Web Hosters Ordered To Pay $32M For Contributing To Copyright and Trademark Infringement

In an article from Jaikumar Vijayan, which appeared on Computerworld on 9/1/09, it’s reported that a California jury determined web site hosting companies can be held liable for the illegal copyright and trademark infringement activities of their clients when the hosting companies were made aware of such infringement and still failed to take any action.

Content created by authors and released by publishers may be protected by trademark (e.g., trademarked processes or techniques, terminology, character names/likenesses, book series names, etc.) as well as copyright, so this case sets a legal precedent upon which authors and publishers can rely in fighting online piracy of their works. 

See also: Internet Defamation, Author Platform And You.

9 Things To Do To Make Sure Your Next Blog Post Is Read By More Than Your Mom

This post, from Darren Rowse, originally appeared on ProBlogger on 9/3/09.

Two days back I explored the myth that all you need to do is write great content on a blog for it to get readers and introduced the idea of ’seeding’ content rather than ‘forcing’ it upon readers.

Today I want to take the ’seeding’ idea a step further and give a few examples of ways that you can do it – and in the process hopefully grow your readership beyond your immediate family (not that there’s anything wrong with Mom reading your blog).

I should say that while this post contains 9 ways to promote a blog post – that I rarely use all of them at once. Keep in mind that the idea of ’seeding’ is not about forcing things but rather it is about getting things going and then letting something organic happen. You might need to put a little more effort into things somewhere along the way to keep momentum going (like ‘watering the garden’ helps a seed to grow) but the idea isn’t for force things.

So without further ado – let me share a few of the techniques that I use to ’seed’ content:

1. Tweet it

I find that one of the most effective ways to get a link to a new blog post ‘out there’ is simply to tweet it. Tweeting a link is quick and easy to do – and if you do it well it can be quite effective at both driving direct traffic to a blog post but also in starting other little viral events on other sites.

The effectiveness of this does depend a little on the size of your follower group – but other factors you can have a little more control over include:

  • timing your tweets to be during peak times when lots of people are on Twitter.
  • doing a followup tweet to your original one (I only do this on important posts and usually try to change the wording so as not to annoy people too much)
  • the wording of your tweet (give people a reason to click it)
  • making your tweet ‘ReTweetable’ by not making it too long (I keep these seeding tweets to under 120 characters to leave room for people to retweet them).

I find that when something does well on Twitter (and not every post will) that it can often trigger a secondary event on a site like Delicious. This in turn can trigger blogs to link to my posts or other social bookmarking sites to pick up links.

2. Facebook Status Updates (and other social media)

This is of course similar to Tweeting a link. I’ve not had as much success with Facebook as a promotional tool for my blogs but know of a few bloggers in different niches who find it to be more effective. Whether it sends loads of traffic or not it can be helpful in an overall strategy.

Similarly I sometimes also use other social media sites like LinkedIn’s status update if I feel that the content I’m promoting is better suited to other audiences. Again – it depends partly upon the size of your network on these sites but even a small but relevant network on these sites can trigger other bloggers to link up or secondary organic submissions on other social sites by those in your network. You never know what impact sharing a link in these sites can have until you do it.

3. Pitch it to another Blogger

Is the post you’re promoting relevant to the audience of another blog?

This is a question I’m always asking myself as I’m writing blog posts. As I write I jot down the names of other bloggers that have an audience that might find what I’m writing helpful. This means that when it comes time to promote the blog post I have a ready made list of people to shoot out an email to to let them know about my post.

I don’t send these emails out often, nor do I send them out to the same group of bloggers repeatedly – but if I genuinely think my post is of high quality and that the blogger will find it relevant I will.

Check out these suggestions on how to pitch other bloggers for some more tips on how to do this effectively.

Read the rest of the post, which features six more options to spread the word about your blog posts, on ProBlogger.

Patience! Patience!

Last night, as my family gathered around a backyard firepit — our September ritual — I found myself sipping on a glass of something red, and engaging in a boisterous discussion over the future of healthcare here in the USA.  The combination, I believe, was responsible for my failure to keep my passions checked.  We all finally agreed to disagree, and no feelings were irreparably hurt, but  I woke up this morning with a fuzzy headache, and the realization that I had not been a patient man the night before.

