Publetariat

Interview With Soft Skull Press Editorial Director Denise Oswald

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Soft Skull Press. The Huffington Post calls it, "The literary version of a punk rock label."  Canada’s Quill & Quire describes it as "One of the most visible and respected alternative houses in the U.S…like Grove Press in the 1950’s and 1960’s." Among its recent releases you’ll find Osama Van Halen and Hos, Hookers, Call Girls, and Rent Boys: Sex Workers and Prostitutes writing on Life, Love, Money, and Sex. Clearly, Soft Skull Press is not your grandfather’s trade publisher.

In this interview, Editorial Director Denise Oswald talks about Soft Skull’s philosophy and approach to publishing, the advantages of working with a small publisher, how Soft Skull succeeds with books the majors won’t touch with a ten foot pole, and more.  

Soft Skull is known for being a sort of "punk" publisher, in the sense that SS frequently publishes edgy and nontraditional material. Can you elaborate a bit on what Soft Skull looks for in its acquisitions?

I’d say we’re drawn to gritty, dissident voices. Risk takers that are in their own way willing to speak truth to power. The focus could be on just about anything, really—it’s all about the author’s take on it.

What specific advantages do you feel Soft Skull can offer its authors, in comparison to a big, mainstream publisher?

It’s really easy for all but the biggest books to drown on a large, mainstream publisher’s list. For a book to just get subsumed amid the sheer volume of other titles vying for the attention and energy of not just the retailers and media, but of the in-house sales, marketing, and publicity staffs. A small press offers a boutique publishing experience. Odds are everyone in house not just knows about the book but has read it and shares the editor’s enthusiasm for it. And odds are the editor who was so enthusiastic about the project from the get-go is going to have a larger hand in how that book gets marketed and sold. So it’s a very intimate relationship.
 
Does Soft Skull have a set number of titles it can release each year, or do you let the quantity of desirable material dictate your release schedule?

Well, I think every publisher, large and small, has a range specific to them that they’re trying to hit in terms of the number of titles published annually. There’s a minimum number you need in order to achieve pragmatic results, like keeping your lights on, and then there’s a maximum number beyond which I think everyone sees diminishing returns because all the key players are working at capacity. But that doesn’t mean if a small publisher falls in love with a project she might not be able to take it on because she’s already maxed out on the number of books that can be published that year. At worst it means waiting a season to put the book out but it never means passing simply because you don’t have a slot to fit it into. 
 
You took over as Editorial Director for Soft Skull following the departure of Richard Nash earlier this year. Do you have any specific goals, or changes in mind for the imprint?

I’d like to expand on the fiction publishing program. It’s a spectacular list that I’m eager to build on, particularly in terms of voices from abroad–in translation or otherwise. Beyond that I’ve always done a lot of music related projects so I think you can expect to see that part of the list growing, as well.

Soft Skull is known for championing the very books mainstream publishers avoid: books that are controversial, difficult to classify, difficult to boil down to a sound bite, and frequently for, from, or about underrepresented or fringe populations. Why do you think Soft Skull is able to succeed with these types of books when the majors cannot?

To invoke an oft-abused term, it’s all about authenticity. When you embrace those kinds of books with purpose and show that you’re discerning about what you take on and that you can publish those that you do take on well, people trust your opinion and pay attention when they otherwise might dismiss a project out of hand.  When it comes to mainstream publishers, they probably have few people on board who’d understand the relevance of some of the books Soft Skull is known for, let alone be willing to devote the time and effort to making them work. This isn’t to say that something controversial or difficult couldn’t make it through at a big house due to the passion of the editor, but it can also die on the vine if the other departments don’t get it or what the readership is for it. 

To what extent, if any, does Soft Skull plan to utilize ebook and Print on Demand technologies?

Well, both are valuable tools that can be used in either standardized or more discriminating ways. Most publishers I know of, including us, utilize POD technology to help keep their backlist going when limited demand might have otherwise forced good books out of print. This is one embodiment of the The Long Tail theory. But I think the most interesting use of POD is what’s going on at ELECTRIC LITERATURE. The editors there have created a new literary journal that plays to both internet and traditional paper readerships and in order to make it feasible the terrestrial edition is purely available as POD. I think it’s a very smart way for a literary endeavor to navigate the digital transition.

As for e-books, at this point they’ve become an established format that stands alongside traditional hardcover and paperback—and one that will likely come out the victor in years to come—but for now it’s a fellow traveler that can be  be utilized in more proactive ways. For instance it allows for the rapid publication of timely material.  So if you’re doing a book that’s tied to current events, instead of releasing an e-book simultaneously with the hardcover or paperback original, perhaps you get that e-book out first. Or perhaps you’re doing a book on the environment or technology and you need the medium to live up to the message. Then maybe going e-book first or e-book only is the way to go. It all depends on the particular context of the project at hand.

Author platform is becoming an increasingly important consideration for mainstream publishers when it comes to considering a debut book for acquisition; how important is author platform to Soft Skull press in its acquisitions of debut books? 

Platform gets such a bad rap, but everyone potentially has one so it’s a question of figuring out what yours is and how to utilize it or further develop it. It’s another way of cutting through the sheer volume of voices out there and making yourself stand out. It’s a kind of road map to your reader and in an era of seemingly endless choices for our personal amusement and enlightenment, that’s crucial. Think of it like building your resume. You need to gain experience and exposure to get better and better job opportunities. If you’re a would-be novelist that can mean working on short fiction and trying to get placement in journals and magazines. It’s very rare that you can publish a debut book by someone who hasn’t made their way to some extent through the newspaper/magazine/journal circuit. If I can use a sports metaphor, getting a book published is like marathoning. A wise coach once told me: the marathon isn’t the hard part, it’s sticking with the months of training that’s the hard part. The marathon is your reward.

In a recent Idealog column Mike Shatzkin said self-publishing is now an acknowledged strategy for authors looking to break in to publishing, but some industry people still strongly advise authors against self-publishing. What is your opinion of the burgeoning "indie author" movement? Can self-publishing be a smart move for authors whose books don’t fit the conventional, easily-classifiable mold?

I think if you look at the number of break-out books amid self published titles you’ll see the percentage is very small. I’m clearly biased, but my feeling is that it always benefits a writer to see if they can place their work with a good house and a good editor who gets it before going the self-publishing route. There’s a lot more to publishing that simply creating the book itself. And sometimes the fact that a book has existed in a prior edition can hinder its chances of getting exposure on a grander scale.

April L. Hamilton is the founder and Editor in Chief of Publetariat, and the founder of the Publetariat Vault, a new crowdsourcing tool for use in literary acquisitions.

Stacey Cochrane of OnLine Book review.org Interview's Edward C. Patterson

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I gave OnLineBookReview.com’s Stacey Cochrane an author interview today. Come visit and comment. I discuss The Jade Owl Legacy series, Indie Publishing, the Kindle and the future of book distribution as I see it.

http://tinyurl.com/l8b9qm

Edward C. Patterson

Authorfail: When Authors Attack

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This post, from Victoria Strauss, originally appeared on the Writer Beware! Blogs on 7/7/09. In it, she shares some past and recent examples of authors behaving badly as the result of receiving a bad review, and gives authors many reasons to think twice before Tweeting, blogging or posting in anger.

