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29 Principles for Making Great Font Combinations

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This post, from Douglas Bonneville, originally appeared on the bonfx site on 8/11/10. There’s some excellent guidance here for anyone laying out a print publication.

When it comes to making font combinations, there are principles and methods, but no absolutes. You can’t apply all the principles or ideas listed here at the same time. Just peruse this list of ideas and see what strikes you as interesting, and then pursue creating your own interesting typeface pairs!

In no particular order of importance…

  1. Combine a serif and a sans serif to give “contrast” and not “concord”. The farther apart the typeface styles are, as a generic but not infallible guideline, the more luck you’ll have. Fonts that are too similar look bad together. Go for concord or contrast but avoid the murky middle ground where all you end up with conflict. Put Garamond and Sabon together to see what “murky” means. Or try Helvetica and Univers together, which is just as bad.
     
  2. Don’t choose two serifs or two sans serifs to create a combination, unless they are radically different in some way.
     
  3. Avoid choosing typefaces from the same categories, like Script or Slabs. You won’t get enough contrast, and will end up with conflict. For instance, Clarendon and Rockwell together is not a good thing at all.
     
  4. Get enough difference in point size between the various fonts to make contrast.
     
  5. Assign distinct roles to each font and commit to them without variance.
     
  6. Try finding fonts from different categories that have similar x-heights and glyph widths. For instance, Futura with Times New Roman just doesn’t work that well because there is too much contrast between x-heights and widths, but in this case, mostly widths. However, if you are going to work with a condensed font, you can overcome this problem because now you’ve gone for an extreme contrast.
     
  7. Find some kind of relationship between the basic shapes. For instance, look to the letter O in upper and lower case. Round letter O’s and taller oval O’s, in general don’t seem to like each other when creating pairs.
     
  8. Contrast the overall weight of the fonts. For instance, Didot and Rockwell look really bad together for many reasons, but one clearly because they both have a heavy presence and just look mad at each other on the same page.

 

Read the rest of the post on bonfx.

A New Publetariat Member Benefit

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Many of Publetariat’s members are active bloggers on the site, and there’s a lot of quality material being posted in member blogs. Prompted by member LJ Sellers, the author of the blog entry being reprinted today as a feature article, I’ve decided to add a new member feature/benefit to the Publetariat site.

The ten most recent member blog posts are already featured on the front page of the site in a link list in the right-hand column, but beginning with this post, once a week I will personally scan that top ten list for an article to be promoted to the front page as a feature article. I may not always find a post that meets the site’s editorial criteria, but I will be actively seeking them.

The goal is to provide useful content to site members and visitors while providing site members with an outlet for wider exposure. People who like what they find in a blog post are likely to click through and view the author’s member profile, and may even be inspired to go a step further and follow any links they find there for the author’s website(s) and book(s). In a way, it’s like bartering for free advertising on the Publetariat site.

In order to make the cut a post must be on a topic of interest to other site members and visitors, it must be professionally presented (occasional typos happen, but in general the piece must be grammatically correct, with proper spelling and punctuation), it should not have a primarily self-promotional focus, and must be of a length comparable to the site’s usual feature article content. Note that all content posted to this site remains the intellectual property of the author, so don’t worry that having your blog posts promoted to feature article status will force you to surrender any rights to the material.

So members, update your member profiles with links to your external sites and book pages, and start blogging! I’ll be watching.  =’)

Member Blog: 10 Steps to a Better Story

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I edit a lot of fiction, and I see a pattern of common problems in manuscripts from novice writers. The most important involve the bond between story and character. If you want an agent,editor, or reader to get past the first few pages, here are 10 things to keep in mind.

1. Make your main character want something. Desire is the engine that drives both life and narrative. Characters who don’t want anything are rarely interesting.

2. Make your main character do something. Your story can start with a character who is the victim of circumstances, but afterward the character needs to move quickly into action. Readers like characters who take charge.

3. Let your readers know the story’s premise early. If they get to the end of the first chapter and still can’t answer the question—what is the story about?—they might not keep reading.

4. Get conflict into the story early. It doesn’t have to be all-out bickering or deception between characters, but let your readers know things will sticky.

5. Skip the omniscient POV. Let the reader experience as much of the story as possible through the eyes of your main character. This is how readers bond with protagonists. If you shift POVs, at least put in a line break.

