Think

Opinion pieces offering commentary on various aspects of book culture, publishing and self-publishing.

Editor’s Desk – A Cover Is Worth 1,000 Words. 10 Tips To Make Your eBook Cover Awesome.

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Please note that while this article is targeting eBooks, there are still some great tips for print covers. However, print covers are more complicated and will be addressed in a future post.

You are not suppose to judge a book by it’s cover, but that is exactly what people do. In the post Categories, keywords, Amazon, and you. How to get the most out of your choices  I showed you how to use categories and keywords to help your book rank higher in Amazon’s search. Now that your book is showing up in front of more potential buyers, you need to make sure you grab their attention. How? With an awesome cover.

You need awesome, because there are a lot of other books competing with yours. You have about 6 seconds to grab potential customer’s attention, and let them know that their next great read is your book.

There is a lot of information that goes into a great cover: color theory, font choices, layout flow, and more. If you can, you should hire a professional. If you can’t hire a professional, don’t use MS Word to create your cover. Use a better program such as Canva, which is free, and will at least give you an option of professional layouts. Either way the tips below will help you.

  1. Goodreads ScreenshotSize – A good cover will look great even in thumbnail size. Readers should still be able to get the gist of the book and at minimum be able to read the title. A lot of dedicated eReaders are in grayscale, so make sure you check that your cover works for them.  The ideal height/width ratio is  8:5 (1.6). See the screen capture of the recent book list I got from Goodreads on the right for some examples.
  2. KISS (Keep it simple silly) –  Simple is better, especially if you are designing your own cover. A simple design sizes better and is easier to convey information to the reader. This doesn’t mean your cover needs to be boring, far from it. A simple design can be very powerful. Covers with more details need careful handling, and are best managed by a professional. You don’t want to overpower your reader or loose the essence of your story with too many details.
  3. Title – Make it stand out. This means good space around the title, a readable font, and a good size.If you have a long title, take the best part and make it the focus. Have the less important parts be, well, less important. For example:
    THE AMAZING TRUE STORY OF BELA LUGOSI AND HIS WONDER RACING LLAMAS: PART ONE – BELA LUGOSI IS ALMOST KILLED AS A CHILD BY A RUNAWAY RACING LLAMA (PART 1 IN THE RACING LLAMAS SERIES!)

    It is a bit much for a cover. The eye is overwhelmed. Try instead:

    The Amazing True Story Of Bela Lugosi
    And His Wonder Racing Llamas
    Part One –  Bela Lugosi Is Almost Killed As A Child By A Runaway Racing Llama
    (Part 1 In The Racing Llamas Series!)

    The bold part is still long, but it gets the title and general story across. The rest can be moved to other areas of the cover, breaking up the text into nice bite size bits. Notice the natural breaks, which happen where there is punctuation. Each section can stand on it’s own.

  4. Story – Does your cover convey a general sense of what your story is about and the genre? Your graphics should match the mood and fit your story. If your story is a regency romance then having a woman on the cover in a modern slip dress doesn’t fit, no matter how breathless and heaving her bosoms are.
  5. Invest – Resist the temptation to be cheap. It is OK to want the best value for your dollar, but I guarantee I can spot your MS Word clip-art a mile away and so can potential readers. If you go to a site where you can hire someone cheaply, be aware that they are probably working off a template. Your cover will look a lot like a bunch of other ones. There are places where you can get good images or artwork for a decent price. A true professional will take time to understand your story and make the cover match.
  6. Image Effects – There are a lot of fun tools you can play with to create rainbow gradients, text outlines, and embossing effects. Go nuts and have fun! Then delete all the effects and put those tools away.
  7. Color – Most website’s backgrounds are white. So if your background color is white, you will fade away. Even using a few shades different from white will make a big difference. Don’t use a big black frame to fix this.
    Your cover will look better if you use color judiciously. This doesn’t mean that you have to use boring colors. If you use colors that are harmonious with each through color theory, it will be more pleasing to the reader’s eye. There are tools that will help you pick out a palette of colors that looks good together. I like the one at Adobe. It is free.
  8. Fonts – Fonts are like spices. A few mixed together is yummy, too many a disaster. Pick two or at most three that look good together and stay with them. Google Fonts are free and offer a wide variety of choices. Make sure you pick one that matches the mood of your story, but is not so fancy it can’t be read. If you have one “decorative” font, pick a simpler one to match. Avoid Comic Sans or Papyrus like the plague. No seriously, don’t use them – ever.
  9. http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41MLd2DZYwL._SX312_BO1,204,203,200_.jpgFlow – The eyes can only look at so many things at once. Your layout should be set up to guide the reader to the main points you want to convey. You can use position, size of elements, and even your graphics to lead the your reader down the path that communicates your story.
    Symbolism can be very powerful. Instead of using a literal part of your story as the cover, use symbols to convey the main point or mood. This attracts your reader but can also leave a little mystery to the reader. No matter how you feel about the story, The Twilight books by Stephenie Meyer, have wonderful covers that use symbolism in a very powerful way.
  10. Review – Have someone you trust look at your cover. Someone who will tell you the truth. Then get a second opinion. Get lots of opinions, lots of eyes, to look at your cover fresh. Be open to feedback, but don’t start changing everything based on what individual people say. If you can manage it, get a couple of different covers and hold a contest where people can vote on the best.
    Look for unintended consequences. I recently came across a wonderful story, very well written about the power of family and a group of sisters. The cover was well done with one exception. The graphic was a pair of shoes, positioned on the top, with the title below. They symbolized the need to see other people’s perspective. Very nice. Except, they still had legs in them. Dangling from the top, with no body. Like one of the sisters made the mistake of using the Comic Sans font and couldn’t face the consequences any more. How more powerful would it have been to just have a pair of shoes, waiting to be stepped into, so that the reader could figuratively walk in the characters footsteps?

