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Articles about craft.

Why Can't A Woman Write The Great American Novel?

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This book review, by Laura Miller, was originally posted on Salon.com today.

Every few years, someone counts up the titles covered in the New York Times Book Review and the short fiction published in the New Yorker, as well as the bylines and literary works reviewed in such highbrow journals as Harper’s and the New York Review of Books, and observes that the male names outnumber the female by about 2 to 1. This situation is lamentable, as everyone but a handful of embittered cranks seems to agree, but it’s not clear that anyone ever does anything about it. The bestseller lists, though less intellectually exalted, tend to break down more evenly along gender lines; between J.K. Rowling and Stephenie Meyer alone, the distaff side is more than holding its own in terms of revenue. But when it comes to respect, are women writers getting short shrift?

The question is horribly fraught, and has been since the 1970s. Ten years ago, in a much-argued-about essay for Harper’s, the novelist and critic Francine Prose accused the literary establishment — dispensers of prestigious prizes and reviews — of continuing to read women’s fiction with "the usual prejudices and preconceptions," even if most of them have learned not to admit as much publicly. Two years before that, Jane Smiley, also writing in Harper’s, alleged that "Huckleberry Finn" is overvalued as a cultural monument while "Uncle Tom’s Cabin" is undervalued, largely because of the genders of the novels’ respective authors; the claim triggered a deluge of letters in protest. Alongside the idea that women writers have been unjustly neglected, there has blossomed the suspicion that some of them have recently become unduly celebrated — an aesthetic variation on the conservative shibboleth of affirmative action run amok.

Onto this mine-studded terrain and with impressive aplomb, strides Elaine Showalter, literary scholar and professor emerita at Princeton. Showalter has fought in the trenches of this particular war for over 30 years, beginning with her groundbreaking 1978 study, "A Literature of Their Own: British Women Novelists From Brontë to Lessing," and culminating in her monumental new book, "A Jury of Her Peers: American Women Writers From Anne Bradstreet to Annie Proulx." Billed as "the first comprehensive history of American women writers from 1650 to 2000," "A Jury of Her Peers" has to negotiate the treacherous battlefield between the still-widespread, if fustian insistence on reverence for Great Writers and the pixelated theorizing of poststructuralists hellbent on overturning the very notion of "greatness."

Showalter is certainly the woman for the job. One of the founders of feminist literary criticism, she has also written about television for People magazine and confessed her penchant for fashion in Vogue. Unquestionably erudite, she has always striven to communicate with nonacademic readers, and her prose is clear, cogent and frequently clever. She has insisted that themes central to women’s lives — marriage, motherhood, the tension between family and individual aspirations — constitute subject matter as "serious" and significant as traditionally masculine motifs like war and travel. Yet she rejects the preference of many feminist literary scholars for emphasizing "culture importance rather than aesthetic distinction," and she doesn’t hesitate to describe some of the writers discussed in "A Jury of Her Peers" as artistically limited, if historically interesting.

Read the rest of this article at Salon.

Book Review: ‘How NOT To Write A Novel’, by S. Newman & H. Mittelmark

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I am not currently writing fiction, so this book was more for pleasure reading than related to my own writing.  Still, I had to write about it as it is truly a must-read for every writer.

How Not To Write A NovelHere are my comments on How Not to Write a Novel: 200 Classic Mistakes and How to Avoid Them–A Misstep-by-Misstep Guide

  • The premise of the book is that authors/editors/publishers would never agree on what makes a great book, so this is a list of what makes a terrible book. Basically, how to ensure your book never sees the light of day.  

 

  • The book is a series of little examples of bad writing with a following explanation of what to fix. Each is named something appropriate e.g. Linearity Shrugged: In which the author assembles the novel in no particular order. 
  • It was laugh out loud funny – and I am not someone who usually guffaws on the morning commuter train! Some of the bad writing is truly terrible, and more amusing when you can recognise some of your own in it somewhere! The skill with which they have constructed the shocking pieces is evident! 
  • Brilliant bad sex scenes, and excellent extras on How Not To Sell Your Novel as well 
     

After reading this book, I actually felt as if I could have a go at fiction writing and then use this book as a checklist to make sure I had not made any of the mistakes they outline. 

Definitely buy this book if you are a writer (or want to be!) 

 

Available at Amazon etc How Not to Write a Novel: 200 Classic Mistakes and How to Avoid Them–A Misstep-by-Misstep Guide

 

Here is a list of other recommended books for writing, publishing and internet marketing.

Good Ideas vs. Bad Ideas

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This post, by author and screenwriter Marshall Thornton, originally appeared on his blog on 2/7/09.

 

I’ve come to believe that there are no such thing as bad ideas. Yes, Tom Green did make a movie called Freddy Got Fingered and that was a bad idea. But, Tom Green in himself is not necessarily a bad idea. Nor is a story of a young man who falsely accuses his father of sexually molesting his younger brother a bad idea. It’s only by putting them together that you come up with something that didn’t make a lot of sense.

 

And that’s the thing that writers have to remember. Your ideas need to belong together. You can’t just string a bunch of good ideas together and expect the whole thing to be great.

 

Each idea, each part of your story, has to have an organic and, hopefully, thematic connection to the rest. By organic I mean that the ideas have to arise out of your main character – they have to be things he or she would actually do. If your main character is an unrepentant liar, they can tell the truth – at the very end of your story. They can’t lie one minute and tell the truth the next. Even if it seems like a good idea on a scene by scene basis.

 

The same goes for theme. Your theme can’t be, say, the elusive nature of truth at one point and then abruptly shift over to the damage dishonesty does to relationships. Keeping your theme on track is particularly difficult in longer forms, like a novel. But when it comes to theme it is important to stick to one idea.

Read more of Marshall’s blog posts, and learn more about his work as an author and screenwriter, here.

Interview with Indie Author Norman Savage

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Just a few short months ago, Greenwich Village author Norman Savage was on the verge of earning a book deal with a large New York publisher for his memoir, Junk Sick: Confessions of an Uncontrolled Diabetic.

Then in October, the market crashed, consumer spending seized, and the publishing industry was suddenly less willing to take risks on unproven authors.  The deal disappeared.

It’s a story we’ll likely see played out over and over again as talented authors learn they no longer have a home in the highest caste of authordom.

Norman Savage is an author who deserves to be published.  His storytelling is vivid, raw and unforgettable.  In Junk Sick, he chronicles a life of addiction, diabetes and hard living that at age 62 has left him with deteriorating health, the scars of quadruple bypass surgery and four amputated toes.

But Savage doesn’t want our sympathy.  No, he wants something else.

I’m proud to present an interview with Norman Savage, who last week published Junk Sick on Smashwords.   In our interview, Savage spoke openly about a life lived teetering on the edge of euphoria and oblivion.

Warning:  This interview contains mature language and subject matter not suitable for children.

