This week I’m teaching a 101 course on e-publishing with Writer’s Digest. I’ve taught it several times in the past year, but each time, I have to carefully update it. New services pop up, standards change, and things you couldn’t do before suddenly become possible—and vice versa. It can be a challenge even for me to keep up.

With that in mind, I thought I’d share what I consider the most trusted resources on e-books and e-publishing. If you think I’ve missed a critical resource, please let me know in the comments.

1. TeleRead. Sometimes it’s a firehose of information, but it’s helpful for quick updates on new devices, important launches, etc.
2. Digital Book World. This site is geared toward publishing insiders, but has plenty of material suited to authors. The more technically advanced author may want to check out on-demand webcasts related to e-book production. Or, start with Carolyn McCray’s helpful series on selling on Amazon.
3. The Book Designer (Joel Friedlander). Some of the best how-to information on self-publishing and e-publishing geared to indie authors. Very even-handed, service-oriented and comprehensive.
4. EBW Knowledge Base. Helpful resource that can explain the basics in plain English.
5. Step-by-step conversion guide for EPUB/MOBI starting with a Word doc (or something like Word). This requires that you download and use Calibre.
6. Creating & Formatting Documents for E-Readers Using EPUB. Similar to the above, just another way of doing it.
7. Liz Castro. This is for more technically advanced authors. Good how-to for anyone not afraid of coding who wants to delve into EPUB.
8. Resource list from Digital Book World. A good jumping off point for other legit resources, including special info for those working with InDesign.

And, separately, here are authors who have been successful e-publishing on their own. I list them as valuable and often essential resources, just keep in mind they can have strong opinions that aren’t shared by everyone.

1. JA Konrath. Try starting with: How to Make Money on E-Books.
2. Bob Mayer. Try starting with: How Do Covers for a Series Work?
3. John Locke. He’s written an ebook on how you can be as successful as him.
4. Cathryan Howard. Try starting with: How to Sell Self-Published Books: One at a Time.

Finally, you may want to check out my past posts on e-publishing:

• 10 Questions to Ask Before Committing to Any E-Publishing Service
• Groundbreaking Tools for Creating E-Books
• And don’t forget my class this Thursday that offers the 101 on how to publish your e-books

A couple weeks ago I wrote a column for Writer Unboxed, “Should You Focus on Your Writing or Platform?” In short, I said it’s a balancing act, but there are times when you should probably emphasize one over the other.

It generated more than 100 responses, many insightful and valuable, from working writers, established authors, editors, and agents. My colleague Christina Katz was one of the last to comment. Here’s part of what she said.

This post really makes me chuckle … I wonder how much time folks spent reading and chewing on and commenting on and spreading the word about a post ABOUT platform rather than actually spending any amount of time actually cultivating and working on their own platform?

I am a person who does not distinguish between writing, selling, specializing, self-promotion, and continuing ed, and also a person who sees all of these things as essential and necessary to my writing career success. … 

For me, there is no separation. Writing is the center. (If you read The Writer’s Workout, you saw the diagram.) But it’s all critical. There’s nothing to debate.

Read her entire comment here.

I’m (mostly) in the same boat as Christina. I find it impossible and irrelevant to distinguish between writing activities and platform building activities. My approach is far too holistic.

So why did I write a post splitting them up?

Because most writers don’t and CAN’T see them as one activity. They’re still asking questions that show they need some concrete ideas on how to manage what they perceive (and what can be) a very real split in one’s life.

There may be nothing to debate for people like Christina and myself, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a very real problem for writers to address until the struggle resolves itself.

Or until writers undergo a paradigm shift.

Briefly defined, a paradigm shift is “a radical change in personal beliefs, complex systems or organizations, replacing the former way of thinking or organizing with a radically different way of thinking or organizing.”

I can write (or speak) on the platform topic forever, but ultimately, I can’t change your mind about marketing/selling being inseparable from writing until you have your own experience or insight that validates what I’m saying. Or, I might convince you logically, but you might not feel it.

And in my opinion, this is why so much is written about platform. People are still figuring it out, trying to find what feels right, but they haven’t experienced the paradigm shift where it all starts to make sense, and they’re no longer torn on how to handle it.