Brainstorm what emotion, concept, key thing about your book you want to get across to your readers. Take a look at the screenshot above from Goodreads. What books stand out to you and why? Go to Amazon and do a search on your genre and ask the same questions. While you can’t copy another person’s cover you can see what elements seem to work for them and apply those elements to get your own awesome cover. A great cover is the next step in connecting with your ideal reader.

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If you liked this article, please share. If you have suggestions for further articles, articles you would like to submit, or just general comments, please contact me at paula@publetariat.com or leave a message below.

Meet your ideal reader: Who they are and why you need them.

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Your ideal reader represents the core person who will buy your book. While you want to sell as many books as possible, getting your title in front of the people who will actually read and buy your story is the real goal. So sitting down and setting up an ideal reader profile or profiles can help you in many ways. Such greats as Stephen King use them and he talks about using ideal readers in his book On Writing.

By identifying and figuring out who your ideal reader is, you can then focus your story and your marketing to that target audience.  Yes, you should have an ideal reader while you are writing.  A hot sex scene would not do well in a story that is written for a fan of young christian romance. Knowing who you are writing for helps you to keep boundaries, which improves your writing.

Raising Llamas for Profit - Chapter one - Watch out for spit!
Raising Llamas for Profit – Chapter One – Watch out, they spit!

So someone who only likes gritty noir detective stories will not be the right person for your regency bodice ripper romance beach read, nor will someone who is looking to raise llamas for profit. What seems obvious in that example becomes more difficult in real life.  So how do you narrow your ideal reader down.

What is your genre?

The first step is to know what your general genre of book is. You probably already have an idea, but you should still go to Amazon and looked for books that are like yours in terms of content. Scroll down the book details page until you find “Look for Similar Items by Category”. That category is your genre.

You want to balance becoming too specific in your genre search vs too broad. Romance is a perfect example. The romance genre is so broad that it could mean a wide variety of choices. You have everything from dinosaur shifting romance (yes that is a thing), to step brother fantasy (yes still a thing), to innocent sweet valley high romances. But by going down a category level on amazon you can narrow it down. So paranormal romance is better than general romance, but don’t make your focus so narrow that you block readers. If you only focus on velociraptor shifting love stories, your ideal reader pool is going to be pretty small.

Non-fiction vs fiction vs kids

There is a difference with your ideal reader profile depending on if your title is non-fiction, fiction, or kids.

Kids books are more defined by age than genre, at least until you get to young adult. Your ideal reader might be male or female or not be gender based at all. Your ideal reader could also be an adult who is trying to get the child to bed, or to learn how to read.

With non-fiction titles, you are generally looking to solve a problem or focus on a particular subject. How-to books are a good example for solving problems. For example a how-to on setting up a budget is solving a problem. Instead of your ideal reader being someone who needs a budget, try focusing it a little more. So your ideal reader is a small business woman who is trying to manage both her personal and business finances. That would provide a better focus. A biography is a good example of a focus on a subject but is too broad a category. Narrowing your ideal reader down to someone who likes to read about politicians is a good compromise, while narrowing it down to corrupt politicians in New York during the during the 1860s is going too far.

Because fiction encompasses such a large variety of stories, doing your research can really help define who your ideal reader(s) are and help you to stay focused.

Research

Once you find your genre, you can try to google your broad genre and demographics. For example, if my genre is romance then I would google “Romance demographics” and I find the Romance Writers of America Romance Reader Statistics.

You can also go back to Amazon and find the books that are similar to yours. Go down and look at the reviews and the reviewers. You can get a general sense, for example, on how many reviewers are men vs women. Click on the individual profiles for more details. Most of the time there is not a lot more information, but you can see what other books the individual feels passionate about enough to write a review.

