The turning point of my long-term publishing plans came when I realized I have very little in common with author Joanna Penn. Have you heard of her?

I started following Joanna on Twitter because she always shared great writing links, but I also began to follow her self-publishing story. She wrote a novel, released it as a 99-cent download, and reached 10,000 downloads after a few months.

Joanna blogged through the whole process and shared all of the details from editing to marketing. She worked really hard to pull it off, and as I added self-publishing to my own long-term publishing plans—plans that included books also published through large traditional publishers—I had no qualms about working hard.

For my self-publishing projects I marked up several drafts, lined up cover designers, sent out review copies, booked blog tours, and worked through spreadsheets listing everything else I had to do. The book received praise from experts, and my brother-in-law, a designer by trade, put together a sharp cover.

For all that fell into place, I dreaded opening those spreadsheets listing everything I had to do. You’d have thought I was being forced to slap a kitten each day.

I’ve always loved writing. Releasing my first commercially published book was a highlight of my life. Why did I hate self-publishing?

After processing my reaction to both self-publishing projects, I read Joanna Penn’s About Page one day. The light flickered on for me: Joanna had a business consulting background. She wasn’t just creative and dedicated to writing; she had the skills you need to run a successful business, which is a huge part of the self-publishing process.

Even the smallest publishing house provides more support than you’ll receive when self-publishing.

Self-publishing means that authors become small publishing companies. They aren’t just writing and editing. They need to manage a complex and draining process. There is layout, design, development editing, proofreading, retail planning, and marketing.

Doing all of these things well enough to sell more than fifty copies to my friends calls for a set of skills that many creative writers like myself simply don’t possess. Even if I had $5,000 on hand to hire designers, editors, and publicists, I’d turn myself into a publisher. Having published through large publishers, small publishers, and now independently, I’d much rather surrender a chunk of my royalties to an experienced publisher—heck, almost any publisher—so that I can pursue my creative calling.

Not sure about my take here? Read what Catherine Howard has to say:

We’ve seen time and time again that the self-publishers who enjoy consistent success are those who treat self-publishing like a business they’ve started up. They act like entrepreneurs, and make like their book is their first product—which it is.

I’m releasing my next book with a relatively small publisher that focuses on my niche, and the experience has been far better for me than self-publishing. They couldn’t pay out an advance, but I’m guaranteed a standard royalty. In return, they have edited the book, designed a cover, written marketing copy, developed a marketing plan, sought out endorsers, and reached out to retailers.

I could lament the non-existent advance, or I could focus on this: they’ve heavily invested in publishing my book after I paid them zip.

Best yet, I wrote the book and have been very involved in the design and marketing process, but they have managed the whole thing. Knowing that someone else is keeping the publishing process on track removes a tremendous burden from my mind and makes it far easier to develop creative marketing ideas.

I used to think of self-publishing as the only alternative to publishing with a large house. Now I’m committed to working with both large and small publishers. In addition, there are some strong subsidy publishers that provide excellent support to authors who have the means to pay for their services.

Now for my caveat: I haven’t ruled out self-publishing completely.

I’ll still create e-books that readers can download for free if they subscribe to my e-newsletter. E-books are also a great promotional tool. Even just selling a 10,000 word e-book on Amazon for 99 cents is a simple way to introduce readers to my work. It’s like I’m getting paid to advertise, but I have no illusions about building my career on these self-published books.

For example, each April 1, I release a prank e-book that my readers can download for 99 cents on Amazon (this year and last year). These e-books, which lovingly poke fun at the Christian subculture and my own quirks, are not a way to make money. They’re simply a way to introduce readers to my writing—even if I lose a few subscribers each year who miss the prank and think I’ve lost my mind.

Self-publishing is a great tool to keep in your publishing plans, but for creative writers such as myself, it is far more useful as a marketing tool. I don’t plan on writing another e-book until next April 1 because I don’t have the chops or desire to run my own small publishing company. When I hammer out 3,000 words in a morning, I hit a high that leaves me chattering about all of my ideas to my wife. When I run my own publishing company, she hears sobbing noises from my office.

I’m grateful that there’s a Joanna Penn in the world. I’ve learned a lot from her about publishing. The greatest lesson she taught me is that I’m not like her and that large and small publishing companies exist because there are authors like me who just want to write.

Mary-Jane reading

What are you working on next? is a question that always takes me by surprise (which is why it’s good advice for writers to have an answer prepared). Words gurgle in my throat. If I can’t change the subject, I mumble something about an essay or short story or blog post.

I want to say My Call to the Ring’s release date is not until September 2012.

It was November 2006 when Deirdre Gogarty handed me pages of true stories she’d written about Ireland, family, and her hard-fought battles to become a champion boxer. In an instant, I agreed to co-write her memoir. The chance of a lifetime had arrived. Like a pugilist who’d trained for an opportunity to fight, I’d been flexing my finger muscles for years. I immersed myself in our collaboration.

