Four Wonderful Tools For Writers In The Digital Era (That Aren't Word Processors)

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This article, from Jeremiah Tolbert, originally appeared on his site on 5/11/09.

As a designer, I’m always stumbling across useful resources and tools online, but for whatever reason, I find fewer tools that really exist to help make writers’ lives easier.  That doesn’t mean they aren’t out there.  It just means you have to dig a little deeper.  Today, I thought I would share some tools that can make certain aspects of the writer’s life a tad easier.

1. Dropbox

If you’re anything like me, you don’t always remember to run your backups.  With recent computer troubles, I’ve been making a much bigger effort to backing up everything of importance.  About six months ago, I started using Dropbox and I haven’t looked back.

Dropbox is an online versioning and backup system.  You install dropbox on your windows or mac computer and everything in the folder called “My Dropbox” is constantly uploaded to the server.  When you make modifications, it keeps a record of these changes and you can go to the web interface and load older versions.  Accidentally overwrite a file?  Dropbox can save your butt.  It has saved me on more than one ocassion.

Even better, Dropbox can be installed on multiple computers, keeping your dropbox folder synced up to all of the machines.  Whether you’re on your office computer or your laptop, you will have access to your files.

Finally, Dropbox users can share folders with one another.  We use this feature extensively at Escape Artists to deal with our production files, contracts, and various business documents and resources.

My biggest concern when I first started using Dropbox was that it would constantly be uploading my 50+ megabyte photoshop files, and my bandwidth would be devoured.  It actually tracks the differences, though, and only uploads the changed bits.  I’ve never noticed Dropbox being a hog of my writing.

There’s a free 2 gigabyte account, which should be more than enough to protect your writing documents.   I pay for the 50/gb a year plan for $99 per year because I truck in larger files.    Dropbox is available for Mac, PC, and Linux.

2. Evernote

I work across 3 different computers, and keeping my research notes in an easy-to-access format, while maintaining flexiblity and a variety of formats, isn’t easy.  That is, until I discovered Evernote.  What I was looking for originally was productivity software to help myself implement the GTD method.  What I found instead was a very useful program for organizing all those little bits and pieces of things that I need to access from time to time.

Evernote works on a very simple system of notebooks and notes.  You can add tags, and just about any kind of media into a note.  You can clip entire webpages into a note, or just the URL.  You can make screen captures very easily.  And then the real power is, it’s constantly backing up your notes to the server, and syncing them with all machines you run it on.  There’s a usage limit for free accounts based on data transfer, but I’ve never even gotten halfway there.  I don’t tend to use much in the way of multimedia files though.

Not only do I use Evernote for sorting and keeping track of things like research notes, storynotes, and so on–I often start writing my blogposts there.  Any kind of document where the format isn’t necessary, that I want to be able to access from anywhere.  You can even record voice notes with the iPhone app and they will be synced to all your machines.  I used this feature to take down some notes on my novel project while I was driving across Kansas alone.  Very useful feature.

There are a few things about Evernote I do find lacking.  For one, you can’t sort notebooks into collapsible hierarchies.  I would really like to be organize my notes in a similar fashion to my email program.   You can kind of fake this with saved searches for tags and so on, but I don’t really need a more detailed system of organization than notebooks/folders.

Evernote is available on Mac, PC, and iPhone. It has a very nice web-based interface as well.  If you have an internet connection, you can get to your notes.

Read the rest of the article, including tools #3 and #4, on Jeremiah Tolbert’s site.

The Enchanted 15: Plot

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This post, from Jennifer E. Pierce, originally appeared on her Just Jen blog on 8/4/09. In it, she proposes that there’s really only one ‘plot type’: protagonist overcomes obstacle.

Narrative is not an exclusively literary domain–narrative, according to Mark Turner ( The Literary Mind 1996), narrative pre-exists language and the structure of narrative is the way we begin to make sense of our world as a body who exists in time and space. 

 
Drama–which is the earliest form of the novel–is the essential motivator in teaching us to move, think, and express ourselves in language.  What is drama?  Drama is a protagonist overcoming an obstacle.  A baby sees a toy.  The baby imagines itself with the toy in its grasp.  But there is an obstacle–the space between the baby and the toy.  The baby must imagine itself overcoming the space between it and the toy in order to learn to crawl and overcome the obstacle between itself and the toy.  This is a cognitive schema known as SOURCE-PATH-GOAL.  ( Dora the Explorer uses this schema all the time and this is the secret to the show’s success.  The map repeats over and over: "River-bridge-Grandma’s house!")  
 
From that moment of triumph, conquering the space between herself and the toy across the room, the baby then begins to project that experience onto the world around it and it is through this that the baby begins to make the world intelligible.  This is the essence of story.  
 
So, concludes Turner, what was once consider the domain of optional literary considerations, is now understood to be the essential operation of mind.  The elements of plot are not exclusive to novels, plays, and movies.  They are the essential components of reality as we perceive it.  
 