Check out the author. Do they have their own author site? If so, go look and see who they are marketing to, and check the comments there. Do they have a Facebook page or Twitter account. Who follows them there? All of this will give you a general idea of who your ideal reader(s) are.

Brainstorming

So now what? Write it down! Compose a couple of sentences on one or a few different ideal reader types. You can make it as simple as writing the demographics down, or even create personas with names.

Are they male or female? How old are they? What is your core story? If you had one minute to talk about your story what would you say to get the gist of your story across? Who would that appeal to?

You don’t need to worry about blocking a reader out if they don’t fit your general demographics. If there is a gentleman who loves Christian romance, he will still find you if you write for the demographics for that genre.

sketched-girl-and-guy-vector-flat-design-elenments_f1IjHgwu_LUsing Your Ideal Reader

In your writing – If your story is about a plucky woman who is in charge of a military campaign in space but studied and applies the theories of Sun Tzu in great detail then you might have a few different ideal readers. They could be sci-fi fans, military fans or even history fans. Address your ideal readers needs. Perhaps you put a quote from “The Art of War”  in every chapter header, provide campaign maps, and have your protagonist get more conquests and less romance.

Targeted marketing purposes – By knowing your ideal reader you can then find out where they are located and can talk directly to them. With our example above, you could start by looking at historical military groups, science fiction fans, or strategy buffs. When you write your copy, you can address their particular needs. This way you are focusing your valuable time and attention on the people most likely to become your fans and buy your book.

Another bonus is that if you decide to find an agent or sign with traditional publisher, they are going to want this information and will be impressed that you already have it figured out.

By finding and addressing reader needs, you improve your writing but also improve your ability to focus your marketing on the people most likely to become your fans and buy your books. We are told that writers should write for themselves, but the real satisfaction is finding a true fan to share your story with. Ideal reader profiles help you to recognize who it is you are writing for and increase the chances of finding your true fans.

10 Writing Lessons I Learned While Creating Self-Editing Success

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Today I am sharing with you a post from The She’s Novel Blog by Kristen Kieffer, who can’t take a bad picture. Kristen shares with us some insights that she gathered while doing research for her next course. Full disclosure Kristen and I have no relationship, I just really liked this article and thought you would too.  While reading the one insight that stood out for me is number 3 – The Importance of Publicizing Your Progress.  I know that I should and it would help me be accountable for big task. Read the article and let me know what you think, or if there was one insight that stood out for you.

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10 Writing Lessons I Learned While Creating Self-Editing Success

Emergency jobHey, friends. Long time, no see.

It’s been just over a year since I launched She’s Novel, and in all that time I don’t think I’ve ever been away from the blog for so long. Three weeks, y’all. How crazy is that? I can’t begin to tell you how much I’ve missed it.

But where have I been? In full-blown creation mode, that’s where!

As many of you know, my first full-length e-course–Self-Editing Success–launched for pre-sale last weekend (hurray!). Since that time, I’ve spent every waking hour creating content for the course.

With 6 modules, over 35 videos, and countless worksheets, I’ve hardly had a moment to spare. But today, I’m back! And so I thought I’d get a bit more personal than usual here on the blog and share with you 10 different writing lessons I learned during the creation of my Self-Editing Success e-course.

You see, I didn’t just take the information in my head and slap it onto a bunch of slides to create the course. I spent months researching different editing topics, analyzing bestselling novels , and chatting it up with you lovely readers to make sure I included everything you need to know in order to revise your manuscript for success.

And along the way, I learned so much about writing for myself. New techniques, truths about the editing process, and mistakes and myths that far too many writers believe. Today, I want to share all of those things with you so we can both continue to grow as writers.

So let’s get started!

In the process of creating Self-Editing Success, I actually learned three new techniques for completing productive edits and holding yourself accountable. Let’s talk about that.

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1. The Two Approaches to Editing

From the planners vs pantsers debate alone, it’s painfully obvious that there is no right way to write a novel. Even if they follow certain patterns, every writer has their own unique process for bringing their stories to life.

One thing that never occurred to me though? That some authors don’t edit their manuscripts linearly!

My experience with editing has always been to start at chapter one and work my way through the entire manuscript, making changes to either the story or the writing itself depending on my current draft. This was a lengthy process of course, often taking me six months or more, but it was always worth it in the end.

But while chatting it up with some writers on Twitter back, I was surprised to learn that not all writers edit in such long drafts. Some choose to focus on a single issue at a time (e.g. fixing plot holes or eradicating flowery language) and jump around to make those edits happen.

Read the full post on The She’s Novel Blog

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If you liked this article, please share. If you have suggestions for further articles, articles you would like to submit, or just general comments, please contact me at paula@publetariat.com or leave a message below.