But there was a tradeoff—I lost volumes of family time.

Two months after I agreed to co-write Gogarty’s memoir, I sped to Women & Children’s hospital to welcome my granddaughter, Mary-Jane, into the world. She wailed and cooed. I rushed back to work.

And—pfffft!—she turned five.

Mary-Jane

Her brother, Milas, clocked nine.

My mother, eighty-five.

And I no longer recognize my hands when I type.

What next?

I’ve been sparring with guilt for missing many of my grandchildren’s milestones. But I’ve concluded it was worth it to hand down examples of sacrifice and perseverance—Deirdre’s and mine—to teach them to follow their calling in life.

Now I’m back to work on those essays and short stories and blog posts. But I’m also taking numerous, long walks with my dog on the family farm while pondering clichés about time.

The way it never stops.

Or turns back.

The way it flies.

And since it often gets lost,

I wonder where it hides.

Nip-Nip hiding

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.

Rumors of Water:
Thoughts on Creativity & Writing

Table of Contents

1. Ether Exclusive: New PackaDRM in the room
2. Sneaking a peek: 3 F+W confabs-West
3. Amazonia: See? It’s not all about us
4. Amazonia: The tall order
5. Publishing: Potter envy
6. Publishing: Meanwhile, out on the Pottermoors
7. Advertising: Brother, can you spare a screen?
8. Craft: Strauss, Morris – good help is findable
9. Craft: Gardner, Bransford – where’s the fire?
10. Craft: Coker, Greenfield – I said, where’s the fire?
11. Craft: Weiland – structure’s end
12. Quotes of the week: Madrigal, Howard
13. Head spinners’ special: What’s going on
14. Last gas: The coming D-Day beyond “books”

Ether Exclusive: New PackaDRM in the room

We want it to be friendly. It’s all about reminding the customer. We don’t believe that readers are pirates.

Hang on. Or as Tarzan would say to a heaving elephant, “Umgawa!” Wonder if saying that to our fine publishing obsesserati could slow them down, too.

Putting our messaging in there where it’s visible reminds them, “You’ve made a binding contract with the publisher, with the author.” It’s in the forefront of the reader experience. It makes them aware, so they won’t share the file.

Kevin Franco of Calgary’s Enthrill Books has come to the Ether, wise man that he is, to announce to you that PackaDRM is going to be made available to publishers and to authors who might be interested in using it.

And we’re packaging “DRM,” but not Digital Rights Management. This is Digital Rights Messaging.

Kevin Franco of Enthrill Books and PackaDRM

PackaDRM is being developed as part of Enthrill Books, which we wrote about it on the Ether at the end of the year.

Fresh off “Day Against DRM” with Joe Wikert and Tim O’Reilly of O’Reilly Media leading the non-DRM charge, plenty of our colleagues are still driving around with “Death to DRM!” placards in their car trunks.

So let Franco get this much across to you:

We’re not trying to convert people who are working in strict DRM. And we’re not trying to convert people from no-DRM.

See, no pushing or shoving is necessary. Turn off your bullhorns. Whatever position you may occupy regarding DRM, carry on. Here’s what he wants to say:

What’s important is that if you’re going to select “social DRM” or watermarking, we’ve come up with the best solution. In watermarking, we think we have a game-changer, the most effective way to use “social DRM.”

To understand what Franco’s doing, think Pottermore. (MorePotterMore is coming up later in the Ether, too, for you Harried ones.)

A part of what’s made Pottermore such a pants-wetting story in publishing is that Jo Rowling’s ebooks are non-DRM. They are watermarked. So what does this mean? This means you can get a non-DRM copy of a Potter book (eight copies for one price, in fact, in P’more’s case) and read each copy of that Harryness on any device you’d like. It’s not locked to a Kindle or a Nook or Kobo or your Android refrigerator door screen. However, the “watermark” encodes information about you as the buyer into the book. So if the copy watermarked to you turns up on a pirate Web site, Hogwarts knows it’s your version that is in illegal hands. You might want a Cloak of Invisibility then.

And this is generally called “social DRM.”

be honest: you were expecting something more from the super moon.

May 6, 2012 2:06 am via Twitter for MacReplyRetweetFavorite

@booksquare

Kassia Krozser

Here’s a little help from Jellybooks’ Andrew Rhomberg on the terms here. I have his permission to quote him from his recent comments about DRM on a boisterous private email list:

Adobe ebook DRM and similar schemes are a form of Restrictive Access Technology (RAT) in that they restrict end-users from how they can use the ebook they “bought” (technically speaking, licensed).

True DRM restricts how you can use your ebook — by whom and on which device.