Some people experience disappointment when they realize, in terms of plot, that there are no original plots.  Every story can find its roots in another story.  A lot of writers I know struggle to make their plots original, to find a story that hasn’t been told–but the struggle is fruitless.  The essential elements of plot remains the same.  Some say there are only  seven plots, others 30,  others 20.  But there is actually only one plot–and that is overcoming an obstacle.  

Once we grasp this essential idea–and the variants on this theme–it shouldn’t disappoint, it should actually free you.  Establish the obstacle and write against it.  Though I know most of you reading here are writing fiction and the application is obvious, this is even so of non-fiction.  The best writing establishes an obstacle and overcomes it through argument and eloquence of expression.  The organization of the writing only falls into place if it is a step-wise process of overcoming a clearly defined obstacle.  

Read the rest of the post on Just Jen.

USMAN MY FAVORITE NEPHEW

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 A young man you are, still growing and learning as you mature into maturity.  Oh how  proud i am of you, I just wished i could share in your lows, highs, glories and in your triumphs-for you have become a wonderful young man, accomplishing so much in your short life span.For i am very proud of you.

love uncle james

Writing Voice: Unteachable… Essential…. Elusive. And… Paradoxical.

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This article, from author and writing coach Larry Brooks, originally appeared on his Storyfix site on 8/14/09.

We are writers.  We must compose the songs we sing.  We must choreograph the dances we perform.  We must design what we ultimately seek to build.

We are unique in these things.  Composers need not carry a tune.  Choreographers need not perform.  Screenwriters and directors need not be actors or set designers.  Architects need not even be present as their creation is being built.  

But we, as writers, are alone with all dimensions of our craft.  We are the sole determinants of words as we compose, choreograph and design stories.  We are judged according to both, separate and together, on how their sum exceeds the whole of their parts.

Writing voice is but one of six core competencies we must come to know and seek to master.  Deficiency in any one of them bars us from what we seek to achieve.

With regard to voice, though, this is ironic if not paradoxical.  Because many come to the craft of writing for the sound of their own voice, if not the utter joy of it.  And yet – and here is the paradox – it is at once the most likely of the elements that will bar us from the inner circle of the published, while being least among the criteria that allows us entry to it.

Allow me to explain.  It takes an agent or an editor many dozens of pages to determine the merits of your story.  It takes only a few pages to assess the rhythm and melody of your writing voice.  Those first pages expose the writing as that of a professional, someone who is publishable… or not.  If it compels, if it flows or doesn’t overwhelm, then it passes muster as acceptable.

And that’s all that is required of it.  Any allure of a stellar writing voice beyond that point is a case study in diminishing returns.

Because you don’t have to write like a poet to sell your story.  You simply need to write well enough to get through the door into a crowded hall full of storytellers.

From then on, your story is what determines your fate.  Little if nothing else matters.

So many writers focus on their words.  As they should if their writing voice has not yet matured and found its unique pitch.  If it even remotely smacks of awkwardness or the timidity of a neophyte.  If it tries too hard.  

And yet, despite that focus, such writers tread a solitary path, because voice is virtually impossible to teach.  All the grammar lectures and sentence modeling in the history of the world won’t get you there.

Writing voice must, in effect, be earned.  Discovered.  Grown into.  It must evolve into a signature cadence and tonality, with colors and nuance that imbue it with subtle energy and a textured essence of depth and humanity. 

Effortlessly.  Simply.  Cleanly.  Without the slightest hue of purple.

There is only one way to discover it.  You must write.  Practice.  Constantly.  Intensely.  Humbly and aggressively.  And you must do it for years if that’s what it takes.  Because it refuses to be rushed. 

Read the rest of the article on Storyfix.

5 Tips For Joining Your First Social Media Site Such As Twitter, Facebook Or LinkedIn

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This post, from Yvonne Perry, originally appeared on her Online Promotion Made Easy blog on 8/17/09.

Getting started on social media can often be deceptively simple – What’s the big deal? You sign up. – or intimidating – Why am I being asked for my date of birth? – or overwhelming – How do I find people to friend or follow?

The truth is that this is a world of official and unofficial rules. It is easier if you start out knowing what’s what, and this is probably especially important if you’re more of an introvert.

Let’s imagine you already use email, search for information on Google, and read blog posts. But you’ve never joined any social media sites. How do you start?

1. Decide how comfortable you are sharing information about yourself. And the corollary to this – how wide a sharing of this information are you willing to do.

If you’re a book author and want people to buy your book, it’s a good idea to decide that you will share personal (although not private) information to as wide an audience as possible. If you only want to connect online with former high school friends, your target audience is much smaller.

