How Publishers Encourage Piracy

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This post, from Chris Walters, originally appeared on Booksprung on 10/4/09.

When a recalcitrant publisher and an impatient consumer square off online, it’s almost always the consumer–at least the tech-savvy one–who wins. Here are four ways in which publishers are encouraging piracy.

 

1. By not releasing official digital copies of works online.

Consider the work of Karen Blixen, the author of Out of Africa. Under the pseudonym Isak Dinesen, she published the short story collection Seven Gothic Tales in the 1930s, and the collection Anecdotes of Destiny in the 1950s. She’s a little obscure, but not forgotten; her short story “Babette’s Feast” and her novel Out of Africa were both adapted into Oscar-winning films in the 1980s, and she’s a widely acknowledged and praised artist.

Her work, however, isn’t available in ebook format on the Amazon Kindle store, the Sony ebook store, or fictionwise. If I want to read her work on a digital device–and I do–my only recourse is to scan a printed copy, convert it to a digital copy, and create my own digital version.

This digital version will exist entirely outside of the official publishing world; whoever holds Blixen’s copyrights will never see revenue off of it. By contrast, if either of those short story collections was available on any of the three ebook stores I mentioned above, I would have already bought them.

It’s not just a problem for dead authors, of course. In May the New York Times pointed out that a digital copy of J. K. Rowling’s The Tales of Beedle the Bard appeared on the website Scribd earlier this year. What’s more telling is that a reader wrote, “thx for posting it up ur like the robinhood of ebooks,” on the Sribd page. That’s not the cackling of a pirate, but the enthusiasm of a fan.

Rowling is famous for refusing to release her books digitally, and yet I can locate and download all seven Harry Potter books, plus the Beedle the Bard collection, in less than an hour. There are readers clamoring for her books in digital format, and they’d be more than eager to pay for the privilege; instead, she’s allowed piracy to dominate her online sales.

I would argue that every time a stubborn author or publisher refuses to release a popular book digitally, she contributes to the wider problem of piracy by helping normalize both the procedures by which one pirates a book and the behavior of reading unauthorized copies. That’s right, all you midlist authors afraid of your income drying up; you can thank Rowling for helping the ecosystem of pirated books grow larger by the year.

2. By crippling content so that it only works on one device, or only works if the reader is given permission by a retailer or publisher to open the file.

When I first bought an Amazon Kindle, one of the first frustrations I experienced was that my ebooks were tied to the Kindle device for no good reason. (Well, for no good consumer reason.) I had other devices that would display ebooks just as well, including a Nokia smartphone and an Asus netbook, and depending on the day I might have any combination of the three devices with me. What I discovered was that in order to read the ebook when I wanted to using whatever I had nearby, I would have to crack the encryption that locked the ebook to the Amazon Kindle.

But note that by doing that, I would be creating a new, unlocked version of the work that existed outside of the publishing industry. What’s worse, it would be in a standardized format (like ePub or PDF) that would be more popular and more robust than the locked Amazon format–which means it would be more attractive to other consumers should I ever put that new file online.

Read the rest of the post, which includes 2 more ways publishers encourage piracy, on Booksprung.

What Is A Vook, And How Will It Change Publishing?

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This is a cross-posting from The Creative Penn.

Publishers Simon& Schuster launched 4 ‘vooks’ last week, a combination of book and video to create a new medium for the reading/watching experience (video on What is a Vook here).

They are available in the Apple app store for the iPhone and are aimed at handheld devices, although are not compatible with the Kindle or Sony e-reader as they don’t do video. You can also buy them at Simon & Schuster’s website.

Check out the video below to see some of the Vooks in action.

Judith Curr points out in the video that:

  • The future is not just linear text
  • Videos already used for promotion and are an aspect of publishing for the 21st century.
  • There are 4 genres, 2 fiction and 2 non-fiction. They are testing the process to see how popular they are.
  • For non-fiction it enables the ultimate ‘How-To’ so you can see how to do the exercises or the skin care.
  • For fiction, it tells the story in a new way. It expands the experience.
  • It is important to start and then the opportunities present themselves. (JP – I fully believe this!)
  • The vook is perfect for memoirs, autobiographies. It allows imagination in a new way. It is content being expressed in multiple ways.

How will this change publishing?

I think this is a fantastic development in publishing!

  • One of the top publishers, Simon & Schuster is embracing multi-media and a digital platform for ‘book’ products. It just shows that it is not just indie authors and small presses who are interested in new technology. Mainstream publishers are also seeing the opportunity. I first learnt about these types of opportunities from JC Hutchins, author of multi-media novel, ‘Personal Effects Dark Art’, and now it’s going mainstream. Exciting times!
  • There are opportunities for new sources of revenue for both publisher and author. The authors are getting ebook royalties (whatever that means!) but Jude Deveraux wrote her novella in 6 days and then worked with a film-maker. This is clearly not the 5 years Dan Brown took to write “The Lost Symbol”! These vooks may not replace the mainstream novel but they could represent a smaller, short story based product that could make authors money in between novels.
  • The ‘vooks’ have launched on Apple’s app store, and so the possibility of creating one as an indie author is there. This week I am interviewing Winged Chariot, who publish children’s books on the App store. I will be asking them how to create an app and will be posting more on this. I am determined to have my books as iPhone apps, but not for a huge price. I’ll let you know what I find out!

I have bought “Embassy” for my iPhone, so I shall have a read/watch and report back.

Crafting a Cover, Part II…Making Relationships Work….

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Last week we covered the use of photography in your book cover to create a simple, attention-grabbing cover image.  This week we’ll look into why some colors seem to work better than others on bookstore shelves.  We’ll also investigate good layout and design practices when it comes to typography and non-photographic covers.  It’s all about relationships.

Natural Design…(Not necessarily on the test)

There was an important mid 20th Century school of design, the brainchild of Swiss-French architect and designer LeCorbusier, which at its root broke all design proportions down into fifths, corresponding to the five element of the human form: arms, legs and head. Because that is how we’re laid out, he intuited, we would be most comfortable living and viewing designs which incorporate these proportions.