 

How to Write What You Don’t Know

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So you are writing an article or a book and there is a subject matter that you would really like to add, but you don’t know very much about it and don’t want to come off sounding like a newb. Amy Gustine over on Literaryhub has some great tips on how to research like a pro.  What are your secret hacks for researching?

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How to Write What You Don’t Know

Research conceptFebruary 10, 2016 By Amy Gustine

One day I decided to stop letting fear prevent me from trying to write certain stories, specifically the fear of not knowing things. I didn’t disavow my penchant for realism, or deny the importance of accuracy. Instead, I resolved to find out what I could achieve with research. It began as a dare to myself, and also a kind of surrender to life’s limitations. I can’t always afford the time or money to do on-site research and there are places I wanted to go in my stories—Gaza, 19th-century Poland—that no amount of either would take me to.

I took up the task of researching from afar in a spirit of experimentation and learned that it was like most undertakings—you have to pick two: cheap, good, or fast. You can’t have all three. I always choose good and cheap, which means I’m not fast. Ninety-five percent or more of what I learn doesn’t make it into the story, but because I enjoy learning, and I suspect that everything is tied together, this doesn’t trouble me. It shouldn’t trouble you either, unless you’re in a hurry, and then you better pick a different profession.

To write what you don’t know, try these strategies: 

Read the full post on Literaryhub

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If you liked this article, please share. If you have suggestions for further articles, articles you would like to submit, or just general comments, please contact me at paula@publetariat.com or leave a message below.

 

Stop Making Excuses And Write A Book

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Today’s post is from the Bookbaby Blog, dated January 19, 2016 by Jim Dempsey.  In the post Jim, analyzes the excuses we make for not starting to write your book, or edit it, or in my case finish it. It is a good read, so check it out and let me know what you think in the comments. What is holding you back from doing what you want to to do?

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Stop Making Excuses And Write A Book

The start of a new year is a good time to finally commit the time and energy to write a book. But first, ask yourself one important question to find out if you really have what it takes to be a writer.

When people ask what I do and I say I’m a book editor, they tell me they’d love to write a book some day, once the kids are grown up, when they have more time, or if only they were good enough. Some people have already given up trying. They say, “I suppose if I really wanted to write, I’d have done it by now.”Excuses File Contains Reasons And Scapegoats

But that’s just another excuse. That argument assumes we all fall naturally into what we want to do, when in fact it’s much more natural to find an excuse not to do it.

We all makes excuses. It’s a part of what we do. And the first step to making a commitment to finally writing a book is to recognize the excuses and to stop them getting in the way of your dreams.

Writing is an adventure

Inventing excuses is your mind’s way of protecting you, from keeping you from taking risks or using up too much precious energy. In evolutionary terms, that makes sense, but the excuses your mind invents can also keep you from enjoying some of life’s greatest adventures, of which writing a book is surely one.

Read the full post on Bookbaby Blog

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If you liked this article, please share. If you have suggestions for further articles, articles you would like to submit, or just general comments, please contact me at paula@publetariat.com or leave a message below.

Considering Self-Publishing? You Might Want to Do This First

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On The Write Life, gives his thoughts on the traditional versus self-publishing options for writers and why he thinks authors should try traditional publishing first.  Do you agree with him? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

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Considering Self-Publishing? You Might Want to Do This First

There are different ways to get your work published, but the biggest two options in today’s marketplace are still the following:

Publishing contract

Traditional publishing: You sell your work to a publishing house, like Simon & Schuster or HarperCollins. The publisher typically pays you money up front in the deal, then distributes the book in print and e-book forms.

Self-publishing: This method allows you to publish your work independently, without anyone judging your work. You’re in charge of everything. A common website people do this is through Amazon’s CreateSpace.

I could talk about all the nitty-gritty elements to both publishing options — the pros and cons, the ins and outs — but that would take you hours to read. So instead, I’ll just focus this post on one simple question: If you’re unsure what path to take concerning these two major publishing options, what should you do?

Which publishing method should you try first?

If you are truly on the fence concerning which path to take, you should always try traditional publishing first — period.

I’ll tell you why.

It’s because if you send your work out to agents first but hit walls, you can always self-publish it afterward with nothing lost. Easy peasy. But if you self-publish it first and then seek an agent for it later, you’re setting up a very difficult task.

Let’s say you have a novel. You send it to an agent who is open to submissions. When the agent reviews your query and first pages, they are asking themselves the following: “Can this person write well? Is this an interesting story? Can I sell this?”

An agent will take a long critical look at your writing, and it’s not easy finding a rep who loves your voice and your book.

When an agent reviews a self-published book, it gets more complicated. They’re asking themselves the following: “Can this person write well? Is this an interesting story? Can I sell this? And why does this book deserve a second life via traditional publishing?”