If sharing information makes you somewhat nervous, think about what it means to be personal as opposed to private. Personal is a good marketing book you just read that you can recommend to help others; private is a fight you had with your business partner over implementing the marketing steps recommended in the book.

2. Ask online savvy friends which popular site they would recommend you start with based on your goal. (And do start with just one while getting your feet wet in this brave new world.)

• If your goal, for example, is to have a wide audience, then Twitter may be the best choice because of its "open to everyone" format.

• If you only want to search for high school friends, then Facebook may be the best choice as you can confine your information to a very small circle and can search by name for those long-long friends.

• If you want to make connections to help with a future job search, then LinkedIn, whose format is set up for such a process, may be the best choice for you.
 

Read the rest of the post, including tips #3-5, on Online Promotion Made Easy.

Steampunk: What It Is, Why I Came To Like It, And Why I Think It'll Stick Around

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This article, from Cherie Priest, originally appeared on her The Clockwork Century site on 8/8/09.

I would like to take a moment to define “steampunk.” This will be an exercise in futility (not to mention sadomasochism) because there is no formal, all-encompassing, final word on the subject, and people are bound to disagree. But for the purposes of what is to follow, I must begin with a definition of this term which I’m going to be flinging around willy-nilly. So here goes.

Steampunk: An aesthetic movement based around the science fiction of a future that never happened. Recall, if you will, visions of the future that were written a hundred years ago or more. Think Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, Mary Shelley, and the like — telling stories featuring technology that didn’t exist at the time, but might someday. Remember that they were writing with no idea of the microchip, or the internet, or (in some cases) the internal combustion engine. Therefore, in their versions of the future, the technology upon which society would eventually come to depend is driven largely by steam power or clockwork. Sometimes electricity is likewise invoked, but it’s often treated as quasi-magical due to the contemporary lack of understanding about how it behaved and what it could do.

WooEEE. That’s a mouthful, I know. Let me broaden that just a smidge and add this as a postscript: Steampunk could be considered a retro-futuristic neo-Victorian sensibility that is being embraced by fiction, music, games, and fashion. It is ornate and vibrant, and intricate. It believes that functional items can and should be beautiful.

It is lots of fun. If it isn’t lots of fun, you’re doing it wrong.

Let the emails beginning, “Actually …” and “Technically …” and “But you’re forgetting …” begin! But please bear in mind, this is but one woman’s experience and opinion.

And click the jump below in order to keep reading.
(Or just scroll down if you’ve been linked directly, or are reading from a feed.) 

* * *

Why I got interested in steampunk:

I first became interested in steampunk about four or five years ago, when I stumbled across a message board dedicated to the subject. This brief introduction sent me on a little research expedition to learn more, and the more I learned, the better I liked it — and the more I understood that this nebulous term was actually encompassing a whole slew of things I already appreciated.

My only tiny gripe was that most of the steampunk art and fiction I was seeing appeared to be centered around Victorian London.

Don’t get me wrong — Victorian London is a pretty awesome setting, and far be it from me to declare it unfit in any capacity; but this American cosplay enthusiast with a history minor [:: points thumbs at self ::] could scarcely resist composing a checklist.

Did we have oodles of fancy steam-and-coal-powered tech? Check. One massive rail system that eventually crisscrossed over three thousand miles of rivers, plains, mountain ranges, and swamps. I believe that counts.

And what of similarly hardcore weaponry, and early mechanisms of flight? Check. How about everything that ever fired, rolled, or flew during the Civil War — including the “aeronauts” and all their war balloons, spy crafts, and surveillance equipment? If that doesn’t count, then gosh darn it, I don’t know what does.

What of class clashes, colonialism, exploration, and scientific expansion? Oh honey, Check. Westward expansion with all its inherent ethical and pragmatic difficulties; an enormous slave class which was liberated and then obligated to integrate into free society, often with zero social or legal protection; a region’s failed secession and “reconstruction” into a crippled territory with a ravaged economy that hasn’t fully recovered even 150 years later; agricultural barons vs. industrial barons; urban poverty vs. rural poverty vs. urban wealth vs. rural feudal wealth; frontier millionaires; gold rushes; smallpox blankets; Spindletop and the rise of fossil fuels; Thomas Edison; Henry Ford … Jesus, need I go on?

So I still had a book under contract.
And I knew where I wanted it to take place — and what I wanted it to look like. 

* * *

Why I think steampunk will stick around:

And now as people talk about steampunk breaking through to the mainstream, and what it must become or acquire if it’s going to have any staying power … I think that at least some of the answers are obvious, and I intend to talk about two of my favorites: (1). Steampunk comes from a philosophy of salvage and customization, and (2). Steampunk’s inherent nature is participatory and inclusive, yet subversive.

Read the rest of the article on The Clockwork Century.

How To Avoid The 11 Biggest Mistakes Of First-Time Authors

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This article, from Roger C. Parker, originally appeared on the Personal Branding Blog on 8/5/09.