Last week, the Twitter- and blogosphere were abuzz with two tales of authorial bad behavior: much-published author Alice Hoffman’s Twitter meltdown over a poor review (Hoffman tweeted several angry messages about the review, including one that provided the reviewer’s phone number and email address and encouraged fans to "Tell her what u think of snarky critics;" Hoffman’s publisher subsequently yanked her Twitter account, and Hoffman issued an apology);

…and philosopher and author Alain de Botton’s blog explosion (de Botton posted an angry comment on the reviewer’s blog, concluding "I will hate you till the day I die and wish you nothing but ill will in every career move you make"; he, too, subsequently apologized, excusing himself by saying "It was a private communication to his website, to him as a blogger…It’s appalling that it seems that I’m telling the world." Well, duh).

Although you can blame these errors in judgment on the social media phenomenon, which encourages us all to tweet (or comment, or post, or email) before we think, they are hardly isolated incidents. Authors wigging out over criticism is nothing new.

This past April, a Russian court ordered a journalist to pay compensation to a writer who objected to the journalist’s review of his novel. Compensation amounted to US $1,000; the writer had originally demanded much more. Per the news report of this incident: "Observers have commented that this judgment creates a very dangerous precedent, opening the way for lawsuits based on subjective opinion. Some have even suggested that if a book reviewer can be sued, a reader who did not like a book can sue the author for making a bad quality product." Holy frivolous lawsuits, Batman!

A recent article on the Hoffman debacle from Salon.com provides several more examples of authors behaving badly over criticism. Authors Caleb Carr, Jonah Goldberg, Stanley Crouch, and Richard Ford have (respectively) written invective-laden letters to, blogged obsessively about, slapped the face of, and spit upon/shot holes in the books of reviewers to whose analysis they objected (one of those reviewers, ironically enough, was Hoffman herself).

In 2007, Stuart Pivar sued blogger PZ Meyers for libel for Meyers’s negative review of Pivar’s book Lifecode, which proposed "an alternative theory of evolution." Most observers dubbed the charges "frivolous" and "empty." Pivar eventually dropped the suit.
 

Read the rest of the post on the Writer Beware! Blogs.

Change: Are You Initiating Or Avoiding?

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This post, from Kassia Krozser, originally appeared on her Booksquare site on 6/6/09.

How can authors leverage change to their best advantage?

I have come to accept that our species is not fond of change. Some of us know it is inevitable and take the pain now rather than later, some simply refuse to change (I have seen this and it is awesome in its execution. Also, ultimately futile.), and some pretend to embrace change while carefully manipulating “change” to look like “same as it ever was”. It is that final group, I believe, who face the biggest letdown.

It is surely the rare soul in the publishing ecosystem who believes the business tomorrow will resemble the business of today. Change, being change, is messy stuff, best managed through experimentation. You can design the best process in the world, but until real people get their hands in the system, you don’t really know what will work and how. Change is iterative.

Mike Shatzkin’s article on evolving role of agents, coupled with his piece on the publishing portfolio reshuffle, focuses on key aspects of this change: the economics. You cannot unsettle an entire industry without considering and preparing for the financial impact on all the players.

There is no doubt that the physical retail environment is shrinking. The news about stores closing for good unsettles people in the industry. And outside. Many factors are behind this loss, from changing consumer behavior to high rents in bad economic times to “redevelopment”. The choice throughout the industry is clear: hope for a business-as-usual miracle or make the necessary changes to thrive in a new (sometimes uncertain) environment.

The booksellers who remain standing — and there will be many! — will react to these losses by changing their retail mix to accommodate new customers while incorporating new sales channels, such as digital. In the physical sense, there is only so much shelf space, and booksellers will, necessarily, be more particular and more aggressive about fresh product. The sheer volume of annual releases, with new titles coming out weekly, leaves the bookseller little room for chancy purchases and backroom stock.

Inventory management will be elevated to an art form as booksellers try to balance the slower reactions of customers who rely upon word-of-mouth with those who chase the latest and greatest. Factor in the enduring popularity of catalog titles, and it’s not hard to see that booksellers will be leaner and meaner (oh, and leaner and meaner indicates that booksellers will be purchasing fewer units because, well, managing returns for credit or cash is not a cheap endeavor).

Read the rest of the post on Booksquare.

Choosing A Freelance Editor: What You Need To Know

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This post, from Alan Rinzler, originally appeared on his The Book Deal blog on 7/2/09.

In the increasingly difficult competition to get published, writers know they must put their best foot forward by sending out only a professional, polished, and persuasive new proposal or manuscript to any prospective literary agent or publisher.

Many authors have come to understand the value of objective help before taking the plunge, and I don’t mean from family, friends, or the local writing group. Such support is valuable to have close at hand, but even with the best of intentions, it’s not as useful as professional feedback and guidance.

Full disclosure:  I’m an Executive Editor at Jossey-Bass/John Wiley & Sons and I also work privately as a developmental editor with selected authors.

But I’m not the only such practitioner, and not necessarily the best one for you. There are plenty of other developmental editors out there.

Ask for referrals from authors you know and from agents and editors you meet at writers conferences, expos, or book store signings. It takes hustle and discernment.

Some independent editors have websites that list their services and former clients. If authors are listed, you can try to get in touch with them through their agent or publisher. The authors may be happy to endorse their editors and may well want to lend a helping hand to a fellow writer.

I recommend you be very careful when evaluating and making a final choice. Here are some of the primary considerations I think are important when selecting an editor.

Evaluating a freelance editor

• Professional Status

Is this individual a developmental editor? A developmental editor works with a writer to improve the basic concept of the book, the way it’s focused and structured, the style and attitude of the narrative voice, whether it’s fiction or non-fiction.

In a non-fiction book they’ll help clarify and organize the ideas and information. In a novel, they’ll work on the plot, characterizations, dialogue, visual description, and literary style.

It’s important to distinguish developmental editors from copy editors, who take a manuscript that has already been developed and correct the spelling, grammar, punctuation, and in some cases fact-checking.

Ask about the editor’s educational background and experience. A developmental editor is likely to have a vitae that includes a degree and perhaps graduate studies in literature or a related subject.  It’s also very helpful to have in-depth experience as an editor working with a broad variety of authors in real-world commercial book publishing.

• Track Record

Has the editor worked on books that have been published successfully?  Your prospective editor should be able to provide an author list of published titles that you can examine.  Did the authors acknowledge the editor in their published works?

Ask the editor to provide references and endorsements, and be sure to follow up.

• Compatibility

Don’t be shy. Get in touch with a prospective editor directly. If you live nearby, make an effort to meet. If that’s not feasible, have a good phone conversation. It’s important to see how they respond and to hear their voice, to establish a relationship you can trust and enjoy.

You don’t have to love your editor but it helps to like one another and have an open, honest channel of continuing communication. A good fit is important.

Humor and compassion also go a long way in forging a productive relationship!

• Accessibility

If your candidate is slow to answer emails or never returns your phone calls, that’s a bad sign, a harbinger of future problems. Being busy is normal; being absent or invisible for long periods of time is not acceptable.

 

Remember: It’s your book

Once you’ve narrowed your search or made an actual choice, I always advise authors to establish the ground rules up front and take an ongoing proactive role in protecting their interests.

Good developmental editors subsume their own egos and enter the world of the writer’s consciousness. They’re not writing their own book but helping you create the book you want to write.

Read the rest of the post on The Book Deal blog.

Offering A Kindle Edition Can Increase Sales By 25-35%

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This post, from Joe Wikert, originally appeared on his Publishing 2020 blog on 6/29/09.