For many novelists, that’s an all-too-common condition.  I’m no different — when I recall the hours, no…weeks, no … years of work that I’ve put into my writing, trying to be patient while waiting for publication, waiting for a review, or waiting for some better sales seems to elude me, sometimes. 

It seems, writers often become impatient with themselves. Sometimes we expect a solution to suggest itself quickly.  We feel the driving momentum leading to a critical point of a WIP, and then…..despite our ongoing focus……nothing. 

That hasn’t happened to me often — I don’t get "blocked" I just change the channel — but when it does, I feel like I’ve let myself down.  Then, every time, the inspiration arrives from some unexpected source, and I go on again, as if nothing had slowed me down. 

I need to remind myself, that writing is the vocation of patient people. Impatience in writing, or marketing, or speaking, never brings the satisfaction you had hoped, and often confuses the issue at hand — even turning good ideas into garbage.

So, as I sit here, waiting to hear from three different reviewers, I’ll remind my self of that fact. Patience, Man! Patience!

The Paper Decision

Paper is such an important part of any book, it’s incredible that many independent authors don’t really consider it as part of the design process, when preparing their book for press.

Most POD publishers use the sheet-fed offset printing process, as the run quantities are usually short.  This is actually a very good process for quality control, although the actual printing is slower than high speed web printing.  It uses a different kind of paper, that is finished in a different way than high-speed paper. 

Text papers, for inside pages, have a surface that is optimized for the printing of text, of course, but there may be different levels of finish available from your book’s printer.  Be sure to request printed samples on the stocks they offer. They may be able to make these available before the contract is signed, or not — it varies from press to press.

At the lower end, you’ll find basic newsprint, which you’ll remember as being the lightweight, easily smuded stock that the pulp novels you read in college were printed on.  It’s similar stock to what most newspapers are printed on, and is designed to be first, inexpensive – -as any product printed on it is not expected to be around very long.  It is not very resistant to tears, or abrasion, and would not be my first choice for a novel, non-fiction or reference book which would expect a lot of handling.

The next step up is basic text stock, often available in two or three shades besides white.  An off-white color is a good choice, especially for smaller than 12 point typography, as it minimizes eyestrain from the high contrast a pure-white sheet would create.  You can also consider the context of the book — for a novel, it’s setting, etc. and the age of the typical reader.  A whiter sheet, or a more creme colored sheet may add page appeal, depending upon the "style" of the prose, the subject matter, the setting — all the things that make your book special.  Look at other books you’ve enjoyed and see what kind of stock they’re printed on.

The finish of the paper itself will also affect the appearance of your book, and a good rule is that as the fine-ness of the type increases — with fine serifs, for example — the smoothness of the paper surface should also increase.  If there will be spot illustrations, unless they will be rendered in a rough manner, such as with block prints, or some scratchboard art, a smoother stock surface will also provide better detail, and what is called "ink hold out". 

Ink Hold Out, refers to the ability of the paper to keep printers ink on it’s surface with less and less bleeding as the hold out increases. Better hold out keeps illustrations and text proofing out, after printing, as close as possible to what you intended, including color fidelity, if you are utilizing spot or process color elements along with the text.  Poor hold out can result in print through, which is what happens when you can see the text on the backside showing through a page, and irregular color fidelity.  You don’t want that, if you can help it! 

As you make paper choices, you’ll also begin seeing your book differently than you did when you were writing it.  Now, you’re creating a product, where before, you had a manuscript.  The product will need a lot of polishing to get it just right, just as the manuscript did. At this point, you’ll be changing"hats".  I believe that seeing your book as a product will help you keep your priorities straight, when setting your retail price.  It will also help connect you with your readers — I mean, consumers.

As we move up the ladder of paper quality, the price also goes up exponentially.  Paper cost is one of the fastest rising components of publishing cost, and it is one that is showing no sign of retreating.  Better paper, useful in hard-bound books, will begin to show what is called "rag" content — actual cloth fibers in the mix with the pulp fibers that give a page more strength and make it less likely to yellow with age because of the acids left in the regular pulp paper from the manufacturing process.