I don’t know if he was right or not, but to me, layouts along these line intersections seem to “work” better than others.  If it works for me, and it may work for you as well. Of course, the idea is NOT to fill all these intersections up with content!  The idea is to set up natural alignments of only the necessary elements to your cover design. Create relationships between elements. Some of the individual elements may also be parts of your photo image.  Look inside the photo.  Considering also the typical eye movements of the reader. Combining these into an effective cover is our goal.  A cover with these kept in mind will be more effective, because it will tie-in to the reader’s mind and emotions naturally – not in a awkward, contrived way which sets up it’s own conflicts.

Design Color Points from Nature…

When designing a book cover, don’t make the mistake of minimizing the importance of color.  Color adds important elements to your cover and reactions in the reader all by itself.  The intelligent use of color will help elicit the intended response in your cover’s reader. Most of these reactions are natural and predictable, as their basis is nature itself.

Yellow animals, for the most part are dangerous to humans, including Yellowjacket wasps and poison dart frogs.  The use of striped yellow and black on barriers for protection is not just by chance.  The combination means DANGER, subconsciously and it seems to be hardwired into our genetics.  Color is an integral part of how our emotions are connected to our conscious thought.  There are color-relationships that have been proven in behavioral studies that you can use effectively in your choices. 

Red for example, is connected with excitement and alarm. Blue with serenity and sleep. Green is naturally connected with healing and growth.  One of my favorite examples is how often the walls in maximum security psychiatric prisons are often painted a soft shade of pink!  Pink seems to calm us and is one of the most non-confrontational colors.

When approaching a color choice for your cover, first try to summarize the mood of your work. how do you want the reader to feel when reading it?  Is there a specific emotion that your book revolves around – an emotional “glue”?  Once you’ve determined what that is, you can choose from images, and design elements that will help communicate this instantly to the reader, side-stepping the need to read the title or other cover copy at all.  The point is – don’t leave anything up to chance here.  Control every step along the way.

Adding Conflict with Contrast…

One of the easiest ways to add a sense of conflict to a cover design is by creating areas of extreme contrast within the layout.  These might include large size differences of elements, extreme color contrasts or the use of display typography in contrast to other elements or to itself.

Look through covers and book jackets in your own bookshelves and set aside the six or so that are instantly exciting and attention grabbing.  Now, with your notepad, quickly jot down the first three things that come to your mind when viewing these, one-by-one.  The title or author’s name doesn’t count right now. Although the importance of recognition and/or “branding” can’t be dismissed, what we’re trying to do here is train your eye to see the emotional content of an overall cover design. 

Set your notes aside, then come back to them later, and see if you’ve written down the same “feelings” for more than a couple of your chosen covers.  If that is the case, then, for you, those covers have effectively done what the designer intended.. You bought the books, didn’t you?

The Letter-perfect Cover design…

Having trained your eye to begin to separate out the Elements of contrast and color we finally move into the realm of Title and Author’s Name.  Typography is a tricky subject.  It involves both our emotional responses and our thinking.  Letterforms vary not just in size and shape. They are each small graphic elements that contain intentional stresses and suggest certain emotional responses completely apart from their utility as carriers of language. 

Find a site online which sells typography – fontmarketplace is one I use – and look through some examples of display fonts.  Most sites will have typography pages that show entire fonts (all the letters, numbers and characters) Some of these will be extremely ornate – overpowering the eye unless used in very short, concise headlines.  If a type face design is very complicated, graphically, it has the tendency to confuse the eye, or lead it in too many directions – if confusion is your goal, this might work well for your cover – assuming a very simple title, of course. 

There will be many others which are much simpler. They may contain very subtle differences in the “thicks” and thins”, called stresses by type designers, that lend emotion and recognition while still remaining legible even in smaller sizes.  These are the fonts you will probably find most useful.  Some of these, like the sans-serif (no little feet on the ends of ascenders or descenders or along the baseline) font Machine, can be very powerful in establishing high-contrast and conflict, based upon their ponderous letterforms.  Others, such as Eras, or the font I use in my cover for The Red Gate, Papyrus, are very subtle, open type designs that convey a very different emotional content.  Some fonts are almost serene – but you would not want to use these in titling an urban-disaster-themed novel, or an auto-mechanics do-it-yourself book, unless you were seeking to insert another emotional element: humor. Humor can also be an effective element.

The most effective covers – some of Elmore Leonard’s covers come to mind – are the ones with a heightened sense of emotion, conflict, or danger.  This can be achieved most effectively with the least number of individual elements.  Sometimes a large title typographic element paired with a small, but significant photographic or illustrative element placed for contrast and conflict will draw the reader’s eye and hold it as they figure out the image’s connection with the rest of the cover.
 
As you can see the choice of typography to convey a desired emotion is very subjective, yet if you “get it” when looking at a font, the chances are that the type designer did their work well, so if it works for you, chances are it will work for your readers, too.

Letter & Line Spacing Issues…

You’ve got your title, pared down to it’s most memorable essence, of course.  You have chosen a color to predominate, based upon how you want your reader affected. Now you have to put the title on the background graphic.  Alignment and legibility are everything. It’s a relationship thing.

Party of the alignment issue is how each letterform relates to its neighbors, above, below and side-by-side.  The spacing between letters and between lines can be adjusted beyond the standard spacing written into the font.  Expanding letterspacing can be very effective if you are working with a condensed font – a narrow style.  Tweaking the inter-letter spacing by opening it up without creating visual “holes” can require finesse, but it can make a hard-to-read title much more legible. Just don’t open it up so much that you see primarily “letters” not the word. 

Another technique on heavy, compact fonts (wider, more ponderous) is to reduce the inter letter spacing, even overlapping letters slightly, especially where round letter forms meet.  It just requires that you finesse the space individually – which might require you to convert the type to curves in your layout/design program, so that individual letters can be moved along the baseline individually.  This letter-by-letter approach is called “kerning” a font, depending upon size, for best legibility and fewest visual holes in a headline, or in text.  Since your title is probably not too long, it won’t be that hard a job to get the best inter-letter spacing you can achieve. Be sure to get back, away from your monitor a few times the process, to check overall legibility and to make sure than you haven’t stacked up the letters to favor one side of the word!

