31 Ways To Find Inspiration For Your Writing

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This article, by Leo Babauta, originally appeared on Write To Done on 3/3/08.

“You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.” – Jack London

No matter how much you love writing, there will always be days when you need inspiration from one muse or another.

In fact, I would argue that inspiration is not just a desirable thing, it’s an integral part of the writing process.

Every writer needs inspiration to produce inspired writing. And sometimes, it can come from the unlikeliest sources.

I’ve compiled a list of some of my favorite ways of finding inspiration — some of them obvious, some of them less so. But it’s always good to have reminders, and if you haven’t used a few of these sources of inspiration in awhile (or ever), give them a go.

1. Blogs. This is one of my favorites, of course. Aside from this blog, there are dozens of great blogs on writing and every topic under the sun. I like to read about what works for others — it inspires me to action!

2. Books. Maybe my favorite overall. I read writers I love (read about my current loves) and then I steal from them, analyze their writing, get inspired by their greatness. Fiction is my favorite, but I’ll devour anything. If you normally read just a couple of your favorite authors, try branching out into something different. You just might find new inspiration.

3. Overheard dialog. If I’m anywhere public, whether it be at a park or a mall or my workplace, sometimes I’ll eavesdrop on people. Not in a gross way or anything, but I’ll just keep quiet, and listen. I love hearing other people have conversations. Sometimes it doesn’t happen on purpose — you can’t help but overhear people sometimes. If you happen to overhear a snippet of interesting dialog, jot it down in your writing journal as soon as possible. It can serve as a model or inspiration for later writing.

4. Magazines. Good magazines aren’t always filled with great writing, but you can usually find one good piece of either fiction or non-fiction. Good for its writing style, its voice, its rhythm and ability to pull you along to the end. These pieces inspire me. And bad magazines, while perhaps not the best models for writing, can still be inspirations for ideas for good blog posts. These magazines, as they don’t draw readers with great writing, find interesting story angles to attract an audience.

5. Movies. Sometimes, while watching a movie, a character will say something so interesting that I’ll say, “That would make a great blog post!” or “I have to write that in my writing journal!” Sometimes screenwriters can write beautiful dialog. Other times I get inspired by the incredible camera work, the way that a face is framed by the camera, the beauty of the landscape captured on film.

6. Forums. When people write on forums, they rarely do so for style or beauty (there are exceptions, of course, but they’re rare). Forumers are writing to convey information and ideas. Still, those ideas can be beautiful and inspiring in and of themselves. They can inspire more ideas in you. I’m not saying you have to read a wide array of forums every day, but if you’re looking for information, trawling some good forums isn’t a bad idea.

7. Art. For the writer aspiring to greater heights, there is no better inspiration that great art, in my experience. While it doesn’t compare to the experience of seeing the art in person, I like to find inspiring works of art and put it on my computer desktop for contemplation (Michelangelo’s Pieta is there right now). It doesn’t have to be classical works, though — I’ve found inspiration in Japanese anime, in stuff I’ve found on deviantart.com, in local artists in my area.

8. Music. Along the same lines, it can be inspiring to download and play great music, from Mozart to Beethoven to the Beatles to Radiohead. Play it in the background as you write, and allow it to lift you up and move you.

9. Friends. Conversations with my friends, in real life, on the phone or via IM, have inspired some of my best posts. They stir up my ideas, contribute ideas of their own, and they fuse into something even more brilliant than either of us could have created.

10. Writing groups. Whether online or in your community, writing groups are great ways to get energy and motivation for your writing. My best short stories were done in a writing group in my local college (a great place to look for such groups, btw), as we read out our work to the group, critiqued them and made suggestions. The work of the other writers inspired me to do better.

11. The Pocket Muse. A book full of writing inspirations. Can’t beat that!

12. Quotes. I don’t know why it’s so, but great quotes help inspire me. I like to go to various quote sites to find ideas to spark my writing, turns of phrase that show what can be done with the language, motivation for self-improvement. Try these for a start: Writing Quotes and Quotes for Writers.

13. Nature. Stuck for ideas? Go for a walk or a jog. Get away from sidewalks and into grass and trees and fields and hills. Appreciate the beauty around you, and let the inspiration flow through you. Sunsets and sunrises, of course, are two of my favorite uplifting scenes of nature, and anything involving water is also awesome (oceans, rivers, lakes, rain, rivulets, even puddles).

14. History. It can be unexpected, but great people in history can inspire you to greatness. My favorites include Benjamin Franklin, Gandhi, Abraham Lincoln, Helen Keller, Leonardo da Vinci, and other greats.

15. Travel. Whether it be halfway around the world, or a day trip to the next town or national park, getting out of your usual area and discovering new places and people and customs can be one of the best inspirations for writing. Use these new places to open up new ways of seeing.

Read the rest of the article at Write To Done for 16 more terrific ideas, and feel free to share your own via the comment form below..

The Life, Death And Rebirth Of The Book

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This article, by Hollie Shaw, originally appeared on The Financial Post on 3/14/09.

A funny thing happened as electronic readers have become more popular: So have regular books.

Print has been declared dead many times, but for aficionados of electronic readers like the Amazon Kindle, that might just be true.

"I love this thing," crowed one consumer reviewer on the CNET review board about Kindle 2, a new version of the immensely popular wireless reading device that was introduced solely to the U. S. market in late 2007. "I like the convenience…. Someone recommended a book to me at the doctor’s office–I had it in less than three minutes."