At the top end of text stock, are "laid" finish stocks, with textural patterns in the paper itself, from the way the paper is made, that resemble the weave in cloth, for example, a "linen" finish.  They can be much heavier weight, and usually completely out of the range of price that could be considered for a retail book, although sometimes, specialty bound keepsake volumes use these papers in extremely short print runs of under 30 books.

Another level at the very top, are 100% rag contect papers, or archival stocks, used for mounting fine art  prints and fine photographic prints.  These stocks usually are certified for a life-span in excess of 100 years without yellowing or any acid damage to anything attached to them. They can be found in laid finishes, plate finishes, with varying degrees of roughness to the touch, and finally in high plate finishes, which are especially smooth and hard surfaced papers designed for fine-art level full color printing. 

There are also plate finished and coated text stocks, in lighter weights, that are designed for color reproduction.  Cast-coated sheets, like Chromecote (R) are designed for the absolute highest color fidelity and resolution.  They have a high, glossy finish, but coated text stocks are also available with matte and low-gloss coating. If you are producing a coffe-table, art folio, or a cookbook full of beautiful images, you will want to investigate these stocks.  Your POD printer may or may not have these available to you, and if you will be producing this kind of book, you will need to choose your printer wisely, in part according to the paper options they offer.

Color reproduction on lesser text sheets can be dicey.  You’ll need to request printed samples of pages with approximatelky the same coverage as the pages you will be providing  them, to see if the quality level is what you want.  Of course, the cost of such production is much higher than black ink on a medium grade text sheet, and you will see how much your choice of paper will affect your retail price.

MOst POD printers will offer only one cover stock choice, which is, more and more, a heavier text stock, plate finish, with a lamination — an actual plastic film heat set over your image.  They resist moisture, spills, and tearing pretty well, but one drawback is that unless shelved, they tend to curl. This is casued by the inside of the cover absorbing mopisture from the air and expanding slightly.  If you are going to purchase inventory in these type of books, keep them lying flat, in sealed boxes with a weighted cover over them to keep the covers flat.  If you are going to shelve them, they will need to be covered with a moisture barrier — a plastic sheet, for example, along the tops so that the covers won’t spring curled when removed from the shelf.  Most of the paperstocks used for trade paperback ccovers from POD printers are selected for good ink hold out and white color. They can reproduce well to 300dpi resolution and beyond.  You may want to take a few extra days with your final proof, to see how it reacts to humidity, etc., before giving the final approval. My novel, The Red Gate was proofed 3 times to check cover consistency.

All-in-all, your paper choice will play a very large role in the quality and presentation of your book — er, product.  Take some time, research the possibilities thoroughly. Get printed samples from potential POD printers if you can.  Get a feel for what one of their books feels like in the hand, adjust your design as necessary…then make it happen!

####

The author is a graphic designer, American Indian arts dealer… and an Indie Novelist.

His first book The Red Gate is available on Amazon

 

 

Finding Indie Opportunity On The Kindle

This article, from Bryan Gilmer, originally appeared on The Millions on 5/18/09.

Bryan Gilmer of Durham, N.C., teaches newswriting at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and writes for institutional and corporate clients. Until 2003, he was a reporter at Florida’s largest newspaper, the St. Petersburg Times. He has just independently published a crime thriller novel, Felonious Jazz.

Last week, I created a Kindle version of my indie crime thriller novel, Felonious Jazz, using the tools at Amazon’s Digital Text Platform. It took about nine minutes, a “why-not” side project alongside my trade paperback, which I published using Amazon’s print-on-demand company, CreateSpace.

coverMy Kindle edition went live last Monday at $7.99, so I announced it on a couple of Kindle message boards online. By Wednesday, I’d sold one copy. One! Message board replies said, “If you want us to try a new author, give us a really low price. It’ll generate sales and reviews.” So I marked it down to $1.99 Thursday morning and posted the price change on the same boards. What happened next was remarkable:

As of 5 p.m. Friday – about 36 hours later – Felonious Jazz was the No. 1 selling hard-boiled mystery on the Amazon Kindle Store and the 17th best-selling title in Mysteries & Thrillers – the only title not by huge names like John Sandford, Michael Connelly, and Elmore Leonard in the top 25. Its overall Kindle sales rank was as high as 133rd out of all the 283,000+ fiction and non-fiction titles available in the Kindle Store.