Writing, books, and personal branding go hand in hand. When you know how to write, and you use that power to write and promote a book, you can change your life.

Writing and promoting a book opens windows of opportunity–opportunities that would never otherwise show up. As a published author, you’re branded as an expert to new clients, prospects, and job opportunities. Your book becomes your business card, proving your expertise and professionalism. You can access experts you’d never, otherwise, be able to access.

You can leverage your book into whatever you want your life to be.

As Harry Beckwith wrote in The Invisible Touch, “If you want to change your life,”write a book.”

Success, however, is not guaranteed

Many first-time authors are not prepared for the possible land mines and pitfalls along the way. Many find writing a book to be a frustrating and unrewarding experience.

Fail to receive rewards

The following are the 11 biggest reasons many first-time authors fail to receive the rewards they expect:

1. Unrealistic expectations

Don’t expect to get rich off your book, even if it’s a success by publishing standards. The vast majority of books fail to earn out their advance.

Instead, right from the start, develop a personal marketing plan to leverage off your book.

Instead of trying to make money on the book itself, use your book to open doors, promote your credibility, and build relationships with readers. Know how you’re going to profit from your book through follow-up information marketing, providing sales and services, or seminars, worksheets, and paid speaking and training.

I’m amazed by the number of authors I’ve interviewed for who have told me they devote their publishing advances and royalties to charity, knowing that profits from book sales will never equal the profits from their own back-end products and services.

2. Writing without a contract

Never write a book without a signed contract. Instead, prepare a detailed book proposal and two sample chapters.

Publishers are increasingly selective the titles they accept. Often, less than 1 in 50 titles proposed are published. Worse, most books change during the writing and editing process.

Writing a book that isn’t accepted is not a good use of your time!

3. No agent

It is essential that you be represented by a literary agent.

Publishers rarely accept unsolicited book proposals. Unsolicited proposals are frequently returned unread or are simply discarded. The right agent will know exactly which publishers might be interested in your book.

More important, publishing contracts frequently contain “boilerplate” text that can sabotage your writing career before it begins. You must have an agent who knows what to look for and is able to negotiate more terms.

[Publetariat Editor’s note: while it’s true that most of the largest publishing houses won’t accept unsolicited manuscripts, very many mid-sized, and most small, imprints will. Visit each imprint’s website to learn whether or not your unsolicited manuscript will be accepted. However, regardless of how your manuscript finds its way to an acquisitions person, when things get to the contract negotiations stage you must have an able and experienced representative at your side, whether in the form of a literary agent or an attorney well-versed in literary rights contracts.]

4. Weak titles

Titles sell books. The title of your book is like the headline of an advertisement. The title is the “headline” that helps you sell your project to acquisition editors as well as bookstore readers.

Successful titles stress the benefits readers will gain from your book. Successful titles arouse curiosity and offer solutions. They often include consonants and alliteration (repeated ”hard” sounds like G, K, P or T).

5. Title versus series

Don’t think “book,” think “brand.” Focus on a series of books rather than an individual title. Publishers want concepts that can be expanded into a series rather than individual titles.

Do it right, and your first book becomes your brand, the “shorthand” that identifies you. Think in terms of brands like Jay Conrad Levinson’s Guerrilla Marketing series which has provided him over thirty years of quality lifestyle, challenging clients, and speaking opportunities throughout the world…and still does.

Read the rest of the article, including points #6-11, on the Personal Branding Blog. Also see Roger C. Parker’s Resource Center for more great marketing tips and articles.

6 Reasons Why Every New Writer Needs To Be On Twitter

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This article, from Caroline Smailes, originally appeared on her website on 8/12/09.

It seems that everywhere you turn writers are being told that they need to build an online platform. They need a blog, a website, a Facebook page and, perhaps most importantly, a twitter account.

Here are six reasons  I (@Caroline_S) have found twitter to be essential for new writers:

It is big and it is clever: The explosion in twitter users has made twitter the thing all the cool (mainly over 25s) ‘kids’ are doing. It’s new (ish) and to be honest its reputation as the best social media tool out there is well deserved. The simple fact that twitter is the latest trend is reason enough to get involved. The fact that is gives writers the chance to entice hundreds of new readers makes it, well…irresistible.

Conversation is King: Twitter’s biggest advantage is that it makes millions of people so damn accessible. Once a member of twitter, you can follow and interact with anyone else on the system. Now (for me) this isn’t about famous people, it’s about normal people and people that you can connect with and who you’re interested in. As a writer it allows you to make friends and build a following. However, it also allows you to interact with people that can help solve problems. For me, twittering isn’t about trying to get someone to buy my books, it’s about connecting and having a laugh. Need a bit of advice about grammar, or which publisher to approach or even the best type of dog food – twitter can help.