Described by its fans as the literary equivalent of Apple’s revolutionary iPod MP3 player, the Kindle’s biggest endorsement came in the form of talk show queen Oprah Winfrey, whose raves for the US$359 gadget on her show last October led to the Kindle running out of stock weeks before Christmas for the second year in a row.

Amazon also introduced an application last month allowing Kindle e-books, which are downloaded from Amazon.com,to be downloaded to an iPhone. While e-books still account for far less than 1% of the market in Canada and the U. S., their proponents are convinced electronic reading devices could become as ubiquitous as cellphones as their technology improves, as they come down in price and as the environmental and dollar costs of using paper continue to take a toll.

"We are not looking at a major shift from reading physical books to electronic books over the next 12 to 18 months," said e-commerce analyst, author and literary agent Rick Broadhead. "I think people will grow accustomed to it. The best test of the market is kids who will be introduced to books in that form. They may develop a preference to [reading on] electronic devices because that is the environment they are growing up in."

The folks at Amazon are tight-lipped as to when — if ever — the Kindle will become available in Canada, even though the retailer has operated a separate Amazon. caWeb site in this market since 2002.

"We know that our international customers are interested in Kindle and we look forward to making it available internationally," said Drew Herdener, Amazon.com spokesman, in an e-mailed response. "We have not announced any specifics."

Currently, the only dedicated e-book reading device for sale in Canada is the Sony Reader, which has two models retailing for $300 and an enhanced version with more memory that costs $400.

Since the Reader’s introduction into the Canadian market a little more than a year ago, its per-capita sales volume has outpaced that in the United States, said Candice Hayman, spokeswoman at Sony of Canada, but she could not give specific figures.

Still, the rise of e-books is not hurting Canadian book sales.

Sales have only become more robust heading into the recession, with book unit sales 6% higher in the last three months of 2008 than they were during the same time period in 2007, according to BookNet Canada, which tracks retail sales. In January, unit volumes jumped 10% year over year.

"It’s huge," said spokeswoman Morgan Cowie. "We can’t really say why it is happening, all we can see is that it is obviously the case that people are still buying books."

 

Read the rest of the story at The Financial Post.

AMAZON CONNECT SYNDICATION

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Everyday I spend a few minutes catching up on posts in the Amazon Daily Blog section of the Amazon.com home page.  I noticed a lot of authors that I follow on Amazon always had posts there that were syndicated from their own personal blog.  Only recently did I discover how to do this myself, and I love it!  After updating my blog, MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter, my Amazon Blog often got skipped over.

 

While I still find the blogging system on Amazon to be a bit archaic, I still believe in it’s purpose and I’m glad that thanks to the syndication option, I don’t have to worry about updating it now.

 

I’d love some feedback from other authors who are part of the Amazon Connect program on new ideas or ways to use it to your advantage.  What’s working for you?

 

Any thoughts?

 

-Shannon Yarbrough

www.shannonyarbrough.com

Putting The Fun Back Into Writing

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This piece, by Jesse Hines, originally appeared on his Robust Writing blog on 1/29/09.

Be honest: do you still have fun when you write?

It wouldn’t surprise me if many of you don’t derive much pure, raw enjoyment from writing anymore, given so much of the writing advice we constantly read in the blogosphere.

You know: post after post on how to improve your writing skills, how to write in a way that attracts more blog subscribers, how to write such that you provoke powerful calls to action, how to write to increase your sales, how to write posts on Twitter to gain more followers, how to write with flawless grammar and punctuation so that people respect you, how to write for the way people actually read on the Web, etc.

I’ve done a few posts like that myself…

But it’s all so much work, isn’t it? We know that all work and no play makes us dull bloggers.

Absolutely, there are plenty of reasons to learn how to write “better”; who wants to read bad, stale writing? And if you’re making money (or trying to) from your writing, it’s wise to improve your writing skills whenever possible.

I’m Bringin’ Fun Back

I majored in English, and I got to read fascinating stories by fascinating authors. Chaucer. Milton. Shakespeare. William Carlos Williams. Flaubert. Dostoevsky. To name but a few. That was fun. And writing papers analyzing those authors and their stories was also fun.

The power, creativity, and enjoyment of story-telling came barreling back to me this past weekend as I watched the new (and superb) film, The Wrestler. I’m not a wrestling fan, but the movie’s themes of haunting loneliness and fleeting redemption powerfully affected me. It was sad but inspirational, evoking real emotion. And Marisa Tomei…what can I say?

The Wrestler is a powerful story that displays the consequences of a life lived in almost exclusionary devotion to one’s passion, while neglecting the important people in one’s life. Sometimes, it really is too late to change–both who we are and the results we’ve brought on ourselves. That’s real life, and a good story conveys that.

My point is, writing, for any true writer, at its core, is fun, and an opportunity to be creatively unique, expressing happy or sad or humorous or grandiose ideas. As I alluded to earlier, writing effective sales copy (or learning how to) is important if you’re trying to sale something. But, sometimes, writers just want to have fun–it’s why we started writing in the first place, right?

Try this Fun and Creative Writing Exercise. Hemingway Did

In that spirit, I’ll be introducing you to some cool writing exercises over the next few posts–fun and creative ways to both express yourself and improve your ability to write concisely and effectively. It’s about putting the fun and creativity back into writing.

Read the rest of this article, which includes Jesse’s first suggested exercise, Six Word Stories, on his Robust Writing blog.  And check back in over there from time to time for more exercises to put the fun back in your writing.

Interview With Doyce Testerman – Twitter As A New Medium In Authorship, Pt. 1

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Doyce Testerman is an author who’s writing experimental fiction on Twitter, the micro-blogging web application which allows a maximum length of 140 characters (including spaces).  Instead of just ‘tweeting’ a novel one line at a time however, Doyce tweets in the character of Finnras, the protagonist of his story.  In this interview series, Doyce talks about the project.