The latest issue (July/August) issue of Fast Company magazine features an excellent cover article about Amazon and Jeff Bezos.  As I read through it I highlighted a few excerpts and made a number of notes:

Recently, Bezos claimed that Kindle e-books add 35% to a physical book’s sales on Amazon whenever Kindle editions are available. Put another way, for every three print copies of, say, Malcolm Gladwell’s "The Outliers" the site sells, it also sells one Kindle e-book — or about 25% of total sales.

This felt like an overstatement to me…till I sat down and checked the numbers.  It’s true, at least for the top several titles I looked at from our O’Reilly list.  Quite a few of the books I looked at had Kindle sales that represented anywhere from 20-30% of the total Amazon sales.  The key point: If you’re a publisher, you need to get your content into this platform.  Authors, if your publishers don’t already have your content available on the Kindle, when will they?  As much as I hate the Kindle’s closed nature there’s no arguing with the results.  Of course, publishers are also free to sell Kindle content direct to consumers, just like we do at O’Reilly.

Jeff Bezos is trying to do to book publishers what Steve Jobs of Apple did to the music industry. With its iPod and iTunes Store, Apple carved out a largely virgin market so fast that it was able to wrest control of the digital-music distribution system and thus dictate what the record labels could do.

I’ve occasionally been concerned about this but I’m not sure there’s much to fear after all.  I’m seeing more and more e-storefronts popping up every week and even though the Kindle is pretty popular it hasn’t been the runaway success the original iPod was.  Even the iPhone itself is a worthy competitor to the Kindle.  Ironically enough, I think it’s when Amazon fully opens the Kindle platform that we’ll have to worry the most about this.  That will probably have to happen at some point, but Amazon doesn’t seem to be in any hurry, so relax…for now.

Should that happen, book publishers would have more to fear than just being squeezed. Amazon could phase them out completely, treating them as the ultimate middlemen orphaned by a new technology.

Forget about Amazon.  Any publisher that isn’t already worried about this in general is asleep at the wheel.  With all the great self-publishing services out there and the ever-growing importance of social media and author platform it’s crucial for all publishers to determine the value they add to the ecosystem.

In some ways, book publishing operates like one of Joseph Stalin’s five-year plans.

This statement made me laugh out loud.  Literally.  It’s painful to admit but true that some publishers still try to lay out 3- and 5-year financial plans.  This, in an industry where most have had a hard time coming close to their latest annual and even quarterly forecasts.  Ugh.

Here’s a doomsday scenario put forth by Richard Curtis, a literary agent and founder of E-Reads, an independent e-book publisher…

The rest of this excerpt would be pretty long, so let me summarize by saying that Mr. Curtis is concerned about Amazon using their BookSurge service to print all the copies they’ll sell.  Is that really scary?  We’re talking about a more efficient model!  If the unit cost (after factoring in the transportation savings) is less than an offset printing of those copies, why wouldn’t the publisher want to do it this way?  If anything, it’s a wake up call to the brick-and-mortar stores out there to figure out what value they add to the model.  Instant gratification.  Check.  How about beating Amazon at their own game though and offering print-on-demand of an infinitely long title list at the individual store level?

Read the rest of the post on Joe Wikert’s Publishing 2020 blog. Also, if you’d like to offer your work in Kindle format but have no idea how to do it, see "IndieAuthor Guide To Publishing For The Kindle™ With Amazon’s Digital Text Platform™ And MS Word™ 2003 Or Higher", written by Publetariat founder April L. Hamilton and offered for free download on her website. 

Publishing And The Black Swan

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This post, from Glenn Yeffeth, originally appeared on the BenBella Books blog on 4/20/09. In it, he applies Nassim Taleb’s Black Swan theory to publishing. The Black Swan theory posits that rare and unpredictable events can have a huge impact in whatever aspects of life and commerce they occur. Publishers, Yeffeth says, can apply some specific strategies to proactively minimize their exposure to "negative black swans" while maximizing opportunities to take advantage of those even rarer, "positive black swans" .

The Black Swan, by Nassim Taleb, is the best book on statistics I ever read. OK, that may sound like faint praise. But the book is one of the best books I’ve read in years. Brilliant, eccentric, and prescient, this book speaks to me in particular because of my stint in the PhD program in finance at the University of Chicago. I dropped out for exactly the reasons Taleb discusses in the book – the more I learned about mathematical finance, the more I realized how disconnected it was from reality (full disclosure: I also sort of sucked at higher math). If you haven’t read it, you want to, especially if you are in publishing.

The essence of Taleb’s theory is straightforward. Rare and unpredictable events, he theorizes, have an enormous impact on business, finance, on life in general. This might seem to be unexceptional, except that all of statistics, economics and finance (to name a few areas) are based on the assumption that this isn’t true. Everything you’ve heard about the normal curve or law of large numbers, or even the concept of an “average” is based on the idea that once you have enough data – say over a hundred data points – you basically know what’s going on in terms of risky events, that your average is going to be stable etc. The whole idea of finding an average from data, for example, goes out the window if one observation (once you already have lots of observations) can radically change your average. Yet in real life this happens all the time (half the growth in the stock market since WWII, for example, happened in 10 days).

Some businesses are negative black swan businesses. They seem to be making more than they really do make, because they are exposed to rare, but huge, downside risks (think banks and reinsurers). Publishers are exposed to some negative black swan risk (i.e. bankruptcy of major distributor or retailer) but, in general, publishing is a positive black swan business. The rare events can make publishers a lot of money. In fact, without the rare events (i.e. Harry Potter, Da Vinci Code) they barely make any money at all.

The essence of black swans is that they are unpredictable; if they were predictable they wouldn’t be black swans. No one knows they are coming, although everyone can see their inevitability in retrospect. Consider the numerous retroactive explanations for the success of Harry Potter, when, in advance, the original novel was rejected by every publisher that saw it but one, and that one (Bloomsbury) paid 2500 pounds and printed 500 copies. No one saw it coming.

So the solution is to design your publishing house so as to maximize your exposure to positive black swans and minimize your exposure to negative ones. Easy, right?

Not so much. It’s tricky to figure out exactly what to do about Black Swan theory, but here are a few ideas to start with:

  1. Have a healthy respect for what you don’t know. Your management processes will pressure you to predict how each book will do, and allocate resources accordingly. Don’t confuse this with the idea that you know what will happen. Allocate a bit more resources to your small books, and a bit less to your big ones, because you are less sure of what is small and what is big than you think.

Read the rest of the post, which includes 9 additional Black Swan ideas, on the BenBella Books blog.

Transitioning From Freelance Writer To Author

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This post, from Raj Dash, originally appeared on the Freelance Folder site on 7/31/08. While it’s aimed at freelance writers, its content will also be of interest to bloggers who are looking to transition from blog to book. 

Go on. Admit it. You might be a freelance writer for now, but you’ve dreamed of being an author, yes? Some of you might even be authors already, but for those of you who are not, there are ways to transition into being an author.

Being an author has its own rewards but not always necessarily monetary. However, with the demand for premium content online, there are opportunities for those of you that can package an offer of a book with other types of “premium” content, as discussed below.

How Do You Become an Author?

For me, the process was a long one, though it doesn’t have to be for you. I’d been writing creatively and technically for a long time before my first book pitch in 1989/90. The Editor liked my outlining approach and hinted at the possibility of my writing computer programming books for him for a long time, including book revisions – a cash cow for authors back then.