[Mark Coker] – Describe your new book, Junk Sick: Confessions of an Uncontrolled Diabetic.

[Norman Savage]   –  Junk Sick is my attempt to bring all that was fractured in my life–family, diabetes, drug addiction, alcoholism, women, jobs, madness, mayhem, ecstasy and suicide ramblings–into a coherent and readable whole.  It tries to explain how and why I married two different conditions–diabetes and addiction–into one unitary structure, me.   Both acts–the taking of insulin and the injecting of dope or the drinking of booze–implies intent and desperation, each of them uses a syringe to bridge one world into another and all the substances are short-acting.

[Mark Coker] – How long did it take you to write the book?

[Norman Savage]   –  About 20 years, though I’ve been writing most of my life.  I began publishing my poetry in little mags and presses in the 1960’s.  In fact, Susan Graham Mingus, the wife of the late bassist Charles Mingus, first published me and had Andy Warhol take the pictures for the spread.  The first draft of <span style="font-style: italic;">Junk Sick</span> was written circa 1985 and then from a kind of cowardice brokered by booze and dope it was shelved.  From time to time, I would re-engage and edit it, but not until Thanksgiving of 2007 did I really begin to edit and update it.

[Mark Coker] – When you first contacted me, you had just lost out on a potential book deal for Junk Sick with Farrar, Straus &amp; Giroux.  What happened?

[Norman Savage]   –  In 2007, I was invited to the Thanksgiving dinner of an old friend who I’d met almost thirty years earlier at a bar where I worked.  I’d always declined previous invitations because I’m never really comfortable around most people I don’t know and am not much a fan of polite chatter.  I never really know what to say.  But I’d lived a solo life for a long time now at that point and thought I needed the company and a home-cooked meal.  Joanie was, and is, a terrific cook.

It also was a kind of challenge to myself to see if I still had the "chops" to engage the human race in social situations.  She, too, had become a bartender in a pretty famous saloon in the West Village and so I thought there’d be other barflies as well, which made it easier to rationalize.  As it turned out I met a woman that evening who had been an editor at Doubleday and was most interested in biography and memoir–she helped Brando pen his.  I told her that I, too, wrote, and had written a memoir.  I’m sure she was being polite by offering to read the first chapter of what I’d written and gave me her email address.

Within a week she contacted me and was very enthusiastic about what she’d read.  She wanted to read the entire work and thought that three agents who she knew would also be interested.  After reading the work she called with encouraging news.  She thought that Cynthia Cannell, a very prominent literary agent, once a VP at Janklow Nesbitt and now owner of her own boutique lit agency would be the person to best represent it.

Right after New Year, Cynthia called me.  She, too, thought the work terrific and wanted to meet.  After meeting, she suggested I edit three sections which she would send to senior editors she knew.  Sometime in March one of those editors at FS&amp;G called and said she’d be interested provided I was better able to "marry" the diabetes with addiction.  This to me was wonderful news.  It gave me an opportunity to go back into the work, update it, and use the cutting edge of "new" psychological advances in making sense of what I and every other addict and diabetic experiences on various levels.

I returned the newer version back to her late July, early August.  She read it and liked it.  She told Cynthia that she was giving it to another senior editor and should he like it as well she was moving it up to the marketing and sales division.

Then we didn’t hear.  And didn’t hear.  I felt in my bones there was something wrong.  That "something" began to become clearer as the economy began to unravel.  At the end of October she called Cynthia to tell her that FS&amp;G was not going to go ahead with new writers and unknown material.  A few weeks after that, Cynthia learned that she was let go after many years of service.  Cynthia suggested that I keep working on my new novel and then she’d revisit the "scene" with my work after the new year.  But that didn’t sit well with me.  I began to look for alternatives.

[Mark Coker] – What led you to Smashwords?

[Norman Savage]   –  Serendipity.  I was researching how to serialize my memoir and/or novels online when I came across a forum where some person spoke about your site as a publishing tool.  Curious, I took a look and liked what you had to say about it.  I didn’t decide to actually publish there until I fooled around–for a couple of days–with my own blog.  Deciding that a blog was not the right way for me to go in getting an entire serialized on it, I then contacted you.  I’ve never had much faith in the publishing industry, or industries in general.  Their existence is by and large for one purpose:  to make money.  How that’s done is usually dictated by what they think the marketplace is, or what they can manipulate the marketplace to be.  And that’s usually the lowest common denominator.

We’ve all heard stories of some of our finest artists never seeing the light of day–in their lifetime–because the powers that be didn’t believe that their audience was either ready or could appreciate the work of these people.  At one time, and not that long ago, if a senior editor at a publishing house thought well of your work they could (though it still could be a fight), get it published.  Some of the best publishers and editors could take risks, and they did.

Now, before a major publisher takes a chance on a "new" voice, they have to run it by the sales and marketing department and they try to see whether or not it will sell 25,000 copies or else they usually won’t take a chance on it.  They try to crunch numbers, but usually go by the past in making decisions:  what used to sell.  They can no more discern that than Hollywood can predict what movie we go to see.  Everyone plays it "safe."  It’s like never falling in love because you never want to get out of your own hip pocket.  And the proof, as they say, is in the pudding.

We know, of course, that most of the stuff that gets to us is dull, mind-numbing.  Whether it’s in print, on a canvass, film, or music hall.  It’s repetitive shit and, for the most part, having nothing whatsoever to do with our lives as we know them.  In order to get published you now have to go to and come out of "writing workshops"; actors and directors come out of "film schools" or "acting workshops"; painters out of "A Fine Arts" program, etc.  How many writers or actors or painters that are in the public eye today come out of the streets, madhouses, jails?  How many were vagabonds, hobos, trapeze artists, merchant seaman, janitors, dockworkers, street sweepers?  How many talk a living language?

Thoreau once told a young man who wanted to learn river navigation not to go to college, but to get his ass on a ship.  You learn by living.  Drink, have a few bad love affairs, drink again (or shoot some dope), get up at 5 a.m. and go to a job you hate, come home to woman you can’t stand being with, but can’t stand being away from, hit the keys like you’re in a heavyweight fight–because you are–and get up the next morning to do it all over again, and do it for many many years.  Go on welfare, food stamps, grab on a rope tossed over, think it’s going to save you only to find no one on the other end and just go until the living stops.  And it will, soon enough.

I know there is good stuff out there that’s being overlooked by the mainstream boys who will continue to publish safe shit:  diet, gardening, how to, celebrity, and formulaic fiction and non-fiction that fits their idea of what writing is.  It rattles their balls and their hearts when something different comes along.

However, there’s a problem that you face as well:  since this is intended to be the most democratic medium to get stuff up on, how does the reader evaluate all the stuff that floats in this ether world?  How much do we have to wade through to get a kernel of what we’re looking for?  We complain, bitch and moan about critics, but the good ones filter some of the shit and saves us god awful time.  Beside, some of the best fights are between critics; sometimes they’re better than the "art" itself.  Hard to draw the line.