Line spacing, is handled in a similar way, but here, the reverse is true in spacing considerations: the narrower the font, the more interline spacing is required visually, thus keeping the reading "flow" moving left to right, not visually jumping "up and down" with nowhere to go. If you use lower case letters in your title, you’ll have to consider ascenders and descenders in multiple-line titling. Make sure that the portions above and below the baselines don’t interfere with letters on the next line enough to affect their legibility.  You may also have a specific need to jog the letters off their baselines a bit.  This is one way to create a panicked, conflicted feeling in a title graphic. The appearance of kidnappers’ ransom notes, made up of individual letters cut from magazine headlines comes to mind.  If this kind of approach works with the “glue” holding your cover together, then use it, but remember: too much of a good thing is a bad thing – keep it legible.

Next, you’ll apply the same principles to the way your name or pen-name appear on the cover. Unless you have an established brand with your name being the most salient element on the cover, place your name below the title, both physically and in size.  If you need a subhead, or a descriptive tag line consider how adding more typography to the cover might dilute your design, damaging its impact.  Maybe re-thinking the title is a better idea.  If not, at lest make sure that in assigning its position to the cover page, it “belongs” visually” to the title, and you name remains its own focal point. 

Relationship Issues…

In the vector program I use, a nice refinement is the ability to group objects so their interrelationships are locked in place, allowing you to move the object elements as a unit, apart from the background. This allows you to experiment with different locations on the cover for the best results.  You can also use the “duplicate” function to duplicate your titling and authors name and test other type fonts while keeping the relationships constant.  Don’t be afraid to move some of these elements off to the sidelines while you work on each element individually.  When you save the graphic file, chances are you’ll also be saving the empty or not-so-empty space nearby as well, for future tweaking.  Just be sure, when you have finally decided on your design, to delete all of these in the final file.

Vertical alignment is the final key to good cover typography.  If you set up your typography, within your program to “align” left, you’re not finished yet.  In headline sizes, the letter alignments within the font may not be the best possible solution.  This is true also for right alignments as well, but personally, as right alignments lead the eye off the page, I don’t usually consider that for a book cover. You want to hold them for a while. But rules exist to be broken…

One situation where a right-aligned title might be effective would be if, say “speed” is your book’s “glue” – rushing their eyes through the cover might support the content for specific readers, but it wouldn’t work as well, say for a family saga. A centered alignment may be best here, if stability and substance is the idea you wish to communicate.  A centered type design does not usually convey any conflict, unless the type consists of several lines and they are sized differently, or jogged a bit right or left.

The key to vertical alignment whether it’s separate lines of typography or title and authors name, is to find the strengths of the letter forms and connected graphic elements and use them.  What I mean here, is to use them to create a visual unit. Make it easy, or "natural" for the reader’s eye to find the beginning of the next line. The relationships of all the typography must connect visually, to hold the eye better.  On my cover, for example, you’ll notice that the author’s name doesn’t align at the left with the left end of the top of the “T”, but with the T’s ascender.

Left alignment exampleThat’s because in this size, the ascender has the stronger movement, and aligning the stroing ascender at the beginning of my name with the ascender above moves the eye better. When in doubt, experiment.  You shouldn’t see the underlying rule of fives grid as anything more than a suggested framework upon which to work.  Your title typography and other elements may align best off the grid, for a specific effect, or for an intended conflict.  Don’t be afraid to throw out the rules, at least once for every cover, just to see what you can do – even if it ends up just an example of where you don’t want to go.

Next week: We’ll design your Back Cover and bring it all together….

Extra Information: Eye Movement Studies (This won’t be in the test, either!)…

Natural eye movements?  Again, there have been lots of studies of how a reader’s eyes move when scanning a printed page with photographic and graphics elements in combination with headlines and text. These studies have been the basis for many years of the science of ad placement and exploiting the findings improves the effectiveness of ad design as well.  It seems that with few exceptions, peoples’ eyes travel a repeatable and predictable path when viewing a composite page.  The average eye circles a page (your book cover) in two ways.  The primary circle will be clockwise, middle left, up and around, ending at the top right after a full revolution.  The secondary is counter clockwise, starting at the bottom right and circling around to end at the top left.  The primary is the one where the most important information is absorbed, and the secondary is the follow-up for remaining information.  It makes an ad more effective (your book cover) to take advantage of this phenomenon, or at least to manipulate it to your own uses in holding the viewers eye upon the page as long as you can.  Make ‘em comfortable before you sneak up behind them with the book pitch to end all pitches! Shatter their resistance gently and then take their money!

Exciting Changes To The Indie Author Stem To Stern Cruise!

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GREAT NEWS!

We’ve added Kirk Biglione of Medialoper and Kassia Krozser of Booksquare to our speaker roster, to present our workshop on Author Platform and Social Media for Authors. We’ve moved the cruise date back to October 10-17, 2010, to allow more time for you to plan and budget. We’ve reduced the first deposit required to hold your cruise spot to just US$25—and you’ll have till May 6, 2010 to make your second cruise deposit of US$250, and till July 12, 2010 to make payment in full for the cruise! You’ll now have till March 15, 2010 to book your workshop registration at US$600, and until May 30 to register at the rate of US$725. Visit the Indie Author Stem to Stern Workshop Cruise page for full details!

Free And The Future Of Publishing

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This post, from William Landay, originally appeared on his site on 7/27/09.

I had an interesting conversation on Saturday with Bruce Spector, the founder and CEO of a new web service called LifeIO. (See the end of this article [Publetariat editor’s note: follow the ‘read the rest’ link at the end of this excerpt] for an explanation of what LifeIO is all about.) Bruce was part of the team that developed WebCal, which Yahoo! acquired in 1998 to form the core of its own calendar service, so he has been watching the web with an entrepreneur’s eye for some time now and he had an interesting take on the whole “free” debate and how it might apply to book publishing.

If you somehow missed the recent back-and-forth about Chris Anderson’s book Free, read the pro-”free” comments by Anderson, Seth Godin and especially Fred Wilson, and the anti-”free” perspective by Malcolm Gladwell and Mark Cuban, among many others. This piece by Kevin Kelly, not directly about “free,” is very good, too.