I thought, now that I’m in the rankings, I shouldn’t have to be so cheap. I bumped the price to $4.99. Sales continued, but at a slower pace, (and Felonious Jazz has slipped in the rankings. I probably should have stuck with $1.99 longer). I also drew in some people who just buy cheap Kindle offerings who don’t normally read the genre, though they may have been less likely to enjoy it than fans of similar books.

But overall, what a no-budget way to gain visibility. A few big lessons here: Readers expect Kindle books to be much cheaper than dead-tree books (because they know it costs less to publish them and they can’t share them and worry they won’t have them forever). A cheap price is enough to buy your way up the rankings among national names with a zero-dollar PR campaign. Now that there’s a free Kindle app for iPhone, the potential audience for a Kindle title is not just the half million people who spent $359 for the device but many times that large. It’s surprisingly comfortable to read book text on the Kindle iPhone app. If you haven’t tried it yet, get the app and grab my free sample from Amazon, and you’ll see what I mean. It’s transformative to have a book you’re reading (or several) on your phone to pull out whenever you have to wait in line or for an appointment.

Read the rest of the article on The Millions.

Also note, Publetariat founder and Editor in Chief April L. Hamilton offers a free guide to publishing in Kindle format on her website in downloadable, pdf format. Also, Publetariat contributor Joshua Tallent is the founder of Ebook Architects, a company that offers consulting, formatting and conversion services for authors wishing to publish in various ebook formats .

How Lucky We Are That The Book Business Is Not Like The Movie Business!

This post, from literary agent Richard Curtis, originally appeared on the E-Reads Publishing In the 21st Century blog on 8/17/09.

Is the book business beginning to feel like the movie business? An article by the New York Times‘s Michael Cieply might reinforce the similarities.

Cieply reports that, unlike filmmakers like Steven Soderbergh and Quentin Tarantino who landed huge studio deals at the Sundance Film Festival, today’s aspiring young movie makers have got to finance everything, investing in themselves on the speculation that lightning will strike in the form of financing and distribution by a major studio. As more and more authors throw in the towel in despair of landing a book deal with a big publisher, they are publishing their own books and underwriting every step from editorial to publicity.

Are there other ways to compare Cieply’s description of the film industry with the current state of publishing? Let us count them, and to help you, I’ve taken the liberty of extracting some of Cieply’s descriptions and substituting language that might reinforce the idea that New York is a lot closer to L. A. than a five hour flight on the red-eye.
 

The glory days of independent film [first novels], when hot young directors [authors] like Steven Soderbergh and Mr. Tarantino had studio [publishing] executives tangled in fierce bidding wars at Sundance [Book Expo, Frankfurt] and other celebrity-studded festivals, are now barely a speck in the rearview mirror. And something new, something much odder, has taken their place.

Here is how it used to work: aspiring filmmakers [authors] playing the cool auteur [literary lion] in hopes of attracting the eye of a Hollywood power broker [major New York literary agent].

Here is the new way: filmmakers [authors] doing it themselves — paying for their own distribution [self-publication], marketing films [books] through social networking sites and Twitter blasts [social networking sites and Twitter blasts], putting their work up free on the Web to build a reputation, cozying up to concierges [maitre d’s] at luxury hotels [chic publishing watering spots] in film festival cities [New York] to get them to whisper into the right ears.

Read the rest of the post on the E-Reads Publishing In the 21st Century blog.

Finally! Some Press!

August 27th I finally was referred to as an author by someone besides my immediate family, in print! Stinky, smearing newsprint!  I suppose it should have felt like a graduation or something, but I was mostly happy with the article, and especially that it mentioned the two local places where the book could be found. 

The editor, whom I’ve known for some time, sent my release and material on to a staff writer, who worked at it for two weeks.  After one week’s delay, it was finally published in an Arts pull-out section of the local newspaper.

When my grandson saw it, he exclaimed "Hey! That’s Papa!" 