[Mark Coker] – How important is it to you to reach an audience?

[Norman Savage]   –  All writers/artists want an audience.  We’re all "talking" to somebody, even if it’s to ourselves.  Even Emily Dickensen, not the most outgoing of gals, had this one guy who she was hot for.  Her poems were directed toward him.  In a way it’s only to prove that we’re not mad and all this breathing and pain was not a waste of time.

[Mark Coker] – What’s the connection between diabetes and addiction in Junk Sick?

[Norman Savage]   –  I wrote Junk Sick after completing a heroin detox and then, faced with no job prospects, but living with a generous woman who loved me and was paying the rent, decided not to let all that I knew about diabetes and addiction, up until that point, go to waste.  I knew that there was not a book that tackled the diabetes from an emotional perspective (there’s still very little of that today).  I did not want it to be a "how to" book or one that just gives a very clinical definition on how to cope with a chronic illness, psychopathology, or a new diet.

Diabetes implies deprivation, sacrifice.  I was diagnosed at age 11, and for a kid, coming into and going through puberty, that’s a high wire act without a net.  I wanted the book to represent the chaos of growing up in a crazed Jewish family in Coney Island, coming down with a disease that no one was equipped to handle or cope with intelligently and, left to my own devices, how I managed to assuage the feeling of being "damaged."  I thought that other people, diabetic or not, who try to cope with life’s madness, could gain some insight as to what governs them and maybe, in one way or another, get some insight into how they’re feeling and acting.

[Mark Coker] – In Junk Sick you write about how music, literature and art served as salves to calm your "crazy fascistic masochistic impulse of creation."  What do you mean by that?

[Norman Savage]   –  It’s scientifically and psychologically proven that when a person engages the arts–reading, writing, really listening to music or looking at a painting–our minds secrete a certain amount of endogenous opioids–the bodies natural morphine–to soothe the system.  It is not something we’re conscious of, but we do feel the effect.  Why, we must ask, do we engage with those things if we derive no pleasure from them?  We actively seek pleasure in our daily pursuit to avoid pain.  Artists are no different, except that in their art, when it’s going really well, those same hormones are triggered.  Every artist at one time or another got in "the flow" and usually that’s what they mean.  Eugene O’Neill, that quintessential alcoholic expressed it this way, "Writing is a vacation from life."

But this is where it starts to get fucked-up.  You can’t be "in the flow" all the time.  Shit, sometimes the gods are not good, the words don’t come, the paint has no color, the sentences make no sense, the kid is crying, the wife needs to talk, or fuck, the water is stopped up, the landlord is screaming for his rent, the car has a flat, your tooth just broke, your shoelace snapped…

You know that in order to do this shit you need "time" but you never have enough of that–there’s too much shit to do.  So what do you do?  You deny yourself pleasures.  You don’t do things that normal people do all the time:  movies, TV, sex, companionship, food, etc.  Now I’m not saying that you become a fucking monk, no, but that you try to give yourself enough time to try and let whatever art you have from whatever word gods sit on high to get through.  So the artist is a bit "fascistic."

"Masochism" is, in a way, the flip-side of that:  somewhere in your insanity you must enjoy whatever hell you’re putting yourself through.  There has to be some secondary gains.  You do have some kind of hidden agenda that you’re not aware of or copping to.  And, of course, you do remember those times when the work was going good, even though your life was in the shitter.  Those pockets of peace are worth a great deal of madness.

[Mark Coker] – Which authors or artists inspire you?

[Norman Savage]   –  All writers/artists are inspiring if they’re not bullshit artists because even the bad ones you learn from.  You know some of them are pretenders, phonies, fakes, frauds, but they give you some courage and anger to do it your way.  But the few who’ve been where you have get you through some hard days and nights and others, especially at the beginning of your writing allow you to be who you never thought you were allowed to be or are.  They opened up, dynamited, gone over and around, what was or wasn’t there before:  Hubert Selby, Jr, Jones/Baraka, Ginsberg, Eliot, Pound, Miller (Henry), Roth (Philip), Pynchon, Pound, Bukowski, Celine, Purdy, Hamsun, Morrison, Marquez, Crews and others, of course, many others.  And, then, you got around to what the painters and musicians were doing and saw color and rhythm and tried to marry that, too.  It’s style, man.  You create it; you swing to it.  It’s yours and yours alone.  It can’t be copied and it can’t be faked.  You just know it when you see it, hear it, or read it.

[Mark Coker] – What drives you to write?

[Norman Savage]   –  Mostly biology.  It’s not a big thing; it’s much like pissing–when your bladder gets full, you just have to empty it because if you don’t the whole goddamn system implodes.  Toni Morrison said in one of her great novels, "Sula,"  "if a writer doesn’t practice his craft, that craft will eventually turn against  him."  I don’t know if I got the quote exact, but it’s close enough.  It is very difficult for me not to think a certain way, in a certain style, to a certain music.  If I deny that–and I’ve tried to do it, sometimes for many years–I’ve usually wound up fucking myself.

I’m sure it’s a selfish thing, too, bound up in ego and all manner of forces, some of which I know and others I have no idea about.  I suppose, when it comes down to it, it’s about "fucking" as well.  I was always good with the women, but in the short term.  Writing has most of the time satisfied my libidinal urges:  striking hard at the keys, blasting letters onto a white sheet of paper, penetrating a canvas or the airwaves.  And now, as my body betrays me, writing has not, my mind has not.  The gods have certainly been gracious and have given me more than my right share.

[Mark Coker] – You write openly about your various addictions to a laundry list of legal and illegal drugs.  Do you regret or treasure these experiences?

[Norman Savage]   –  "Regret" and "treasure" are two words that are not easily addressed.  Each usually contains some of the other.  It’s like a woman saying she loves you and you are unable to respond, whether you love her or not.  It’s never that cut and dried.  I know that people would like "simple" answers, but for them there will only be hard days and nights.

I "regret" wasting a lot of time tethered to a habit, but then again, I regret wasting a lot of time going into another ridiculous job.  Alcohol and drugs opened up ways for me that were unsuspected, and they led me to other things that I wouldn’t have come across without altering my normal sense of reality.  They helped make sense out of things and provided different ways of seeing and experiencing, not necessarily all good.

But, as I’ve said earlier, there’s a lot to be said for "bad" experiences, too.  They are part of the whole, whatever the "whole" is or becomes.  They have also fucked-up and altered certain relationships, and given others pain, that never did them or myself any good.  But then, again, without them, I might have bitten the bullet before I had a chance to sort some of this out.

When I first started to experiment with drugs, I was lucky enough to be around some people, smarter than me, who used drugs as a tool and they taught me ways to work with various substances.  For me, though, they finally became a way for escape, escape from what was really best in myself and, after losing what control I had, I had no way of returning to my previous state.