For the uninitiated, the issue boils down to this: The marginal cost of delivering a bit of information over the web — a song, a video, a bit of text like this one — is approaching zero. As a result, information is increasingly available, and consumers increasingly expect to get it, for free. So traditional “legacy” information-sellers like musicians or movie studios or newspapers, whose actual costs are very far from zero, have to figure out how to turn free-riders into paying customers — and fast, before they go out of business. Fred Wilson’s answer is “freemium“: you lure the customer in with a free basic service, then up-sell the heaviest users to a premium version of your product. As Wilson puts it, “Free gets you to a place where you can ask to get paid. But if you don’t start with free on the Internet, most companies will never get paid.”

How does all this apply to book publishing?

Here are some of Bruce Spector’s ideas. He is a great talker, though, and a summary like this doesn’t do him justice. Also, this was a private conversation, but Bruce kindly gave me permission to repeat some of his comments here.

First, book publishers are no less vulnerable than other old-line media industries to the tendency of information to squirt around the web for free. E-books will be passed around as promiscuously as MP3’s. You can bet on it. So book publishers should expect their customers to demand that e-books be, if not free, then radically less expensive than traditional dead-tree books have been.

That means the current approach publishers are taking is precisely the wrong one. Locking up your content with DRM and enforcing higher prices will not work for books any more than it has for CD’s or movies. You cannot resist the downward price pressure of the web merely by refusing to acknowledge it. The old business model simply won’t work anymore.

How, then, will Random House — and novelists like me — make a profit? After all, in a world where iTunes sells songs for 99 cents, even successful musicians can’t make ends meet by selling recorded music anymore. They have to tour relentlessly. But a novelist like me can’t cash in by touring. I can’t play nightclubs performing my work live. For a novel, the book is the performance; the reader performs it in her head. So how do I survive in a world of, say, five-dollar e-books?

The answer is right in front of our noses, says Bruce. The business model is long established and proved to work.

Read the rest of the post to learn Bruce’s suggested solution on William Landay’s site.

Why Responsible Aggregation Is Not Only NOT Evil, But A GOOD Thing

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This is a cross-posting from April L. Hamilton’s Indie Author Blog.

There’s a lot of hue and cry against online aggregation circulating around the interwebs these days, and I really don’t get it.

Aggregator sites reprint excerpts from other sites’ articles and blog posts, along with a ‘keep reading’ or ‘read the rest’ link to the source article/blog post. The more responsible aggregators also include the name of the author, and the most considerate ones also include links to the author’s website or blog and a link to the home page of the site where the article or post originally appeared.

If an aggregator site prints an entire article or blog post, or 50% or greater of the article/post without the author’s permission, well that’s just theft. If the ‘read the rest’ link opens the source web page in a window controlled by the aggregator, that’s tantamount to theft since it appears to the viewer as if he or she hasn’t left the aggregator site; worse yet, most such windowing systems don’t make it easy for the viewer to escape from the aggregator’s window. They may click links on the source site, but the linked pages still open up in the aggregator’s window. As a web consumer, I find those aggregator windows incredibly annoying and have come to avoid following links provided by such aggregators.

If an aggregator fails to credit the author when printing an excerpt and ‘read the rest’ link, it’s depriving the author of his or her due and that’s wrong, too. If an aggregator surrounds aggregated material with lots of paid advertising, particularly advertising with which the authors of aggregated material might take issue, that’s also an abuse of the authors’ material. But if the excerpt is brief, the author is credited, a ‘read the rest’ link is provided back to the source article without wrapping it in the aggregator’s window, links are provided to the author’s website (where available) and the home page of the site where the aggregated material originally appeared, and advertising surrounding aggregated material is minimal and non-offensive, with very few exceptions (e.g., aggregation of material the author is offering for sale) I really don’t understand why authors or anyone else should have a problem with it.

Publetariat, a site I founded and for which I’m Editor in Chief, has a mix of both original and aggregated material. The site focuses on content for indie authors and small imprints, and operates on a ‘we scour the web for relevant articles so you don’t have to’ sort of paradigm while also providing a discussion board area and member profiles with blogging capability. Every weekday at about 11am PST, I tweet a link to the site with the titles of articles posted to the site for that day. My tweet is often retweeted by my Twitter followers, but I’ve noticed another phenomenon going on: some people retweet, but only after changing the link to point directly to the source article. They seem to be making a pointed, if somewhat passive, statement against Publetariat’s aggregation, but I don’t know why they feel the need to do so since Publetariat is providing a service to both the author and readers.

Publetariat is a heavily-trafficked and well-respected site in the publishing world, and it gets several thousand unique visitors every week. It also gets thousands of RSS feed hits every month. The site has a traffic rank in the top 2% of all sites worldwide, and a Technorati blog rank in the top .2%. In other words, getting your material on the front page of the Publetariat site gets you a LOT of exposure to a highly targeted audience of authors and publishers. Let’s look at a specific example.

My blog post entitled “Self-Publishing: Future Prerequisite” was published on my blog on 9/22/09 and cross-posted to the Publetariat site the same day. To date, the post on my blog has received 221 hits. Not too shabby. But the same post on Publetariat has received 709 hits: over three times as many reads. In the current climate, in which authors are supposed to be doing everything they can to attract readership and attention, why wouldn’t they want three times as many readers for their content? And if you’re an author services provider, such as an editor, book doctor or promotional consultant, why wouldn’t you want three times as many authors to know about you and your site?

To date, there have only been two authors/webmasters who’ve asked to have their aggregated material removed from the Publetariat site, and both times, Publetariat has complied with the request. But I will never understand why those authors/webmasters are turning down an opportunity for such highly-targeted, free exposure from a responsible aggregator.

When Publetariat aggregates, we credit the author, provide a ‘read the rest’ link that isn’t wrapped in a Publetariat window, provide a link to the author’s own website where available, provide a link to the home page of the site on which the aggregated material originally appeared, and sometimes even provide links to buy the author’s books or other merchandise—and these are not affiliate links, Publetariat isn’t making any money on those click-throughs. We do everything we can to ensure both the author and the site where the article originally appeared will benefit from being aggregated on Publetariat.