Read the full post on The Write Life

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If you liked this article, please share. If you have suggestions for further articles, articles you would like to submit, or just general comments, please contact me at paula@publetariat.com or leave a message below

Profit Engine: The Author Solutions Markup – from Writer Beware

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Writer Beware is a site you should bookmark! Sponsored by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, Inc., the goal of the site is to shine a bright light on the scams and bad practices that prey on the unwary writer.  Victoria Strauss looks a little deeper into the Author Solutions sale by Penguin and why smart writers might want to avoid them. Originally posted January 15, 2016.

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Profit Engine: The Author Solutions Markup

As most of you already know, Penguin Random House dumped Author Solutions at the end of 2015, selling it to a private equity firm for an undisclosed amount. (“A Penguin Random House Company” has already vanished from Author Solutions’ logo.)

The sale received quite a bit of media coverage, at least some of which acknowledged AS’s troubled reputation–something else that won’t be new to you if you’re a regular reader of this blog.

One of the areas that I and others have often criticized is AS’s huge range of marketing services, which are aggressively pitched to authors who sign up for publishing packages. Most of these services are dubiously useful (email blasts), jawdroppingly expensive (book signings at book fairs), or both (cinema advertising). Basically, they’re the equivalent of liquor at a restaurant: relatively inexpensive to deliver, but extremely profitable because of the enormous markup at which they can be sold. (AS executives have actually admitted, in depositions related to class action lawsuits brought against AS, that selling books is not one of the goals of AS’s marketing services.)

What’s the actual markup, though? How much difference is there between the price for which AS sells a service, and AS’s cost to deliver it?

Here’s an example. One of my readers drew my attention to this recent ad on Craigslist, in which Author Solutions seeks “freelance coverage writers” to “read self-published books and provide detailed, coherent coverage on the work’s potential for film/television/digital adaptation.”

Read the full post on Writer Beware

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If you liked this article, please share. If you have suggestions for further articles, articles you would like to submit, or just general comments, please contact me at paula@publetariat.com or leave a message below

THE E-PUBLISHING REVOLUTION IS DEFINITELY NOT OVER (Regardless of what you’ve heard)

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Today’s offering is in the spirit of why Publetariat was created. Agent Laurie McLean gazes into the future to let us know what to expect on Anne R Allen’s Blog. Too bad she couldn’t give us the US winning Powerball numbers – I would totally share with you. What do you think of her predictions? Let us know in the comments.

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THE E-PUBLISHING REVOLUTION IS DEFINITELY NOT OVER (Regardless of what you’ve heard)

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We’re honored this week to host literary agent Laurie McLean of the Fuse Literary Agency. If you’re looking for an agent, we have great news for you! Although Laurie is not accepting unsolicited submissions, she will accept queries from readers of this blog! Scroll down for more info in Laurie’s bio. And now, here’s Laurie!… Anne 

Agent Laurie McLean, Founding Partner of Fuse Literary, Looks into Her Crystal Ball

Thanks, Anne, for once again sharing your audience with me for my annual predictions of the year ahead in publishing. From the title of this post, you can tell I’m at odds with the notion that the digital publishing revolution is now over, ebooks are slipping in popularity, print is once again king of the world, indie bookstores are back on a steady footing, and adult coloring books are saving the world.

Well, except for that last one. I agree with traditional publishing that adult coloring books are propping up print book sales big time. But as far as the other “facts” go, I say hogwash.

That’s a lot to digest, so let me bullet point these 13 predictions for ease of digestion…and hopefully inspiration…for 2016!

1) Ebook sales are NOT stagnating.

I’ve always been a firm believer that you can make numbers and statistics dance to any beat you play and I believe the Big Five are skewing these numbers with their newly won agency pricing models.

Last year I saw several of my clients’ debut novels come out with an ebook price that was higher than the print book price. Check it out on Amazon. I’m not kidding. That’s part of the “decline” scenario, because honestly who would not buy a hardcover print book if it was cheaper than a digital book. Most people would make that choice.

And because of this, ebook sales from traditional publishers large and small seem to be declining.

Once you add Amazon ebook sales into the calculation, however, it all falls apart. Unfortunately that is not what most reports have done. They only concentrated on traditional retail sales numbers from their usual cast of publishers. So you’re getting fed false numbers. Ebooks are healthy and should continue to be healthy throughout 2016 and beyond. They are here to stay.

Once ebook pricing stabilizes, because while I’m sure the traditional booksellers and publishers are trying to help their physical retail partners (aka bookstores) by increasing print sales, they will see that they went too far and the smart ones will adjust. At least that is my opinion.

2) Physical bookstore sales will continue to decline.

Amazon already sells the vast majority of print and digital books. They are a healthy company. Heck, they signed up 3 million new Prime members at $99 a pop during the third week of December alone!