He had plans to come to a big author’s shindig in Toronto, and when he landed in town, he called and left a message. Unfortunately, my roommate decided not to tell me for three or four days. I missed out on meeting him and several well-known novelists.

He accepted my explanation of the situation, but we never reached any specific agreement. Despite my detailed outlines and pitches, they weren’t right for that publisher’s market. A missed opportunity for sure. It wasn’t until 2002 that I finally found an Editor who liked my book proposal, and ultimately became a co-author for a book that I designed, content-wise.

Your path to becoming an author might be a lot quicker from desire to actuality, but you have to want it, as well as be willing to take the good and the bad that comes with it. That’s just the start; you have to actually research your market and select a project to start with it. 

 

Why Become an Author?

This is something only you can answer. My family and cultural background is one of education, teaching and dissemination of knowledge. Writing a book, for me, is the pinnacle of sharing a skill. It’s never been about “making lots of money” – something few authors do anyway.

For such authors, it’s everything else that comes with being an author:

  1. Regular work – the royalties from a series of books could help keep food on the table.
     
  2. The talkshow circuit, which helps with promotion.
     
  3. The lecture circuits, which usually pays per appearance, not to mention aiding in promotion.
     
  4. Professional recognition, which can lead to other opportunities, including teaching.
     

So there is secondary or tertiary income opportunities sometimes, even with a minimal level of success as an author. Here’s what it usually takes:

  1. Prove your stamina as an author – i.e., actually complete books that you sell.
     
  2. Be in a relatively profitable niche (fiction and non-fic).
     
  3. Enjoy at least a minimum level of sales – varies by niche, but selling out your initial run helps.
     

Meet these criteria – and sometimes others – and authoring could be a long-term career for you.

Pros and Cons of Being an Author

Some people just like the concept of having been an author, not actually doing the writing. Trust me, if that’s all you want, write an 8-page ebook and have done with it. The writing of books has been said to end relationships, marriages and day jobs, and drives some writers to drinking and other intoxicants.

Let’s hope your authoring career isn’t so dramatic, but writing a book is often a thankless task. Don’t do it because it’s “cool” or seems romantic. If you’re lucky, your book won’t be remaindered in the discount bins of a big chain bookstore. The publishing industry real is a game of averages. For every big-name author, there are literally hundreds who are relegated to obscurity.

Some things to consider:

  1. It’s easy to plan and propose a book, but actually completing the book can be a considerable emotional effort. It’s more likely that a fiction author will go through emotional hurdles, but it happens to non-fiction authors as well.
     
  2. You need to pace the workload. If you have X days to complete a rough draft and Y pages to write, then you need to average Y/X pages per day. But don’t get hung up on the exact number of pages written per day. If you’re concerned, keep a log but judge your productively weekly rather than daily.
     
  3. Take breaks regularly, reward yourself for daily milestones. I used to go to the theater and watch an afternoon movie, or jump on the bus to eavesdrop on conversations.
     
  4. It’s important to actually get away from your writing environment at least once a day. Having a clear head is more valuable than spending hours on end getting nowhere. I found that I could spend 4-6 hours writing, break for 2-4 hrs, then spend 4-6 more in writing and get just as much done in 8-12 hrs total per day as spending 16 hrs straight being miserable and unproductive.
     
  5. Depending on the “value” of your book, as assigned by the publisher, you might get to do a signing circuit. This can be either good or bad, depending on the schedule and whether you can afford to take the time off. Make sure you negotiate these sorts of things before you sign a book contract.
     

Ultimately though, if you can handle all the cons, there are the positives of being an author, which include gaining professional respect that can be leveraged into ROI later. What your Return on Investment is will depend on you, what you do, and how you leverage your effort. It could be the opportunity to produce “premium content” marketed online, such as ebooks, books on demand, and podcasts or video workshops packaged on DVD. This is where being an author in this Internet Age can be lucrative. 

Read the rest of the post on Freelance Folder.

The Evolving Role Of Agents

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This post, from Mike Shatzkin, originally appeared on his The Idea Logical Blog on 6/29/09.

Because of a couple of panels I spoke on last spring and because of the development of FiledBy, I have had more and more conversations lately with agents. They are part of the General Trade Publishing ecosystem. So their lives are getting more difficult and more complicated, like everybody else’s in Book Valley.

The agents’ concern is frequently expressed as “what do I tell my authors?”  Publishers are increasingly insistent that a prospective author have an internet platform to build on before they sign a book. Editors always wanted credentials to back up a writer’s authority on any subject; now they’d like to see that the writer has a following on that subject as well.

But agents are also concerned about themselves. The two most innovative imprint initiatives in recent memory — Bob Miller’s HarperStudio inside HarperCollins and Roger Cooper’s Vanguard inside Perseus — are built on the idea of reducing risk, paying the author a lower advance. Yes, they also promise a higher reward (higher royalty), but experienced agents know most books don’t earn anything beyond the advance.

Miller and Cooper are smart guys and it could well be that their imprints will have a higher percentage of earnouts than most. But, as smart guys, they wouldn’t be willing to pay more on the high side if they didn’t believe they were saving at least that much on the risk side.

The advance pool is probably shrinking. John Sargent, Macmillan’s CEO, said as much at a gathering of agents a couple of months ago when he explained that the de-leveraging that is taking place throughout the economy is also taking place in publishing. Big houses just won’t have the cash available to them that they used to, and that means less money for advances, less money for printing, and less money for promoting.

But in addition to shrinking, publishing advances are taking on much more of a power law configuration, with concentration at the top and a long tail of books getting less and less (and extended by mushrooming self-publishing where the “advance” is actually negative; it’s a cost!)

This is already having an effect. I have heard from people who know that larger agencies are now shopping among the smaller ones to buy them out. It takes more agents working to pay the same rent than it used to. And the smaller agents are finding it harder and harder to make a living so they’re ready to sell out a bit of their upside to get some stability. The small number of agents that have clients at the power end of a power law distribution are doing great; those who have traditionally made a living on making lots of second level deals are really suffering.

Compounding the problem for agents is the changing nature of publishing opportunity. While the sales and royalty potential of the book through the publisher is declining, other opportunities are opening up. There is a multiplicity of ebook channels that in the aggregate do not replace the revenue that print used to provide and doesn’t anymore. Chunks of books and material too short to be published as a book can be sold through them. Agents have for years been trying to split off audio rights to sell to Audible or Brilliance or Tantor Media. The opportunity to sell content to web sites seems to be emerging. But all of these deals require conceiving, pitching, closing, negotiating, and contract reviewing. For fifteen percent of what?

Read the rest of the post on The Idea Logical Blog.

Internet Defamation, Author Platform And You

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Building and growing your author platform requires you to be very active and vocal online, and this opens the door to two outcomes you will want to avoid: being guilty of online defamation and libel yourself, or being the victim of someone else’s online defamation and libel. Most people seem to think that anything published on a website or blog is automatically classified as opinion, and is therefore protected free speech. They’re wrong. Bloggers have been hit with millions of dollars’ worth of libel judgments, and there are entire legal practices specializing in internet defamation.

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What Constitutes Libel?
I’ll open with the usual disclaimer: I am not an attorney and nothing in this article should be construed as legal advice. I can sure quote the heck out of people who are attorneys and legal experts, though. Nolo Press, the US’s oldest and most respected provider of legal information for consumers and small businesses, defines libel as, “An untruthful statement about a person, published in writing or through broadcast media, that injures the person’s reputation or standing in the community.”
 