What about advertising? Isn’t Publetariat profiting from aggregation through its site advertising, and not sharing that profit with the bloggers and authors who’ve made it possible? While Publetariat does carry paid advertising, from the day the site launched to today, despite our impressive traffic stats we’ve received a grand total of about US$65 in ad revenue. All the rest of the advertising on the site consists of public service announcements and traded links. Advertising revenue isn’t even enough to cover our hosting expense.

So, it’s clear that Publetariat is a responsible aggregator. You can also see what Publetariat has to offer an author of aggregated material, and that Publetariat isn’t profiting financially from aggregation. But there’s one more facet to explore here: why it’s better for a reader to discover a given blog post or article aggregated on Publetariat instead of on the source site or blog.

When a reader visits my blog, they’re getting my content only. That’s great for me, but somewhat limiting for them. If they come across my blog posts on Publetariat, they’re also getting exposure to lots of articles and blog posts from my fellow authors, author service providers, publishers and more. Sometimes, they’re seeing material relevant to writers that originated from a site they weren’t at all likely to discover on their own because it’s not a site geared specifically to writers. It’s like going to a great party that’s filled with fascinating people and discussions, any of which you’d love to know more about, and having introductions to those people and discussions made on your behalf by the host of the party.

People who retweet links to Publetariat’s aggregated material only after editing the link to point directly to the source site are leading their Twitter followers away from the party, and depriving them of everything else Publetariat has to offer.

A last objection that’s sometimes raised is the matter of click-throughs. Some will argue that the click-through rate on ‘read the rest’ links is low, that many visitors to the aggregator site will only read the posted excerpt. This is true, but every reader who does click through is a reader you didn’t have before your piece was aggregated.

So if Publetariat or any other site wants to aggregate your material, so long as the aggregator site is higher-profile than your own site/blog and they intend to aggregate responsibly (with proper credit and links, no wrapper window, no offensive advertising), it’s not evil. It’s the easiest free promotion you can get.

And if you’d like your site or blog to be on Publetariat’s list of available sources for aggregated or reprinted material, post your name and a link in the comments section, below, along with your preference for having your material merely excerpted with a ‘read the rest’ link, or reprinted in full on the site.

A Review That Helped

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The next book I wrote after "Hello Alzheimer’s Good Bye Dad", about caring for my father, was "Open A Window" – ISBN 1438244991. A caregiver’s handbook that is used to train CNAs in long term care and as an ice breaker at Alzheimer’s support group meetings. This book I actually had printed at a print shop. I’m very proud of the book for the help it has been.

In 2000, residents family members would stop to ask me questions about why their loved one said things like they hadn’t been fed all day. Sometimes, the family couldn’t understand the behavior problems or the sudden declines. I remembered the days when I wanted so much to know about Alzheimer’s disease in order to help my father. By 2000, the Alzheimer’s Association was well known and very helpful if families contacted them. In some cases that didn’t happen. Not realizing how devastating the disease would become, the relatives didn’t bother to become educated until they were surprised by devastating events. I decided I need to write a book that would educate the families that I came in contact with at the nursing home. Little did I know that the book would go much farther than that.

Over the years, I had 100 copies printed, sold those and had another 100 books printed before I self published the book last summer. To go along with publishing the book, I asked Jolene Brackey a well known author and speaker about Alzheimer’s if she would give me a review to put on the back of the book. Now how did I get the nerve to ask for that review? The administrator at the nursing home had sent one my book to Jolene. She liked it so much she called to ask me if I would let her use some of my stories in her next book "Creating Moments Of Joy". What an honor. Of course, I said yes. About three years ago, Jolene was in the area doing her presentations. I went. Jolene waved her book around as she told the audience if we wanted one we would have to buy it from her website. She only packed one for the plane trip. As I was leaving that day, she stopped me and handed me that signed book. She had brought it for me. So when I published my book "Open A Window" I thought I’d ask her for the review, and I got it.

Jolene’s review – "This book shares what is possible if we allow a person with Alzheimer’s to "be" who they are right now. Thank You for "opening" a window."

For more about Jolene Brackey visit her website http://www.enhancedmoments.com

 

 

Jolene’s isn’t the only review on the back of the book. I’ve had many good review about the book from buyers. I put as many of them as I could fit under Jolene’s review as a way to show prospective buyers that this book might be worth reading.

A Forest Full Of Trees

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This post, from Devon Monk, originally appeared on the Deadline Dames site on 7/20/09.

You’ve got an idea for a novel. You’ve worked on it in stops and starts ferverishly for a few years months, and the first draft is finally done! Congratulations, you’re a novelist! During your moments of deep depression coffee breaks on the veranda, you also researched agents and editors, and cruised web sites and blogs to scream in despair perfect your cover letter, synopsis, and outline skills.

But the thing that’s stopped you dead is getting the novel draft cleaned up for submission. Yes, I’m talking about the dreaded rewrite.

Some writers don’t like to rewrite. Some writers don’t like to stop rewriting. Neither affliction is beneficial to a lasting career in this biz.

I see rewriting (or revising, if you prefer the term) as a very important tool in the writer’s tool box. When you are under contracted deadline and are asked to cut ten thousand words, or get rid of a character, or add more action, or slow down the scene, ore completely change a plot line, and it has to be fixed and beautiful and back in your editor’s hand in two weeks, baby, you’re gonna want a toolbox bristling with every rewriting trick in the book.

But how do you know what needs rewriting? You bled your soul into wrote the thing. You know all the back story, you know what the setting looks like, you know where the characters are running to and from and why.

But you may not have put any of that on the page in a way the reader can clearly see and experience it. Since you’re the author, your mind automatically fills in the missing bits with the info only you have. That’s a problem.

One way to address that problem is to shove your ego in a carpet bag and look at what you’ve written through the eyes of a reader.

Yes, you, the writer, stop being a writer for a second and look at your book as a reader. Print it out and sit down and read your book as if you just pulled it off the shelf. Read it out loud. If you trip over the sentences, likely the reader will too.

Another way to spot what needs rewriting is to critique other people’s work. Over on her blog, Ilona Andrews did a terrific series of line-by-line edits (and suggested rewrites) for opening scenes. Check it out. Read through what she thought should be changed, and why. Then look at your story and see if you can apply any of those principals to it.