So I’m betting that they will continue to discount books, support indie authors through KDP Select and Kindle Unlimited, and the local bookstores and chains will simply not be able to keep up.

I’ll talk about Google and Apple as possible white knights a bit later, but for now I’m predicting that Amazon is just going to keep growing and taking market share from bookstores in 2016.

Read the full post on Anne R Allen’s Blog

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If you liked this article, please share. If you have suggestions for further articles, articles you would like to submit, or just general comments, please contact me at paula@publetariat.com or leave a message below

Fantasy World-building Questions By Patricia C. Wrede

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Patricia C. Wrede created this awesome list on the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers Of America website to help writers create a more realistic world for their characters. Who doesn’t want a world with depth and dimension in their story!  I am bookmarking this, as it is a super helpful resource. Thanks Patricia!

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Fantasy Worldbuilding Questions

By Patricia C. Wrede

Throne Fantasy Background

The following list of questions is meant to aid authors of fantasy fiction who are seeking to create believable imaginary settings for their stories. While many of these questions may be helpful or crucial to certain stories, they will not all apply to every story. It is not necessary for an author to answer all, or even any, of the questions in order to start writing, (or to finish writing, either). The idea is simply to provoke people into thinking about the ways their settings and backgrounds hang together … or don’t. If it’s useful, use it. If not, don’t.

Some questions apply to more than one topic, and have been duplicated under more than one heading. This should not be considered as an exhaustive and final list, but as a beginning point from which each individual writer can compile a personal list.

The Questions

Read the full post on Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers Of America

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Anyone else taking the Goodreads 2016 challenge?

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Part of being a good writer is being a good reader. Goodreads is having a challenge, where you pledge how many books you are going to read. I did it last year but forgot to register my books. I am vowing to do better this year, but have kept my goal low since I really want to be able to put some time into Publetariat. If I can read a new book, once a month, and remember to log it, I will be quite happy. There are giveaways as well! Let us know how many books you are planning to read in the comments! We can cheer each other on!

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Want to Read More This Year? Join the 2016 Reading Challenge!

Forget about drinking more water or getting in shape! Our favorite New Year’s resolution is definitely this: Read More Books. And we’re guessing it’s yours, too. Make it easier by creating a reading goal and tracking your progress with the 2016 Reading Challenge on Goodreads!

Will it be one book every other month? Or maybe one book a week? A day? It’s up to you! Your goal can be any size. To get started, just choose the number of books you’d like to read this year.

Not sure what to read next? Don’t worry! Here are a few ways to build your want-to-read list on Goodreads:

– Recommendations: To get recommendations tailored just for you, rate books you’ve already read. The more books you rate, the better your recommendations will be!
– Giveaways: Did you know you can enter book giveaways for a chance to win free books?
– Lists: You can also browse the thousands of lists on Listopia—where you’ll find categories ranging from classic (Best Books of the 21st Century) to niche (Best Alpha Male Alien Meets Human Heroine Romance).
– Goodreads Choice Award winners: Peruse the results of the recently announced 2015 Goodreads Choice Awards, with winners and runners-up in 20 categories!

And it never hurts to have some social support when working toward a goal, so check out the many Goodreads groups that host reading challenges across every topic, theme, and genre imaginable.

1.0 Is the Loneliest Number – (Why your rough draft is lonely)

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This article from Matt Mullenweg, one of the founding developers of WordPress, is more software directed. But the concept is the same for writing. I am not talking about creating an eBook in a day with no editing, but rather to those people who always wished they could write and use “one more thing” as a means of procrastinating actually doing or completing any writing. This hits home for me, and one of the reasons why I took on this blog was to challenge myself away from this type of thinking. Perhaps if we hold hands and take a breath we can both jump forward together?

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1.0 Is the Loneliest Number

Many entrepreneurs idolize Steve Jobs. He’s such a perfectionist, they say. Nothing leaves the doors of 1 Infinite Loop in Cupertino without a polish and finish that makes geeks everywhere drool. No compromise!

I like Apple for the opposite reason: they’re not afraid of getting a rudimentary 1.0 out into the world.

“No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame.” — cmdrtaco, Slashdot.org, 2001, reviewing the first iPod

Now Or Later Keys Shows Delay Deadlines And Urgency

I remember my first 1G iPhone. Like a meal you have to wait for, or a line outside a club, the fact that I stood in line for hours made the first time I swiped to unlock the phone that much sweeter. It felt like I was on Star Trek and this was my magical tricorder… a tricorder that constantly dropped calls on AT&T’s network, had a headphone adapter that didn’t fit any of the hundreds of dollars of headphones I owned, ran no applications, had no copy and paste, and was as slow as molasses.