But, to answer your question, I do treasure many experiences–from making connections with things when alone and thinking, to experiences with others in the most common situations–and regret the dishonesty, to myself and others, that bordered my own particular cowardice and what fueled it.

[Mark Coker] – How is it that you’re still alive after struggling with diabetes for 50 years and nearly continuous drug addiction for 45 of those years?

[Norman Savage]   –  Luck, brother.  Never underestimate it.  Yes, we work and plan and scheme and pray and think we’re on top of our game, but dumb providence makes the difference in a great many respects.  And fear, don’t forget down home gut-wrenching fear; that will get your attention.  My memoir makes clear just how helpful "luck" and "fear" were and are.

My genes, except for the "diabetic" one (if my disease wasn’t psychosomatically orchestrated), are apparently good.  Also, within my madness and mania, I never missed an insulin shot, ever.  The doctor, who became my friend, and took care of me for a long time, was a past president of The American Diabetic Association, wasn’t judgmental, and always was not only in my corner, but gave me other docs to sort out other ills.

Women were always far better to me than I was to them and kept me going long after I should have "stopped."  I’ve been clean for a couple of years now and stopped on my own.  I kicked junk three years ago by going into a looney bin and then coming out and getting on a public Buphenorphine program, then stopped going there after being clean for a year, and stopped drinking two years ago because I wanted to.

I do not like the word "recovered" or "recovering."  I used to go to a lot of AA meetings and never liked all the hand-holding, sharing and higher power kind of thing, but I did like, and needed, the social lubricant.  But I stopped going at a certain point.  What exactly am I recovering from?  Desire?  How the hell can you recover (and why would you want to?) from "desire?"

People drink or drug because there is an absence inside us, and we "desire" to fill that  absence.  We fill it with drink, drug, sex, others, TV, gambling, eating, working, or praying.  But that kind of desire remains, always.  Usually it’s the misguided desire for the other:  mother or father.  And that "other" is dressed in drag, disguised.  It’s finally false and utterly impossible to reproduce.  But we still search.

I believe, it’s only when you try to come to grips with that that you get on with it and go on.  There was a huge study done by NIAAA comparing what mode of "therapy" worked best for the drug addict/alcoholic.  They compared AA, therapy, and pharmacological interventions.  Each of them were dismally inefficient.  Most people who do stop using alcohol and/or drugs and who were really addicted (not those fakers who go on TV or to meetings wanting to meet people and get laid, published or "networked"), do so by "spontaneous remission."  They just decide one day that they’d had enough and quit.  Quietly.

[Mark Coker] – What’s your day job?  What are some of the other jobs you’ve held over your lifetime?

[Norman Savage]   –  I’d rather not mention my day job.  It’s legit and it’s hard, but it suits my purposes.  Aside from being a bartender from time to time and before I had four toes amputated, I was a non-profit whore.  Whoever wanted me,  I lifted my skirts for.  I taught, wrote grants, counseled kids and adults in alcohol and drug treatment settings, taught nurses and interns about diabetic management and skills (circa, 1984), drove taxi’, worked supermarkets, administered grants in major medical institutions, and worked with kids who had ADD & ADHD.

[Mark Coker] – When I asked you for ten things about you, you listed, "the impossibility of not lying."  Do truth and fiction blur to you?  Is your memoir truth, fiction, or both?

[Norman Savage]   –  Yes, "words" are a construct.  They’re made up.  It’s like trying to tell someone your dream.  Yes, you can almost, almost describe it, but you can never quite get the colors right, the texture right, you can never really say what you mean.  Some, of course, are much better at getting at the right word than others, but, brother, that takes a whole lot of work.  "Words," too, are straightjacketed;  they strain and crack under the weight of too many tongues.

I try to get it right, at least as "right" as I know it, but I’m sure if other interested parties were to describe the same experience they had with me they’d remember it, see it, and word it in other ways.  Truth and fiction indeed do blur.  My friend, Jack, calls it "friction."  Melville, too, in his great work, "Billy Budd," (or was it "Benito Cereno"?) says this about the rainbow:  how can you really tell where the blue ends and the orange begins, and then to red, to green, to yellow, to fuscia, to purple, to gold?  How do you really tease those things out?

My memoir is as close to "truth" as I know it for me.  I did not make-up or fabricate any of it; I didn’t have to.  Dizzy Dean, a once great baseball pitcher, once famously remarked:  "It ain’t bragging if I done it."  Other people would disagree with some or all of it.  That’s O.K.  Let them write one of their own with their own take on things.  What is always fiction is how I put the words together; one word, one sentence after the next.  In that respect, it’s entirely up to me.

[Mark Coker] – Have you been truthful in this interview?

[Norman Savage]   –  Yes.  Today.  But as this cat Zizek said, "I’d rather be inconsistent, than inconsequential."  If I learn of something that makes more sense to me, then I’d be a fool not to entertain that.

[Mark Coker] – What do you want written on your epitaph?

[Norman Savage]   –  There’s a writer who I’d admired long before I came to correspond with him briefly, Harry Crews.  There’s something he said that I’d like on my gravestone.  And, Mark, since I don’t know many people these days, maybe you’d be so kind?  Here’s what I’d like on the rock:  "I never wanted to be well-rounded, and I do not admire well-rounded people nor their work.  So far as I can see, nothing good in the world has ever been done by well-rounded people.  The good work is done by people with jagged, broken edges, because those edges cut things and leave an imprint, a design."  I want to leave a stain, Mark, I want it to say that I was here and lived it through.

[Mark Coker] – Thanks Norman!

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Where to buy Junk Sick:

Junk Sick: Confessions of an Uncontrolled Diabetic is available at Smashwords for $2.99 as a multi-format, DRM-free ebook.  Visit http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/715

To learn more about Norman Savage, visit his Smashwords author page.

This interview originally appeared at the Smashwords Blog.

The Design Process For A Book & More

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On the Soro Design Book Design Blog, Cecilia Sorochin offers a multi-part blog series.  In the series, Cecilia walks you through the professional designer’s process of designing not only the cover and interior layout of a book, but the design of a companion website as well.  You can learn a lot from her, and if you like, you can even hire her.

I find the design process really interesting, maybe more than the finished work.

Why? (just my point of view) Because during that collaborative process between designer & (ideally) author is where the visual personality of the book will be defined.

PART I: The Book Cover


We get the manuscript for the design of the book cover, layout & website for   A Worthy Legacy by author Tomi Akinyanmi.

A Worthy Legacy is a story about life and the passing of wisdom from one generation to the next. The author combines the last wise words of her beloved grandfather together, along with a few of her own thoughts to create a compelling story about real life.

Read the manuscript

From just a glance, the overall feel of the book should come out.

Then look for the voice: my starting point for every book is the belief that authors write books because they have something to say. By reading a manuscript, I need to find what it is that they had to say, who says it, how it is said, & from which point of view.

Sooner or later (usually very soon) some details are revealed, and often I find in those little details the key to the cover.