Here’s one area where I partly disagree with Christina: If you commented on my post, you were participating in a community of writers, and making yourself seen in that community, and that’s indeed a part of your platform … where you’re active, the relationships you build, the places where you’re known. So make sure you’re spending time and energy on places that matter most to you and your work. Eventually it won’t be blog posts related to author platform … unless of course you’re trying to be a platform expert.

And: writing may or may not be your center. For the past two years, teaching has been my center. Much of my writing spins out of things I teach. I create instructional materials and modules, I refine them through extensive research and reading, and I put things in formal writing usually as a last step, and even then, only when I have sufficient motivation (e.g., an article assignment that pays well).

That’s because formal writing is sometimes the worst possible way for me to help someone. A conference workshop, Twitter chat, or webinar is often a better way for me to inform and engage. The topics I write and teach on can change overnight.

But it’s true that writing is the center for many of you. Just not all. Frankly, I’ve been advocating writers have yet another paradigm shift regarding writing and books. I see books as just another medium—and not always the best medium—to entertain and inform, but that’s another post for another day.

Superdog by Laura Diehl / deviantART

When I was in 5th grade, my mom spent hours working on a middle-grade novel. These were the days before word processing, so she used an old Smith Corona electric typewriter. It became a fixture on the dining room table.

Eager to follow in her footsteps, I conceived my own novel. I bought a spiral-bound notebook and wrote on the cover, “The Adventures of SuperDog.” On the first page, I wrote, “Chapter 1.”

And so I began to describe how SuperDog came into existence. I mean, it was important to explain the hows and whys of how such a creature came to be, right? This took at least 1 page.

Then I started thinking of all the other questions his existence raised. How did he manage to buy and supply himself with food on a consistent basis? How did he come to have all of his resources? Where did his magical bone come from? What events led him to getting his powers? This consumed at least Chapters 2 and 3, from what I recall.

I was obsessed with explaining as logically and clearly as possible the ins and outs of this creature, and getting all the day-to-day questions settled, so that readers wouldn’t be confused.

It was pretty boring—so boring, in fact, I stopped around Chapter 6 or 7. I can’t even remember what the story conflict was. I was too obsessed with the proper setup.

I was too young to know it at the time, but the stuff I was writing was really prep work—character background, setting/environment details, world-building rules—stuff that I needed to know to write the REAL story, but not something I should dump in the first chapters.

My inclination with SuperDog is the inclination most writers have when approaching their first manuscripts: I’ve got to show how this world came to be. I need to put in this explanation of why this person is how they are now. I need to show what everyday life is like. I need to … ZZzzzzz.

It’s OK to leave stuff out. You have to, because if you don’t, you’ll never get to the real story you want to tell. The how-it-all-came-to-be can be related as you go—and some of it can create tension, e.g., “Why IS Jeb so nervous whenever he’s around Lucy? When will we learn what happened between them?”

Or: Think of it this way. When you first meet someone new, what do you tell them about yourself? What do they need to know right away? And what will you save for later? You don’t have long to convey your story. A lot must be summarized and left to the imagination—and it’s better that way at the start.

by Kevin Pogo Curtis

I’ve visited New York City more times than I care to remember—always for work. Sometimes I enjoy it, sometimes not. But I always know for sure: I’m not part of those who live and work in that city.

Living in Cincinnati these past 14 years means I’m invisible in most publishing industry circles—not so unlike the company I once worked at, deemed “The Midwest Publishing Empire” by my first boss. At first I thought the moniker was a charming endearment. Later I realized it was an underhanded compliment.

But my life as a Midwesterner has made me sympathetic to writers outside the NYC publishing gates, who wonder why they can’t break in. It made me a good publisher for Writer’s Digest … that plus my own natural tendency to encourage people.

It was never my intention to remain in the Midwest for as long as I have. In fact, I hated Cincinnati for nearly a decade, and couldn’t think of anything worse than being from Indiana and living not more than a few hundred miles from the place where I was born. It’s a peculiar disease for us Americans, to think it a failure not to move away from what we know. As a twentysomething, I wanted nothing more than to live in Europe—where I’d stayed 6 months during a study abroad—and to be done with the uncultured and ignorant USA.