6. It’s okay to tell sometimes, instead of show. Not every character reaction has to be described in gut-churning, eyebrow-lifting physical detail. Sometimes it’s okay to simply say, “Jessie panicked.”

7. Introduce characters one at a time with a little background information for each. Too many characters all at once in the first few pages can be overwhelming.

8. Don’t overwrite. Nobody agrees on what constitutes good writing, so trying to make your writing stand out will probably work against you. The best writing doesn’t draw attention to itself; it just gets out of the way of the story.

9. Avoid word repetitions when you can. Read your story out loud. You’re much more likely to hear the repetitions than see them.

10. The components of a novel that readers care about most are, in order: story, characters, theme, setting. If you have to sacrifice something, start at the end of list. Never sacrifice the story for anything else.

 

This is a reprint from LJ Sellers‘ Publetariat member blog.

Writing in Different Genres – A Writer's Tool Belt

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One of the fundamental parts of being writers, I think, is knowing your purpose for writing. Now, I’ll admit this is made much easier when your freelancing gigs keep you covered up in short informative articles or web content. That makes it simple. Yet, like any writer, you have this basic sense of purpose informing your choices on how to present those words. The issue is really one of genre. I’ve haven’t actively thought about this in a while other than some idle thoughts about switching over and writing some fiction rather than nonfiction. That’s really it.

Thinking It Over

On this fundamental level, all of us, as we prepare to writing something, should consider the purpose of their writing. There are some essential questions that help you determine this if you don’t already know intuitively. (This can differ with each writer and also how much experience one has.) What sort of questions? Well, for starters, are you writing for the purposes of entertainment? Or do you want to strictly inform the readers? Then again, you could be writing to persuade the reader of your viewpoint or position.

The act of deciding the purpose of whatever it is you’re writing has a close relationship to the purposes of reading something. What do I mean by that? Essentially, when you’ve defined the purpose you influence what types of choices you make about the form you want to use.

This is really where genre comes into play. It is a crucial decision since it can affect how the writing is received by your readers. Whether you are writing in the form of a story, a poem, a letter, or an essay, you may already have some clue about the ways these different literary forms are interpreted by the audience – and what ones work together the most effectively with your chosen subject matter.

Some Considerations

What I’ve realized is that you may not always get the genre right the first time. You may have written a story when a essay would have been more effective given your topic. Or, perhaps, in your effort to express your feelings simply by stating the facts as you see them or shaping them into a persuasive essay, you missed the pleasure of sharing your feelings in a poem or the lyrics of song.

Genre is something that typically has unique structure. It will serve you well if you can become knowledgeable of these distinctions so you don’t mistakenly mix them. The results could be atrocious. There are a variety of genres and categories that you will encounter during your time as a writer – provided you are still learning as much as you can about the craft you’ve called your own. (I’m talking to freelancers and novelists alike.)

A Starting Point For Further Study

It may be good to look at least six categories or genres that are a part of the writing life. Check them out. I’m offering them in no particular order but I do hope that you do some additional study of them individually.

1. Descriptive writing involves the careful choice of precise language, noting the sensory details and using metaphors and similes to make real, but powerful comparisons. You might be in the realm of essays and certain poetic types here.

2. Expository writing involves the synthesis and collation of information. You point here is to strive for objectivity. Often this genre will manifest as a report or a how-to article. You might also use elements of the expository in an essay or a treatise.

3. Narrative writing is storytelling. This is about creating your own tales, rewriting familiar ones in your own voice, and most of the time you’ll start dealing with elements like plots and characterization. This is the realm of the tried and true story arc – the beginning, middle, and end that make up every story created by human beings.

4. Poetry writing is the art of creating word pictures and using stylistic devices like rhyme and rhythm to express strong emotions or ideas. Poems come in all sorts of shapes and sizes.

5. Journals and letters offer a less rigid format for self-expression through words than some of the other genres cited here. Now this doesn’t mean that a letter cannot be a full formed essay if you choose to treat it that way. Still, letters – especially when handwritten letters were the rule rather than the exception – could be a very deep and intimate outlet for communicating. Journals and letters alike can be a mode for sharing news, record notes, explore new ideas, among other things.

6. Persuasive writing is all about trying to convince the reader to change their opinions and sway them with logic, moral appeals, and emotional language. You are wanting them to side with you. Effective persuasion in the written form is accomplished through a combination of a clearly expressed position that is supported by various examples and evidences.