P: Describe your serialized, flash fiction Twitter project. Are you building a novel one tweet at a time, or do you view the project as more experimental in nature, without a specific outcome in mind?

DT: Well, the story itself is a kind of sci-fi yarn – it has those trappings – the spaceships and the eerie, emotionless pre-teen pilot and the multilegged aliens and all that; that’s the window dressing, and it’s fun stuff to play with. That said, the heart of the story is really about the captain – Finnras (or @finnras, if you like) – and his search for his daughter and what he’s going to sacrifice to get back to her. All my stories are eventually about people; I don’t think I’m particularly unique in that regard.

Am I writing a novel one tweet at a time? No, I don’t think that’s what I’m doing. Now, for the sake of folks who don’t do Twitter but who still want to follow the story, I’m compiling the tweets on a blog, which I set up so that you can read each month’s posts top-to-bottom, but even when they’re read that way, it’s still not like reading a traditional novel.

First, the format of the story is something like a first-person private journal, so the language itself is terse, but it’s more than that: the constraints of the Twitter format (140 characters, and my own desire not to use any abbreviations or truncated words) require that you encapsulate far more action into a single post than you ever would in 140 characters using the typical style of storytelling found in a novel.

In part, that’s kind of encapsulation is necessary to keep the story moving at an enjoyable pace – it would take something like 25 twitter posts to get one page of a normal novel out, and each of those individual posts would be pretty boring… and people would hate you for spamming them like that – overall, not really the response I’m going for. So no: not a novel-via-twitter.

At some level, it’s obviously an experiment – to a degree, it feels like I’m writing one panel of a graphic novel every post, and in a lot of ways there’s a similarity between what I’m doing and any other kind of sequential story telling. I call it ‘serial micro-fiction’ for a reason: the old serial adventure stories always ended with a cliffhanger and I try to do something that with each post – leave the story on an "ooh, and then what happens?" note.

P: What motivated you to try Twitter flash fiction? Is it primarily about the creative challenges and rewards of working in a new medium, or leveraging social media to build awareness of, and interest in, your work?

DT: First off, let me give proper recognition to my two biggest inspirations. The first was @twitlit, which was probably the first thing I followed on Twitter, and the other is @othar.

Twitlit is this simple, genius little project that posts the first sentence from a book, and a link to where you can go find that book. I follow it for those sentences — they showed me how much story you can compress into one sentence.

Othar is – I believe – written at least in part by comic book genius Phil Foglio, and is essentially the diary of one of the minor characters from his Girl Genius comics — someone he basically didn’t have time to draw a whole book about, but who had some stories in him. I’d actually started writing Finnras’ story on twitter about a year or more ago and kind of let it fall off my to-do list, then I found Phil’s @othar twitter, and it really inspired me to get back to this project. Now, with those props given…

A big part of doing this is the challenge of working in a new medium. Not the biggest part – this will sound corny, but my biggest reason for doing this is just the joy of doing it; I am enjoying the hell out of every single post – I am flat-out having a great time with it, and I look forward to doing every new post.

But to go back, working this story out in a new medium is part of that fun, and definitely part of the reward. Composing each post is like putting together a haiku — the limitations force a tremendous amount of creativity and concise word choice — getting it right is a big reward, though sometimes it takes time to get there; I’ve spent what some might think is way too much time composing some of these 140 character posts.

And frankly, I think it’s long past time that writers look at new mediums for their work. Paper is just a medium (a sentiment I’m essentially reTweeting from this year’s Technology of Change conference), and as our world (and the smaller publishing world within it) changes, it makes sense for writers to take a look at the tools around us and see if there aren’t some that we overlooked. Artists and sculptors do this sort of thing all the time; "Maybe I can paint on this building, maybe I can make something out of this old car… wait, even better: maybe I can paint on this building with this old car! Genius!" Tom Waits likes to go into hardware stores with a mallet and see what kind of sounds he can find.

What do storytellers use? Spoken words… and paper. That’s it. Very recently, people have considered the still hotly-contested idea of taking the-thing-that’s-on-the-paper and reproducing that exact same thing electronically, and that’s good, but that isn’t storytelling intrinsically designed for the electronic medium – I mean so intrinsically designed for that medium that it doesn’t actually translate well back to paper or spoken words.

Maybe this story about Finnras is that kind of non-transferable thing – if so, I’m comfortable with that – it’s enough that it’s fun for me and for the people reading it.

Now, with all that said, I’d be lying if I claimed I wasn’t aware that people following and enjoying @finnras (or even @doycet) might buy a book I wrote or an anthology I’m in — obviously, that kind of stuff is important. Today, writers really need to either build or be part of a community in order to enjoy some success, but for me that doesn’t mean "Doyce, you have to get on Facebook and Twitter and ping.fm and post on a blog and get people following you so that you have an audience!", it means "People like other people (even authors) a little better if they feel like they’re connected to them. Go out and connect with people; don’t be a dick."

P: You have a background in the world of roleplaying games. At this year’s O’Reilly Tools Of Change conference, Jeff Jarvis remarked that people who subscribe to World Of Warcraft are essentially paying to participate in the creation of a group narrative. Do you agree?

DT: That’s an interesting statement, really, but I don’t know that I really agree with it. Perhaps for some players who are very into the meta storyline that’s unfolding through an online game (be it WoW, LotRO, City of Heroes or what have you), that’s part of the payoff, but even then I’d say what they’re paying for is the right to participate in Hamlet as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern (or, far more often, as Spear Carrier #2 and #3).