It’s like all young people to think this way—to imagine that the place where we come from is stupid and beneath everything else. Eventually you realize that all places are rather the same. Or, people are the same. You just find the right circles where you can be accepted or make a difference. The rest is just details.

It took a long time to accept that I’m a Midwesterner at heart. I want to be friendly and helpful. I’m not eager to talk about myself. I prefer a laid-back, unpretentious lifestyle. While these are not qualities unique to the Midwest, I don’t reliably encounter those environments elsewhere.

Cincinnati has been an unintentional home for me. I never meant to stay here for long, and at first I was always in an apartment or neighborhood that I partially despised.

Eventually I corrected that. I have an apartment I consider the happiest place on earth, where I wake up in the morning and feel happy to exist in such a beautiful room, with wood rafters, tall windows, and cool air silence, the city alive in the distance.

At my lowest points, Cincinnati has provided a cure in its core infrastructure. I drive out to Interstate 71 or 75, where I can go north or south, and drive in a continuous loop, using the 275 city bypass, or a quick 4-lane lateral for shorter periods of despair.

I drive circles around the city for calm, for familiarity, to remember I’ve had bad times before, and always found a better time after.

It used to be that when I’d drive into the city on 74 East, or on 71/75 North, there was nothing worse than realizing I had come home to Cincinnati. But after I overcame the melodrama of youth (and the desire to throw away everything I knew—bad only because it was familiar), then greeting the city from 74 (the wooded hills) or 71/75 (the cut in the hill & the river) became magical.

A couple years ago, for the first time, I bought original artwork from a Cincinnati artist who was producing a variety of bridge images. They all could easily be interpreted as Cincinnati bridges over the Ohio River, but were not clearly symbolized as such. Yet in my heart, these bridges represent the ones I’ve crossed now hundreds of times while thinking about what has been, what is, and what will be. They remind me of transition—a period of growing up.

Cincinnati is currently undergoing its own “growing up”—a renaissance in its historic residential quarter, Over the Rhine, where I now live. It is gorgeous and mostly undiscovered by the greater public. Even the people who’ve lived in Cincinnati all their lives don’t clearly recognize what’s happening. Soon, the world will recognize it. Only I will have moved onto another place …

Jane at 2012 National Magazine Awards (NYC)

I had the very good fortune of attending this year’s National Magazine Awards in New York City. Even though I’m not yet officially on staff of the Virginia Quarterly Review, I was able to tag along and see if any of the three nominations would turn into wins. (Sadly, not this year.)

The final award of the evening was given to Time, as Magazine of the Year. The editor who came up to accept said, “We will win in the long run. Quality wins.”

What did he mean by that?

I’m not really sure. Presumably “we” refers to the magazine industry, and magazines will win because they put out quality material unlike … who? Bloggers like myself? Online-only publications? Atavist? Salon? Huffington Post? Flipboard? Netflix? Google? Amazon? Apple? Wikipedia? Cable television? All of the above?

What comes to mind is a recent column by David Brooks. He has a unique argument to make about why we ought to move away from the “competition” mindset that’s prevalent in our culture:

Instead of being slightly better than everybody else in a crowded and established field, it’s often more valuable to create a new market and totally dominate it. The profit margins are much bigger, and the value to society is often bigger, too.

[We're] talking about doing something so creative that you establish a distinct market, niche and identity. You’ve established a creative monopoly and everybody has to come to you if they want that service, at least for a time.

That probably hasn’t provided an ounce of clarity, has it?

But I sure would like to know why a magazine might feel threatened in such a way that it must defiantly insist, “Quality wins!” Would it not be more valuable, as Brooks points out, to establish a distinct market, niche, and identity? (Especially if you’re media agnostic about it?)

I hope everyone will discuss in the comments, especially your thoughts on whether quality always wins.

Right now I’m teaching a senior capstone course that prepares e-media seniors to graduate and enter the workforce. There are two required texts: The Education of Millionaires by Michael Ellsberg and Uncertainty by Jonathan Fields. Why these two books?