Write On

I’ve come through this short exposition on genres with the belief that even I should take some time to look over these familiar genres and think through the ideas that I have to determine how they might be best explored. There are so many ways to express yourself as a writer. Now, that you have some fodder for your thoughts and ideas, I recommend you get started right now. Don’t hesitate.

 

This is a reprint from Shaun C. Kilgore‘s site.

Bridges Of Virtue: Indie Publishers As The Golden Mean

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This post, by Paolo Chikiamco, Publisher, Rocket Kapre Books, originally appeared on Digital Book World on 9/21/10.

“Virtue, then, is a kind of moderation inasmuch as it aims at the mean or moderate amount.”

– Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics.

Being a philosophy major, I’m of the opinion that the great thinkers of the past have something important to say about every aspect of life, even our modern life. As such, I hope you’ll humor me as I open this talk on a decidedly modern topic – the opportunities for independent publishers in this digital book revolution – by talking about Aristotle and the Golden Mean.

For Aristotle, virtue or excellence is that trait which, when possessed in the right amount, keeps something in good condition, and allows it to perform its function well. One of the key phrases there is “possessed in the right amount” – Aristotle believed that virtue could only be found at some optimal point between two extremes, that of excess and that of deficiency. To use the most common example, the virtue of courage is found between the two extremes of cowardice and recklessness.

What does this have to do with publishing? Right now, publishing is defined by two extremes. First are the Big Publishers, the ones with substantial investment in the old status quo of print books, the entities with big-name authors, enviable capital and long-standing connections with distributors and media outlets. At the second extreme are the Self-Publishers, a class of authors which have always been with us – for authors, such as Aristotle himself, were releasing their works to the public long before third-party publishers existed – but who have in the past been stigmatized, as well as sidelined from the most lucrative types of commerce by an inability to match the scale of access and distribution available to Big Publishing. (In the Philippines, the most visible form of self-publishing – social networking aside – is the burgeoning indie komiks [comics] scene.)

Of course, “in the past” here must be taken to mean B.T.I. – Before The Internet. While I would not go so far as to say that the playing field has been leveled – although I’d argue that it is on its way there – the fact that the publishing landscape has been irrevocably altered cannot, at this point, be doubted.

“Nothing endures but change.”

– Heraclitus

Read the rest of the post on Digital Book World.

The Emotional Side of Setting

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There is more to a novel’s setting than just the when and where of your story. It includes the entire environment in which your CHARACTERS find themselves and the full circumstance under which they suffer. Setting has a great many characteristics to it but one aspect aspiring authors often miss is the emotional side of SETTING.

Listen to a PODCAST of this article.
 

Consider this. Might your character’s anger change the mood of your story? It certainly could if he, say, lashed out and killed someone. The secret to setting then, is to involve your characters’ full environment, including their emotions. Does your story take place in the fall of the year? Then not only should you have leaves on the ground and winds that blow, but you may also wish to incorporate your character’s feelings toward the season.
Envision how your character’s emotions can enhance the setting of your novel. Might her dark mood after the fight with her husband carry into the crowed grocery store? Would it affect the way she cheers at her daughter’s soccer game? Might it build into road rage during rush hour? Indeed, her emotions can alter the setting in a huge fashion.
 