For those of you living across the pond, Website-Law.co.uk has this to say about defamation and libel:
 
Defamation is all about reputation, and in particular about statements which damage others’ reputations. The English courts have not settled upon a single test for determining whether a statement is defamatory. Examples of the formulations used to define a "defamatory imputation" include:
 

  • an imputation which is likely to lower a person in the estimation of right-thinking people;

  • an imputation which injures a person’s reputation by exposing him to hatred, contempt or ridicule;

  • an imputation which tends to make a person be shunned or avoided.  

The law of libel is concerned with defamatory writings; whereas the law of slander is concerned with defamatory speech. There are some differences in the laws relating to slander and libel…defamatory statements on a website will be libelous rather than slanderous…
 
So any online statements you make, or which are made about you, fitting the above criteria are in violation of U.S. and U.K. law and subject to prosecution. Most Western countries have defamation and libel laws that read similarly, but as you’ll see later in this article, the defamer’s country of residence need not be a barrier to the victim in pursuing a charge of libel.
 
What Doesn’t Constitute Libel?
Bear in mind, not every negative or potentially damaging statement made online or in print constitutes defamation in the legal sense. The first and best defense against a claim of defamation is simply that the statement in question is true. The next go-to defense is often that the statement in question is a statement of opinion, because in most cases such statements are generally protected free speech (see next section for information on the exceptions). For example, imagine Johnny Author, the author of a book about business ethics, has a criminal record for fraud and someone shares this information online or in print. It’ll certainly injure his reputation and standing in the community, but it’s not defamation because it’s true. Now, suppose he was tried for fraud but found innocent of all charges.
 
Web Troll A blogs, “Anyone who trusts anything Johnny Author says is a fool; everyone knows he was arrested for fraud last year.”
 
Web Troll B blogs, “Johnny Author is a liar and a fraud.”
 
Web Troll A’s statement probably has the most potential to do damage, but surprisingly, Web Troll B’s statement is the one of these two that more clearly qualifies as libel because it’s the only one making “an untruthful statement” about Johnny Author. Web Troll A’s remarks are a mixture of opinion and fact.
 
How Not To Be Guilty Of Libel Or Internet Defamation
The easiest remedy is prevention: don’t publish nasty comments about other people on your website or blog. Even if the things you’re saying are true, sharing them only makes you look like a mudslinger and a gossip—hardly the sort of person with whom your peers or people in the publishing industry will want to associate. If you have a legitimate reason for making negative remarks about some person, to blog about a specific issue related to that person for example, then don’t refer to that person by name and leave out identifying details.
 
Couching your statements in explicit qualifiers like, “In my opinion,” “If you asked me I’d say,” and “It seems to me that,” etc., may strengthen your defense if you get hauled into court, but even a statement explicitly labeled as opinion can be legally actionable as libel if the court concludes any reasonable person reading the statement would interpret it as asserting statements of verifiable fact, or as implying that facts exist to support the defamatory statement. Only an attorney versed in internet defamation can offer an opinion as to whether or not your online statements would be likely to pass this test.
 
Also, none of these cautionary measures will grant you absolute immunity from a charge of libel or internet defamation here in the U.S., where anyone can attempt to sue anyone for anything, so why not make your life safer and easier by just avoiding such statements altogether?
 
My Own Internet Defamation Story
I was prompted to write this article after being subjected to internet defamation. It hadn’t previously occurred to me that internet defamation is an author platform issue. As damaging as it can be, it’s something most authors haven’t thought about and would have no idea how to deal with.
 
At first glance it would seem my case was hopeless. The defamer posts under a pseudonym, lives in another country, and posted the defamatory statements on his/her own site. Despite all these obstacles I succeeded in getting the defamatory material removed or blocked from public view, and so can you.
 
When You’ve Been Defamed Online
If you believe you’ve been defamed online, you need to ask yourself:
 
  1. Is the offending material really libel, not statements of fact or non-actionable opinion?
  2. Is the offending material likely to be seen by large numbers of people?
  3. Is the offending material truly likely to damage your reputation?
It’s not usually worth taking action to get the defamatory material removed unless the answer to all three of these questions is a resounding YES, and the defamatory remarks are being made in reference to you under your legal name, pen name, or business name. Defaming remarks being made about your online alias aren’t usually worth fighting unless your online alias is clearly linked with your legal name, pen name or business name (i.e., in a user profile, on your own site, Twitter profile, etc.)
 
Questions #1 and #3 can only be answered by you (possibly with the input of an attorney, in the case of #1), but you can get the answer to #2 using some free, online tools. Run the URL of the website—not the specific page, but the main website URL—where the defamatory material is posted through these two tools to view traffic statistics and other data about the site:
 
Even if you’re not absolutely certain the defamatory statement(s) will pass the ‘actionable opinion’ test, if you feel very strongly that your reputation among your peers, readers and/or the publishing community is being damaged, it’s still probably worthwhile to take action to the extent you can do so without getting an attorney involved. Most people would rather take simple steps to make a problem go away on their own than risk legal action, so the threat of that risk can often get results.
 
Chain Chain Chain, Chain of Legal Liability
Let’s say you’ve decided to take action. If you ask the defamer to remove the objectionable material directly, your request isn’t likely to be honored and will most likely generate more online abuse and exposure. However, that isn’t the end of the story. Even if the defamer posts under a pseudonym, lives in a foreign country, or is defaming you on his or her own site, so long as the company that hosts the site is based in a country with libel laws, you’re still in business.
 
The defamer is just one of the people in the chain of legal liability for internet defamation, and certain others in the chain are usually easier for you to get to—and have a lot more to lose. The chain consists of every person or company involved in the creation, publication and presentation of the offending material. This group may include:
 
  1. Discussion group administrator
  2. Site administrator
  3. Site editor
  4. Site owner
  5. Blog or Site platform/software provider
  6. Content aggregator
  7. Site hosting company
You’ll probably find you’re wasting your time lodging a complaint with parties #1 – #4, even if the site or discussion board in question has specific prohibitions against defamation in its Terms of Use (ToU) or Acceptable Use Policy (AUP). All of these people are usually ignorant of the law, and will tend to dismiss your complaint. Worse, if any of them are pals with the defamer, your complaint will likely backfire.
 
There are certain legal protections that tend to insulate #5 and #6 from most claims relating to the objectionable or illegal use of their services by individuals, so these are also usually dead ends. And this brings us to #7: the hosting company.

(continued, next page; read on to learn how to get defamatory statements & reviews removed) 

Twitter Strategy To Increase Targeted Traffic

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This post, from Chris Al-Aswad, originally appeared on his My Corporate Blogger site on 5/7/09.

I’ll admit it took me awhile to fully comprehend the madness behind Twitter. But nothing is ever revealed right away in life and so it was with Twitter. In this post I will talk about a few essential Twitter tools to build a Twitter following, and my new favorite social media strategy to gain targeted traffic.

I have about eleven websites and blogs on the Web. My daily routine is juggling those sites, adding content to them, fulfilling my clients’ needs, and of course, finding new ways to direct traffic to my sites.  MyCorporateBlogger.com, what you’re reading right now, is actually one of my newest blogs and it is also my professional blog, where my clients can find me and learn what I’m up to.