Rhomberg goes on, by contrast:

Watermarking…does not restrict access in any way, which is a huge advantage to the reader (a.k.a. buyer/consumer/end-user). Digital fingerprinting (watermarking) is a technology for making usage trackable and hence TRAC is maybe a more descriptive acronym than “social DRM.”

So what Franco is talking about, in Rhombergese, is TRAC. You are not restricted on how you use your ebook. Your copy, however, can be tracked.

PackaDRM places a greeting and explanation for the reader at the start of each book. Click for a readable size.

If Franco had a chance to breathe Ether with Charlie Redmayne, CEO of all Pottermore, how might he explain the difference in most watermarking (“TRAC”) “social DRM” programs and his PackaDRM?

Well, in addition to the trasaction ID inserted into the ebook — the one that makes your ebook TRAC-able to you if it gets into pirately hands — PackaDRM displays very visible messages to the reader at the beginning and end of the book. Franco:

The message can be customized by the publisher and contain information from the ebook file in combination with the consumer’s information.

PackaDRM also places a reminder statement to the reader at the end of an ebook. Click for a readable size.

Front and back of the book. A special message, complete with the customer’s email address. Here’s an example of the text:

This book is yours to read and it’s registered to you alone — see how we’ve embedded your email address to it? This message serves as a reminder that transferring digital files such as this book to third parties is prohibited by international copyright law. … If you think someone you know would love it (the book in question), recommend it to him or her and let them know where they can pick up their very own. When they are done, you can meet up for a coffee or tea and discuss!

Permission granted: you may discuss.

Image: Samir (the scope) / CC

As I told Franco, this is very Canadian stuff. (One of his own board members said the same thing, it turns out, so I don’t feel too crassly American for making the observation.) It turns out that Canadian cordiality comes in with an expressly respectful tone — exactly what Franco is after here.

That wording took a long time to settle on. We had to get the message across in a firm way, but at the same time, we have to respect the relationship between the reader, the publisher, the author. Respect for the reader — the customer — is terribly important.

Brian O’Leary, earlier this week, wrote in The Sky Is Rising, about the Macmillan/Tor decision to stop using DRM.

If I sound cautiously optimistic, it reflects a sense that the tide has not turned when it comes to the use of DRM or the study of the true impact of piracy.  As I’ve covered before, DRM locks publishers and readers into specific platforms. It does not suppress piracy. Linking the two, as many commentors did when Macmillan made the announcement, conflates two different activities.

And others have spoken out this week in various conversations, with a clarification that the DRM issue really doesn’t dovetail well with those who’d like to back the car over Jeff Bezos. As one astute observer puts it: “There are many reasons not to use DRM, but it seems that the dream of dropping DRM and taking down Amazon is highly improbable.”

So why “PackaDRM?”

Matteo Berlucchi / Photo: Anobii

Franco was with many of us at New York’s Digital Book World Conference in January, when Mike Shatzkin staged Anobii’s Matteo Berlucchi in a major denunciation of DRM. As I wrote then on the Ether: “DRM went from gum on a shoe to a rebel yell once Matteo Berlucchi was given the floor.”

And Franco tells me he remembers exactly how Berlucchi started his presentation to the conference:

Berlucchi said, “Let’s talk about the elephant in the room.”

For more info on the PackaDRM in this room, be in touch with Franco. His column, just out with the Ether, on the subject is Packaged Digital Rights Messaging.

And Click here to obsess. I mean to comment.

We sold 22,000 ebooks in our #DayAgainstDRM celebration. Not bad, considering how other publishers think they need DRM to make people pay

May 5, 2012 10:09 am via bitlyReplyRetweetFavorite

@timoreilly

Tim O'Reilly

Sneaking a peek: 3 F+W confabs-West

October 17-21 in Hollywood, it’s StoryWorld, Screenwriters World, and Writer’s Digest Conference West.

And F+W Media has all its westward-ho wagons pulling into a circle of sites for your perusal.

Looks like some interesting speakers and sessions ahead on the Left Coast.

Click here to comment

Wondering how many people actually read all 174 pages of B&N's terms & conditions for the nook. #TOCcon (That's right. 174 pages.)

May 3, 2012 6:07 pm via TweetDeckReplyRetweetFavorite

@jwikert

Joe Wikert

@jwikert hold on, they sent a PRINTED Terms and Conditions with your Nook? #TOCcon

May 3, 2012 6:09 pm via TweetDeckReplyRetweetFavorite

@KatMeyer

Kat Meyer

Amazonia: See? It’s not all about us

So here it was, the Metropolitan Museum’s springtime Costume Institute Gala.