You can view the unfolding narrative from a front row seat, but I don’t think that’s participation in any but the most rudimentary sense — when it comes to the Big Story (as opposed to your personal story) you have no influence or control over what is or isn’t going to happen. You might be participating in the narrative, but you’re not participating in the creation of the narrative. That’s nothing against any of those games; I enjoyed WoW for a couple good years, I still play a couple other games — heck, I met my wife online.

To me, to really have some level of participation in creation, the players need to have real say in what’s going to happen — if, for example, you were ‘playing’ Hamlet – playing some of the characters, you should have some influence over the outcome: maybe Hamlet doesn’t die… maybe he and Ophelia blow the whole murder drama off and elope while Laertes conducts an affair with Gertrude and they conspire to kill the King. Or something. The point being that I think the players should have influence over the story to be truly said to be participating in the creation of a group narrative.

Face to face, ‘old-school’ pen and paper RPGs have the advantage in this arena over online MMOs — I think only EVE Online really gives the reins entirely to the players of the game, with crazy and often fascinating results.
 

P: Is the @finnras project your first undertaking as an author, and if so, why did you choose that route over the more traditional approach to writing (i.e., write, revise and polish a manuscript)?

DT: Oh, definitely not. I’ve been writing pretty much my whole life. I’ve put some serious focus into it over the last five years or so, and since then I’ve sold a number of short stories to publishers’ anthologies and ezines — even won a couple awards. I’ve got a couple novels completed, and a couple more in progress.

With my second novel, Hidden Things, I’m going through the entire traditional publishing cycle — that includes a number of pretty serious rewrites, making submissions to agents, eventually finding a great agent who agreed to represent me, then submitting to editors, and so forth. That’s an ongoing project; right now, I’m working on some suggestions from an interested publisher that are pretty fun — I’m excited to see how it’ll turn out. I may think the publishing industry needs an overhaul (both from the publishing side, but also from the point of view of author expectations), but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s a real pleasure to work with people who know how to make a story better and who like yours well enough to work on it with you. I’m getting a chance to do that right now with Hidden Things, and it’s taught me a lot.

Of course, at the same time, I’m doing Finnras’ story, and I’ve participated in close to a half-dozen ‘storyball’-type collaborative projects with some great people. I’m a tech geek and a pretty early adopter, and when I start playing with a new thing, one of the first things I ask myself is "What can I create with this? What would that look like? Would it be cool? Will it be fun?"

I asked the same thing when contemplating traditional publishing — bottom line, I like doing all of it; each different method and medium is fun and rewarding in different ways — they each teach you different things. Traditional publishing teaches you, above all, discipline and determination. Self-publishing – however you do it – teaches you about the nuts and bolts of publishing and self-reliance. Writing on Twitter teaches facility with language and how important small choices can be; it’s a little zen, really — like working on a bonsai.

But I think it’s all worth doing, even if you ‘fail’ (whatever failure looks like for you) – especially if you fail; failing teaches you a lot. You have to fall down a lot before you figure out how to stay on your feet.

"It’s all about falling down." Something I’ve been known to say on occasion.
 

This interview will continue with parts two and three next week.

A Self-Publishing Diary

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This diary, by The Lulu Book Review founder Shannon Yarbrough, traces Shannon’s process and experiences in self-publishing his book, Stealing Wishes, from manucript formatting through publishing with Lulu, making the book available for the Kindle, and beyond, including a look back at his expenditures and net profit in the first year. The diary is from The Lulu Book Review.

From May to August of 2007, I wrote a novel and edited it twice then had no idea what to do with it because I was already thinking of a new project to write next. It was part romance, part comedy, and I didn’t know which market to shop it to. So, I let it sit.

In October, Amazon.com announced its ABNA contest to find the next breakthrough novel. I decided to polish my finished book and submit it as an entry. I made it into the contest, but was cut in the second round in January of this year.

So, there I sat with a finished novel. In December, I finished the second project I had started. Now…TWO finished novels! I got an idea on how to improve the first one, so I began rewriting and editing it again! I began shopping them to publishers and agents. I sent the first one out less because I thought the second one would appeal to a wider market. Rejections began to roll in. But I really wanted to publish that first novel, now entitled Stealing Wishes, because I had put so much time and effort into it. So, I have since decided to use Lulu to do it.

This page will serve as a diary of my publishing process to hopefully be a good resource for others who frequent this site often and may be looking for suggestions or advice. Feel free to ask questions or make comments, or share your own ideas if you have them.

Here’s where we are so far…

Three weeks ago: I began formatting my Word document manuscript to a 6×9 page size. I changed the margins and added page numbers. I added the blank pages at the beginning and end like you find in regular novels, and which Lulu requires for ISBN assignment. I added a copyright page (also required), a title page, and a dedication page..consulting other traditional books I own for alignment suggestions and for what the copyright page should say.

I added necessary pages so that my chapters always begin on the right side. I’ve noticed some traditional books do this and some don’t. Some more recent titles I looked at go straight through with no blank pages, chapters starting on the left or the right. But I did find some with blank pages so that the chapters always begin on the right. Any thoughts? I like the right side format so I went with that. I also “fully aligned” my words so I have that crisp straight line down the right page. I also added a picture to appear on my title page between the title and my name.

Two weeks ago: I started a new project on Lulu.com but kept it private. I uploaded my manuscript and examined the created PDF file to see if it was to my liking. It was, so I began working on a book cover.