Anyone who’d be interested on the small-town Long Island take of my Indie-almost launch, should read the article on my book website homepage this month.  www.rlsuttonbooks.com/

Now, I’m goinbg to have to use that to try and obtain some print reviews.  There are a couplke of slick, local lifestyle magazines that occasionally do them for local writers, and both are distributed in shops and hotels in the Hamptons resort area.  I’m keeping my fingers crossed, and will let you know how it goes…..

Time to get out the Press Release Letterhead…..

 

 

The Wrong Questions

This post, from Gallagher Girls series author Ally Carter, originally appeared on her Ally’s Diary blog on 9/11/08.

I attended a couple of writers’ conferences last summer. I enjoy conferences. I like notebooks and name badges and having an excuse to wear the three cute outfits I own.

But this year it felt like I gained less from the sessions themselves than I usually do.

This is probably due to a lot of things, not the least of which is that I’ve been doing this for a while now and I’m simply farther along the learning curve than I used to be.

As a result I spent a lot of time twisting in my chair, wanting to shout out the things that I’ve learned so far. But I couldn’t. Because shouting is a good way to get escorted out of the Hyatt or the Marriott.

So instead I’ll do my shouting here–in the comfort of my own blog.

Please note that what follows is my HONEST opinion about the differences in writing for teens and adults. If you don’t want my honest opinion, stop reading. If you continue to read, consider yourself warned.

One of the sessions that I attended was a session on the differences in writing for teen and adult audiences. But two minutes into the session I wanted to stand up and tell everyone in the audience that they were asking the wrong questions.

Now don’t get me wrong, they were no doubt very common questions, but in my opinion if you want to be successful in the YA market, they were the wrong questions.

So here is my lame, Thursday-morning-just-got-back-from-the-gym-and-I’m-too-lazy-to-go-upstairs-and-do-some-real-work attempt at answering the wrong questions and steering people toward the right ones.

WRONG QUESTION: How do I develop an authentic teen voice?

THE RIGHT QUESTION: Do I have a voice that’s appealing to teens?

After all, would you ask "how do I write in a voice that mystery readers would respond to?" Or "how do I sound like a science fiction reader?" No. You wouldn’t.

Your voice is your voice is your voice. Period. And frankly, either you’ve got a voice that teens will enjoy or you don’t.

Furthermore, all teens don’t sound the same and neither do all teen novels.

There are very successful teen authors who use long sentences and huge words and very complicated sentence structures. And then there are teen authors like me.

There is no such thing as a "teen" voice. And no amount of hanging out in shopping malls and eavesdropping on the kids at the next table is going to teach you to write in a manner that will appeal to those kids.

Furthermore, trying to mimic those readers is an almost surefire way to make those kids hate your book. They know imitators when they see them. They don’t take kindly to pandering.

Trying to write like you think teens want you to write is the fastest way I know to fail in this business.

Write how you write. Either it’ll work for the YA market (or the horror market, or romance market, or scifi market, etc) or it won’t. At the very least, teens will respect you for it.
 

Read the rest of the post (it’s quite lengthy, so there’s still much more to learn from it) on Ally Carter’s Ally’s Diary blog.

Just Say NO!

I have been reborn! At least I feel like something basic has changed, deep inside my writer’s mind.  I just read "Say No to Your Publishers Advance!" which is located in the Publishing Section of this site.  It is the most compelling, well-thought out presentation on why fiction writers don’t need any publisher but themselves.  No kidding.

I’m not unusual, I found out, in thinking that if I push the boulder uphill far enough, I’ll get a big, fat advance check.  Now I’ve learned why that isn’t such a good thing to hope for — if it comes true, the mathematics may well destroy your career as an author.

The change is simple.  Now I want to sell books. Lots of books. That’s a concept I can understand.  Marketing 101.

Make the best product you can, find a need, and sell it!

 

You Gotta Love The Conflict!

This post, by author Valerie Storey, originally appeared on her Writing at Dava Books blog on 7/28/09.

Conflict. If you’re anything like me, the very word conjures up argument, avoidance, ‘peace at any cost.’ In real life, conflict is rarely fun or something I go looking for. But leave it out of our writing, and we can have some serious conflict with editors and readers.