This year — and, in fact, opening today — the topical basis for the annual fund-raising gown-o-rama lies in an exhibition titled Schiaparelli and Prada: Impossible Conversations. “Impossible” conversations because the two designers, Elsa and Miuccia, respectively, were not contemporaries. And also, perhaps, for another reason, adroitly pointed out by the Times’ Eric Wilson:

Mrs. Prada, one of the most influential female designers in recent history,…initially rebuffed the museum’s plans to mount an exhibition that compared her to Schiaparelli, who died in 1973. Mrs. Prada said in many interviews about the show that she had never been inspired by the work of her predecessor.

Amazon is sponsoring the Met's Schiaparelli/Prada show. Click for a larger view.

To our point here, you might notice in the finer print on the exhibition’s site page, “The exhibition is made possible by Amazon.”

And so it was that on May 7, if you happened across the retailer’s home page, you saw live streaming video from the red carpet arrivals at the Met.

Paparazzi screamed at the gingerly teetering celebs on the staircase. Vogue’s Billy Norwich did his usual amazing job of keeping everybody’s name straight and then reaching for them: “Don’t trip over the cord.” Elettra Wiedemann was there on another mic, gushing over everybody between Norwich’s chats.

Sarah Jessica Parker talks with Billy Norwich at the Met Gala / on the Amazon home page. Parker's gown and escort were Valentino.

On Amazon’s cover page. So uptown.

No gala-goers seemed at all upset with Amazon, either. No nasty comments about a “monopoly” or “freezing out the rest of us,” although the Times’ Stephanie Clifford in Amazon Leaps Into High End of the Fashion Pool, wrote:

Though characteristically tight-lipped on bottom-line details, Mr. Bezos said the company was making a “significant” investment in fashion to convince top brands that it wanted to work with them, not against them.

RT @learmonth: When did amazon start streaming live events on its homepage? // Fascinating -- they're showing the #MetGala tonight w/ Vogue.

May 7, 2012 8:02 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@brianstelter

Brian Stelter

And compared to books, something by Michael Kors looks pretty good to Seattle. Clifford:

Because Amazon’s costs are about the same whether it is shipping a $10 book or a $1,000 skirt, “gross profit dollars per unit will be much higher on a fashion item,” Mr. Bezos said.

The Jonas Brothers talk with Elettra Wiedemann at the Met Gala / on the Amazon home page.

Big difference: In fashion, Bezos is telling the Times, the underselling strategy used in publishing isn’t in the cards:

Mr. Bezos said that, despite having taken a low-price approach in other industries, Amazon would not in fashion. “There’s a sophisticated markdown cadence in the fashion industry that we think makes sense and we’re basically following that established approach,” he said.

Click here to comment

What shall we obsess over today?

May 9, 2012 8:44 am via TweetDeckReplyRetweetFavorite

@DonLinn

Don Linn

Amazonia: The tall order

Rowling had zero digital revenue to protect and zero responsibility to anybody else for delivering it. All the major publishers have triple digit millions of dollars of Kindle revenue at stake and thousands of authors counting on them to deliver it.

And so, Mike Shatzkin in The ebook marketplace is a long way from settled, brings a merciful bit of reason to how it would be “a really scary thing” for a large publisher to try bargaining with Amazon for the Pottermore deal. It seems we could use more of that this week.

How easy it is for folks to forget the readers are just that wild about Harry. Not about everything else.

Dutifully, Shatzkin trundles forward:

But with Barnes & Noble now funded (by Microsoft) for battle for the next several years and Kobo and Apple committed to the fight as well, there’s a serious question as to whether Amazon would feel as comfortable going forward without one of the Big Six’s ebooks the way they have been willing to work without those from IPG.

Potterwhere? Author and good friend George Davis' Rosslyn Boathouse, Essex, New York, a photo taken January 8 by Glenn Estus, who says the image was "manipulated using the iPad 2 app Snapsee." Another spell cast.

What prompts this round of speculation — not that the industry! the industry! ever needs prompting — is Matteo Berlucchi’s write for TheFutureBook, Has Pottermore cast the Riddikulus spell on Amazon? No link-bait in that headline.

Berlucchi, who called on everybody to drop DRM right this very minute, damn it, in his DBW Conference appearance, now wants publishers to tell Jeff Bezos it’s their way or the highway, buddy.

Berlucchi is very good at asking everybody else to risk it all.

And he seems to feel that Jo Rowling isn’t the only sorceress strong enough to stare down Seattle. Turns out, Shatzkin is — carefully — willing to give Berlucchi some rope:

It’s easy for me to say, because I have nothing at stake, but I think Berlucchi is right. The big publishers can make this happen; it would change the game.

But, as he also says, these are complex issues freighted with serious potential losses if publishers who have no Potter protection were to go to Matteo’s mat with Amazon.

Potter news seems smart for both sides pushes brand out further and free, while cementing relationship with Amz. Use of 'exclusive' puzzling

May 10, 2012 9:18 am via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@philipdsjones

Philip Jones

As in so many of our most hotly debated questions, all we have to do to get an accurate look at the future? — is relax, sit down, wait. But we’re none too good at that “calm down” stuff in publishing, Ethernaut.