Reading A Worthy Legacy I learned that the author, originally from Nigeria now living in the U.S., tells many insights about the Yoruba Tribe, which totally fascinated me… & gave the book the ‘unique’ factor.
 

Go to the Soro Design Book Design Blog to: see what sorts of images the manuscript brought to the designer’s mind, view her early cover design ideas, learn which one the author ultimately chose, and read more of the series.

A Review of The Jade Owl . . . but more

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This is not the first review of my novel The Jade Owl, but this is the first one that has add commentary on Indie Publishing and POD. I thought it would be interesting to share it on Publetariat.

Edward C. Patterson
www.dancaster.com

 

"From Aricia’s Gay Book Blog

review by Aricia

http://ariciasgaybookblog.blogspot.com/2009/02/gay-mystery-and-ancient-chinese-magic.html

 I was asked a while ago, will I review POD books … and the answer to that is a resounding yes. I’ve said this several times before, and it’s true: some of the best fiction being published today is coming out in POD form, where it’s direct from the writer to the reader.

However, the first thing I need to do is make sure to qualify this statement! "Direct from writer to reader" does not mean the book hasn’t been edited, proofread, labored over, illustrated, layout-designed and so on. The best POD books have had every bit as much work as a book issued from a traditional publishing house. Sometimes more.

I applaud when a really talented writer has the courage to go it alone, because it’s going to mean work such as a non-writer can’t imagine. (Mel Keegan states the case better than me in this post: POD Publishing: why do it? And why not?")

So I’m delighted to be reviewing The Jade Owl by Edward C. Patterson, which is available from Amazon. com as a paperback, and also in Kindle. It’s also available from Smashwords in several formats. (I have the PDF for reading on my desktop because I haven’t yet saved enough of my pennies to get an ebook gadeget. Soon. Very soon.)

The story falls into the same category as the "urban fantasy" novels of writers like Charles de Lint (Yarrow, Greenmantle and so on) and Jan Siegel (the Prospero’s Children series). It takes place in the real world … but one of the foundation stones of the book is, paranormal artifacts do exist, and the powers are real. (The same foundation stone is holding up everything from Indiana Jones to the Mummy movies. It’s come to be a Hollywood staple.)

In this novel, the artifact is an ancient Chinese object, a six inch piece of Jade carved in the likeness of an owl — and it’s actually a key that opens a box known as the Joy of Finches. What’s in the box? That would be telling! But everybody wants the key.

The first thing that impressed me about Jade Owl was how knowledgeable about Chinese antiquities the writer is, and about China itself. Shanghai and Beijing are described with the same amount of detail and enthusiasm as San Francisco — and never having been to either China or the USA myself, I really appreciated the "local color." Many writers, when setting their plots in London, New York, what have you, seem to think that everyone’s been there and knows intimately every secret of the city. Not true. So, the first level where Jade Owl succeeds is in "selling me" San Francisco, which is the setting for the first long segment of the book.

Then it’s off to China, and in the second half of the novel the adventure really kicks in. The first half is more of an exploration of culture, personality, even history. There’s not too much "action" in this part of the story, but I liked having the story built up properly from the ground up, so that all readers are on the same page when the knock-down-drag-out adventure begins.

The characters are, for the most part, excellently drawn, with only one or two of the lesser players falling back on "stock characterization." Edward C. Patterson’s dialog is very believable, you can "hear" voices saying these lines. But it was the paranormal aspects of the story that hooked me … I love this stuff anyway, and the Jade Owl does it well. I know a little bit about things Chinese, since I grew up with a huge crush on Bruce Lee and read/watched everything I could get my hands on over the space of about ten years! Jade Owl is a real treat.

It’s a crying shame this book had to be self-published, and you have to ask yourself what the publishing world is coming to, when gifted writers everywhere are having to fly solo. Jade Owl is not just "competently" written — it’s only one thorough, ruthless edit away from being on a par with the top-notch writers who sell in the gajillions. (Trust me on this: I’ve been a pro "proofie" for decades and have seen the best and worst that professional writers can turn out … and some long-time professional writers I could name churn out unpunctuated drivel that has to be bashed into shape by line-editors who get paid about $10 an hour!) There was a time, maybe 20 years ago, when a publisher would take in a manuscript from an inspired and gifted writer, and would assign an editor to do the final work, then the book would be jacketed and sent out there with posters and hype galore. (Doesn’t happen now. A manuscript can be received that is absolutely gem-perfect, and it’ll still get turned around and sent back unread … sad to say, I’ve worked in the industry and seen what happens: it’d shock you).

But — I digress! The Jade Owl is an extremely good read. It gets off to a slightly shaky start, but the style settles right down after a few pages and is very readable. You’ll like the central characters of "Rowdy" Gray, Nick Battle and his partner, Simone. In fact, you ought to love Simone, who’s a drag queen from the Castro, indomitable, very human, very "real." There’s enough gay content to keep GLBTI readers reading — and more than enough action of other kinds (sensual, paranormal, cultural, comedic) to keep straight readers reading.

It’s also hellaciously good value for money, at $15.45 for the paperback, $3.19 in Kindle, and $3.99 from Smashwords … and this is a major novel, over 200,000 words. And here is one of the great things about getting a book direct from the writer: because there’s no publisher to accommodate, the price can afford to be much lower than you’d think.

Does the book have a downside? Well … maybe, but it depends who you are, and what your "ear" is like! The writing style can be a little erratic at times, but many readers would also call this one of the book’s charms. So there you are — as with so many facets of so many books — it’s actually your call. I found the PDF ebook easy to read, but halfway through I longed for a "proper" ebook reader to get away from the PC — not the author’s fault! When I get myself an iLiad, or Bebook or something similar, I shall be reading Jade Owl a second time in the comfort of a hammock chair at the bottom of the garden.

I should also note that there are two more books following on from The Jade Owl , the first one of which is available now, the second, on its way. I still have to get to the second, so can’t talk about it here.

Recommended on many levels. AG’s rating: 4 out of five stars — with a "gold star" added for incredibly good value for money."

 

Notes from the TOC conference

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I just returned late Thursday night from the O’Reilly Media Tools of Change conference in New York City. This was my third year at the conference. The first year I attended as a reporter for VentureBeat, and then these past two times as a speaker. For the benefit of those of you who didn’t attend, I’ll share some of my personal highlights, in no particular order:

Twitter Forever Changes the Conference Experience – Thanks to Twitter, conferences will never be the same. For every session of the three day conference, hundreds of TOC attendees were Twittering real time quotes, analysis and conversation. I found myself monitoring the Twitterstream (check it out here) as I listened to the speakers, and it added another interesting (though distracting!) perspective on the conference.