The Book Cover: For the idea I had in mind, I grabbed a camera and set up a photo shoot using props I wanted on the cover. These were old photos, a cup of coffee, and some lose change. After several snapshots and different angles, I uploaded my photos to my computer and chose the best one. I played with color variation a bit, using Adobe Photoshop Manager, and finally had something I liked.

Using the Paint program on my computer, I created a 7×10 file which would serve as my cover. The reason for the slightly larger size is for the bleed over when you start creating your cover on Lulu. I chose a blue background for the entire cover, then I stretched my photo across the middle from the left edge to the right. After choosing a font and size, I typed my title across the top and centered it between the top of the book cover and the image, and then did the same with my name below the image. After a few adjustments, I had a nice cover. Well, I thought it looked nice. Keep reading.

I quickly uploaded it to Lulu and then used Lulu’s cover design to do the spine and the back cover. I chose a slightly different shade of blue for the spine. I put the title and my name in white, and chose not to print the Lulu logo on the spine. For the back cover, I used Lulu to color the back cover all black. Then in white, I typed in my blurb description of the book. I could not find a way to make it fully aligned down the right side for a nice crisp straight line. If anyone knows how to do this, let us know. I even tried typing my blurb in Word and doing a full alignment, and then copied and pasted it into the Lulu screen, but it didn’t work. Oh well, this would not be my final product anyway, so I left it as is for now.

The Sample Copy: After a few minor adjustments and some spell checking, I ordered a sample copy on Saturday, May 3rd. My cost for the book was $9.99. Shipping was $7.44 for Priority Mail. The book shipped from New York on Tuesday, the 6th, and arrived at my home in St. Louis, Missouri, on Thursday the 8th. Wow! Excellent shipping time! (Note: Media Mail would have been cheaper, but would have also taken a few days longer to receive. Also, Lulu does not offer any tracking for media mail, so if the package is lost in transit, you are out of luck.)

No, I didn’t have to buy a sample copy, but I believe it helps to have the book in hand to get a feel for it. How is it going to look to the reader? It really helps to step away from the monitor and spend time with the book during this process, so I highly recommend taking the time and money to do this. I spent $1.99 on some red ink pens so I could immediately begin revising the text which is what I am still doing at this time.

Click to view larger and in higher resolutionThe Book Cover: I hate it. The lettering on the cover is fuzzy. My photo looks great and the quality is excellent, except there is an orange shine in the top corner, which probably came from a vase which was sitting on the table where I photographed the image. There’s also a glare in the bottom right corner which I didn’t notice before, and the collage placement of my photographs is not very good on the top right side. Back to the drawing board.

The Interior: Wow! The inside looks great. The gutter, that space down the middle between the pages, is a little tight and I found myself having to open the book wider to be able to read it. So, I’ll have to fix that margin. Also, the page number at the bottom is too close to the text. I will bump it down. I also think the top margin is too wide, so it may need to be adjusted as well. I am still currently reading the text, but so far, my spelling and grammatical errors have not been too bad. My red ink pens are getting some use though!

Marketing Investments: Yay! My economic stimulus package arrived via direct deposit on May 6th. I’m using most of it to pay bills, but I decided to treat myself to a few helpful books I’ve been wanting. They are: Jeremy Robinson’s POD People and Janet Elaine Smith’s Promo Paks. I immediately began reading POD People and highlighting ideas in it. It has been a great motivator. I even posted about it in LLBR as being a valuable resource. Total investment: $25.93. I haven’t read Janet’s book yet, but I will post more about it when I do. By the way, just an aside that doesn’t really matter but Jeremy’s book contains spelling and grammar mistakes. See…no one is perfect! 

Read about the rest of Shannon’s experiences with Stealing Wishes at The Lulu Book Review.  

Publetariat Resource Lists

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Publetariat is in the process of adding resource lists to all applicable departments.  These lists of links to free resources will appear at the top of the list of articles within each department, so that when you click on ‘Design’, for example, the first item listed will be the Design Resources List. Resource lists are now posted in the Think and Write departments. 

The Think resources list features blogs and sites offering insightful opinion pieces on broad-ranging topics that all fall under the umbrella of self-publishing.  For example, in his blog, Mick Rooney offers reviews of self-publishing service providers, and PMI Books’ The Populist Publisher analyzes just about every issue you can think of related to self-publishing. 

The Write resources list highlights sites with helpful tools you can use when dealing with issues related to craft.  For example, Get Into It can help you work through writer’s block, the Internet Public Library offers a list of basic plot outlines, and Rick Walton maintains an extensive collection of brainstorming ideas and lists for authors of books, stories and poems for children (i.e., lists of common proverbs, first lines of kids’ songs, summaries of popular fairy tales, etc.) .

Additional resource lists are planned for the Design, Publish, Sell and Imprint departments, and will be announced when they’re ready. Check back from time to time because new links will be added periodically. 

Feel free to use the Contact Us form to recommend relevant links. Recommended links should primarily offer information, opinion, instruction or downloadable resources of interest to indie authors and small imprints. Links to sites that only offer goods or services for a fee will not be added. 

DRM on the Kindle – an update

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This is cross-posted at Teleread.org.

A few weeks back I posted on Teleread about Jew Bezos’ take on DRM on the Kindle. Bezos said that copyright holders can choose to include DRM in their Kindle books if they want it, but my contention was that anyone who uploads content to the Kindle through the Digital Text Platform (DTP) did not have this option. I made that assertion because there was no information on the DTP about how to add DRM to a book, and there is certainly no check-box on the upload interface that lets a user choose to DRM the content or not when Amazon prepares it for publication.