One great technique used to bring setting to life is to have characters, and their emotions, alter the setting. "She shattered the glass against the hearth." Powerful stuff, guys.
Here’s another compelling technique with which to draw your readers into your setting. Have it come in conflict with your character. Here’s an example. "Frightened as never before, he leaned as if into a powerful wind and advanced amid the hail of bullets." Whoa! Now that’s in conflict with your environment!
Another effective method to show how emotions can affect your setting is to employ similes and metaphors. "His anger built like a river held in check by a dam." Can you see how the setting will be impacted when his emotional dam breaks?
Have you ever established your setting with the weather? Might your characters’ emotional mood also have the same effect on setting? Sure can.
As you weave setting into your story, don’t ignore the emotional side of setting. It’ll give you a much more powerful story.
Now, here are some general tips for setting.
Imply rather than reveal. There’s no need to tell the reader it’s fall if the dry leaves on the ground crinkle under your character’s feet.
Sprinkle your setting throughout your novel. Ergo, avoid the proverbial info dump.
Introduce your setting by way of your characters’ action. It might go something like this: "He gazed over the rolling countryside…"
Include all the senses. Have your characters smell the honeysuckle, taste the pepper and relish the sound of night cicadas.
Have the details of your setting coincide with the length of your story. The shorter your story, the less setting you need to introduce.
Be specific. England is too general a setting. London on Bleaker Street is not. It’s not a plant, it’s a mandevilla with an explosion of brilliant pink petals.
Details do it. Add the tiniest of details to enhance your setting. Which of the following sentences produces the better picture?
"He swung the ax again."
"He swung the ax again and a shower of fragrant wood chips mushroomed out and fell to the ground."
Consider if your setting might foreshadow upcoming events.
Ensure your setting moves in time with your characters. For example, you might have your character’s hair turn gray as the story progresses over the years.
Slang is a wonderful tool to establish setting. For example, during the American Civil War, bullets equated to "dead men" and what we call land-mines, they called "infernal machines."
Setting expands beyond your characters’ environs. How might a world-wide financial collapse affect your character?
And then, of course, there is the ever-classic adage, "Show. Don’t tell."
"He put on his uniform."
"He stepped into his trousers, buttoned the fly and waistband, then slipped the suspenders over his shoulders."
Setting, my friends, is as important as any aspect of your novel and the emotional side of setting is as important as any other aspect of the literary device we call setting.
Thanks for your time and know I wish for your only best-sellers.
 

This is a reprint from C. Patrick Shulze‘s Born to Be Brothers blog.

Search Engines–Your Personal Genie to Build Your Author Brand

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This post, by Kristen Lamb, originally appeared on her blog on 10/6/10.

Welcome to WANA Wednesday, based off my best-selling book We Are Not Alone–The Writer’s Guide to Social Media. This is the day I dedicate to making your social media experience more enjoyable and productive. Many authors have gotten the message that they need to be on social media and they need to be blogging. But one of the big problems I notice is there is a failure to understand how search engines work and how to use them in our favor. What good is posting content if no one can find it, right?

What I am going to teach you today is going to help you rise even more above the masses of competition all clamoring for the public’s attention and money.

These days the competition is fierce. Barnes and Noble just announced its self-publishing service PubIt so everybody can get published. The gates have been thrown open and it is every writer for himself. Why I brought up this new development in self-publishing is that it highlights why it is even more critical for authors to have a platform. Unless you happen to already be a household name, your social media platform is more critical now than ever.

As a debut fiction author you will be competing against counterparts who have a solid social media presence and a blog following. Are you prepared? The odds are not in our favor. According to the BEA, 93% of novels sell less than 1000 copies. A solid social media platform can make all the difference.  In earlier blogs, we have discussed using your name as a brand. Anything else will cripple a platform and leave an author stressed out and spread too thinly. Our goal is to get our names to do the heavy lifting (sales) so we have time to write.

So why is a name so important?

Today we are going to have a quick lesson on how search engines work. By the end of this lesson, I am sure it will be much clearer why your name is so critical.

Read the rest of the post on Kristen Lamb’s blog.

Views from Sandhausen – A Major Shift (Epiphany) – Part 2

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To continue my story from yesterday, I’ll describe the activities and sources of my “Epiphany”.  In continuing my research I stumbled upon a couple of sources, and the talented folks who feed these resources.  Joanna Penn, Carol White, Judy Cullins,  Jane Friedman and others, I discovered that I was about to make a serious error.  Congruently, the LinkedIn group Book Writing, Self Publishing, and Marketing for Business People rather forcefully convinced to cancel my order with the (best in class) Publish on Demand (POD) company that I was about to jump into bed with.  Since I had done (and paid for) almost all of the front end work, it didn’t make much sense to those would should know.

 

 

Another major influence was Mark Levine’s landmark book; The Fine Print of Self-Publishing clearly shows that going my own way, to become my own independent Publisher, was my best course of action.  I wanted to retain ownership of my own ‘production’ files, I did not want to pay an exorbitant mark-up on individual book printing, and if you think about, the splendid list of services that they sell in increasingly more expensive packages, really are not possible without a major emphasis on ‘template’ and ‘cookie cutter’ tools.

So, with heart in hand, I asked for a refund and they agreed to reverse the charges on my credit card.  I have no ax to grind with AuthorHouse.  It was simply a matter of my personal ignorance, and the approach that I took in Part One of this dissertation.