Read the rest of the post, which includes an excellent 21-point revision checklist, on Deadline Dames.

Why I Am Not Afraid To Take Your Money

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This post, from Amanda Palmer, originally appeared on her blog on 9/29/09. Amanda Palmer is known primarily as a musician and cabaret artist, but what she has to say here is something authors need to hear, too.

aie!

i had two conversations within the last 24 hours which made me feel like blogging about this.

one was with jason webley, who i’ve been living with for the past week in the Middle of Nowhere.

i was writing a press release and in it disclosed how much money i made from the recent london webcast (about 10k).
i gave a copy of the text to jason to proofread over a cup of tea (that’s what rock stars do for each other nowadays instead of leaving lines of blow on the backs of bathroom toilets).
he suggested taking the money part out. he gently advised; he’s heard people gossiping about me and my shameless revelations about my webcast/twitter income etc.

right around the same time i got an email from beth, regarding the future of my webcasting.
she suggested we do something totally free and not ask people for any money.
she’s been picking up on heat from people that the ask-the-fans-for-money thing has gotten out of control.

listen.

artists need to make money to eat and to continue to make art.

artists used to rely on middlemen to collect their money on their behalf, thereby rendering themselves innocent of cash-handling in the public eye.

artists will now be coming straight to you (yes YOU, you who want their music, their films, their books) for their paychecks.
please welcome them. please help them. please do not make them feel badly about asking you directly for money.
dead serious: this is the way shit is going to work from now on and it will work best if we all embrace it and don’t fight it.

unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve surely noticed that artists ALL over the place are reaching out directly to their fans for money.
how you do it is a different matter.
maybe i should be more tasteful.
maybe i should not stop my concerts and auction off art.
i do not claim to have figured out the perfect system, not by a long shot.

BUT … i’d rather get the system right gradually and learn from the mistakes and break new ground (with the help of an incredibly responsive and positive fanbase) for other artists who i assume are going to cautiously follow in our footsteps. we are creating the protocol, people, right here and now.

i don’t care if we fuck up. i care THAT we’re doing it.

in fact, i ENJOY being the slightly crass, outspoken, crazy-(naked?)-chick-on-a-soapbox holding out a ukulele case of crumpled dollars asking for your money so that someone else a few steps behind me, perhaps some artist of shy and understated temperament, can feel better and maybe a little less nervous when they quietly step up and hold out their hat, fully clothed.

i am shameless, and fearless, when it comes to money and art.

Read the rest of the post on Amanda Palmer’s blog, and if you like what she’s saying and doing, buy something from her.

Reviewing The Reviewers: A Dialog About Book Reviewing

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This post, from Henry Baum, originally appeared on Self-Publishing Review on 9/17/09.

The idea for this dialogue came after the controversy regarding the review of John Lacombe’s Winter Games.  If you haven’t seen that thread, check it out, it’s a long one – it has a lot of interesting commentary about how writers and/or their fans should respond to reviews, including examples of how not to respond to a review.  Carol Buchanan, who reviewed the book, didn’t like the novel.  Steven Reynolds, who reviews for SPR, liked the book in a review for the now-defunct Podler.  Carol and Steven got together to talk about the controversy and book reviewing in general. This will be the first in a series.

Self-Publishing Review: You’ve both read Winter Games by John Lacombe and had quite different responses to it. Why do you think this is?

Steven Reynolds:  It’s because Carol doesn’t know what she’s talking about! Just kidding. We had different responses because we’re different people: we have different backgrounds, interests, reading histories, and tastes. Carol’s an award-winning novelist, I’m not. Carol has a PhD in English Lit, whereas I have degrees in Economics, Literature and Film Studies. Carol’s a woman, I’m a man. Carol grew up in the 1940s-50s, I grew up in the 1970s-80s. Carol reads James Lee Burke, Val McDermid, Michael Connelly and Craig Johnson, whereas if I’m looking for chills and thrills I might pick up Thomas Harris, Michael Crichton or the darker volumes of Robert Cormier. Some of these factors might have influenced our readings of Winter Games, whereas others might be irrelevant. Who knows? What I do know is that it’s possible for two, three, or thirty-three people to read the same book and each form a different view. Some will be broadly similar, some will differ wildly.

Without wanting to get too esoteric about it, the act of reading – making meaning out of words on a page – is an essentially subjective experience. They’re just dots of ink assembled into shapes we call letters and words. The magic happens in our minds, and it’s going to be influenced by what’s already there. This is why I can read Ian McEwan’s Saturday and think it’s wonderful, and my friend Kath can read it and declare it “ideologically rancid”. Who’s right, Kath or I? That’s not a question with an objectively verifiable answer, and it’s actually an extremely boring one. This is why I don’t give books a score or a star-rating anymore (unless it’s compulsory). I’m more interested in exploring what the novel’s about, how it works, its relationship to other books, and who might enjoy it. You must pass judgement, in some sense, because readers expect that. But when I say of Winter Games, “Overall, this is a slick and solid action-thriller from an emerging writer of considerable strength,” readers know this isn’t a statement of fact, even though it’s phrased as one. It’s my opinion. Whether or not they value my opinion is up to them.

Carol Buchanan:  As Steve says, we’re different people. We both read thrillers, but by different authors. Steve appreciates Michael Crichton’s work, while I’m partial to the novels of James Lee Burke.

Novels are an art form. Being a writer myself, as well as a former college English teacher, I pay attention to the writing of every book I read – how the sentences and paragraphs are constructed. I listen for rhythm and variety, to hear the English language sing, which it does for good writers. One of my favorite authors disappointed me recently with this sentence: “Rows of windows … rose above ….” The kernel of meaning in that sentence, the part a writer can’t strip out and have anything left, actually reads “Rows …. rose.” Not “windows rose,” which would say something entirely different again. For some people, windows rising might recall sash windows; for others it might portray a different window action. But these windows could not rise. They were set in stone. Whether “Rows …rose” or “Windows …rose,” it’s sloppy writing. It jars the ear.

Does that mean the book wasn’t any good? Or the author is a poor writer? Not necessarily, but if I were writing a review, I would be obligated to point out problems and let the readers judge for themselves if it might interfere with their enjoyment of the novel.

