered an interview with Doyce Testerman, an author who’s writing experimental fiction on Twitter, the micro-blogging web application which allows a maximum length of 140 characters (including spaces).  Today the series concludes with a survey of Twitter projects in authorship and books.

Twitter has become a force to be reckoned with in authorship, publishing and media. Here’s a sampling of some of the more interesting projects and developments happening on Twitter.

FICTION:

We’ve already discussed Doyce Testerman’s @finnras project, but you may not be aware of these others.

@smallplaces – The Christian Science Monitor reported on this project from author Nick Belardes in October, 2008.

Earlier this year, Belardes was cleaning out his desk drawer when he came across an unfinished manuscript for a workplace novel called “Small Places.” He briefly considered shipping the thing off to publishers for consideration. Instead, he decided to serialize “Small Places” on Twitter, a popular microblogging site.

“It was a natural fit,” he remembers. “So many people are sitting in their gray cubicles, reading Twitter. They’re looking for something easy to digest. I thought I could put a smile on their face.”

Slowly, in fits and starts, he adapted the manuscript to terse, comedic tweets, frequently digressing into colorful observations. “I’ve grown to like small places,” runs the first post. “I like bugs, bug homes, walking stick bugs, blades of grass, ladybug Ferris wheels made out of dandelions.”

As the narrative spooled out over some 400-plus tweets, “Small Places” began to attract a sizable audience…Belardes has become a figurehead of sorts for a decidedly micromedia movement: the novel by tweet. Although exact numbers are hard to come by – many projects have been abandoned and more crop up every week – the idea appears to have real ballast among the millions of Twitter fanatics, who crave rapid bursts of overshare.

Twiller – Also in October of ’08, Media In The New Millenium reported on this project from NY Times reporter Matt Richtel.

Boulder native, New York Times reporter and Rudy Park co-creator Matt Richtel has launched his latest creative project: a novel on Twitter.

Called Twiller, it’s a thriller delivered one 140-character slice at a time. Catch it at  http://twitter.com/mrichtel.  You might want to check the plot summary first before jumping into tweets like this:

Interogators of 10days past asked: how do U no bout China&The hookers? Says I: huh? BAM; Face-punched. again: huh? again: SMACK. blackness about 22 hours ago from web

and this:

any1 no how 2 stop internl bleedin? must avoid hosptls. 11:18 AM Oct 11th from web

Richtel tweets from his PC because, he notes, “im just 2 old 2 create-n-write on a gadget smaller than a hamstr.”

@joymotel – The Phoenix reported on this project from John Kewley, as well as a few other Twitter fiction projects, in January of 2009.

Toronto ad man John Kewley — he writes concisely for a living — likens Twitter, teeming with constant updates, to a global "brainstream" where users can submerge themselves in others’ thoughts, feelings, and existential particulars. So he’s co-writing a language-dense, James Joyce– and Philip K. Dick–inspired Twitter sci-fi narrative, Joy Motel, the plot of which plugs the reader into the protagonist’s stream of consciousness.

Kewley’s writing partner, Wayne Allen Sallee, is someone he’s never met. ("We’ve never even spoken on the telephone.") Nonetheless, they correspond online, and "share a wavelength," and one day, when Sallee tweeted Kewley with "a snippet of a film noir–sounding sentence," Kewley replied in kind. "I sent him one back, to sort of build on his, and we did about 20 of those."

The pair banged on back and forth, braced by the brevity and immediacy mandated by the medium. "You can just jump on there because you have half a thought, and then an hour later, Wayne will respond," says Kewley. "We don’t know where this is going. It’s real-time writing on Twitter."

BOOK REVIEWS:

The Christian Science Monitor posts its book reviews on Twitter under the username csmonitoronline.

Flashlight Worthy Books posts lists of books deemed so good that they’re worthy of reading under the covers with a flashlight.

You may want to consider sending review copies of your books to these Twitter members; the subsequent review will be seen by all the reviewer’s ‘followers’.

The BookGeeks are a group of book reviewers operating out of London.

Mystery Books News – Information for and reviews of mystery books, television, movies, games, and more.

Chrisbookarama – Reviews from a reader in Nova Scotia.