The first step toward understanding conflict is to know what genuine artistic conflict is not. Compelling conflict rarely stems from:

* Slammed doors.
* Slapped faces.
* Misunderstood fragment of overheard dialogue.
* A spilled drink.
* Romance characters tormenting each other with “fake” lovers.
* Characters complaining they are never understood because men and women can’t communicate.

You get the picture. All of the above are actions and events; things that can certainly be the result of conflict and that can make characters angry, but conflict is much more than anger. Authentic conflict often begins long before your story opens and is the motivating spur behind every decision and action your characters will make. In order to uncover as many levels of conflict possible (and to make life near-impossible for your characters) it can be helpful to explore the following seven areas.

1) The World or Society at Large. This is the world your story characters inhabit. It can be as simple as a barren desert or as elaborate as a feudal realm set in the distant future. Whatever it is, it contains problems; problems that can disadvantage and hold your characters back from their goals in significant ways. For instance, a world at war can be set anywhere from ancient times to the present day, from Middle Earth to outer space, but no matter the weaponry used, war always involves great suffering.

At the opposite end, a peaceful, apparently beautiful society can be filled with social injustice or a devastating class structure. Characters caught up in a perfect life may be the most discontent of all. Consider the poor heroine who is engaged to the perfect man, has the perfect job, eats perfect dinners with her loving, supportive parents every Friday night. On the surface she seems happy, but she may be ready to strangle them all.

Including a backdrop of social turmoil to your work will provide your characters with either past negative experience to overcome, or an ongoing situation that creates constant hardship. “High society” with all its rules and traditions, vices and hypocrisies can be a terribly low place filled with dark secrets and psychoses.

2) The Immediate Professional Environment or Workplace. No matter the times they are born into, your characters all have to do something to make a living. Even if your heroine’s sole purpose in life is to be married off to a peer of the realm, this is still her “occupation.” No matter if your characters are nannies or rock stars, advertising executives or harried FBI agents; they will at some stage encounter the monster boss, rival co-worker(s), ruthless or incompetent employees. Sometimes the workplace itself harbors corruption and is a great source of conflict, such as an unethical law firm or a company cutting corners on its products.
 

Read the rest of the post, which covers locations #3-7, on Valerie Storey’s Writing at Dava Books blog.

Authors: Just Say "No!" To Your Advance

This article, by Joe Quirk, originally appeared on the SF Gate site on 8/27/09.

My fellow authors laughed when I said I was publishing my fourth book with Numina Press. Then they learned my cut of each sale.

How big is the difference? Try three times as much money each sale.

Numina is an exclusive commercial publisher that uses print-on-demand technology to radically alter the cost ratios in favor of the author. They started working with dead writers like Jack London, who was quite cooperative. Now they have their sights set on living published authors, who are not.

Your choice, living authors. Take home:

$1.50 from a $23 book, or

$4.50 from a $16 book.

Wait. You have to give up a lot of perks for this tripling of your pay, and my living author friends are quick to list their objections:

Big New York publishers will give me an advance!

 

Okay, stop flapping your wrists like a pack of sissies. Let’s walk through each of the standard fear-driven objections one by one.

But major publishers will pay me an advance!

An advance is a chance to ruin your career. A big advance for a first or second book is a chance to almost guarantee your career will end six months after your book comes out, and nobody will tell you until you write and try to sell your second book. A gigunda advance? That spells an almost certain death.

The bigger the advance, the worse it is for the author.

Seventy percent of published books don’t earn back their advance. Add to the balance sheet the costs of printing, shipping, and promotion, and that means even more than 70% of books lose money for the publisher. That means the majority of published authors get a permanent Big Red Mark next to their name.

Publishers don’t know why most books don’t sell, nor do they understand why most of their riches are made off less than 5% of the new authors they publish, and they don’t know what to do about their ignorance, but they do know how to do one thing: blame the author.

If your first book lost them money, they will not publish your second book, no matter how many copies it sold.

So move on to another publisher? Not so fast. Publishers share sales information with their competitors. That’s right, competing New York publishers close ranks in solidarity against the authors who might have sold well but lost money. Most major publishers, before they read your new book, run straight to the stats and see how well your last book sold, how much money was spent on it, how much was earned back, and their eyes go straight to the bottom line: Did it lose money? If the answer is yes, they don’t waste their time reading your new book.