You might just bag yourself a book deal: A growing number of publishers and agents are using twitter. Most are open and ready to interact. This means that, for the first time, writers have the chance to skip the slush pile and go straight to the people that count. Build a relationship with the correct agent or publisher and you never know there might be a book deal in it for you.

Read the rest of the article on Caroline Smailes’ website.

Revelatory Sequencing

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This article, from editor Alicia Rasley, originally appeared on Edittorrent on 7/27/09. In it, she explains how pacing and your choice of what to reveal, and when, can strengthen or weaken your fiction writing.

I’m reading a mystery where the victim is widely disliked, so there are lots of suspects. (I’m summarizing and paraphrasing here, but you’ll get the point.)

So the detective has just arrived at the scene and has said he’ll go tell the new widow that her husband is dead. He thinks that her reaction could tell him something.

The woman sees that he’s a policeman and stands up and says in exasperation, "I hope you’re not here to tell me my son has been arrested."
He says, "I have some bad news. Your husband has been murdered."

Next line:

She reacted with shock but not sorrow, and Yanif saw clearly that she didn’t love her husband. Could she have murdered him? He didn’t know. He just knew she wasn’t mourning his death.

—
Okay. We know she has a husband, the victim.
We know now that she has a son.

Now this is a big moment in the plot. The detective tells the widow, and she reacts in a way that puts her right at the top of the suspect list.

But I think the scene could have been made more emotional, more fun, with a bit of a diversion here. Let’s say the woman rises and says with exasperation, "I hope you’re not here to tell me my son has been arrested."
The detective — craft the dialogue carefully here, because my point is… draw it out. Take your time. Take it slow.
The detective replied, "No. But I have some bad news–"
And then he pauses.

Maybe you want him to draw a breath here. Maybe he’s pausing so that he can see her reaction to the news. But when he pauses, instead of waiting, the widow rushes in.

"No! Not my son! He’s not–"
And the detective says hastily, "No, no, not your son. It’s your husband. He’s been murdered."

So she drops into her chair, hand on her throat, and whispers, "Oh, thank God. I thought you were going to tell me– but he’s all right. Philip. My son. He’s all right, you say?"

And the detective then has to say again, "Yes, ma’am. This isn’t about your son. This is about your husband. He has been–"

"Murdered, yes, you said. But Philip is all right– Thank you."
"But your husband–"
She took a deep breath. "Yes. Walter. Murdered. Yes. Please tell me where, and when."

—

What’s the difference? Well, first, we learn something about this woman. She loves her son. She doesn’t love her husband, but that’s not because she’s incapable of loving. She’s no sociopath.
 

Read the rest of the article on Edittorrent.

Cloud-publishing; or, Why "Self-publishing" Is Meaningless

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I don’t like the term "self-publishing."

Cloud-Publishing

In the emerging world of "cloud-publishing," it’s meaningless, and does not reflect what’s coming, what we’re already seeing signs of. Cloud-publishing — what we’re doing at Book Oven — is providing a toolset, on the web, to publish books; a publishing model native to the web, with all the benefits:

  • instantaneous global distribution
  • simple, web-based collaboration (editing, proofreading, design)
  • networks of creators and collaborators (new and existing)
    • networks of readers (new and existing)

How book creation gets organized in such a model will vary greatly, from the lonely writer, to a small press wishing to focus on content & not technology, to collections of colleagues and friends, to professional associations, collections of strangers aligned by topical interest, or financial interest, or just aligned in the interest of making books.

The key here is: cloud-publishing (and Book Oven) will provide the tools to allow groups of people to easily coalesce around the production, distribution and sale of a particular book or books. How those groups organize themselves will look different from book to book. But Book Oven’s tools will mean that book makers can focus on the important thing, the content, and not worry about the technical hurdles of making, printing & distributing books.

What’s Wrong with the Status Quo?

Others of course, will prefer the current model, and that is wonderful and excellent and good. I love publishers, and books, and book stores, and libraries, and they have brought me great joy over the years.

But the web offers new, parallel ways to make books, not necessarily better, but more flexible, more easily global, more connected.

That’s the larger movement afoot. And if all goes well, Book Oven will be a big part of this movement.

Self-Publishing Doesn’t Cut It

So "self-publishing" doesn’t cut it as a description of what we’re building at Book Oven. It’s too limiting, and doesn’t get anywhere near the vision we have of a new, parallel, model for publishing as a whole.

As the availability of web-based tools for making books grows, the distinction will be between what you might call "corporate publishing" — blockbuster, and top-end publishing; commercial textbook production, etc. — and the rest of us. The rest of us are "independent": the smaller presses, groupings of people who put craft and time into making something with various motivations, and yes, individual writers. That doesn’t mean there won’t be money on the independent side, but the structures around the businesses will be very different than on the blockbuster side.