Twitterers held nothing back. If the speaker started giving a sales pitch, or made questionable statements, the Twitterers were merciless. If the speaker said something interesting (or not), Twitterers would tweet it and then that would cause a cascade of retweets. For three days straight, TOC was in the top five most discussed subjects on Twitter. Thousands, if not millions, of people who weren’t at the conference were getting a taste of the not only what was happening but what people thought about what was happening. Many of the Twitterstream participants weren’t even at the conference.

One of the most profuse and entertaining Twitterers on the TOC Twitterstream – and he wasn’t at the conference – was Mike Cane (@mikecane for you Twitterers), a self-described "ebook militant" and writer who lives near Staten Island. Twitterers from around the world tweeted their friends at the conference and had them convey questions to the presenters. At one great panel on social media in publishing, moderated by Ron Hogan (@ronhogan for you Twitterers) of MediaBistro/GalleyCat, Ron actually introduced his panelists by their Twitter handles.

Is Twitter going to become a secondary form of identity? I think yes. I think it’ll also forever change the dynamic between conference presenters, attendees and wannabee attendees. At some points, the Twitter echo-chamber reached heretofore unknown limits of, well, echo-chamberness. During the Blogging and Social Media Workshop led by social media guru Chris Brogan (@chrisbrogan) who told attendees he considers Twitter the new phone, session attendee Chad Capellman (@chadrem) uploaded a YouTube video of Chris speaking. When Chad told Chris about it, Chris logged on to YouTube and the audience watched Chris watch a big screen projection of the Chris video taken minutes earlier, and then Chad or some other attendee joked they could take and upload a new video of this special moment as Chris watched a video of himself that we could all then watch.

Several times during his three hour workshop, Chris checked the Twitterstream to gauge audience impressions of his live performance. At one point after he walked on stage drinking from what looked like a beer bottle, Susan Danzinger (@susandanziger) of DailyLit tweeted she thought Chris was drinking a beer onstage, then yours truly (@markcoker) retweeted it because I was wondering the same, then Kat Meyer (@katmeyer) set the record straight, as did Chris when he saw the tweetstream on the big stage monitor. Twittering while watching Twitter while listening to and participating in a conference while the presenter talks about Twitter and is the subject of a Twitterstream while he himself Twitters makes for a very surreal experience.

Peter Brantley on Literature as a Driver for Services – Peter Brantley directs the Digital Library Federation, and he’s one of my favorite thinkers about the future of the books, and about the sacred place books occupy in culture. In a keynote address, Peter challenged the audience of publishers to consider how moving books from print to digital can change the nature of reading, and how the move to digital can open up new business opportunities for publishers. "What’s published will be less about the book and more about the people who read them," he said. He talked about how books will become networked and empower more participatory methods of reading.

Cory Doctorow Eviscerates DRM – In a keynote, author Cory Doctorow (@coreydoctorow) had the audience in rapt attention as he proceeded to disembowel Amazon and all those who would seek to perpetuate the short-sighted practice of DRM. He challenged publishers to step up to the plate and demand Amazon accept their ebook files DRM-free. If anyone knows where I can find a transcript of his talk, let me know so I can link to it here.

Chris Baty of Nanowrimo Says Authorship has Bright Future – One of my favorite presentations came from Chris Baty, founder of National Novel Writing Month, which just completed its tenth year of operation. Although Steve Jobs says people don’t read books anymore, Chris made clear that you can’t stop writers from writing, and for this reason alone books face a bright future because the process of writing helps writers appreciate books. "Novels are not written by novelists," he said, "novels are written by everyday people who give themselves permission to write novels."

At least one Nanowrimo participant has landed on the New York Times Bestseller lists, and several have earned book deals. The international Nanowrimo challenge has grown from only 21 participants in its first year, 1998, to 119,000 participants in 2008. Chris spoke at length about how the success of Nanowrimo has been driven by the powerful community that develops between writers as they share the deeply emotional experience of "meeting the book inside them."

The Rise of Ebooks – Ebooks were a big theme of the conference. The first year of the conference in 2007, there were maybe one or two ebook-themed sessions. Last year there were maybe three or four. This year, ebooks reigned supreme with at least ten sessions squarely focused on ebooks and with most of the other sessions touching on related themes. I moderated the "Rise of Ebooks" session. I admit, I’m biased, because I think my panelists (Joe Wikert of O’Reilly Media; indie author advocate and Publetariat founder April Hamilton; David Rothman of Teleread; and Russ Wilcox of E-Ink) did a kick *ss job of surfacing and debating some of the most interesting trends facing ebooks today. We covered a lot of ground in just 45 minutes, including:

  1. What’s driving the rapid sales growth of ebooks? (Answers: better screen display technology; availability of more titles; Oprah; lower prices; e-reading becoming as, or more, pleasurable than print; DRM starting to slip away)
  2. How long until ebooks go mainstream? (Russ predicted 2-3 percent of American households will own a dedicated e-reading device in the next 18 months [this is huge, and even if he’s off by half, it’s still huge], and most of the panelists agreed the ebook market will be dramatically larger in the next couple years.
  3. Screen technologies, present and future (screens will get faster, cheaper, better color, different sizes)
  4. Print vs. ebook, complementary or competitive? (most concluded they’re complementary, though I don’t think we’ll know if they’re a net positive or net negative for a few years – I suspect the latter)
  5. Supply chain implications for ebook intermediaries (new supply chain models forming, may not look exactly like print model; publishers and authors likely to get closer to consumers)
  6. Rich media ebooks, integrating video, audio, sensory feedback such as vibrations (lots of interesting stuff happening; a worthwhile opportunity to leverage traditional "book" content to offer readers a more engaging experience)

Artist Nina Paley Argues, "Give Away the Content, Sell the Containers." – Artist Nina Paley closed out the conference with a thought provoking talk in which she argued that artists and writers should give their content away for free but sell the packages that add value to their content. For example, she argued, water is free from the tap or filter, yet people will pay for water in a bottle for the benefit of the packaging, the brand, and the perceived benefits of that bottle or brand. Customers will pay for free content that is packaged in such as way that it adds value to the consumption of the content.

She showed a trailer for her new animated feature film, "Sita Sings the Blues," which she plans to make available online for free. She plans to make money (and pay off the debts incurred to make the movie) by selling the film to theaters, and by allowing publishers to publish coffee table books of the movie and its art. She also plans to sell value-added packaged versions of the movie, such as the limited edition DVDs she sold at the conference (Corey Doctorow was the first buyer).

Amazon Announces the Kindle 2 – Amazon tried to steal some of the thunder of the conference by choosing to announce the Kindle 2 a few blocks away on the first day of the conference. Amazon, however, was conspicuously absent from the conference. While attendees generally praised the new device for it’s faster screen refreshes (enabled by new E-Ink technology) and improved user interface design, as mentioned above in Cory Doctorow’s keynote and repeated by other keynoters, presenters and conference-goers,

Amazon was ridiculed throughout the conference for its adherence to DRM on the Kindle. Download O’Reilly’s Free "Best of TOC" Ebook – There was a ton more of interesting opinions and news from the conference, and I couldn’t possibly capture it all here. O’Reilly put together a good ebook (it’s free) that captures the best of the show (its only big omission is it doesn’t mention the Rise of Ebooks panel!) you can download it as long as you don’t mind jumping through all the convoluted hoops necessary to register for, and "purchase" the free ebook. Check it out here: https://epoch.oreilly.com/shop/cart.orm?prod=9780596802110.EBOOK Watch TOC Videos – O’Reilly has created an online archieve of some of the videos from TOC 2009 and prior years you can access here.