I write reviews primarily for the reader, who may lay out money for a book. If the author reads a review and learns from it, so much the better.

When Steve says his reviews are his opinion, that goes for me, too. The reviews I write are not fact. They are my opinion, even though they are based on some decades of reading and studying and writing fiction. Readers can take them or leave them.

SPR: What makes a “good” novel? Similarly, what makes a “bad” novel?

 

 

Read the rest of the post on Self-Publishing Review.

Creative Commons: What Is It And How Can It Benefit You?

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This is a cross-posting from The Creative Penn site, where it appeared on 9/13/09.

I went to a fantastic workshop this weekend at the Brisbane Writers Festival on Creative Commons. It was presented by Elliott Bledsoe, who is Project Officer at Creative Industries and Innovation in Australia and a wealth of information in this area. (You can find him on Twitter @elliotbledsoe). All the detailed information is at: http://creativecommons.org/

This is such important information for authors online so please read and share!

What is Creative Commons?

  • It is a version of copyright licensing, and it relates to your creative works. The basic Copyright law says that no one can copy or distribute your work, or use it, remix it or profit from it. This law becomes impractical in the digital environment where sharing, remixing, distribution and marketing are so important. Creative Commons licensing is a license you can put on your work to allow some of these things and make Copyright work for you and your creativity. Read this for the full lowdown on Creative Commons.
  • You can license your work for different purposes. The main aspects are Attribution (you let others use/distribute your work but you must be attributed as the creator), Share Alike (you can use my work but you must share your own work too), Noncommercial (you can use my work but you can’t profit from it), No Derivative Works (you can use my work verbatim but you can’t remix it or change it). For more on the different licenses, read this. People can approach you for options beyond the license e.g. you have a novel released under Creative Commons which is Noncommercial but someone approaches you with a movie idea based on it that will be sold. You can still allow them permission.

How can it benefit you as an author?

  • On Piracy vs Obscurity. You need to make your own decision as to whether you want your ideas to be out there and used (and potentially pirated), or whether you want to keep them in a drawer where no one will discover them. If you want to be a successful author who sells books, you need to be known and the internet is the place to build your global presence. The risk of piracyis nothing compared to being unknown. Cory Doctorow addresses this in “Giving it away”, a Forbes.com article where he describes giving the ebook versions of his books away for free under a Creative Commons license. His sales increased but his books were also translated by fans and his ideas spun into new creativity.
  • “Share your creative wealth and accomplish great things”. This is a quote from the video at the bottom of the page which explains Creative Commons in a great way. The internet has changed the way we produce and consume information. We all find ideas everywhere now. We put our thoughts and text online in the hope of building an author platform, or selling our books/products or finding an audience. Other people may get ideas from our work, and Creative Commons enables a legal way for them to re-use or remix it. This has started in mainstream books now with the success of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, a remix of Jane Austen. Is it fan-fic or a remix of a Public Domain book?
  • Collaboration and Creativity. Expanding the theme of fan-fic and remixes, licensing under Creative Commons gives people the ability to take your work and recreate it in different ways based on your ideas. This could spread your work much farther than you could do on your own and may lead to some extraordinary ideas you can take and reuse in your turn. Is your idea your own? or can you release it and see what happens to it out there in the big wild?

How can you license your work as Creative Commons?

  • Advice from Elliott was: Have a really good think before you do license as Creative Commons. Are you really happy for people to use your work? Can they make money from it? Can they remix it? Only license once you are sure.

How do I find other authors and creatives using Creative Commons?

  • You can find works licensed under Creative Commons by including it as a Search term on sites like Google and Flickr. Many of the images I use on this site are Flickr Creative Commons and I add Attribution to each one. Use the Advanced Search option. You can also use http://search.creativecommons.org/
  • I have now licensed this site under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 Australia License, you can see this on the sidebar under my books. This license applies to the blog content and does not currently apply to my workbooks, Author 2.0 material and published books. This means that you can use my posts on your own websites, books and projects as long as you attribute me and this site as the original creator, share the work derived from it and don’t make income on it. Start with this one and spread the word about Creative Commons! You can see all the international licenses here. 

 

Publetariat Presents: The First Indie Author Stem-to-Stern Workshop Cruise!

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In this exclusive, weeklong, all-workshop cruise aboard the Carnival "Fun Ship" Splendor (the one with the big waterslide you’ve seen on Carnival’s TV commercials!), just 24 UPDATED: 30 attendees will have the opportunity to learn everything they need to succeed with self-publishing, ebook publishing, podcasting, author platform and book promotion from Publetariat founder and Editor in Chief / self-publishing expert April L. Hamilton, ebook publishing expert Joshua Tallent, authors and podcasting experts Seth Harwood and Scott Sigler, and author platform / social media experts Kirk Biglione and Kassia Krozser—all while enjoying a wonderful cruise vacation on the Mexican Riviera from March 7-14, 2010 UPDATED: October 10-17, 2010!

In addition to attending four, 3-hour workshop sessions on POD Publishing, Ebook Publishing, Author Platform/Social Media and Podcasting/Author Platform, each attendee will also receive a private, one-on-one, 45-minute coaching/consulting session with the speaker of his or her choice. This private consulting session alone is a $300 value. Add to this the opening night Meet and Greet, mid-week mixer and farewell mixer, and you’ve got a whole lot of face time with workshop speakers to get your questions answered and issues addressed as part of a very small group.

Also, we’ve scheduled all our workshops for "at sea" days, so attendees will be free for sightseeing and shore excursions on the three in-port days at Puerto Vallarta, Mazatlan and Cabo San Lucas. If you’re already thinking about taking a vacation and attending a writers’ retreat or conference next year, why not do both in this one trip?

For full details on pricing, the workshops, cruise itinerary, presenter bios, travel agent contact and more, check out the Indie Author Stem to Stern Workshop Cruise page, and if you’re interested, register and get your deposit for the cruise in right away; there are only 24 UPDATED: 30 slots available, and once they’re gone, they’re gone!