Remember: Second book finished? Publishers read the bottom line on their balance sheet before they read the first line of your manuscript.

Read the rest of the article on the SF Gate site.

Big New York publishers will get me publicity!

Big New York publishers will pay for a book tour!

Big New York publishers will get me book store placement!

But if I accept triple money with a print-on-demand publisher, Big New York publishers will punish me! My agent will be mad!

Commentary — Crusty, but Likeable!

I guess I’ll have to start doing this — it’s easier than running back and forth between different writer’s sites, replying to lots of different threads — as if my opinion was important!  Well, my wife and my cat care what I have to say, so I guess I’ll have to put that up there for you, too. 

I’ll add something every other day, or so, as the mood strikes me, or as frustration builds, or as my arthritis needs a work-out.  Please be sure to reply and add your own take on my blither.  It wiull prevent my stress-shrunken head from getting any bigger.

Interview with TV's Inside edition turns into salable article

TV’s Inside edition contacted me about doing a movie review of Brad Pitt’s movie, The Assasination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. They sent a film crew to my home in Kentucky, where we shot some story background footage. I viewed the film at Warner Brothers in New York, and the next day appeared with my review on camera at Inside edition’s studio. My review never was aired by Inside edition. However, the story of what happened turned into a nice salable article, first published as Pitfalls – Confession of a Jesse James Movie Reviewer.

The Writing Life: I Don't Believe In Writer's Block

This post, from C.L. Anderson, originally appeared on SUVUDU.

I don’t. Really. I don’t believe there is a mental disorder that only strikes writers. As my friend the writer Steven Harper Piziks put it: dentists do not wake up in the morning, go into the office, stare at an open mouth and say “OMG, I can’t drill! I just…can’t…drill…” Or if they do, we call it burn out and the smart dentist changes jobs, or gets a better shrink.

But writer’s block is mysterious, it’s dramatic. It is regarded as a sign of true artistic temperment and possibly genius. Because everybody knows Geniuses are tempermental and a little c/r/a/z/y eccentric.

In short, unlike the dentist’s failure to drill demonstrating the symptoms of writer’s block gets you attention and sympathy and even a weird kind of respect. Kind of like the ladies of old Great Britain with their Nerves and Vapors.

Don’t get me wrong, writing is a tough gig and there are days it does not go well. In fact, there are days it doesn’t go at all. I have been stuck, even mired. But usually this is because of something I’m doing, or not doing. Usually, I am not looking at the scene in the right way. I don’t have a clear handle on the goals of the characters, or, worse, I’ve gotten lazy and ignored something important further up the line, or refused to acknowledge that the way I had planned to write the scene is no longer going to work because of changes I’ve made to the plot.

In cases like these, the answer is similar to that with any other sticky problem. Step back. Walk around the block. Take a shower. Do a load of laundry. Work on something else. Come back fresh and ready to do the needed work. Amazing how the words almost seem to rearrange themselves and provide the answer.

This can be hard to do, however, when you’re under pressure. And everyone who writes professionally is under pressure. Writing is a performance art and it is also piece work. You don’t produce, you don’t get paid. You don’t produce, you lose your audience. To make your living eventually something of yourself has got to get out there and face the judges and the judges have to buy it, literally.

Read the rest of the post on SUVUDU.

What Is 'Value Added' And What Does It Have To Do With Indie Authorship?

This post, from Publetariat founder and Editor In Chief April L. Hamilton, originally appeared on her Indie Author Blog on 1/7/09.

I’ve been taking a lot of flak lately from professionals in the graphic arts and typesetting fields because in The IndieAuthor Guide, I more or less tell indie authors that in most cases, the services of those professionals are optional. The flakkers protest, in frequently ugly tones, that I’m giving bad advice in this regard and a book brought to market without their services is a "defective" product.

Here’s my recent response to one such complaint:

The local independent bookseller who stocks my titles has said that to his (professional) eye, apart from the lack of a recognizable imprint logo on their spines, my books are indistinguishable from mainstream books. So long as the readers and booksellers are pleased with my books, I’m meeting the demands of my target audience. And that’s what indie authorship is all about: reaching and serving your readership, not slavishly following the conventions of traditional publishing, regardless of whether or not they form a value-added proposition where your intended audience is concerned…I and my books are doing pretty well. And in the final analysis, in attempting to judge the merits of what I propose and advise in The IndieAuthor Guide, isn’t *that* the only benchmark that really matters?