If you want to dramatically increase targeted traffic to your website, here is what you will need. Think of it like a recipe:

  1. a blog
  2. a twitter account

In addition, you will be using these tools and services:

  1. Twollo
  2. TweetDeck or Hoot Suite
  3. Twitter Button
  4. TwitThis Button
  5. Huitter/Mutuality

Twitter Strategy to Increase Targeted Traffic

Step One:  The Basics, a blog and a twitter account

The first thing you will need to do is set up a twitter account.  When you choose your username, try to pick the same words of your site URL or organization.  Think keywords–something instantly recognizable.  On the twitter account I just set up for this blog, I use “mycorporateblog”.

The most optimal SEO strategy is to create a Twitter account for your business or your website rather than a personal account.  This is because your Twitter page has a small place to put your website URL and a short description.  Your Twitter page will therefore represent your website.  Focus on your site versus “you” the person.  But make sure you upload a picture of yourself.

These are the basics.

Next you will need a blog which you probably already have.  If you have a business website but no blog, then start a blog.  Why?  Because a blog is dynamic while a website is static.  User-generated content is what creates traffic.

Step Two:  How to use Twollo.com

There are a number of auto-follow Twitter tools on the Web.  These tools enable you to automatically follow people.  But remember, your goal is not simply to increase your followers.  What you want is targeted followers, followers interested in what you’re interested in, followers who belong to your niche.

For example, one twitter tool called TweepMe.com charges 12 bucks a year to increase your followers.  It is not a targeted traffic tool, however, and will do you little good.

I recommend Twollo.com.  On this service, you add the keywords you’re interested in and the tool searches conversations in which these keywords appear.  You tell the app to follow 10, 20, 30, 40, 100, 200, 500, or unlimited amounts of people who are using the keyword you have chosen.  You can add as many different keywords as you want.

But wait?  You’re following them; they’re not following you.  Correct, but about half of those people will follow you.

I also suggest paying the 7 bucks to give you priority in the system for one month.  This means the system will process your requests faster and ultimately you’ll gain more traffic to your Twitter page.

The traffic comes to your Twitter page, but your website URL is right there.  If people are interested in what you’re interested in (i.e. keywords), then they will click on the link to your site.

Step Three: Use TweetDeck or even better HootSuite

The phenomenon of Twitter is not going anywhere but up.  Twitter is the next Google mainly because of the possibilities in real-time search.  It will revolutionize communication and we’re yet to see what that will look like.  We just need to learn which tools will make that communication worthwhile.

It’s best to be as personal as possible and not to simply automate your Tweets.  Here is a great article from PC World  which I’ll quote:

If you’ve got a blog that’s connected to your business, you can use a service such as TwitterFeed to directly channel your new blog posts into Twitter posts. Sounds nifty, doesn’t it?

Well, don’t do it. Your business’s primary Twitter feed ought to be hand-fed. If you publish a flood of impersonal links, your Twitter account will just seem like a faceless promotion machine. And that’s not any way to engage people on Twitter. Link to the very best stuff on your blog, as well as relevant stuff you see elsewhere on the web, and also post items that don’t contain links at all. (Don’t forget to use a URL-shortening service such as tinyurl, is.gd, or xrl.us for your links.)

Rather than use automated feed, engage!  TweetDeck is a personal browser to connect and converse with your contacts across Twitter.  It allows you to see exactly who is sending you messages and simplifies the complex rhythm that is Twitter.  Twitter can be very overwhelming; an advanced tool such as TweetDeck is very worthwhile.

If you want to engage on Twitter and only have one Twitter account, then I recommend Tweet Deck.  If you have multiple accounts, however, use HootSuite.  HootSuite is my personal favorite because you can toggle between accounts.  For clients who are running multiple business websites, this is an ideal platform

 

Read the rest of the post, which includes Steps 4-6 and the author’s results, on My Corporate Blogger.

Internet Defamation, Author Platform And You, Part 2

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(Continued from part one. As in part one, nothing herein should be construed as legal advice.)

Gather Documentation
First things first: take screenshots, create pdfs, or save offline copies of the web pages where the libel occurred. Be sure to note the URLs and bookmark them; you’ll need to share these with others later. Also retain copies of any emails, phone calls, faxes, instant messages, or other communications you send or receive pertaining to the matter going forward.
 
Identify The Site Hosting Company
Go to the Network Solutions WHOIS Search page and enter the domain name of the site where the defamatory material appears. For example, if you were investigating Google, you’d enter “google.com”. The WHOIS record will show in whose name the domain is registered, and will also list the Domain Name Servers (DNS) on which the site is hosted. The DNS entries will follow this format:
 
[server ID].[host company name].com
 
Now that you know the host company name, go to their website by typing www.[host company name].com into your browser. If that doesn’t get you to their site, do a Google search on the company name to find it.
 
Hosting Company Terms of Use / Acceptable Use Policy
Once on the hosting company’s site, look up their ToU/AUP. You may have to hunt around a bit to find it, and may have to click a link to a page where the company’s hosting services are being offered for sale, but the document you need will definitely be somewhere on that site. Find the paragraph in it which specifically prohibits defamation, libel, or ‘any other illegal activity’, which should read something like this.
 
[must not] encourage, allow or participate in any form of illegal or unsuitable activity, including but not restricted to the exchange of threatening, obscene or offensive messages, spreading computer viruses, breach of copyright and/or proprietary rights or publishing defamatory material;
 
If the document is very lengthy, you can use your browser’s Find > On This Page option to speed up your search. When you find the paragraph, make a note of the paragraph number or letter and save the entire document as a pdf, screenshot file, or offline web page for later reference. Even if you don’t find the paragraph, the fact that the host company operates in a country with libel laws gives you ammunition to proceed.
 
Put The Hosting Company On Notice
Click the host company’s ‘Contact Us’ link and look for the ‘Abuse’ department or email address. Some companies take abuse so seriously that they provide a telephone hotline.
 
Use the provided email address or phone number to report the incident(s). If you begin with a phone call, follow up with an email to create an electronic paper trail. You can follow this basic format, customized with your details:
 
Subject: Your Client In Violation Of Your [ToU or AUP]
 
Dear [Hosting Company Name] Representative:
Your client is using a website hosted on your server to make libelous statements about [me/my work/my business]. Your client’s statements are illegal and in violation of your own [ToU/AUP], [provide paragraph number or letter]. In allowing your client to utilize your hosting service for such use you may be held liable as the publisher of the libelous statements if you are made aware of them and fail to take action to remove them. Here are links to the offending content:
 
[provide links]
 
I am taking this very seriously, and if I do not receive notice that you are taking action to remove the offending material I will pursue legal action against your company in the matter.
 
–          [your name]
–          [your contact info]
 
School The Hosting Company
You may luck out and score a win with your first contact, but it’s more likely that the person on the receiving end will be ignorant of the law and respond with some boilerplate message about protecting the company’s clients’ right to free speech. So, you’ll need to take him to school. Respond with an email patterned after this one (including links):
 
You seem to believe your client’s defamatory material is protected free speech, but you are mistaken.
 
ACCORDING TO NPR’S "ON THE MEDIA": "The Media Law Resource Center, which tracks these cases, reports that there’s been over $16 million in [libel] judgments against bloggers."
 
ACCORDING TO ATTORNEY SEAN EGAN, OF LAWFIRM BATES, WELLS AND BRAITHWAITE: "The law of defamation prohibits defamatory statements being made and defendants may include the original author, a person publishing or editing the statement. Libel is making defamatory statements in writing. In principle therefore whoever hosts a webpage will be liable for any defamatory statement and will be considered to have published the statement."
 