So before you finish tearing all your hair over this one, you might want to see the next waft of Ether, just below this one: “Potter envy.” Or, if you’re mad as hell and you’re not going to take it anymore, go ahead and click here to comment

upgraded my cauldron on pottermore.. whathwat

May 9, 2012 11:24 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@Abbsolutelyyy

Abby Reaves

Publishing: Potter envy

Berlucchi’s right, but the industry needs to take the Pottermore idea several steps further if they are to reap all the rewards it has to offer.

This is Suw Charman-Anderson in a contributor piece at Forbes, apparently in no mood to perform our industry’s Ceremonial Asking of Questions We Cannot Answer and plunging right on under the ice forthwith, in Pottermore: Developing A Blueprint For Futureproof Publishing.

There is a window of opportunity now to expand upon the concept of a publisher-centric ebook hub, to take Pottermore’s partial blueprint and use it to futureproof publishing.

At a time in which the digital transition has done what it has done — and is doing — to or for or about or in spite of publishing, Charman-Anderson’s phrase “futureproof publishing” rings probably closer to Berlucchi/Rowling’s Riddikulus spell than most whammies anyone has tried flinging at Seattle yet.

Any publisher who wants to truly woo me as an author has to give me access to realtime traffic and sales data; a Pottermore-ish platform would easily be able to do that.

Well, great. And all you have to do, Suw, is write a Harry Potter-ish universal blockbuster.

Did I just hear a boggart laughing? See a bit more, from “the Pottermoors,” below.

Or click here to comment

@mikemurphy1979 @philipdsjones Honestly I don't think there's much for the rest of the industry to learn from Pottermore. It's a SuperBrand.

May 4, 2012 9:54 am via TweetDeckReplyRetweetFavorite

@DonLinn

Don Linn

Publishing: Meanwhile, out on the Pottermoors

The point about Frankenstein – and other innovative ebooks – is that it is a new type of monster, one that would be impossible to create within the pages of a paper book. Created by a writer with a background in video games, the reader can influence the route the story takes by making choices in the character of the monster or of Frankenstein himself. Because it deals with multiple pathways, Dave Morris’s new text is longer than that of the original novel.

Noting that Dave Morris’ app, previewed on the Ether, Frankenstein, “leapt straight into the top 10 in the books section of Apple’s App Store on both sides of the Atlantic,” Guardian books editor Claire Armitstead at the Guardian is more inclined to see scariness in From Pottermore to Frankenstein, a new kind of monster is being created.

At least Armitstead knows how to ask an honest question:

A lot is happening but what does it all mean?

Dropping in loads of disparate publishing efforts, even harkening back to Amanda Hocking, our Example of Everything, Armitstead somehow gets herself tangled up in the worrisome research department and ends up wandering on across the heath wringing her hands.

No innovations come without health warnings – and a recent article in Time Magazine suggested that digital reading might damage your learning. It quoted Kate Garland, a psychology lecturer at Leicester University, whose studies on memory and digital reading appeared to show that the human brain doesn’t navigate digital texts as efficiently as paper ones. Her findings suggested that computer readers needed more repetition to absorb the same information as from a book, and that book readers seemed to digest the material more fully.

Honk if you’re tired of upheaval. (And sorry, but the next segment is even tougher.)

SHOCKED the Amazon panel isnt more crowded at #muse2012. R people afraid of the elephant in the room? http://t.co/eVN8TPWp

May 5, 2012 3:55 pm via HootSuiteReplyRetweetFavorite

@DanBlank

Dan Blank

Advertising: Brother, can you spare a screen?

As TV viewing habits change, so will advertising. Stowe Boyd believes that the days of the 30-second TV commercial are nearing an end.

Surely we’re all shocked, I tell you, shocked at such a statement. (Not.)

Busy Emma Gardner, who seems to do anything but Lean Back 2.0 at the Economist, has this New report on “Social TV and the Second Screen.” And who am I to gainsay postfuturist Stowe Boyd? But weren’t we all on our computers while watching TV 15 years ago? And yet maybe the fact that TV ad-sales people could never get their heads around that one means that Boyd does need to stand up now — so they’ll think of it for mobile devices.

I can credit Gerd Leonhard for his foreword on the study, in which he has the grace to concede that it’s all right in our faces:

Let me recap the obvious: the Internet is now actually converging with television (or vice versa), the desktop computer as the most important place for entertainment or content is finally fading away, and mobile devices are where we ‘consume’ – I prefer to say ‘experience’ – most of what we want see or hear. Scheduled media is on its way out (except for sports, other live events and, maybe, news), and the crowd is now actually moving into the cloud, whether it’s for music, TV, movies, books or education.