Now, the crazy thing about that release is when the original iPhone went public, flaws and all, you know that in a secret room somewhere on Apple’s campus they had a working prototype of the 3GS with a faster processor, better battery life, normal headphone jack… a perfect everything. Steve Jobs was probably already carrying around one in his pocket. How painful it must have been to have everyone criticizing them for all the flaws they had already fixed but couldn’t release yet because they were waiting for component prices to come down or for some bugs to be worked out of the app store.

“$400 for an Mp3 Player! I’d call it the Cube 2.0 as it wont sell, and be killed off in a short time… and it’s not really functional. Uuhh Steve, can I have a PDA now?” — elitemacor, macrumors.com, 2001, responding to the original iPod announcement

Or, I wonder, are they really quite zen about the whole thing? There is a dark time in WordPress development history, a lost year. Version 2.0 was released on December 31st, 2005, and version 2.1 came out on January 22nd, 2007. Now just from the dates, you might imagine that perhaps we had some sort of rift in the open source community, that all the volunteers left or that perhaps WordPress just slowed down. In fact it was just the opposite, 2006 was a breakthrough year for WP in many ways: WP was downloaded 1.5 million times that year, and we were starting to get some high-profile blogs switching over. The growing prominence had attracted scores of new developers to the project and we were committing new functionality and fixes faster than we ever had before.

What killed us was “one more thing.” We could have easily done three major releases that year if we had drawn a line in the sand, said “finished,” and shipped the darn thing. The problem is that the longer it’s been since your last release the more pressure and anticipation there is, so you’re more likely to try to slip in just one more thing or a fix that will make a feature really shine. For some projects, this literally goes on forever.

“hey – heres an idea Apple – rather than enter the world of gimmicks and toys, why dont you spend a little more time sorting out your pathetically expensive and crap server line up? or are you really aiming to become a glorified consumer gimmicks firm?” — Pants, macrumors.com, 2001

I imagine prior to the launch of the iPod, or the iPhone, there were teams saying the same thing: the copy + paste guys are *so close* to being ready and we know Walt Mossberg is going to ding us for this so let’s just not ship to the manufacturers in China for just a few more weeks… The Apple teams were probably embarrassed. But if you’re not embarrassed when you ship your first version you waited too long.

A beautiful thing about Apple is how quickly they obsolete their own products. I imagine this also makes the discipline of getting things out there easier. Like I mentioned before, the longer it’s been since the last release the more pressure there is, but if you know that if your bit of code doesn’t make this version but there’s the +0.1 coming out in 6 weeks, then it’s not that bad. It’s like flights from San Francisco to LA, if you miss one you know there’s another one an hour later so it’s not a big deal. Amazon has done a fantastic job of this with the Kindle as well, with a new model every year.

Read the full post on Matt Mullenweg and maybe show a rough draft to someone?

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If you liked this article, please share. If you have suggestions for further articles, articles you would like to submit, or just general comments, please contact me at paula@publetariat.com

Happy Holidays & A Wonderful New Year – What is Figgy Pudding?

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Publetariat will be off until Jan 3, 2016. Hoping you have a wonderful holiday season and we will see you again next year! Until then here is a podcast and post on Figgy Pudding from NPR.

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‘Oh, Bring Us Some … ‘ Wait. What Is Figgy Pudding?

 


This holiday season, one popular Christmas carol has been raising some questions here at NPR headquarters. Namely:KONICA MINOLTA DIGITAL CAMERA

“Oh, bring us some figgy pudding, oh, bring us some figgy pudding, oh — ”

Wait. What is figgy pudding?

First of all, it’s “absolutely delicious,” says Debbie Waugh, who recently served the dish at a tea at the Historic Green Spring House in Alexandria, Va.

Figgy pudding — also known as plum pudding or Christmas pudding — is a staple of the British Christmas table, she says.

“It resembles something like a cannonball, and it maybe feels a bit like a cannonball when it hits your stomach, but it’s tradition and we love it,” Waugh tells NPR’s Michel Martin.

And despite its moniker, the dessert features neither figs nor plums.

thumbnailFrom The Archives

From 2007: A Recipe For Figgy Pudding (With Actual Figs)

 

“The ‘plum’ was a pre-Victorian generic term for any type of dried fruit, but most specifically, raisins,” Waugh explains. ” ‘Figgy’ — certainly at some time figs would have been incorporated into Christmas pudding recipes, but today, not traditionally.”

It’s also a pudding in the British sense, meaning dessert — not the creamy, custardy dish most Americans associate with the word. It’s a steamed cake full of raisins, currants and brandy.

Read the full post on NPR

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If you liked this article, please share. If you have suggestions for further articles, articles you would like to submit, or just general comments, please contact me at paula@publetariat.com

“A Christmas Carol” read by Neil Gaiman

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Today’s we have a special treat for the holidays. The New York Public Library offers a special reading of Charles Dicken’s “A Christmas Carol” by Neil Gaiman, using Dicken’s personal copy and notes.