(By the way, I am keeping a diary!).  It doesn’t make sense to learn all of these lessons and skills and not to write a book about it).  So, with a completed and ‘ready to go to publishing’ book in hand, I’m back in learning mode, beginning to leverage my aforementioned friends as well as a few good resources. 

Primary in this list of resources is The Complete Guide to Self-Publishing: Everything You Need to Know to Write, Publish, Promote and Sell Your Own Book by Marilyn Ross (Author), Sue Collier (Author). 

On the cover front, my friend Becky Macri, author of PIP: A Very Special Little Caterpillar (which is selling like crazy in its first full week of release, provide me with great feedback on our cover.  I’ve run it by several people who should know, and they LOVE it.

OK, enough dithering; back to studying and being my own Publisher.  What have I done??

Cliff

Thoughts On Getting Close To The End

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Novels are like lovers – you only pick the ones you think you’ll like, but no two are really the same. Sometimes they’re just awesome and make you feel special. Sometimes they let you down. Often they can surprise you, make you feel a whole range of emotions. And when it’s over, you sometimes wish it could go on forever and other times you’re glad, because it started to feel like more work than it was worth. Or you’re satisfied and it lasted just as long as it was supposed to.

And I’ll stop there before my analogy disappears up its own arsehole. The thing is, it occurred to me today that this applies to writing novels as well as reading them. I’m currently around 94,000 words into my third novel. I’ve written numerous short stories, a couple of novellas and now I’m close to typing those strange words – The End – on my third novel length work. Novels are certainly unique creatures and while many bear similarities, just like lovers, no two are the same. And no two writing processes are the same either.

I’m still very much a journeyman writer. Perhaps when I get to that stage where I’ve written loads of books I’ll have developed some kind of process that’s familiar and practiced, but there’s a part of me that hopes that never happens. I like the excitement of taking on a new project and if it all started to feel the same I might lose the urge.

RealmShift was the first novel I wrote. Not the first one I started, not by a long way. I’ve written varying amounts of several novels. But it was the first one I finished and knew was a real novel. It went through many more redrafts and rewrites before it was published, of course, but I remember the feeling of reaching the end of that manuscript. I remember the feeling of writing it, feeling the story pouring out, astounded at how it was telling itself. Other times I struggled, trying to make something work. But there was a distinct vibe to writing RealmShift. I knew the main character inside out, I knew the mission he was on, but I wasn’t entirely sure how it was going to end until I got there.

My second book is MageSign, the sequel to RealmShift. When I started writing that I knew exactly how it was going to end. The final climax was the entire reason for writing it, but I wasn’t sure how to get there. I had lots of notes and plans written, but there were huge gaps that I trusted myself to fill as I got to them. Which I did. There was a distinct vibe to writing MageSign too, and it felt very different to RealmShift.

Now I’m close to finishing the first draft of my next book. It’s the same “world” as RealmShift and MageSign, but a whole new story with all new characters. There are a couple of cameos from key players in the first two books, but that’s mainly for the geeky fun of it. This book feels very different again. Where RealmShift grew from the main character, and MageSign grew from the final climax, this one has grown from a strange and weird concept. The concept led me to develop a main character and that subsequently led to the story. It feels quite different to either of the previous two.

I wanted to write something different. My books are dark fantasy thrillers, and this new one is too, but with a slightly different feel, a different pace. I’m playing with different archetypes, different character relationships and a pervading sense of dread rather than a flat out race against time. And it’s been a struggle. This story has been harder to get out than either of the previous two. A lot harder, in fact. That’s not because it’s more complicated. If anything, it’s a simpler concept than either of the previous two, with fewer key characters. I don’t know yet if it’s any good. I think it’s awesome, but you always feel like that with a new lover. Hopefully I’ve written something better than ever, less predictable, more nuanced. The fragile, insecure writer in me wonders if I’ve blurted out a pile of shit.

When I finish a novel, I immediately go through it again, sorting out all the little issues that occurred to me along the way, that I made notes about as I wrote. Sometimes something will happen later in the book that means I need to change something near the start. Or I’ll have a better idea and need to rework something. Then there are all the little bits and pieces that I can weave in here and there to make the whole story arc flow seamlessly, and often some of those things can only be added later, when you know exactly how it all ends.