And there’s an interesting graph in the report that indicates the majority of device brandishing TV viewers aren’t doing much related to the shows they’re watching, based on Nielsen 2012 figures.

• Sixty percent of tablet and smartphone owners surveyed are checking email during the program, itself. (And that drops only to 59 percent during the commercials. Maybe we need to work on the shows’ content?)
• Forty-six percent of those tablet and smartphone owners surveyed by Nielsen surfed for unrelated info during the program and the commercials. Riveted to the show, huh?
• Forty-two percent visited a social networking site during the show and commercials.
• Hell, 30 percent checked sports scores. What kind of crap were these people watching?
• Just 29 percent, per Nielsen, looked up info related to their show on TV. Nineteen percent checked out product info for an ad they saw (more men than women did this).
• And only 13 percent looked up coupons related to an ad they’d seen.

In a world in which new amalgams of commercial and literary elements are coming together — or being shoved together — it seems to me that the publishing community’s hold on story just might be something that could be leveraged a lot better than anyone in “Old TV,” as Boyd calls it.

My fellow tropical writer (and a man who can produce comics) Brad Meltzer tweets his heart out with his viewers during every edition of his TV show on the History Channel, Decoded. Folks on their many screens, yakking with the star of the show.

If you’re watching The Borgias, as I do, on Showtime — now in its second opulent season with Pope Jeremy Irons on the Throne of St. Peter — you’re seeing some simple early use of apps and soc-med to catapult Renaissance-era papal vengeance at us, on more than one machine. But why not a parallel production, streaming data on the historical underpinnings of the show as it airs? Savonarola has a bonfire ready for your iPad, but he needs introducing to today’s audience every time he shows up.

It’s Emma Gardner again, in fact, who turns up with Annette King of  OgilvyOne London getting the two-screen bug in “As an ad agency, we’ll always be trying to lean forward”:

We’re really interested in the dual screen experience right now. By dual screen, I mean sitting in front of the TV with a tablet. You might be watching one thing on the TV, but doing something else on your tablet. And we want to start connecting those two things. If Jamie Oliver is making a special truffle recipe on television, you can use your tablet to find out where truffles grow in the world, or how to make Jamie’s recipe. You can get people involved through the second screen.

If nothing else, you can always read a good book on your tablet while the nonsense on TV carries on. You always want a second screen handy. Click here to comment.

It generally isn't possible to explain to an idiot that they're an idiot.

May 7, 2012 3:49 am via Twitter for iPhoneReplyRetweetFavorite

@BenedictEvans

Benedict Evans

Craft: Strauss, Morris – good help is findable

Be sure the editor (or editors, if it’s an editing service) is qualified. You’re looking for professional publishing industry experience–preferably, as an editor for reputable publishers–and/or professional writing credentials (legitimately-published books, articles, etc.). If the editor has a website, a resume or CV should be posted there.

We do a lot of yelling and screaming these days about how authors simply must get  outside, professional editing services. To my mind, this is true whether you’re trying to self-publish or sling-shotting your MS on a flash drive at the rococo facade of a legacy publisher.

But how to find reputable editing?  That’s Victoria Strauss’ focus in Vetting an Independent Editor.

I’m a little concerned only about her first comment about considering free alternatives such as:

…a friend who’s not afraid to criticize, a local writers’ group or critique circle, an online writers’ group (such as Critters Writers Workshop for SF/fantasy/horror writers), a peer critique community (such as Book Country or Authonomy), or a creative writing course.

In a hardship case, do what you have to do, of course. And if you’re in earlier stages with a book, you do want less expensive avenues of feedback, sure. But I’d say — and again, this is me, with no desire to put words into Strauss’ blog post — there’s a point at which a true run at the market goes far past the friends-and-family stage. And a professional developmental edit isn’t the same as exchanging input in a mutual-critique community.

From Roz Morris' post, / Image by Tony J. Morris

I find some backing on this point in a post — Where will self-publishing get quality control? — from author Roz Morris, diligent in working on why so much self-published content is sub-par.

It’s raining slush and nonsense. Readers who’ve bought unreadable books are muttering ‘vanity press’ all over again.

Morris is asked by a reader, “If people won’t use editors, can we realistically replace them with critique groups and beta readers?”

Morris’ answer is typically straightforward and refreshingly honest:

I.E., is it possible to get all this input free? Sorry, guys, I don’t think it is. In the real world that doesn’t come free. Agents and publishers do it as part of their job. Critical feedback of that type takes experience and judgement.

What’s more, Morris reminds us, we need to let “good work rise on merit.” Gaming reader reviews and jockeying for advantage around the ready-reader racetrack isn’t working.

Ultimately we need to reach readers way beyond our own little blogosphere of indie publishing. We need to win the respect of the major book reviewers, because right now we’re preaching to the choir, and this is not sustainable.