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Even huge Charles Dickens fans may not know that A Christmas Carol is organized in five stanza-like sections called “staves.” They might not know the author’s only surviving “prompt” copy of the book, that is, Dickens’s own annotated version used for live readings, is held at the New York Public Library. But it’s without a doubt that Neil Gaiman gives one of the greatest deliveries of the classic holiday tale. Made up to resemble a nineteenth century man by Jeni Ahlfeld, the author was transformed for a performance at the New York Public Library, and his engaging reading captured the liveliness of Dickens’ prose. And so, as is our NYPL holiday tradition, we’re sharing Gaiman’s delightful performance of A Christmas Carol. We hope you enjoy it as part of your family tradition too.

Read the rest of the article at the New York Public Library website.

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If you liked this article, please share. If you have suggestions for further articles, articles you would like to submit, or just general comments, please contact me at paula@publetariat.com

Maeve Binchy – Tips for aspiring writers

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Today’s post is quick video from author Maeve Binchy, with timeless tips for aspiring writers. The best one, don’t let your book sit in a drawer or in your head. If you don’t take the risk you will never have the rewards. What a lovely woman, I still miss her.

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https://youtu.be/2jUBEFxfzUU

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If you liked this article, please share. If you have suggestions for further articles, articles you would like to submit, or just general comments, please contact me at paula@publetariat.com

Infographic: Why writers make great friends

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Today’s offering is from the FreelancersUnion site, (because not all writers are book writers), which shares this lovely post on why writers make great friends. Written by Brendan Brown, the founder of Global English Editing and The Expert Editor, two online editing and proofreading companies.

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Friends are important in so many ways. They help mold us as people and will be the first to intervene when our heads get too big, or taste in clothes too poor.

However, do writers make good friends?

On the one hand, writers are prone to alcoholism, cigarette addiction, and severe bouts of melancholy (at least according to the internet and stereotyping).

Nevertheless, I think writers have certain qualities that other civilians cannot match as friends. As an editor I have made friends with plenty of writers, and every one of them has added value to my life in some weird and wonderful ways.

The infographic below outlines 8 little-known reasons why writers make great friends.

1. Writers are knowledgeable

‘Knowledgeable’ probably wasn’t on your list of most desirable traits in a potential friend, but think about it. Nobody likes awkward silence. Lulls in conversation tend to come about when there’s nothing to talk about, but writers are often repositories of information ranging from the random to the hilarious (and inevitably the tedious).

When you’re at a party, sit next to the writer and you’ll hit the conversational jackpot: they’ll not only be up to date on the latest world events, but will also fill you in on what Kim Kardashian’s booty has to do with feminism.

2. Writers are great plus-ones at dinner parties

Offer a writer free food and they’ll rarely flake out on you.

Some might be in need of a good meal, being that they survive near the breadline on a daily basis or have been trying to finish NaNoWriMo and preparing food simply wasn’t an option.

Others may well be well on their way to a successful career in journalism or travel writing, but have never quite shaken those nightmares about being strangled in their sleep by ramen noodles. A catered-for dinner party is like therapy for them.

3. It’s hard to bore a writer

Most of your friends are probably fed up with hearing about your ex or how unreasonable your coworkers are. Instead of venting to them, turn to your writer friend.

Writers lap this stuff up. For you it’s catharsis, for them primary research. They’re probably working on a series of essays about how the monotony of everyday life is crushing the creativity out of a generation. Get ready for engaged questioning – “but why do you think you feel that way? Do you think there are societal forces preying on your mind, creating an unrealistic image of who you should be?”

If your rant is their brainstorm session and you’re helping each other out, isn’t back scratching what friendship’s all about?

4. Writers ‘get’ rejection

Even when they professionally benefit from your pain, writers are compassionate. Not because they’re inherently better than regular civilians, but because they’ve been through it all too: mind-melting jobs in call centers, getting dumped for spending too much time on their work, and being isolated from human contact for days or weeks at a time while writing.

Writers know your pain. Most of all, though, writers get rejected a lot.

You got turned down for a promotion this week? Your writer friend probably got turned down for three article pitches today. When you need a shoulder to cry on, writers are there to be your friend. But most importantly, they’ll insist you get back up on your feet and try again.

5. You might get a character named after you

Look at your friendship with a writer as a potential investment in future notoriety. If you’re in your writer friend’s inner circle while they’re working on a novel, you might get a character named after, or even loosely based on, you.

There are many examples of this, known as Tuckerization, but a notable one is Philip K. Dick naming fellow author Poul Anderson in his short story “Waterspider”.

Read the full post on FreelancersUnion .

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If you liked this article, please share. If you have suggestions for further articles, articles you would like to submit, or just general comments, please contact me at paula@publetariat.com