After that, assuming I don’t decide I need a complete rewrite (pleaseno!), the next stage is to put the book away for at least a few weeks. I’ll write other things in that time. I have a couple of short stories clamouring to be written and I want to write the next Ghost Of The Black novella. Then I’ll go back to this novel and redraft again. That’s when I’ll really get a feel for what I’ve created.

Only time will tell. Regardless, I’m very close to the end of actually writing it, as opposed to revising it, and some time in the next couple of weeks (I hope) I’ll type those two fateful words. The End. Then I’ll sit back in my chair staring at a completed manuscript. I suppose I’ll have to brace myself and, after the process described above, send it out to the beta readers and see what they have to say.

I wonder how other writers do it? If there process is anything like mine?

Anyway, it’s another novel, like the others I’ve written in so many ways. It’s the kind of thing I think I’ll like. At times it made me feel special and awesome. I really hope it doesn’t let me down… or would that be me letting it down?

 

This is a reprint from Alan Baxter‘s The Word.

Do Not Cry For Me Wall Street Journal

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This post, by Wanda Shapiro, originally appeared on her One Girl One Novel site on 10/3/10.

I must respond to the Wall Street Journal’s recent story, Authors Feel Pinch in Age of E-Books, which discusses the plight of literary novelists who are finding it harder and harder to make a living. According to the Journal, e-books are to blame but as an indie author of literary fiction, I have two things to say to that. First, stop blaming e-books, and second, don’t cry for me Wall Street Journal.  

According to the Journal, e-books are bad for debut novelists. Supposedly, the lower prices of e-books and the increasing sales of e-books are to blame for lower advances, less risk-taking, and a loss of patience for the cultivation of young novelist. The article talks about the general decline in book sales, shrinking retailers who are buying fewer titles, publishers who are making fewer deals (especially with new writers), and authors with fewer meet and greet opportunities who are making half as much per e-book. We’re lead to believe that e-books are killing literary authors who weren’t suffering at all before the advent and wide spread popularity of e-books.

While there’s a lot of truth in this article, blaming it all on e-books is not a logical conclusion. It’s true that literary authors have been a particularly hard hit segment of the writing population, but literary authors were having a hard time making a living long before e-books, and publishers are not without culpability. Publishers blame the readers for the decline in literary fiction but they’re the ones who publish the books and it’s no secret how they feel about literature.

It’s also no secret that the publishing industry is in shambles, I can only guess the Journal made such an illogical leap because the general state of the publishing industry is being blamed with increasing frequency on the rise of the e-book. This article gave an accurate albeit grim picture of the publishing industry from the point of view of a literary novelist but few of the supporting facts have any logical connection to e-books.

Let’s face it, authors of literary fiction were abandoned by the majority of the publishing industry a long time ago and if we’re going to talk about the grim truths of the publishing industry we need to stop blaming e-books. The only one who can be blamed for the current state of the publishing industry is the publishing industry. It’s not technology’s fault and it’s not the economies’ fault and it’s not the readers’ fault.

Read the rest of the post on Wanda Shapiro‘s One Girl One Novel site.

What Are Books Good For?

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This article, by William Germano, originally appeared on The Chronicle of Higher Education site on 9/30/10.

I’ve been wondering lately when books became the enemy. Scholars have always been people of the book, so it seems wrong that the faithful companion has been put on the defensive. Part of the problem is knowing what we mean exactly when we say "book." It’s a slippery term for a format, a technology, a historical construct, and something else as well.

Maybe we need to redefine, or undefine, our terms. I’m struck by the fact that the designation "scholarly book," to name one relevant category, is in itself a back formation, like "acoustic guitar." Books began as works of great seriousness, mapping out the religious and legal dimensions of culture. In a sense, books were always scholarly. Who could produce them but serious people? Who had the linguistic training to decode them?

In the sense of having been around a long time, the book has a long story to tell, one that might be organized around four epochal events, at least in the West. In the beginning was the invention of writing and its appearance on various materials. The second was the development during the first years of the Christian era of the codex—the thing with pages and a cover—first as a supplement and eventually as a replacement for the older technology of the scroll. The third was what we think of as the Gutenberg moment, the European deployment of movable type, in the 15th century. And the fourth is, of course, the digital revolution in the middle of which we find ourselves today.