Record your book: 3 ways to speak your book instead of write it

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There are a number of ways you can now have a book without writing it. Some people think best out loud, so talk your book and then edit afterwards. Here are some options:

1. Record it yourself. Buy an audio recording device that creates digital files (under $100) and talk into it. Create mp3 files. Put an ad on www.Elance.com and get bids for someone to transcribe it for you. Then get an editor to craft it into a finished product. If possible, do the proofreading yourself and it’s done. I use a basic recorder for interviews which I get transcribed professionally and returned to me over the internet. It’s cheap and fast.

2. Record over the internet. Use a service like www.IDictate.com where you can do the recording direct over the internet. They then return a typed file for you to edit.

3. Speech to text software. Use software like Dragons Naturally Speaking http://www.nuance.com where the software recognizes your voice and writes it on the screen for you. Edit from there. All of these will give you a written file that you then have to edit and shape into a book, but the bulk of writing is done in a different way. You can then get a freelance editor to help you shape the final product – try http://www.elance.com

An Interesting Viewpoint on Indies

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I’d like to share this from Independent Publisher Online Magazine:
[http://www.independentpublisher.com/article.php?page=1276]

The Good, The Bad & The Simply Ridiculous
Why Independent Publishers Can Rule the World
by Nina L. Diamond

For the last two decades, we’ve all seen that neither the major publishing houses’ crazy business model nor the variety of business models used by independent publishers have worked. Some have been worse (major houses) than others (independents).

As our current unfavorable financial follies progress worldwide, it’s clear that every publishing entity will have to change how it does business. Some will change for the better. Others will simply change without the concept of better entering the picture.

My money (what little we starving writers and authors have these days) is on independents changing for the better and the major houses finding ways to stay afloat while continuing the model that has been so destructive to books and authors.

This brings us to some news – the good, the bad, and the simply ridiculous:

The Good
Independent publishers are in the same position that cable TV networks were back in the ‘80s and early ‘90s.

The three broadcast TV networks (ABC, CBS, NBC) short-sightedly and unwisely underestimated cable’s potential. Well, we see where that got the three smug behemoths: focused solely on money, they’ve lost their market dominance, scores of viewers, and most of their creative credibility.

Their news operations can barely keep up with cable’s quality, and the networks’ creative programming has been reduced to a handful of quality shows amidst a line-up of mind-numbingly stupid so-called “reality” shows, while the cable networks have grown in number and in high-quality, critically acclaimed programs loved by audiences.

The cable companies, those independent visionaries once dismissed as poor step-children by the broadcast industry and the print media, have shown that quality rises to the top.

Today, independent publishers can follow the cable network model, and rise to the top of the publishing industry.

Did putting money first and quality a very distant second spell financial success for the three broadcast networks?

Of course not.

And it hasn’t spelled success for the major publishing houses, either.

And, as you’ve noticed, it certainly hasn’t worked out very well for the real estate, banking, and investment industries.

It never does, when you don’t care what you sell as long as you’re selling something. That always leads to selling nothing.

Independent publishers far outnumber the major houses, and can survive the storm because the independents have a tradition of focusing on quality, and of respecting authors and their books.

They can come out on top because they don’t have the burden of a mandate to sell crap in order to funnel millions of dollars into corporate conglomerate leaders’ salaries, bonuses, and other payments, and to cut back on staff and titles when they can’t sell enough of said crap in order to keep stuffing those dollars into corporate honchos’ pockets.

They can come out on top because they have the flexibility that the major houses lack.

They can turn on a dime. And get by on one, too, for a while if they have to.

Recently, I had a conversation with Lynne Rabinoff, a literary agent who represents an author I’ve been working with. She represents high profile and midlist authors, and, until now, like most agents, has pitched her authors primarily to the major houses.

Given the current publishing climate, she’s now routinely including independent publishers in her list when she pitches an author’s book.

Other agents, she says, are doing the same.

Her advice to the major houses?

“Put more emphasis on what a book has to say rather than on a glitzy platform.”

That will force them “to pay more attention to a book and to reign in the big advances that just end up hurting everyone.”

Her advice to authors?

“Think twice about writing a book. You need to know that what you’re saying is important. Not everyone can or should write a book.”

Often, she says, the material is better suited for a magazine article, if it’s even suited for publication at all.

But, alas, the lure of fame and fortune – that, of course, doesn’t come to 99.9% of authors – leads so many people to want to have a book published, often when it’s not warranted. And that does nothing but hurt the industry.

So, yes, there is good news to come from today’s publishing predicament. At least for independent publishers and their authors.

Independents, with the quality and creativity they offer, are in a position to take over the industry. And agents who once shied away from independents solely because they couldn’t fork over big advances, are now turning to them. That helps authors, keeping them from being under-represented, or not represented at all, as they deal with independent publishers.

The Bad
Economic recovery is going to take a while. This isn’t the sniffles, it’s a serious illness with a long treatment plan. The patients, however, will steadily improve. If they take good care of themselves and stop doing self-destructive things.

The Simply Ridiculous
The list of absurdities in the publishing industry could wrap around the world twice, so I’ll just share one with you that’s emblematic of what’s been wrong for so long:

An author I spoke to has been having a hard time getting a novel published.

What’s so ridiculous about that?

The author has had about 20 fiction bestsellers that have been loved by critics and readers, and that have made a tidy fortune for the major houses that have published them.

So, why the trouble getting the next one published?

The major houses would prefer to publish only the author’s non-fiction, which is very good and has done okay, but nowhere near as well as the bestselling novels. Novels that readers have made very clear they want more of.

See, I told you it was ridiculous.

Independent publishers will lead the book world if they can focus on the good, ride out the bad, and learn from the ridiculous.

* * * * *

Nina L. Diamond is a journalist, essayist, and the author of Voices of Truth: Conversations with Scientists, Thinkers & Healers. Her work has appeared in numerous publications, including Omni, The Los Angeles Times Magazine, The Chicago Tribune, and The Miami Herald.

Ms. Diamond was a writer and performer on Pandemonium, the National Public Radio (NPR) satirical humor program, for its entire run in Miami and select markets nationwide from 1984-1998. As an editor, she works frequently with other authors and journalists on both fiction and non-fiction.