 

Well, it looks like the option is available after all — in a manner of speaking.

After some investigation I started to see that most of the books I downloaded that were published on the DTP did not have DRM. To figure this out, all you have to do is change the extension from .AZW to .PRC or .MOBI. Then the files will open in any Mobipocket Reader program or supported device if they are DRM-free.

 

So, I contacted Amazon to see what they would say about the issue officially. The response I received was enlightnening:

 

Using Amazon DTP, publishers have the ability to add or omit DRM from their submissions. If you use the DTP conversion, the default will be DRM-Free. You can, however submit a mobipocket file through DTP, which can have DRM when it was created. If this is the case, then DTP will honor the DRM.

 

That little bit of information is a game changer. I would venture to guess that the majority of individuals and companies using the DTP do not have any idea about DRM, and even fewer know how to effectively use Mobipocket Creator to make a decent eBook file.

 

I would encourage Amazon to make this option more prominent on the DTP and give users a front-and-center option for selecting DRM or not. A link to the Teleread DRM Primer would be a good addition, too.

 

Joshua Tallent is an eBook guru in Austin, Texas. He offers Kindle eBook formatting tips and tricks at his KindleFormatting.com website, as well as formatting assistance for authors and publishers.

Facebook: How authors can use it for book promotion

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 Facebook has more than 175 million active users worldwide. If Facebook were a country, it would be the eighth most populated in the world, just ahead of Japan, Russia and Nigeria. The fastest growing demographic is those 30 years old and older (and you can bet a whole lot of them read books!).

It can therefore be a powerful place to promote your book and yourself as an author. Here are 5 ways you can use it for book promotion: 
 

  1. Set up your own personal profile and start making some friends. If you are a complete beginner, check out these “How to use Facebook videos” on YouTube. You can find my personal profile page and friend me here http://profile.to/joannapenn    

     

  2. Set up a Group. You can set up a group for your book or for yourself as an author here. You can also get a memorable URL instead of the incomprehensible one Facebook gives it.

Here are some related groups to check out:

 

For the other 3 ways to use Facebook for book promotion – check the original post out here. 

Building and Curating Your Community, Part I

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With all of the negative news of late about the collapse of the publishing industry and the "death of print", combined with the report that Captain America, Chesley Sullenberger, "scored a $3.2 million two-book deal with HarperCollins’ William Morrow imprint" for a memoir and a book of inspirational poetry, one might understandably think that jumping into the publishing game right now would be like investing in Ruth Alpern’s new hedge fund based on the advice of Jim Cramer, no?

Actually, no; not at all.

While the major publishing houses continue their suicidal death spiral, and being a mid-list author or aspiring newbie at one of them is less appealing than it’s ever been, this is arguably the proverbial moment of opportunity in a time of crisis for indie authors and publishers.

As I’ve noted previously, self-publishing is becoming an increasingly viable option for non-fiction writers and poets, as well as for ambitious genre fiction writers who understand that, no matter who their publisher is, they’re going to have to bust their ass to market their book and hand-sell it to as many people as possible, one copy at a time, in person and online. These savvy authors know that they have to build a platform for themselves over time — something almost every major publisher requires these days — and know how to use it, attracting a loyal tribe and continually nurturing it.

This exact same opportunity exists for indie publishers who can identify an under-served genre or topic of interest, carve themselves a niche and build a platform around it, and produce quality content that attracts a following that they can then nurture into a passionate community, or tribe.

Back in the late-90s, I founded a poetry reading series here in New York City called "a little bit louder" (now known as louderARTS) that you can read about in Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz’ definitive history Words in Your Face: A Guided Tour Through Twenty Years of the New York City Poetry Slam, published by Soft Skull Press last year, themselves about as interesting a case study in indie publishing as you could ask for. In the four years I ran the series — as curator, host, accountant, and occasionally even poet — I learned a lot about community organizing, and most of that experience is directly transferable to indie publishers looking to build their own community.

Here are four fundamental tips for curating a thriving community, or tribe, that every indie publisher (and author) needs to keep in mind:

1) It’s not about YOU, it’s about the tribe. Probably the most simple and straightforward point, and yet one that is completely missed more often than not. The strongest tribes share something in common, and it’s rarely the glorification of a specific individual, brand or distribution model. Barack Obama made his Presidential campaign about our hopes for America, while Hillary Clinton’s was all about her until it was too late. Avoid the vanity of a ReganBooks and choose a name that means something to the community you’re looking to become an integral part of.

2) Professionalism is important, but the tribe must have an equal voice. Social media and user-generated content are all the rage right now, and getting the balance right is tricky, but crucial.  It’s what the major publishers have failed miserably at, positioning themselves as unfallible arbiters of taste and opening the doors to the indie revolution. Don’t stumble lazily through those doors; take the best of what they do (editing and design), jettison the worst (high advances, minimal marketing support, no interaction), embrace new distribution models, and add real value to the process by plugging in directly to the community you’re looking to serve and becoming a valued member.

3) "Location, location, location"…isn’t nearly as important as it used to be. Thanks to the internet and digital technology, New York City is no longer the home of the publishing industry, major industry events like BookExpo America are less important than ever, major retailers have less control over distribution, and elite reviewers have less authority than ever before. The only "location" that counts these days is your position within the tribe, and there is no middleman standing in the way of your positioning yourself properly and, more importantly, authentically.