We’re All Indie Now, or None of Us Is

Though as Richard Nash suggests, we’re all indie now (except the big guys), so even the term indie doesn’t mean much:

So now the phase of indie is over, now that the monopoly on the production and distribution of knowledge, culture and opinion has been broken, what next, a new phase, a drive to, perhaps, create, maintain, defend a New Authenticity arises?—Ah, am I opening myself up for derision with that…? Never mind, I toss it up there, a wounded duck. Power will try to hide behind the people, let’s use a new authenticity to stop them. [more…]

Bloggers Suck, Right? And Amateur Talkers?

But back to "self-publishing": once upon a time, it conjured in some people’s minds a negative slew of adjectives: Bad. Sub-par. Not selected.

Deserved or not, that’s how many react to the term.

They said the same thing about blogging in the old days, and yet I can (and do) now find 10 times as much wonderful, thoughtful, well-written content from blogs than I do from professional outlets. Every time I hear people claim that blogging is "bad" (amazingly, you still hear that), I roll my eyes. As I said to Henry Baum: you might as well complain about bad "talkers." Some talkers are wonderful. Others insufferable. Some of the worst "talkers" are paid lots of money to talk; some of the best are friends of mine and they do it for free. So you would never consider complaining about "talking" as a method of communicating, just because lots of people talk nonsense. You assume that is the case, and seek out the good talkers. So on the web with bloggers, and music, and indeed, books.

Talking is just a means of transmission of words and ideas.

But for whatever reason, it’s hard for people to think of distributing text in the same way that they think of distributing verbal words. While talking might be free, distributing text, audio, video has only recently become (effectively) free. And just as the world is getting used to blogging, and maybe podcasting, along comes this idea that books can be distributed essentially for free. Think about what happened with blogging: suddenly, the means of transmission of text – to a global audience – became free. When the cost restrictions on producing written text disappeared, so did the power of the established system to decide what was worth printing and what wasn’t. And people did what they are wont to do when systems blocking them disappear: they started publishing text like crazy on the web. That made people very uncomfortable. It meant lots of "bad" writers were publishing their text for global consumption. But more importantly, it meant that we saw a beautiful flourishing of great writing that no one had bothered printing before – the topic was too narrow, the audience too dispersed, the return on investment too low. It turns out that the calculations about what’s "worth" publishing is very different when the cost of publishing approaches zero. And that means that now, if you have an internet connection, you can read just about anything produced anywhere in the world. Lutes and Violins? Bespoke tailoring? Goats? You got it.

In the end though, blogging is just a means of transmission of words. And it turns out that there were millions of people willing to write excellent stuff that for whatever reason the traditional media set up did not, or could not publish.

We expect to see something similar with cloud-publishing.

[We’ve had easy access to the tools of publishing for a while, see for instance Lulu. But the most important shift we’re about to see, I think, is the network of readers and writers and book makers. I’ll write more about this later].

Good Books vs. Bad Books

Now, I can guarantee something. As the ability to publish books gets easier, we’ll have more "bad" books than you can shake a stick at. (In fact, we probably already do, published, unpublished, self-published…).

But the lines of distinction will not be, as they were previously, between traditional publishing and self-publishing, but rather just between good books and bad books (with caveats about eyes of beholders etc).

We’ll have corporate publishers making good books, and independents making more good books. And everyone will make lots of bad books too. But how independents organize themselves will change greatly too.

Publishers and the Web

Fact 1: many corporate publishers are having a hard time coming to terms with the web. It’s going to get harder for them – they already are having trouble sustaining their cost structures, and have off-loaded much of the work around the web to their authors.

Fact 2: The web has a wonderful ability to allow people to sort through huge piles of information, and seek, rank and share gems.

Opinion 1: People will find more new writing on the web; so "book publishers" must start to be native to the web, and see the web as integral to their task of connecting readers and writers; they cannot continue to see the web as some kind of add-on to their marketing departments.

Opinion 2: Big corporate publishers will have trouble with Opinion 1; so new publishing models need to emerge.

Nothing Is New Under the Sun

We’ve seen this in music and blogs/newspapers and encyclopedia, where the web, and cheap tools of production have spawned an explosion of creative activity, excellence, choice, and a toiling mass of music and writing of all shapes and sizes (along with lots of dreck, but that’s a side effect of all the great stuff).

We think the same is going to happen for books. With a global audience hungry for content, and cheap easy tools for creation and distribution, and a growing network of creators and readers connected on the web and an explosion of devices that allow people to be reading at times and in places they never did before, the distinctions about where or how books were made will fall away.

Do I Want to Read It?

All that will matter are these two questions:

1. is it any good?

and

2. do I want to read it?

And so "self-publishing" is a term that should be retired.

[Cross-posted at the Book Oven Blog and elsewhere …]

Manifesto (Why Do We Write?)

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This post, from Paul Anderson, originally appeared on the Write Anything blog on 7/19/09.