BOOK CLUBS:

Twitter book clubs are a relatively new phenomenon, but a very good idea.  Essentially, a group of Twitter members all agree to read the same book and comment on it via Twitter.  Some book clubs have a dedicated Twitter account, but this is very limiting since only people with sign-in access to the club account can post tweets there.

Another approach, which allows literally any Twitter member in the world to join in the discussion, is to set a "hashtag" for a given book or book club.  When a reader wants to comment on the current book or discussion, she tweets as usual but includes the specified hashtag. Club members then follow the discussion by doing a search on Twitter for the specified hashtag.

A hashtag is simply a word with a pound sign (#) appended to the front, i.e., #authors.

On 3/24/09, Galleycat reported that Picador has launched a new book club on Twitter:

Picador formed a new book club on Twitter today, and at two o’clock this (Tuesday) afternoon, they will give away free copies of the inaugural book.

The club begins with Yoko Ogawa‘s "The Housekeeper and the Professor," which will be discussed on April 10, 2009 in pithy Twitter posts. Upcoming book club titles include: "A Wolf at the Table" by Augusten Burroughs, "The Story of a Marriage" by Andrew Sean Greer and "Last Last Chance" by Fiona Maazel.

The book club has its own webpage, with information about sign-up and today’s giveaway: "[Sign up for Twitter] then ‘follow’ Picador here so you can hear about the upcoming announcements and discussions. We’ll create special hash tags (#) to append to your tweets during the discussion. This way, you can simply search here with the hash tag to see what people are saying! It’s open to all and ongoing – if you missed a recent discussion day, you can still contribute."

The Canada Book Club tweets here.

You can follow the discussions of the Prose Hos book club by searching Twitter for the #prosehos hashtag, and join in by posting your own tweets with the same hashtag.

 

Try searching wefollow and TweetGrid to find more book clubs, twitter novels and Twitter book reviews.

Ed Patterson Interviewed by Amanda Young

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I gave an Interview on Amanda Young’s Romance website, complete with excerpts and covers. Come take a look and let me know what you think.

http://www.amandayoung.org/blog/

Edward C. Patterson
http://www.dancaster.com

Ed Patterson Intervieewed by Amanda Young

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I gave an Interview on Amanda Young’s Romance website, complete with excerpts and covers. Come take a look and let me know what you think.

http://www.amandayoung.org/blog/

Edward C. Patterson
http;//www.dancaster.com

FiledByAuthor – An Easy, New, Free Web Presence Option For Authors

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Filedbyauthor is a new, free web service that promises to connect authors with readers and readers with books.

From the site’s About Us page:

 

FiledBy, Inc is a digital marketing company providing membership sites, web tools and community building solutions to content Creators – authors, writers, illustrators and photographers – and their fans. The Company, based in Nashville, TN, has launched its flagship site, filedbyauthor, the most comprehensive online marketing platform and directory of published author web pages on the Internet.

Filedbyauthor is now in Beta. Any author with a book published in the U.S. or Canada can join for free, claim their page, check for accuracy, provide corrections and enhance their pages.

Mike Shatzkin. co-founder of filedbyauthor, was not quick to jump on the author web presence bandwagon.  On February 22 of this year, he wrote about his gradual conversion:

 

When Joe Esposito first told me about blogs in about 2001 or so, there were very few. Michael Cader had PublishersLunch, but if Michael knew that it was an emailed blog, he didn’t tell me. And then blogs “happened”, as things do: gradually, then suddenly. And now I’m late to have one of my own. Really late.

I’ll admit that I fiddled with this a couple of times before. I started up at least twice, maybe it was three times. I decided I’d try it for a while, see if I could get into the pattern of writing regularly, and then reveal it to the world when I’d piled up a month or two of posts. But I never GOT to a month or two of posts. And because I was keeping what I was doing a secret, I had no traffic, no comments, and none of the rewards of interaction which provide the motivation to keep going. So I didn’t keep going…

But I’ve been getting some signs that “now’s the time.”

One follows from having been on Peter Brantley’s mailing list for a couple of years. Twenty, thirty times a week, Peter sends us a link to something he’s found about publishing and digital change and invites comment. The posts and comments have increasingly sparked a response from me that amounts to a blog post. Once in a while Peter would ask me to extend a comment as a post to one of his blogs, PubFrontier. Then last week David Rothman flattered me by turning another Brantley list comment into a post on his Teleread.