The Hero's Journey

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Publetariat Editor’s Note: Chris Vogler, author of the fantastic The Writer’s Journey, Mythic Structure For Writers, now runs Storytech, a literary consulting firm. In this excerpt, reprinted from his site, he provides an outline and overview of Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey, a theory and model of storytelling Campbell wrote about in his classic book, The Hero With A Thousand Faces. If you want to write a bestselling novel, The Hero’s Journey won’t steer you wrong. In fact, you’d be hard-pressed to find any blockbuster movie or blockbuster novel that doesn’t hew to The Hero’s Journey.

The Hero’s Journey is a pattern of narrative identified by the American scholar Joseph Campbell that appears in drama, storytelling, myth, religious ritual, and psychological development. It describes the typical adventure of the archetype known as The Hero, the person who goes out and achieves great deeds on behalf of the group, tribe, or civilization. Its stages are:

1. THE ORDINARY WORLD. The hero, uneasy, uncomfortable or unaware, is introduced sympathetically so the audience can identify with the situation or dilemma. The hero is shown against a background of environment, heredity, and personal history. Some kind of polarity in the hero’s life is pulling in different directions and causing stress.

2. THE CALL TO ADVENTURE. Something shakes up the situation, either from external pressures or from something rising up from deep within, so the hero must face the beginnings of change.

3. REFUSAL OF THE CALL. The hero feels the fear of the unknown and tries to turn away from the adventure, however briefly. Alternately, another character may express the uncertainty and danger ahead.

4. MEETING WITH THE MENTOR. The hero comes across a seasoned traveler of the worlds who gives him or her training, equipment, or advice that will help on the journey. Or the hero reaches within to a source of courage and wisdom.

5. CROSSING THE THRESHOLD. At the end of Act One, the hero commits to leaving the Ordinary World and entering a new region or condition with unfamiliar rules and values.

6. TESTS, ALLIES AND ENEMIES. The hero is tested and sorts out allegiances in the Special World.

7. APPROACH. The hero and newfound allies prepare for the major challenge in the Special world.

8. THE ORDEAL. Near the middle of the story, the hero enters a central space in the Special World and confronts death or faces his or her greatest fear. Out of the moment of death comes a new life.

9. THE REWARD. The hero takes possession of the treasure won by facing death. There may be celebration, but there is also danger of losing the treasure again.

10. THE ROAD BACK. About three-fourths of the way through the story, the hero is driven to complete the adventure, leaving the Special World to be sure the treasure is brought home. Often a chase scene signals the urgency and danger of the mission.

11. THE RESURRECTION. At the climax, the hero is severely tested once more on the threshold of home. He or she is purified by a last sacrifice, another moment of death and rebirth, but on a higher and more complete level. By the hero’s action, the polarities that were in conflict at the beginning are finally resolved.

12. RETURN WITH THE ELIXIR. The hero returns home or continues the journey, bearing some element of the treasure that has the power to transform the world as the hero has been transformed.

Read the rest of the article and see the accompanying diagrams on Vogler’s Storytech site, here.

What is Publishing 2.0 and why is it great news for writers?

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Publishing 2.0 is changing the way books are written, published, sold and promoted over the internet utilising Web 2.0 technologies.

Authors can now use these tools to self publish and get their message out there themselves. You do not need a publisher to write and sell your books, and you are not confined anymore by space or somewhere to store your books. You are not confined by price either. Here’s why.

Writing your book has changed

Traditional publishers will assign you an editor and proof-readers, as well as a cover designer and type-setter. They have professionals to do this for you. However, these people also work as freelancers and there are people all over the world who you can employ to do this for you as a self-publisher writer. Sites like http://www.Elance.com and http://www.Guru.com have people who can do these jobs for you so your book is as professional as a “real” publishing house.

The ways of writing have also changed with technology. You can speak your book into a hand-held recorder and send it to a transcriber to put into words, then send that to a freelance editor. You can use a tool like Dragons which turns your words into text as you speak.

You can blog your book now. Write a post every day of 500 words on a related topic and in 6 months you will have substantial book. Setting up a blog is now so easy anyone can do it for free at sites like Blogger.com or WordPress.com.

Printing your book has changed

Print-on-demand (POD) technology is when you load a print-ready file to a POD publisher online. When an order comes in for your book, they print the book and send it to the customer directly. You get a smaller cut of the sale price but you have no stock to store, no postage hassle or costs and no up-front print costs. If you are a self-published author, you have the global rights to your book. You can have multiple POD publishers in order to lower costs from postage e.g. use http://www.Lulu.com in USA and http://www.Pothi.com in India.

Another new technology is the Espresso Book Machine that enables a book to be printed and bound in about 7 minutes. As these machines become cheaper and easier to use, people will be able to download and print books on demand. If you think that these machines could be hooked up to Google Book Search online and print anything, people may print your book just as easily as a traditionally published book.

Alternatively, you don’t have to print your book at all. You can sell it as an ebook on one of the many ebook sites, or from your own website. The pricing of ebooks does vary but the information is still the same and sales are starting to rise. Ebook readers are available in many different formats and with the popularity of the iPhone with Stanza software, most people will soon have ebook readers in their mobile phones.

Selling your book has changed

Online book sales have changed the way people browse and buy books. Even small independent bookstores now have online sales, as well as huge stores like Amazon.com and BN.com. With Print-on-demand technology you can now have your book on these megastores alongside traditionally published books. The page is formatted the same, the availability is the same and to the public, there is no difference. When you have an Amazon page, other online booksellers will also pick up your book for their website so you get even more exposure.

You can also sell your book on your own website using PayPal to take credit card payments globally without the need for a merchant account. You can sell your ebook on Clickbank and have affiliates sell it for you. You can upload your ebook to Kindle so people can read it on Oprah’s favourite ebook reader. You can sell your book on the iPhone through http://www.Smashwords.com

Think bigger than just your local bookstore!

Promoting your book has changed

Traditional publishers have focussed on “in-person” promotion like book signings, book tours and traditional media like newspapers and TV. This is still valid promotion but can cost you time and a lot of money.

Web 2.0 changes the way authors can promote themselves for very little money.
Here are just a few ideas:

* Write a blog about your book so search engines can find you. Include links to Buy your book now.

* Submit press releases online to free (or paid) PR services that are syndicated around the world

*Make a podcast on your book that people can download to hear your voice and get to know you

* Make a video book trailer and post it on YouTube

*Do a virtual book tour and visit websites in countries all over the world

* Submit your book to Google Book Search for even more search engine traffic

*Join general social networking sites and build up a group of people interested in your topic

*Join specific social networking sites for authors or groups about your topic

*Gain a following on Twitter

*Post articles on your topic at article sites with links back to your main site

*Upload your book and author details to Amazon and syndicate your blog there

*Build your email list with a free report and market to your hungry crowd

*Make your own pages on Web 2.0 sites like Squidoo and Hubpages with links to your own website

Publishing 2.0 is the broad term that encompasses all of these new developments. It is the future of publishing and it’s here right now for those authors who go online.