When we say "book," we hear the name of a physical object, even if we’re thinking outside the codex. The codex bound text in a particular way, organizing words into pages, and as a result literally reframed ideas. The static text image on my desktop is the electronic cousin of late antiquity’s reading invention. When my screen is still, or when I arrange text into two or four pages, like so much visual real estate, I am replicating a medieval codex, unbinding its beautifully illuminated pages. Yet reading digitally is also a scroll-like engagement—the fact that we "scroll down" connects us to a reading practice that dates back several millennia. One of the things that book historians study is the change in, and persistence of, reading technologies over time, and what those historians have demonstrated is that good technologies don’t eradicate earlier good technologies. They overlap with them—or morph, so that the old and the new may persist alongside yet another development. Think Post-its, printed books, PC’s, and iPads, all in the same office cubicle.

The book has a long history, but the concept of the "history of the book" is comparatively new. In the 1950s, two Frenchmen—Lucien Febvre and Henri-Jean Martin—brought out L’apparition du livre, or, in English, The Coming of the Book, a work of scholarship that became one of the signs marking the arrival of a new scholarly discipline. Book history’s objective was analysis of the function of the book in European culture, and since the 1970s, it has continually expanded its scope, emerging as a trading zone among various disciplines, a rare scholarly arena where the work of librarians, archivists, and scholarly publishers can intersect with the work of traditional scholars and theorists, all members of what the economist Fritz Machlup termed the "knowledge industry."

Read the rest of the article on The Chronicle of Higher Education site. 

Journalist, Editor, and Novelist

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Hello fellow authors,

I’ve worked in publishing most of my adult life, either as a journalist, editor, or both. I’m now a freelance fiction editor and the author of the Detective Jackson mystery/suspense series. I have three Jackson books available and the fourth coming shortly:
The Sex Club
Secrets to Die For
Thrilled to Death
Passions of the Dead

I started out self-published, was picked up by a small press, and now I’m going back to being indie. I also have two standalone thrillers: The Baby Thief and The Suicide Effect. All my novels are available as e-books for $2.99. Mystery Scene and Spinetingler magazines have given me terrific reviews, and my readership is enthusiastic and growing.
http://ljsellers.com

I also offer reasonable freelance rates to authors who have decided to self-publish and need someone to proofread their manuscript (for typos, missing words, and syntax errors).
http://ljsellers.com/wordpress/editing-services

L.J. Sellers

 

 

 

10 Steps to a Better Story

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I edit a lot of fiction, and I see a pattern of common problems in manuscripts from novice writers. The most important involve the bond between story and character. If you want an agent,editor, or reader to get past the first few pages, here are 10 things to keep in mind.

1. Make your main character want something. Desire is the engine that drives both life and narrative. Characters who don’t want anything are rarely interesting.

2. Make your main character do something. Your story can start with a character who is the victim of circumstances, but afterward the character needs to move quickly into action. Readers like characters who take charge.

3. Let your readers know the story’s premise early. If they get to the end of the first chapter and still can’t answer the question—what is the story about?—they might not keep reading.

4. Get conflict into the story early. It doesn’t have to be all-out bickering or deception between characters, but let your readers know things will sticky.

5. Skip the omniscient POV. Let the reader experience as much of the story as possible through the eyes of your main character. This is how readers bond with protagonists. If you shift POVs, at least put in a line break.

6. It’s okay to tell sometimes, instead of show. Not every character reaction has to be described in gut-churning, eyebrow-lifting physical detail. Sometimes it’s okay to simply say, “Jessie panicked.”

7. Introduce characters one at a time with a little background information for each. Too many characters all at once in the first few pages can be overwhelming.

8. Don’t overwrite. Nobody agrees on what constitutes good writing, so trying to make your writing stand out will probably work against you. The best writing doesn’t draw attention to itself; it just gets out of the way of the story.

9. Avoid word repetitions when you can. Read your story out loud. You’re much more likely to hear the repetitions than see them.

10. The components of a novel that readers care about most are, in order: story, characters, theme, setting. If you have to sacrifice something, start at the end of list. Never sacrifice the story for anything else.

Hello and my road to self publishing

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First off, I want to say hello to my fellow publetariats. This is a good website and props to everyone who makes it happen.

In brief, my name is David Perez, and I’m a writer/editor/journalist and actor from New York. I now live in Taos, New Mexico with my wife Veronica Golos, whose second book of poetry, Vocabulary of Silence (Red Hen Press), is due out in Feb. 2011.