4) Be authentic. Any community worth being a part of is one that is bound by a common interest, cause or goal. In the age of the internet, there are no hiding places and fakers will eventually be exposed. Seriously. A friend of mine, a young woman in her early 20s, recently tweeted the following instructive bit of advice: "to all you marketers on twitter trying to follow us 18-24 yr olds to see what is hip. F*** you.You’re all blocked"

While building and curating a community is incredibly important, the single most critical step comes at the beginning of the process: understanding the reason you’re doing it and managing your expectations on how it will play out.

"Community leads to sales, not necessarily vice versa."

In part 2 of this series, I’ll look at the community=revenue mindset that’s driving a lot of new initiatives in the publishing world these days, and explore the right way to go about turning a loyal community into paying customers.

 

Guy LeCharles Gonzalez is the Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of Spindle Magazine. He’s won some poetry slams, founded a reading series, co-authored a book of poetry, and still writes when the mood hits him and he has the time. Follow him on Twitter: @glecharles

Should You Create a Kindle Book? An Author's Guide

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March 8 -14 is Read an E-Book Week. In keeping with the spirit of the event, I thought I’d try to summarize what an author should know about Kindle, the e-reader from Amazon.

I’m going to assume that you’ve heard about the Kindle but you don’t really know too much about it. My aim with this post is to provide enough information for you to evaluate the market and figure out if it’s worth pursuing. So let’s get started. 

 

What Is the Kindle?

  • The Kindle is a dedicated e-book reading device, meaning it reads e-books, along with some newspapers and magazines, but not much else. Version 2 of the Kindle was released in February of this year.
  • It uses E ink technology for the display. E ink is very different from a computer screen or the screen on, say, an iPhone. It is not backlit and so the experience of reading on a Kindle is very much like that of reading off paper. There’s no eye strain and it can be comfortably used for long periods of reading.
  • The Kindle is relatively small and lightweight. It weighs just 10.2 ounces and has a 6″ screen on the diagonal. It’s very convenient for carrying, and many users appreciate its portability over heavy books.
  • The Kindle 2 can hold about 1,500 books at a time.
  • The device currently sells for $359 USD.

There are many video reviews online that will give you a more detailed look at the Kindle and its features. Here are a few good videos I have found:

Who Uses a Kindle?

  • Amazon will not release any sales data about the Kindle devices so no one really knows how many they have sold or who is buying them. Guesses from industry watchers range from 300,000 units sold to as high as 500,000.
  • Contrary to what you might intuitively guess — that the biggest users are kids of the ‘Net generation — anecdotal evidence points to users 40 years of age and up as the primary market. This older audience appreciates the resizable type, the light weight and portability, and the convenience of instant access to content. Typically, they also have more money and are able to afford the $359 ticket price.
  • Oprah Winfrey endorsed the Kindle on her show in October 2008, raising the device’s profile with the public in a big way. Demi Moore twitters about how much she loves her Kindle.
  • Right now, the Kindle is only available in the United States. There is some speculation that version 3 will be available in other countries, but Amazon has yet to confirm that this is true.

What About the Content?

  • There are about 245,000 book titles currently available in the Kindle format, including 102 of 111 current New York Times bestsellers.
  • Amazon reports that Kindle books have been selling briskly, now accounting for about 10% of sales for titles where both print and Kindle editions are available.
  • Kindle books are proprietary files. The files are wrapped in DRM (Digital Rights Management) technology, meaning they are encrypted. They can only be read on a Kindle or on the Kindle app for the iPhone. There is a great deal of debate and criticism in the publishing industry over Amazon’s choice to encrypt its files. Many publishers are pushing to standardize e-books around an open file format called ePub. (More on that in a later post.)
  • The typical price for a Kindle book is about $9.95. Amazon keeps a 65% commission on each sale. This is higher than the 55% commission they keep on print book sales.

What’s the Upshot?
While Amazon has taken its share of criticism over the Kindle for a variety of reasons — some of it well deserved — it can’t be denied that the device is helping bring e-books to the mainstream and creating new opportunities for book sales.

If you are an author with an existing print book, or one in production, publishing a companion Kindle version is pretty easy and inexpensive. For a small additional investment, you can make your book available to an audience that craves new content and wants it quickly. This audience is relatively small right now but will continue to grow over time. It’s almost certainly a good investment to make.

Jennifer Tribe is a principal at Highspot Inc. where she helps business owners publish their non-fiction books.

Article Featured on Hold the Presses

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I’m getting spoiled with all this exposure on websites (blush) this week. Part I of an Article I wrote called Writing Good Stories is featured today on Hold the Presses (WheelmanPress):

http://bddesignonline.com/Press/wordpress/

Edward C. Patterson
 

Getting Out of The NY Mindset

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A challenge I’ve had in going indie, is to get out of the "NY Mindset." There is an assumption I think many people have about indie authors that basically starts with: "Secretly they really want NY."

 

Well, maybe they do, maybe they don’t. But as I’ve been exposed to more and more indie authors as well as small press and e-published authors, I’ve started to learn that every writer has a different dream. We aren’t a homogenous blob of one desire.

 

Not every author wants to be a bestseller. I know that sounds insane, but nevertheless. Not everybody wants to be president of the United States either. There are drawbacks to everything, no matter how amazing it looks on the surface.

 

Not every author wants another publisher, whether it’s a small press or a big major NY publisher, to take control of their work. It’s easy sometimes for one author to look at their personal wants and desires and decide that must be what all authors want. It’s easy for human beings in all areas to do the same thing.

 

If you want a house with a white picket fence, a dog, and 2.5 children, then that must be what everyone wants. If you want to run your own business, that must be what everyone wants. Intellectually we all know this isn’t true, but emotionally sometimes it’s easy to forget that our goals are not everyone else’s goals.