Than you to everyone for your suggestions at the end of last week’s petulant whine appeal for ideas. I’ve got an idea for a few different articles based on suggestions, but I thought the first one to address should be something that Rob asked, as it seems to be one of the first things to address – why do we write?

Well, I can’t really speak for anyone else, I can only say why I write, and give thoughts on what I perceive to be the general urge to write.

All life is story and myth. We tell stories about ourselves every day, in gossip, in conversation, in blogs and emails and telephone calls. “You’ll never guess who I met”, “did you hear about Sandy”, “I’m so excited I just have to tell you….”

Our popular entertainment consists almost exclusively of stories. Drama, comedy, horror, fantasy, science fiction, romance on television, DVD, the movies, radio, online (even books!).

Even current affairs and news is a form of storytelling, depending on the point of view you want to put across from supposedly objective events (or in some cases events cut from whole cloth). The news is myth in the making, before passing into the realms of history, myths that are generally accepted.

Religion too comes down to storytelling, an esoteric myth to history’s exoteric myths.

Stories impart essential information, warnings about dangers, and explanations for how things are. Humans are curious, curious about everything, and stories are how we explain things. From reminiscing about our greatest hunts and warnings of the dangers lurking in the dark, to how we came to set foot on the moon, our existence is told and retold through stories.

Read the rest of the post on the Write Anything blog.

Secrets Of The Amazon Bestseller List

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This article, from Marion Maneker, originally appeared on Slate’s The Big Money site on 8/5/09.

It’s almost a philosophical riddle: Do sales drive the best-seller list, or do best-sellers get all the sales because buyers see them on the list? As much as we’d like to believe that the crowd picks the best books, a strong presence in retail locations—front-of-store positioning and tempting discounts—still counts a great deal in determining how well a title sells. Nonetheless, authors are in it for the glory, and the visibility and bragging rights of being a "best-seller" retains the glamour of years past.

In the old days, the New York Times best-seller list meant everything. But it doesn’t come out until weeks after the sales take place, and it only updates on Sunday. Today’s author needs a better, faster sounding board. And she’s found it in Amazon‘s (AMZN) unblinking sales rank, the 24-hour barometer of book sales. Indeed, it’s a rare author with self-control who, as soon as the book is published, doesn’t obsessively check the list these days, which is updated every hour.

Yet for all that, few people understand how the Amazon list works or its relative importance in the publishing industry. Amazon’s method of ranking books remains something of a black box with the fancy word algorithm used to describe it.

Let’s look at an extreme version of what a writer can be today. The best writers take an active, entrepreneurial role in their book sales. Publishing is filled with success stories that began as self-publishing miracles. Many of those are novels, but let me introduce you to a friend of mine, Andy Kessler, who did it in nonfiction.

Andy’s a bit of an annoying guy. He’s got that gene that just won’t let him take anything at face value. So when he’s presented with a challenge like publishing a book, he just keeps picking it apart until he feels he can do it better.

That worked to his advantage in the 1990s when he moved to the Bay Area and opened a hedge fund that invested in early stage technology companies: real engineering-geek stuff like chipsets and drivers. Andy did well as an investor. He did so well during the tech boom from 1998 to 2000 that he found himself with plenty of free time for writing afterward. In 2002, when Wall Street was getting pilloried in the press, he realized he had worked with some of the most notorious names from the dot-com bubble, like Mary Meeker, Frank Quattrone, Henry Blodget, and Jack Grubman (remember him?).

So Andy sat down and wrote up his experiences in a book called Wall Street Meat. He published it himself because traditional publishers were too slow and kept him too far from the action. His experience outlines just about everything we know about the Amazon list.

1) Authors’ obsession. Like dozens of other writers, the Amazon sales rank became his daily, even hourly thermometer of success.

"The Amazon rankings are a blessing for authors because you can really figure out how your marketing is working," Andy says. "Just do Fox News? No change. Maybe that wasn’t a good use of my time. A positive Wall Street Journal review? Wow, look at it spike. I went up 150 today. Woohoo!

"Radio interviews feel like echo chambers, ‘Hello Cleveland.’ " he recalls. "I wonder if anyone is even listening to WZIP—they sure haven’t budged the rankings."

2) Smart authors try to goose the list. "After countless hours watching the timing and delivery of PR for my books—radio, NPR, cable TV, broadcast TV, newspapers, magazines, blogs, newsletters—I have picked up on the rhythm of Amazon rankings," Kessler says. "I’ve done the best after a week or two of decent PR followed by an e-mail newsletter (from a third party with a big, big following) with a link to click. The former sets up a base, and the latter spikes the sales within a few short hours or over the course of the day."

"My best?" Andy asks rhetorically. "I once hit No. 4 and stayed there almost all day. It was a Sunday. An e-mail newsletter had dropped on Friday night with a direct link, and I could almost hear mouses clicking all weekend. By Monday morning, I was back in the 20s and 30s; by Wednesday I was back to around 100. It was exhilarating."