You can check out my profile, as well as my website (click here) for more information on my work. What I’d like to briefly share is my road to self-publishing. I recently completed my memoir, Wow! about growing up in the South Bronx in the 1960’s. I was fortunate to have some accomplished authors read my manuscript and provide solid critique. All I need to polish it off is getting it copyedited and proofed, and then finding a good book designer. My brother George, a famous comic book artist, is going to design and illustrate the front and back cover and will also sketch some chapter headings.

I decided early on not to go the agent route, as there a re plenty of good presses that accept queries, samples and even whole manuscripts without requiring an agent. One small press quickly agreed to publish my book (they read it in less than two weeks and sent me a contract!) and another noted midsized publisher also expressed interest. But after doing extensive and sometimes exhausting research on the state of publishing, coupled with the fact that I have to do 90 percent of the marketing anyway, I decided to publish it myself. Among other factors, I wanted full control of the artwork, book design, price, and the schedule of publication – not to mention the higher royalties. My aim is for Wow! to come out early next year.

Soon after my decision, a good friend of mine involved in the film business decided to expand into publishing and wants Wow! to launch the new 11B Press, which is still in business formation but should be up and running in the next few weeks. I received excellent royalty terms and retain control over content, pricing and timeline, with the added bonus of my friend’s many networking contacts.

With all these things in my favor, it made perfect sense to me to go the self-publishing route. I’ll continue to do research into marketing and distribution, as well as navigating the bewildering and often intimidating world of social networking and media. Sites like this one, with its invaluable readers’ comments, have been very helpful. It’s inspiring how so many folks take the time to share their experiences, often in great detail. Gracias!

The main decision I have to make with Wow! is whether to print through Lightning Source or Createspace, both of which have strong advocates. I’m leaning toward LSI because of problems some writers (probably a minority) reported with their covers being warped, or the glue binding coming undone. These reports were actually on a discussion forum within Createspace itself, which I found interesting and refreshing for its honesty. To be sure, there are plenty of writers who’ve had great experience with Createspeace, and their website, pricing martrix and forums are clear and friendly. Still, all signs point to LSI being the best, taking into account, of course, that you need to be a “publisher” who can meet their extensive requirements. But the payoff seems worth it, in my opinion.

Assuming I go with LSI, I’m unclear how to proceed with individuals who want to order the book. I know folks can always ask for it at a bookstore, or order it through Amazon. But I think I’ll make the most money, if 11B Press orders quantities in bulk and then ships the books themselves. This would mean. I think, opening a Paypal account with Shopping Cart options – or something similar What my friend and I are unsure about is: do we want to become a shipping warehouse, or is it better to just let Amazon be the store of choice?

However I proceed, it’s been an exciting journey getting this far. I’ll keep everyone posted.

 

 

Pip: A Very Special Little Caterpillar

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Today’s blog is about the world-wide introduction of Pip: a Very Special Caterpillar. Pip’s creator, my very good friend for many years, Becky Macri, along with (people) illustrator Bonita Feeney, have created Pip, the youngest of six caterpillars, that faces some very big issues and challenges. This tender story of the enduring love between parent and child is sure to become a classic.

Becky is officially an author/ illustrator with the publication of Pip: A Very Special Caterpillar you can discover her books and some of her art on her website www.rebeccamacribooks.com
Becky, the Mother of two very special boys, has been married to my 20+ year friend Steve. Collectively they are a great family, the makeup of which has enabled the naturally-talented Becky to exercise her natural creativity to the fullest.    In the interest of clarity, Becky created all of the illustrations in acrylics – less the people. These were created by Realism Artist Bonita Feeney, a 30+ year talent whose work you can see on her website: http://bonitafeeney.blogspot.com/
With playful illustrations and a message that reaches deep into the hearts of every reader, Pip is sure to make you smile and tug at your heartstrings! Pip’s story weaves its way lovingly through the issues of children with special needs, the death of a parent, and the vastness of a mother’s love.
Pip is not a children’s story of colors and numbers, it is a story of character, values and how Love shapes the world around us. It is sure to become a family classic, reaffirming the power of love, hope and perseverance in the hearts of all who read it.   Join Pip and his friends on a stroll through the flower garden that has been set before you. Pip is about to show you what it means to truly fly. Let the mending of saddened hearts begin.
Buy the book at Becky’s interesting website by clicking the link below.
May God bless you all!
Cliff