[Host company name] is the publisher of the defamatory and libelous statements being made by your client on [his/her] site, and your company became complicit in the libel from the moment your company was made aware of the offending material and did not act to remove it or have it removed.
 
[If you found a paragraph prohibiting defamation, libel or other illegal activity in the host’s ToU/AUP, include the following paragraph as well:]
 
[Furthermore, I am advised that if you refuse to enforce your [ToA/AUP] in this instance, given all the documentation of that fact, you are establishing a precedent which any of your other clients may use to prevent you from enforcing said [ToU/AUP] in the event any of those clients violate your terms or policies. Selective enforcement is typically deemed no enforcement at all by the courts.]
 
Please provide your legal counsel’s full name, address, phone number, fax and email so I will know where to direct a Cease and Desist letter.
 
–          [your name]
–          [your contact info]
 
 
In the great majority of cases this second contact will spur the host company to action, if for no other reason than the fact that they must pay their legal counsel his or her usual hourly rate just to read your Cease and Desist letter and reply to it—even if the reply is nothing more than a legal-ese version of, “Get lost, we’re not doing jack.” Allowing a C&D letter to get through to their attorney also puts the attorney on notice that the company is potentially in legal trouble, and in publicly-held companies this sets a chain of notification requirements in motion: senior management must be notified immediately, followed by board members and shareholders if the matter isn’t resolved quickly.
 
It’s a whole lot cheaper and easier for the host company’s Abuse department to send a notice to their client advising him or her of the ToU/AUP violation and asking the client to remove the offending material on pain of having his or her site shut down with no refund of hosting fees. It also keeps the Abuse department manager from getting chewed out by the higher-ups.
 
The Cease And Desist Letter
If the second contact doesn’t work, your next step is to obtain a Cease and Desist (C&D) letter from an attorney and send it to the host company’s lawyer. If you Google “internet defamation” you should be able to find plenty of attorneys who specialize in these matters, and the letter should only cost you around US$100. While that’s a considerable chunk of change, it may just be worth it if the libel is hurting your sales, your standing as an author, your reputation among your peers or your reputation within the publishing industry.
 
Many communities and colleges with a law school sponsor low-cost legal clinics, so those are other avenues to try if you feel the libel is very serious but you can’t afford to hire an attorney at regular rates. Contact your local city hall, community center or universities to inquire about available low-cost legal clinics.
 
A Third Act Plot Twist For U.S.-Based Hosting Companies
Here’s where things get a little more interesting for defamation victims dealing with U.S.-based hosting companies. Here, in addition to charges of defamation, you can charge misappropriation of your name, likeness or trade name for profit, intentional interference with economic relations, and more. This sample C&D letter from the Chilling Effects website includes several charges. Your C&D letter should include as many charges as can reasonably be applied, per the opinion of the attorney preparing the letter.
 
A Common U.S. Defense Tactic: The Digital Millenium Copyright Act
Attorneys for U.S.-based software companies, internet service providers, hosting companies and similar are used to summarily rejecting any defamation claims levied against their clients’ end-users on the basis that their client is protected by the Digital Millenium Copyright Act; Google it if you want to know the particulars of that piece of legislation. In a nutshell, it’s intended to protect those providers from the illegal actions of people who use their software or services. In most cases it’s a more or less bulletproof defense. Does this mean our hero (you) is ruined? Not necessarily.
 
If the plaintiff can show that the provider has access to edit, block or delete its clients’ content, and has previously done so for any reason, the provider will have a hard time proving it does not act as the publisher of its clients’ content. Nevertheless, this can be tough to prove and therefore more likely to result in a legal battle than a speedy, out-of-court resolution.
 
Misappropriation: The Charge Most Likely To Get Fast Results In The U.S.
A charge of misappropriation of a person’s name, likeness or trade name for profit isn’t so easily dodged, and violation of this U.S. law is readily apparent to anyone viewing the pages with the defamatory material. If the page with defamatory material also contains advertising, or links to buy products being offered for sale by the site, host, blog author, etc., then the page content qualifies as content being used for a commercial (money-making) purpose. See this blog post from Internet Law Attorney Erik Syverson, and this one from Internet Defamation Attorney Adrianos Facchetti for more information, and specifics on how the same concept can be applied to defamatory online reviews.
 
How I Prevailed
In my situation, the defamer’s hosting company is based in the U.S. I put the company on notice with a first email as suggested in this article, which was answered with the expected ‘freedom of speech’ boilerplate. I followed up with the suggested second email, in which I reiterated the defamation charge and also added the bit about the risks of selective enforcement of the company’s ToS/AUP. I was truly prepared to go the full distance to clear my name and protect my reputation, and I made that fact very clear.
 
I can’t say whether it was the defamation schooling, the selective enforcement schooling, or the request for their legal counsel’s contact information that finally got the company to take action, but within 36 hours one of the offending posts was deleted and the other was marked as ‘deleted or locked’. A ‘locked’ post on the site is still visible to registered site members, but the site’s registered membership is a low number so I’m not terribly concerned about it. What mattered to me was having the post removed from public view and Google search results on searches of my name, site names, etc.
 
What About Retaliation?
The sort of person who would attempt to maliciously defame another is not the sort of person to graciously accept censorship. You may find that in winning the first battle, you’ve touched off a war in which the defamer takes to spreading his or her damaging lies about you on other sites.
 
No worries! So long as 1) the site carries advertising, or 2) the site, hosting company or corporate owner of the site is refusing to enforce its own ToU/AUP, or 3) the hosting company or corporate owner of the site is based in the U.S., U.K., or any other country with libel laws, I know how to get defamatory material removed.
 
And now, so do you!
 

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April L. Hamilton is an author and the founder of Publetariat and the Publetariat Vault.

36 – No, Make That 59 – Free eBooks For Authors

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This post, from Holly Lisle, originally appeared on her Juiced On Writing site on 9/17/08. In it, she shared links to 36 free ebooks of interest to authors. While the individual links can still be followed from that original post, Holly has since combined them all, and added some more, in a downloadable ebook of her own and offers it for free on her site.

 

This list has now been superceded by the publication of a free e-book containing 59 Free E-books for New Writers. You59ebooks are welcome to download this e-book. For more details and to download please see The Ultimate Guide to Free E-Books for New Writers.

 

Original Post (October 2008)

Looking around the web, I’ve lately found 36 free ebooks to download for writers. These do not include the seemingly hundreds of free ebooks and articles available on writing or producing eBooks to sell, as I’ve tried to concentrate on creative or other online writing guides. Links are current at this point in time. Let me know if there are any more.

In no particular order –

1. Mugging the Muse by Holly Lisle.
This 209 page eBook incorporates many of the articles and workshops from Holly Lisle’s main writing site, with additional material. It is now available as a free download both in PDF and Exe ebook versions. This is one of my favourites, I must add.

2. The Non-Celebrity’s Guide to Getting a Children’s Book Published
This free eBook is avilable from Write4Kids.com, along with a couple of others.

3. Unleashing the Idea Virus by Seth Godin
Okay, not strictly about writing, but Seth Godin’s publications are some of my all time favourites because they are applicable to any writer’s lifestyle, marketing and creativity. And most are given away quite freely, so take a look around his site. Unleashing the Idea Virus is about word-of-mouth marketing.