After I posted, another flakker chimed in to berate me further, pretty much missing my point about ‘value added’, and it occurred to me that it may be a term that merits some further exploration. It’s something one hears bandied about in the business world quite a bit, and entire books have been written on the subject. In simple terms, a ‘value-added proposition’ is something in which you invest time or money because there will be a commensurate payoff, or payback of that investment, in the future.

For example, let’s say you manufacture protective cell phone covers. People like your covers and they’re selling pretty well, but you think you could do even better if you started printing licensed cartoon characters on them. So you go through the paperwork and expense of getting the licensing rights, you re-tool your shop to print the characters on the covers and you invest in some extra advertising to let everyone know about your new product line. Naturally, you must price the new line higher to absorb the added expenses, but you’re confident it’ll be a hit. Three months down the line you find your old, plain covers are selling just as well as they ever did, and sales on the new covers are decidedly slow. Clearly, printing licensed cartoon characters on your covers was NOT a value-added proposition. Customers may like the new covers, and may even prefer them to the plain ones. But if they don’t prefer the new covers enough to pay extra for them, it doesn’t make business sense for you to be producing them.

And what does this have to do with indie authorship, you ask? When bringing your book to market, every time you make a choice that involves investment of your time or money you should be asking yourself, "Does this constitute a value-added proposition for my target audience?" Because if it doesn’t, you should be looking for ways to reduce or eliminate that investment. Based on my research and experience, I’ve concluded the average reader doesn’t know or care about the minutiae of ‘proper’ typesetting according to mainstream pubishing standards. So long as the text is easily legible and looks about the same as that in a mainstream book to a typical (non-industry) reader, the reader will not find fault with the layout and typesetting in a given book. I freely acknowledge that people who follow the directions I provide in The IndieAuthor Guide will end up with a book that’s instantly recognizable as self-published to most industry pros, but since those pros are not the indie author’s intended audience, their opinions are irrelevant in this regard. Therefore, investing hundreds or thousands of dollars in professional typesetting and layout services does not form a value-added proposition for most indie books.

In deciding whether or not to invest in this or that service or product when bringing your book to market, let your target audience be your guide. If your target audience WILL notice and care about details of typesetting and layout for instance, paying for those professional services is a necessary expenditure for your particular book. However, if paying for those services requires you to price the eventual book so high that no one is willing to buy it, then the entire book fails the value-added proposition test.

Cover design is another area where value added comes into play. The IndieAuthor Guide includes directions for designing your own book cover, but many authors feel out of their depth when it comes to graphic arts and design and will prefer to hire out for those services; even so, they must wade through a seeming ocean of possible vendors and price ranges. Of course you want a cover that will draw the potential buyer in, even when viewed as an icon on a webpage if your book will be sold online. However, spending thousands of dollars on a piece of commissioned artwork from a name artist for your cover doesn’t necessarily add value for which your eventual readers will be willing to pay extra.

Since increasing the retail price of your book to absorb that cost may alienate potential buyers, you need to consider how many extra books you must sell at your regular retail price to recoup the money you spent on the cover artwork. In some cases, the investment will be worth it. In other cases, not so much. You can usually get an attractive, professional-looking cover which effectively conveys the theme of your book from a journeyman graphic artist at a much lower cost, or even from an art school grad student who’s willing to do the cover for free in exchange for the portfolio sample and exposure. As with any small business expenditure, you must balance the benefit against the cost when determining how much money to spend on professional services.

Let me hasten to add: I am not suggesting that indie authors try to do everything ‘on the cheap’ for the sake of saving money or increasing royalties. On the contrary, I advise indie authors to do all in their power to deliver a product that, to the typical book buyer, is indistinguishable from the products of their mainstream competitors. That means quality editing, paper, printing, cover design, and more. What I AM saying is that each time you’re faced with decisions about whether, and how much, to spend on some aspect of your book’s production or promotion, carefully consider the matter of ‘value added’.