Building On The Momentum

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Promoting doesn’t and shouldn’t end with the book sale. I live in the middle of farm country where book sale events are hard to find. Harvest is about ready to start. Winter is coming soon. The internet is my best method for promoting. I’ve just had a successful book sale. Now I can build on that and find ways to promote the fact that I am an author with books for sale until the next event.  Do I know everything about promoting?  I’ll be the first to admit that I’m still learning. 

I took my camera to the last book sale and snapped a lot of pictures. The first pictures I had my son take of me in my pioneer dress and bonnet and of my table after it was set up with stacks of books and the two posters. With these pictures I made an album on Facebook and other web sites complete with captions.

On twitter, I submitted messages about my book sale and later wrote to take a look at my album on Facebook. By the way, I am developing a following. I have at least two authors following me now – Stephanie Cowell and Steve Weber the author of Plug Your Book – online book marketing for authors (which I have).

Every time I find a website for writer/authors I’ve signed up. In fact, I am on so many that I had to log them in a book with login name and password. I wanted to stick to one login name.  My choice of names should describe me and what I do so I picked booksbyfay. I don’t want to miss an opportunity to reach internet users. Having a list helps me keep track so I don’t forget to make entries on one of those web sites about a new book, a book sale or press release. Several of these websites have links to other websites which I happened to registered on so I can link what I do to be announced on those sites.

I’ve put a link to Publetariat where I could. Hopefully, internet surfers will come across my blog post on the front page. I appreciate the opportunity to help other authors. On Biblioscribe, I wrote two news articles. One article was about the success of my book sale. The other article was about my blog entry "Preparing For A Book Sale" posted on the front page of Publetariat. That should get people to take a look at Publetariat and perhaps become interested in my blog.

So don’t stop promoting after a book sale event. Keep finding ways to get your name out there until the next event.  Then work on that event and build on the momentum.

The One That Got Away!

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This morning, I read a wonderful compilation of stories from agents and publishers on  agent and author Betsy Lerner’s blogsite called "The One that Got Away"

It’s a must-read for any new (or established…) author who’s been rejected by an agent or publisher.  We all know the drill. We’ve painstakingly honed our novel or non-fiction proposal to a bright, shiny appearance, and approached the "gatekeepers" with trepidation and awe, our hands shaking as we hold out our "jewel". 

They respond in a couple of weeks or months with a pleasantly efficient form letter saying "[insert brush off here]".

It’s nice to keep in mind that the bastions of power where the keys to the kingdom are guarded, are staffed by human beings, after all.  They make mistakes.  They have regrets, too.

I especially enjoyed the publisher in the blog who admitted to having responded to a pitch for Cold Mountain by telling the author’s agent, "I was raised on a Civil War Battlefield! If I don’t believe it, no on elese will either!"

Authors, it seems are not the only ones that suffer from occasional hubris.

But, as authors with a "product" to pitch, we need to remember the job description we labor under.  Author: a hard, unfulfilling, obessive occupation with impossibly long hours and very poor pay.  But that’s why we do it!

Do your homework. Edit. Get help. Edit. Find a developmental editor who can suggest mechanics to improve the way your plot works. Edit.  Edit.

If you must… pItch to agents and publishers who you know ahead of time have worked successfully with genres and styles such as yours.  Polish your submission and personalize it just for them, and when you receive their pleasant, but dismissive letter, realize they just might have made a mistake!

How To Handle Criticism And Get Something Good Out Of It

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This post, from Henrik Edberg, originally appeared on The Positivity Blog on 6/9/09.

“Criticism is something we can avoid easily by saying nothing, doing nothing, and being nothing”
Aristotle
 
Receiving criticism isn’t always fun. However there are ways to handle it in a less hurtful way and – sometimes – get something good out of it. Here are a few pointers I have found useful when dealing with criticism.

 
Like most tips, these are not magic bullets. They won’t work perfectly the first time you use them. You have to practise. Over time your mental muscles will become stronger. And criticism will become easier to deal with and more valuable.
 
Count to 10 before you speak.
If you react immediately to criticism then you’ll often react in a knee-jerk manner. And the words that come out may be overemotional, vicious and unnecessary. Count to at least 10 after someone has criticised you. Then respond. This simple way of calming yourself down and regaining some perspective can save you a lot of trouble and help you avoid saying something you can’t take back. It’s a good approach to avoid creating unnecessary problems.
Handle it like Buddha.
Maybe you’ve heard this one before. It’s a great and practical way to look at criticism. It might be extra useful when dealing with angry, destructive criticism and nasty personal attacks.
 
A man interrupted one of the Buddha’s lectures with a flood of abuse. Buddha waited until he had finished and then asked him, “If a man offered a gift to another but the gift was declined, to whom would the gift belong?”
“To the one who offered it,” said the man.
“Then,” said the Buddha, “I decline to accept your abuse and request you to keep it for yourself.”
 
Simply don’t accept the gift of a criticism. You don’t have to. Then it still belongs to the person who offered it.
Take both praise and criticism evenly.
My mindset for praise – that I try to stick to as much as I can – is that it’s cool and I appreciate it. It’s great to get praise, but I seldom get overly excited about it and jump and down shouting enthusiastically.
 
A great upside of this mindset is that when you receive the opposite – negative criticism – you can often observe it calmly without too much wild, negative emotions blocking the way. And you can often appreciate that piece of criticism too (if there is something to learned from it).
 
Basically this mindset is about not caring too much about what other people think. If you do then you easily become pretty needy and let others control how you feel. Both how good and bad you feel.
So you move from depending on external validation to depending more on internal validation. You validate yourself more and more and then you need less of outside validation. Don’t take this too far though. Don´t become that arrogant jerk who never listens to criticism no matter how valid it might be.
 
If there is nothing to be learned from some piece of criticism you received or it’s just nonsense ravings and insults then with this mindset you just go: “Ok”. You don’t care that much and you quickly forget about it. Instead of spending the rest of the day being angry, sad and riled up.
 
Shifting into this mindset isn’t always easy. You can slip quite a bit. But if you learn more about your mind – especially about your Ego as Eckhart Tolle describes it in books like Power of Now and A New Earth – this understanding gives you more control over your reactions and less knee-jerk responses.

Read the rest of the post on The Positivity Blog.