• The Ellsberg book focuses on all the practical stuff you don’t get taught in school (at least not typically): how to turn passion into a paying career, how to learn sales and marketing, how to find mentors and network, how to build your brand.
• The Fields book focuses on training yourself to be better at handling uncertainty and risk, which we all know is abundant in any worthwhile creative endeavor. I excerpted this book last year; if you missed it, read: A Hidden Aspect of Creative Life That Underpins Great Work.

But to get to the key point: In the Ellsberg book, what has stuck with me, months after initially reading it, are his two questions to help you network with anyone, but particularly those who reside higher on the food chain than you. Quoting directly:

I’m going to teach you two questions that, if you put them into use at parties, events, and conferences, will change your life forever and will grow your network faster than you ever thought possible.

1. What’s most exciting for you right now in your life/business?

2. What’s challenging for you in your life/business right now?

Ellsberg believes—and I agree—that everyone (even those more successful than you) are struggling with at least one area or issue where you might know more than they do. To explore this issue more—and to get a deep dive into how to use these questions with the right attitude—then I highly urge you to get the book.

While I’m talking about Ellsberg, I’ll go ahead and point you to his Forbes blog, where he has some invaluable advice for writers:

• The Tim Ferriss Effect: Lessons From My Successful Book Launch
• Nix Your Neediness Now (read before you attend another conference)
• The Paradoxical Secret of Obsession-Worthy Branding

There are few things more obsessed over by writers than word count: required word count, in-progress word count, goal word count per day/week/month, words that were cut, words in the final version.

So I love Daniel Torday’s essay in the newest Glimmer Train bulletin, “The Secret Lives of Novellas.” It begins like this:

The Great Gatsby received some truly awful reviews when it was published. HL Menken called it “no more than a glorified anecdote” and felt its characters were “not quite alive.” Edmund Wilson said much the same. Fitzgerald spent a good deal of time writing letters apologizing for having written an incomplete book, and the main source of his contrition was this: he felt the book was too short to be accepted as truly great. Years after its publication he wrote to legendary Random House editor Bennett Cerf that the book “was a light little volume barely touching 50,000 words,” and as a result “it was a rank commercial failure.”

Torday goes on to discuss an Amazon feature called Text Stats, which—if you haven’t heard of it before—may well distract you for the rest of the day.

Check out the full essay by Torday, or view the entire Glimmer Train bulletin.

Last week, I asked for your insight regarding: What Makes You Anxious or Fearful About Tech?

There are 85 comments and more coming in each day! I also received some wonderful private responses via e-mail. While we’re far from “getting to the bottom” of the issue, we’re exploring it in a meaningful way, and I appreciate all of you sharing so much of your personal experiences.

That discussion inspired the theme of my recent e-newsletter, where I focused on three friendly resources to help you with tech.

Click here to view the newsletter, even if you’re not a subscriber.

If other tools or resources have made a difference in your life—at least when it comes to learning or understanding tech—please share in the comments!

Digital Native / Flickr

I’m often asked, “How much time should I spend on writing and how much on building my platform?”

It’s a difficult question to answer. After a very long preface, I attempt to offer guidelines over at my column on Writer Unboxed.

Should You Focus on Writing or Your Platform?

I hope you’ll take a look, and let me know in the comments (here or there) what you think belongs in the guidelines.

Today I’m looking for your insight on a phenomenon I see a lot with people over a certain age: fearfulness and anxiety around tech.

Those of you who’ve followed my posts for a while know how much I promote the use of new media in a writing career. I think it can make it more powerful, enjoyable, and sustainable.

But when I travel to conferences, or speak conversationally with friends (about their older parents), it’s clear that there’s a significant cross-section of the population who just aren’t comfortable with tech. (And then there’s another section of people who are kinda comfortable, but don’t want to push the boundaries.)

I don’t quite understand it—where does this fearfulness or tentativeness come from? Why is there anxiety about “breaking” the computer? Where does the resistance originate?

Since I don’t really know, I’d love to collect your thoughts. What do you think?