And then two weeks ago I started using Twitter. I was a bit slow to get it, but Tools of Change accelerated the process for me. The complementarity of Twitter and a blog seem pretty apparent.

On top of that, I’m involved with a large number of exciting new initiatives even in these troubling times. Filedbyauthor, a new venture I’m co-founder of being headed by my longtime friend and colleague, Peter Clifton, will be live with a web page for every author with an active ISBN in another month or so.

 

Here we are, a month or so later, and FiledByAuthor is live (in beta).  PersonaNonData shared the announcement on 3/25/09:

 

FiledBy, Inc. today announced the Beta launch of filedbyauthor. The site is the first large-scale author-centric promotional platform to provide every author that has been published in the U.S. or Canada a free, hosted, ecommerce enabled web page ready to be claimed and enhanced. With more than 1.8 million pre-assembled author web pages and over 7 million book titles, filedbyauthor is the most complete site for finding and engaging with authors and their work.

“All authors, regardless of publishing category are encouraged to visit the site, claim their page, make corrections, and enrich them in a variety of ways," says Founder, President & C.E.O. Peter Clifton.

Any published author or co-author can easily and immediately update their author page which is linked to individual work pages. In addition to the free level, FiledBy announced two new membership levels designed to make additional web marketing tools available at low cost. These additional levels include blog tools, additional linking and media postings, event listings, online press kits and banner customization.

And, any reader can join the filedbyauthor community and start connecting with authors. Readers can fill in their own pages, collect favorite authors and books, write reviews, rate works and authors, and comment through wall postings.

“We hope to level the web marketing playing field for all authors, eliminate some of the challenges authors face when designing their online presence, and help every author become more easily discoverable through a highly optimized site,” added Clifton.

 

If you have a book with an ISBN that was published in the U.S. or Canada, you can claim your filedbyauthor page now.

Finding Value In Author Web Sites

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This article, by Judith Rosen, originally appeared on Publisher’s Weekly on 12/15/08. 

Now that just about every writer has a Web site, blog and/or MySpace, Facebook and GoodReads pages, are they finding the effort of keeping up with it all worthwhile? Do authors even need a Web presence? And if so, is it worth the $3,000 to $35,000 fee that professional Web site creators/marketers charge?

“Yes,” said Steve Bennett, who has written more than 50 books and is president of AuthorBytes, which builds and markets author Web sites. “A Web site is your locus in space. It’s not that people can’t get basic author information on Amazon. But they’re looking for extras. The Web has changed the way we learn about products and services; it’s hard to imagine succeeding without it.”

There’s little question about the value of author Web sites for Carol Fitzgerald, founder and president of the Book Report Network, either. As she sees it, having a Web presence gives writers a chance to extend the conversation with their readers. When her company signs an author, she reads their books to make sure that the site her company creates captures the same attitude and tone, beginning with the welcome letter on the home page. Fitzgerald is less concerned about authors having a message board or book trailer than with providing a go-to place for fans.

“If you’re going to get a book review over the Web,” she said, “you want to be sure to have a Web site to send people to, not just the publisher’s site.” She does have one caveat, though: don’t overdo the Flash. “If I’m waiting for a site to load, it ought to be pretty good,” said Fitzgerald. “Like it ought to clean the floor.”

In the absence of clear proof that an expensive, Flash-driven site makes any difference when it comes to sales, some authors, even well-known ones, are opting for a bare-bones Web presence. Susan Cheever, who was given her first Web site 15 years ago, chose a no-frills, DIY Authors Guild site, where writers pay up to $9 a month for Web hosting.

She said that she would upgrade if there were any way to prove that sites sell books. In addition to saving money, the Authors Guild arrangement allows Cheever to update her site (www.susancheever.com) directly, unlike many Web services.

Not that she changes it often—her most recent book, Desire: Where Sex Meets Addiction, is still listed on her home page as due out in the beginning of October. Nor is there a blog. Still, for her the site does what she wants: it enabled this reporter to track her down at Yaddo, and she uses it to sign up speaking engagements.