 

Read the rest of the post on Slate’s The Big Money.

27 Ways To Breathe Life Into Your Blog's "About" Page

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This article, from social media expert John Haydon, originally appeared on his site on 8/11/09. The tips here are not aimed at authors and publishers specifically, but will be very useful to anyone with a site or blog.

Every three or four months, I take a look at my About page and ask myself two questions:

  1. What are my business goals for this page? In my case, I do strategy consulting and build what I call “social web systems” for small businesses and non-profits. I want this page to help visitors imagine getting results by working with me.
     
  2. Is this page a true reflection of myself? This is a hard one because, like you, I am constantly evolving – and evolutions resist being bound by words.
     

The answers help me to start breathing new life into my About page. Below are a few things I’ve picked up along the way, either from other About pages and/or through trial and error. ;-)

The obvious

  1. It’s not about you. It’s about the visitor. Speak to them – as if they’re sitting across from you at a coffee shop.
     
  2. Answer questions. This person sitting across from you – what questions will they have about who you are and what you do?
     
  3. Open your door. Put links to your about page in a few places. I have mine in my footer, my nav bar and sprinkled throughout posts.
     
  4. Testimonials. Still the quickest way to establish confidence with potential clients.
     
  5. Have a photo. The quickest (and oldest) way of reading someone is through their face. And for God’s sake, smile!
     
  6. Keep it simple. Depending upon your strategy, less can be much more. Danny Brown teases visitors with an outline of services and provides a link to contact form at the bottom of the page. Beth keeps things short and sweet too. 

    Beth Kanter About

     

  7. Make it interactive. If you have a lot of information that people need to know, break it up into sub-pages, like Epic Change did.

    Epic change about

     

  8. Page Directory. Lots of info still? Try putting a table of contents at the top, just like Alltop does.
     
  9. Have a phone number. I can count on one hand the number of times new clients have introduced themselves with a paypal payment. Most of the time, we talk a few times -through email and on the phone.

    [Publetariat Editor’s Note: This is a good tip if you do consulting or other for-hire work, but you’ll probably want to keep your phone number, address and other personal information private otherwise.]
       

Read the rest of the article, including tips #10-27, on John Haydon’s site.

The Little But Really Useful Guide To Creativity

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This post, from Leo Babauta, originally appeared on his zenhabits site on 8/5/09.

“The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.” – Albert Einstein

It’s easier than ever to be creative, to create, to imagine and make what’s imagined become reality.

It’s also tougher than ever, with distractions surrounding us in ways never before imagined.

No matter what kind of creative type you are — writer, painter, musician, marketer, blogger, photographer, designer, parent, business owner — you are likely always looking for inspirations, for ways to let loose your creative genius.

And while there are millions of creativity tips on the Internet, I thought I’d share the ones I’ve found most useful — the ones that I’ve tried and tested and found to be right.

Here they are, in no order at all:

 

  • Play.
     
  • Don’t consume and create at the same time — separate the processes.
     
  • Shut out the outside world.
     
  • Reflect on your life and work daily.
     
  • Look for inspiration all around you, in the smallest places.
     
  • Start small.
     
  • Just get it out, no matter how crappy that first draft.
     
  • Don’t try for perfect. Just get it out there, asap, and get feedback.
     

Read the rest of the post, including 23 more tips to keep the creativity fires burning, on zenhabits.

The Happiness Project: 13 Tips For Actually Getting Some Writing Done

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This article, from Gretchen Rubin, originally appeared on her The Happiness Project site on 5/27/09.

Every Wednesday is Tip Day. This Wednesday: 13 tips for actually getting some writing accomplished.

One of the challenges of writing is…writing. Here are some tips that I’ve found most useful for myself, for actually getting words onto the page:

1. Write something every work-day, and preferably, every day; don’t wait for inspiration to strike. Staying inside a project keeps you engaged, keeps your mind working, and keeps ideas flowing. Also, perhaps surprisingly, it’s often easier to do something almost every day than to do it three times a week. (This may be related to the abstainer/moderator split.)

2. Remember that if you have even just fifteen minutes, you can get something done. Don’t mislead yourself, as I did for several years, with thoughts like, “If I don’t have three or four hours clear, there’s no point in starting.”

3. Don’t binge on writing. Staying up all night, not leaving your house for days, abandoning all other priorities in your life — these habits lead to burn-out.

4. If you have trouble re-entering a project, stop working in mid-thought — even mid-sentence — so it’s easy to dive back in later.

5. Don’t get distracted by how much you are or aren’t getting done. I put myself in jail.

6. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that creativity descends on you at random. Creative thinking comes most easily when you’re writing regularly and frequently, when you’re constantly thinking about your project.

Read the rest of the article, including tips #6-13, on The Happiness Project site.