4. Assaulting a Writer’s Thinking by Lea Schizas
This eBook is available via Free-ebooks.net, once you’ve registered. In fact, there are 44 results under the Writing and Publishing category at Free-ebooks. However this one has a good rating and is on a general writing subject, whilst most others are more towards ezines and eBooks.

5. Book Writing for Fun and Profit by Brian Scott
From the Bookcatcher site, this 84 page eBook in PDF format contains some information, some advertisements, and some resource links.

6. Improve Your Writing Skills
This is a little Exe eBook downloadable from Mantex.co.uk. It includes some simple grammar discussions, plus chapters on writing strategies, writers block and resources. Although dated 2002, the eBook itself is a good representation of putting together an exe eBook with a good format, working links to pages, and small relevant advertising to the side.

7. Legendfire’s Writers Guide V2
The Legendfires online creative writing community has published version 2 of its writing guide in March 2008, which provides discussion around goals and starters for writing. This 54 page PDF guide is well worth downloading if you are into creative writing.

8. On Creative Writing by Linda A Lavid.
This ebook is found on the Legendfire website also, and comes in 48 pages PDF format.

9. and 10. Blogbash and Blogging for Profits
Both of these ebooks are free to download, on the specific subjects of blogging. Blogbash came about after an event on the Chitika blog and interviews 30 successful bloggers. Blogging for Profits is written by Yaro Starak who runs the successful Blog Mastermind ecourses. Both give some excellent principles for writing for the blog platform. Both are free.

11. Manage Your Writing by Kenneth W. Davis
This is a free download via the Scribd website, where you will find other writing themed books as photocopies / scans or uploaded PDFs or text files from some authors. This eBook concentrates on Business Writing.

The Oxford Essential Guide to English, a scanned edition is also currently available from Scribd, as are other dictionaries and references.

12. Creative Freelancing
A free ebook available from writingcareer.com.

13. Make Your Words Sell
This large and free ebook by SiteSell.com’s Ken Evoy with Joe Robson. At 250 pages, it’s an excellent reference for copywriters, or making your words work on the internet. While you’re there, check out the other free large ebooks in PDF format – Make Your Content Presell, and Make Your Knowledge Sell (the last being on information products or eBooks).

14. How to Write a Great Query Letter by Noah Lukeman
This ebook is relatively famous out there on the internet, and has been given back as a gift to the writing community by the author. On the same page you will now also find the free download eBook, How to Land a Literary Agent. The How to Write a Great Query Letter is available only via a free download at amazon.com however. Which means there is a difficulty from my own perspective as I’m a UK amazon customer, and the U.S. Amazon places restrictions based on geography on digital downloads.

15. Writing Success Secrets by Shaun Fawcett
A general eBook of 89 pages on everyday writing – letter writing or writing essays or papers.

16, 17 and 18. Tropes and Schemes, Begin Writing Fiction and Dangers for Fiction Writers
These three short eBooks (around 35 pages each) by Shruti Chandra Gupta are available as free downloads at the LiteraryZone blog. These are a compilation of the content on the website, where you can continue to read this content if you don’t want to download the eBooks.

Read the rest of the post on Juiced On Writing.

Publishers: About To Make All The Same Mistakes As The Music Biz

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This piece, from Susan Piver, originally appeared on her website on 2/11/09.

Hello book publishers. You’re starting to scare me.

I work in publishing but was a record label executive from 1990-2001 and am fascinated by parallels between the two industries. When it comes to the digitization of product and attempts to master/mangle the phenomenon of social media, the publishing business is where the music business was about 10 years ago. And although publishing probably sets its collective IQ (not to mention good manners) as superior to the music business, I can’t find evidence that their reactions to industry sea change are substantially different.

While attending this week’s O’Reilly’s Tools of Change in Publishing conference, I heard a lot of this:

There is still time to change course and we’ve got to do something now—but we don’t know what.

In the meantime, let’s co-opt whatever new trends we see out there by assigning some low-level marketing person to troll Twitter or hiring a social media consultant.

Please, please don’t let us end up like the record business.

If there’s anything to be learned from the recent past, it’s that none of these thoughts are worth pursuing. The “somebody do something” mentality duplicates the kind of hoping-for-the-best attitude espoused by long-time executives in music who simply could not or would not question the viability of the professional cocoons they’d built for themselves. And who can blame them—corporate mega structures are schooled in consolidation as the primary means of growth, not fleet-footed, shape-shifting responsiveness to change. But now we’re in a world where getting bigger is not the answer, getting smaller is.

The question I hoped would be addressed at the conference was: How will publishing avoid being trapped by its own environment? But it never was. Instead, I noticed a lot of talk of waiting and seeing how things are going to work out before making any earth-shaking, world-class responses to a world that has already changed.

At the conference, I was excited for a keynote aimed at comparing the music and publishing industries. Although entertaining, it lacked vision. The speaker talked about how only wimps fear the freedoms of the digital marketplace and attempt to control intellectual property rights and that at least we’re not going to start arresting people like those thugs over at the RIAA. I was disappointed not to hear a more sophisticated dissection, beginning with debunking the idea that digital downloads killed the music business, or could kill publishing.

Downloads did not kill the music business. Shortsightedness and turf-protection on the part of music business executives did. Piracy and changing distribution schema will not kill the publishing industry. Shortsighted infrastructure-protection on the part of publishing houses will.

Read the rest of the post on Susan Piver’s site.

The Five Golden Rules Of Publicity For Authors

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This post, from Katherine (Kat) Smith, originally appeared on WritersWrite.

The hard work, you think, is over. You’ve labored into many late nights writing your book, struggled to literally make sure every "i" is dotted and every "t" crossed. Your book — your baby — is all grown up now; completed and ready to set the world on fire.

Then, the cold, hard truth slaps you in the face like a winter chill. Like the proverbial tree falling in the woods with no one around, your book isn’t going to make a sound — or even be known about by anyone — unless you get the word out. You could hire a publicist, but the often high-costs can be prohibitive, and perhaps most of your "book money" went to editing, design, layout and printing.

What to do?

Relax, set your ego aside, and set up a plan and course of action. Book promotion isn’t rocket science; but it does involve a lot of hard work, persistence and some added touches of creativity. Here are some basic yet invaluable pointers for the bold author who has decided to go it alone in the wild world of book promotion.

Change positions with the media

The essence of book promotion is the utilization of the media to get the word out to the public about your book. Sure, producers, editors and journalists can be a gruff bunch, but the reality is they are literally swamped with books and press releases every day.

What you need to do is put yourself in the shoes of the media. If you were a feature editor at a paper or a producer of a talk show, what would interest you? Too often, amateur publicists simply believe that getting a book or press release into the right person’s hands will do the trick. WRONG. You’ve got to think of an angle, hook, slant — whatever you want to call it — that will interest the right people.

Listen to talk radio. Watch TV talk shows. Read the lifestyle and feature sections of newspapers. Read magazines. See what makes it; then create a press release that will make it happen for you.

Remember: No one ever interviews a book

Getting on radio and TV talk shows is exciting, fun and can really jumpstart book sales. But if you think your book will get you on the air by itself, you’re probably wrong. No one interviews a book … they interview PEOPLE. Of course, the topic your book may be gets the attention of producers, but they need and want people who can be informative, entertaining and articulate. People make a show … not books.

When you’re promoting a book, you’re also promoting yourself. Remember this, practice this, and go for it!
 

Read the rest of the post on WritersWrite.