 

As writers we’ve been conditioned to believe that only bad writers won’t give up control of their own work. While I agree that editing is one of the single most important facets of a book, whether self published or not, I don’t agree that in the end the author shouldn’t have the final say over what happens to his/her work. After all, it is his/her work. And the goals of the author might not be to fatten the bank accounts of a major NY publisher. Wacky idea, I know.

 

I have several NY published author friends, and I think they’re awesome. And I have several friends who are on that NY publishing track, which is great too. But I often find it hard to relate with this group of writers because their perception of what success is, and what we should want, and what is real or fake, or acceptable or unacceptable, flies in the face of what I’ve learned about myself.

 

The economy is creating a funny dichotomy. On the one hand, more people seem to be open to the idea of self publishing. It’s as if we only needed the economy to really go bad for people to feel like they had permission to publish, because the odds suddenly got so awful that it’s almost "legitimate" now. On the other hand, some are getting more loud in their arguments against self publishing.

 

I’m not sure why self publishing is of interest to someone who has no intention of doing it, but the biggest argument that is brought forth is how "bad" most self published books are. Well, yeah, that’s true.

 

The unfortunate side effect of lowered entry barriers is that anyone who wants to play can play, even if they aren’t any good. But that’s been the case for all other types of business forever. If you open a bad restaurant, you fail. But anyone can open a restaurant. You don’t have to be vetted by another restaurant owner first.

 

If you sell wilted flowers from a stand on the side of the road, you fail. But anyone can sell flowers without a vetting process.

 

I’ve seen my fair share of really bad NY published books as well. In fact, of the 41 novels I read last year, about half of them were bad enough that I couldn’t write a review for them without it sounding like sour grapes. So I abstained from comment.

 

But the one thought running through my head with regards to most self published books being bad is: who cares? There are lots of bad books, but one of the primary forces that drives sales besides just getting your book out there somehow, is word of mouth.

 

When people love your work they tell others. And if those new readers love your work, they tell others. The statistical percentage of bad self published work is entirely irrelevant to your book and your personal success, however you choose to measure it.

 

But I got to thinking more about those "bad self published books" and wondering about the goals and dreams of the person who wrote them. Does that person want to be a bestselling author with a NY house? Maybe. That’s the stereotype. But what if they have a different view?

What if they aren’t on the author career path at all. Maybe they wrote a book because it was inside them and they needed to get it out. Maybe they wanted to see their name on a book and hold that book in their hands. (Why this is wrong and ‘vain’ when everyone chases after things that make them feel good, I have no idea.) Or they wanted to give it to family and friends. Or they wanted to sell it just to see what happened.

 

Some people really are okay with creating their art for whatever audience they have without having to have a dollar or prestige goal attached to it.

 

Yes, a lot of self published books are bad. So are a lot of NY published books. While there is a lot of chaff, indie authors can produce whatever they want, and in that artistic freedom we sometimes find something really great.

 

In Search Of Dolphin Leather

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This post, by Seth Godin, originally appeared on his blog on 3/11/09. In it, Mr. Godin offers some excellent advice for anyone who’s swimming against the tide; indie authors and small imprints, for example.

There’s a story in the bible with very specific instructions for building an ark. Included in the instructions is a call for using tanned dolphin leather. Regardless of your feelings about the historical accuracy of the story, it’s an interesting question: why create an impossible mission like that? Why encourage people who might travel 100 miles over their entire lifetime to undertake a quest to find, capture, kill, skin and eventually tan a dolphin?

My friend Adam had an interesting take on this. He told me that the acquisition of the leather is irrelevant. It was the quest that mattered. Having a community-based quest means that there’s less room for whining, for infighting and for dissolution. Having a mission not only points everyone in the same direction, it also creates motion. And motion in any direction is often better than no motion at all.

All around you, people are telling you two things:
1. whatever you want, forget it, it’s impossible, and
2. sit still, preserve resources, lay low.

And yet, the people who are succeeding, creating change and (not coincidentally) are happier aren’t listening to either of these pieces of advice. Instead, they’re on the search for dolphin leather.

Frank Sinatra had it wrong. Your dream shouldn’t be impossible, but it sure helps if it’s improbable. Don’t choose your dreams based on what is certain to happen, choose them based on what’s likely to cause the change you want to occur around you.

Read more of Seth Godin’s insights on his blog.

New Around Here?

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Publetariat has plenty of great information and articles for indie authors and small imprints who are already actively publishing, but there’s not a whole lot here for would-be indies, or authors who are just getting started down this road. Fortunately, one of Publetariat’s site contributors has built a fantastic site just for you.

Zoe Winters is an author of paranormal romance, an indie author who speaks from a position of experience and passion, and she can relate to the challenges indies face. 

One of those challenges is figuring out how to handle all the things a publisher would ordinarily arrange for an author: editing, layout and design, cover design, soliciting for cover blurbs, and creating a customized promotion plan for the finished book.

If you’re the type who feels very comfortable hunting down these services for yourself, or even doing all of them yourself, Zoe’s articles will give you most of the guidance you need to get started. You can get more help from the free IndieAuthor Guides offered by Publetariat site founder April L. Hamilton on her site, or from her book of the same name. 

Others would prefer to maintain a more hands-off approach to these ‘production’ matters.  For you, Zoe also offers book coordination and consulting services at reasonable prices. Since Zoe was formerly a wedding coordinator, she has a great deal of experience in tracking down paid professional services and negotiating for the best possible prices for her clients, as well as in packaging numerous services together to maximize efficiencies and minimize cost. You can contact her here.