So in regards to Strauss’ post, I’d make the personal caveat (and I doubt that Strauss and I disagree on this), that bona fide professional work is required for a truly valuable result.

So sorry to hear that Maurice Sendak passed. But look at the Twitter trends in NYC--half are related to him. He touched so many of us.

May 8, 2012 9:36 am via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@Ginger_Clark

Ginger Clark

And that being the case, Strauss’ guidance is sturdy, needed stuff in terms of how to assess the viability of a professional editor. There are details under each of these important subheads:

• Be sure the editor (or editors, if it’s an editing service) is qualified.
• If you’ve been referred to the editor or editing service, verify that they’re independent.
• Be sure the editor you’re thinking of hiring has experience appropriate to your work.
• Look for a client list, or a list of published books.
• Ask for references, and contact them.
• Ask to see a sample critique or part of a sample edit.
• Make sure the business arrangements are clear–and get it in writing.

@CTD publishers absolutely suck at customer service, while Amazon is brilliant at it #extrapolate

May 4, 2012 10:33 am via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@arhomberg

Andrew Rhomberg

Strauss also offers you a fine list of red flags to watch for, again with extensive details under each subhead:

• If you receive a referral from a literary agent or publisher. (Strauss notes that this is hardly an automatic problem — she has specific types of scams in mind and explains them.)
• If the publisher or agent recommends his/her own paid editing services.
• If buying editing is a requirement of representation or submission.
• If you can’t find a resume or CV, or claims of expertise can’t be verified.
• If the editing is anonymous.
• If the editor edits any and all genres, all comers accepted.
• If the editor tells you that agents and publishers prefer manuscripts that have been professionally edited.
• Vagueness about specific services.
• Refusal of reasonable requests for information.

Click here to comment

This tweet specifically for @Porter_Anderson's Ether: Something something #eBooks #amazon #apple #apps #digital #EPUB #ISBNs #wittycomment

May 8, 2012 2:43 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@bsandusky

Brett Sandusky

Craft: Gardner, Bransford – where’s the fire?

From Rachelle Gardner's post / A vintage commercial that I'm too young to have seen, of course.

Agent Rachelle Gardner has quality on her mind this week, too (or maybe she just needs a good drink, I know I do), in trying to slow down the writers panting to see print. In Quality Books Take Time, she’s soberingly clear about her point, emphasis hers.

If you self-publish a book that sucks, you may permanently lose potential readers. They pick up the book, it’s poorly crafted, they don’t like it — and they cross your name off their mental list of good authors.

It’s true, of course, that traditional publishing — which faces so many unsustainable problems — has operated in slow-mo for far too long. It’s hard to fault authors for wanting to avoid that agonizing, often counter-productive pace.

But only amateurs believe that a book can be “turned” quickly like a video or a science project. When former-agent-now-CNET-social-mediatore Nathan Bransford asked in a recent post How Long Does it Take You to Finish a Draft?, I had a lot of messages from folks mildly scandalized that Bransford had said it takes him “between 6-8 months to write a novel.” Clearly, that’s enough out of the precocious Bransford.

As Gardner writes:

One of the main arguments writers use for self-publishing is the speed at which they can get their books up for sale. They’re proud of themselves for circumventing the laborious publishing system that — yes — takes forever. But many of them have nothing to be proud of. I’ve bought and read numerous self-pubbed books now, and in general the quality is noticeably inferior to what most traditional publishers are putting out.

On behalf of self-publishing authors who want to do things to the highest standards, I’m really glad to see Gardner include this line:

All of those self-pubbers who are doing it poorly are giving a very bad name to the handful who are doing it well.

But in the end, there’s a lot to assess here, and it all falls heavily on many writers struggling to understand New Publishing’s requirements that they swim independently — even if on contract. These comments from Gardner and Morris, and those “common-sense suggestions” from Strauss, are a good place to start grabbing for a handrail as you head down these stairs.

Let me know — have you been scammed by a falsely represented editor or editing service? And what do you think of the burden of quality being shouldered now by authors? Is this what should have been the case all along? Or a completely unfair and creativity-crushing burden?  Click here to comment

To the untrained eye, "writing a novel" and "staring blankly into space" look exactly alike.

May 3, 2012 12:54 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@noveldoctor

Stephen Parolini

Craft: Coker, Greenfield – I said, where’s the fire?

The biggest challenge is self-restraint. Publishing tools, like Smashwords make it fast, free and easy for any writer anywhere in the world to publish. But we don’t make it easy to write a great book. Many writers, intoxicated by the freedom to self-publish, will often release their book before it’s ready to be released.

Mark Coker / Smashwords

Don’t look at me, that’s Mark Coker, Mr. Smashwords, himself, the man most likely to want you to publish now, now, now, right?