Despite Cheever’s decision not to blog, both Bennett and Fitzgerald argue that a blog is the easiest way to keep sites fresh. And there’s no reason the blog has to be only about the book; at least that’s James Frey’s approach at BigJimIndustries.com. On his blog, he collects funny news items, videos he likes and stray Web commentary.

But it’s not just bestselling writers who use the Web to keep their names out in the blogosphere. Relatively unknown authors, especially nonfiction writers, have found the Web to be an effective tool for generating interest in their work. Months before her combination travelogue/humor book Queen of the Road came out in June, Doreen Orion used her advance from Broadway to hire AuthorBytes to create QueenoftheRoadtheBook.com.

Her objective, she said, was to have a site that would give people a sense of her book without reading it. She chose to have every Web page look like a postcard sent from a different destination, with a stamp of her wearing a tiara.

Although Orion estimates that she spent eight hours a day for six months before her book came out working on the site and posting YouTube videos, she said the money and time were well spent. She credits the site with getting her a speaking engagement at A Great Good Place for Books in Oakland, Calif., as well as making her book a reading group selection. She viewed her advance as “my book’s money. If you don’t have a really good Web site, you’re hampering yourself.”

Clearly something’s working. Queen of the Road is in its sixth printing and has close to 38,000 copies in print.

Read the rest of the article at Publisher’s Weekly, and also take a look at this companion article about filedbyauthor for a new, totally free option for creating your own author web presence.

The Psychology of Writing, Part 1: A Sane Perspective On The Creative Process

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Today Publetariat launches a new series on the psychology of writers and writing. First up is a video from the TED network featuring author Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat Pray Love) speaking on the emotional pitfalls of being a creative person, particularly about feeling at the mercy of your muses. In the clip, Gilbert explains how she came to a healthier, more positive attitude about the seeming capriciousness of the creative process.

This video is approximately 20 minutes in length. In it, Ms. Gilbert talks about the psychological and emotional challenges of being a writer, how to make peace with the emotional risks one takes in creating, and how altering your perspective on creativity can free you to find new joy in your work.

Watch for additional articles in this series, to be run each Wednesday.

Borders Continues To Struggle

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This article, by Greta Guest, originally appeared on the Detroit Free Press site.

Borders Group Inc. shares languish below the price of a candy bar, its new CEO is closing stores and slashing payroll and turnaround experts differ on its fate.

 

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The Ann Arbor bookseller reports fourth-quarter results next week. And the expectation is for more multimillion-dollar losses, turnaround experts say. Borders said its holiday sales at stores open at least a year fell 14.4%.

 

Shareholders will hear more about the company’s strategy next Wednesday when CEO Ron Marshall hosts a conference call with analysts and investors.

What they know already is that the retailer is in danger of being delisted from the New York Stock Exchange. Its shares closed Tuesday at 64 cents, down 60% in the four months since it announced it was no longer for sale.

Meanwhile, chief competitors have seen huge gains in share prices. Amazon is up 71% to $72.70 and Barnes & Noble, thought to be Borders’ most likely suitor, has risen 53% to $23.01.

Borders has been cutting costs in the past year while spending big on an e-commerce site. It has announced some store closings including the downtown Detroit and Chicago’s Michigan Avenue stores and cut 1,152 jobs. The company employs 27,000 at more than 1,000 stores.

 

Ken Dalto, a Farmington Hills-based turnaround expert, said Borders’ strategy seems to be one of buying time and hoping economic recovery is just around the corner.

"They are figuring their brand name is going to carry them," Dalto said. "Brand names mean less with the inroads of technology. The brand name is Amazon."

Dalto said staffing cuts and dropping small things like free bookmarks could hurt the in-store experience.

"It is a self-liquidation," he said.

Jim McTevia, managing partner of Bingham Farms-based McTevia Associations LLC, a turnaround firm, said he thinks Borders could seek Chapter 11 protection, but it wouldn’t solve the bookseller’s business problems.

"Depending on their ability to get debtor-in-possession financing, they could easily file for Chapter 11," he said. "It is much easier to facilitate the sale of a troubled company under bankruptcy protection."

Read the rest of the article on the Detroit Free Press site.