After all, he’s got 121,000 self-published ebooks by 42,000 keyboard-bashing self-ordained writers aimed at the Nook, the Kobo, and all devices east of the Kindle. If anybody wants lots of writers to publish, publish, publish, it’s going to be Coker, right?

Wrong and wrong. Keep your cover jacket on.

In very insignificant news I seem to have turned 42 today.

May 10, 2012 2:31 am via Twitter for iPhoneReplyRetweetFavorite

@samatlounge

Sam Missingham

He’s talking with Jeremy Greenfield at Digital Book World in an interview headlined Smashwords CEO Mark Coker: Indie Authors Need to Become Great Publishers. And Coker’s not saying what a lot of hustle-it-right-out-there self-publishers want to hear.

The biggest challenge faced by self-published authors, it’s not marketing, it’s not discoverability, it’s adopting the best practices of the very best publishers. It’s about becoming a professional publisher.

Now, this being the post-dignity era, Coker does go on blithely to push his own new brew:

If you look at the resources we make available to our authors, most notably the latest e-book that I published, The Secrets to Ebook Publishing Success, we’re very focused on elevating the best practices of indie authors, helping to educate them and inspire them through the example of the success of other indie authors.

But even as that plug singes your eyebrows, I’ll hand it to Coker, he’s willing to say to his customers (self-publishing authors) and potential customers (every man, woman, and child, since they all now believe they’re writing books):

We want to inspire them to up their game.

So do I. I’d like about 95 percent of them to up their game in another profession for which they have more aptitude. But as long as they all insist on trying to write books (“because, you know, like, it’s the Internet”), I’d be grateful if they’d spend a little time with more of Coker’s thoughts here:

Indie authors need to learn to think like a publisher. There’s a lot of expertise that goes into connecting books with readers.

Coker is right in how he describes the reversal of leadership underway:

Authors are starting to ask two very dangerous questions from the standpoint of publishers: What can the publisher do that I can’t do for myself? …And, will it actually harm my ability to reach readers if I work with a large publisher? But these questions set up publishers to be in a precarious situation.

I honestly don't understand why @melvillehouse and others hate Amazon so much >> Sara Nelson joins Amazon via http://t.co/oExR0GhE

May 10, 2012 4:38 am via Tweet ButtonReplyRetweetFavorite

@eoinpurcell

Eoin Purcell

In his role as a kind of DBW cheerleader for the publishers, Greenfield, of course, comes back with: “That hasn’t stopped publishers from continuing to do what they’ve always done: publish and sell great books and make money doing it.” Faithful until the vertical goes horizontal.

Well, not to worry, Coker’s ready. Before Greenfield can start into “Give me a P…!” he has Coker’s answer:

When I look at the future of publishing, we all become service providers for authors. The authors are in control. The power has shifted from publishers to authors. Anyone who doesn’t believe that and honor that is going to go out of business.

Sorry for so many German tweets in your TL. An absurd "debate" on copyright going on in Germany! Unbelievably ignorant from both sides!

May 10, 2012 8:20 am via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@sposth

Sebastian Posth

I encourage you to read the interview in its entirety. You may be surprised to find Coker sticking up for the publishers on the Department of Justice action, at least sympathizing with them for “drowning in a swimming pool, scared about the future” in 2009 and 2010 — even if “it does appear that some publishers did some stupid things.”

In short, it’s an unusually long piece for DBW, in which you’ll find two or more sides of some issues represented and you may just have to make up your own mind. How Ether-esque.

Because there are many facets to everything and everybody. At the very end, Coker tells Greenfield, “I don’t have time to read.”

Oops.

Click here to comment.

Yet continue to sell to them.... MT @eoinpurcell: I honestly don't understand why @melvillehouse and others hate Amazon so much

May 10, 2012 6:54 am via TweetDeckReplyRetweetFavorite

@DonLinn

Don Linn

Craft: Weiland – structure’s end

Your story and its conflict officially ended with your climax. Conceivably, you could end your story right then and there. But most books need an extra scene or two to tie off any leftover loose ends and, just as importantly, to guide your readers to the emotion with which you want to leave them.

In The Secrets of Story Structure, Pt. 11: The Resolution, K.M. Weiland practices what she preaches, inviting her own readers to look at — or for — something ahead.

The resolution is not just the ending of this story, but also the beginning of the story the characters will live after the reader has closed the back cover. It performs its two greatest duties in capping the current story, while still promising a sense of continuing life from the characters.

As practical as is most of her advice here — a hallmark of her work in this entire series on structure — I like the attention she gives to the “softer” elements of a good resolution’s potential, which are central regardless of whether there’s a series involved. Here are two of a list of five key points she makes:

• The resolution should give the reader a concrete example of how the character’s journey has changed him. If he was a selfish jerk at the beginning of the story, the resolution needs to definitively demonstrate his change of heart.
• Finally, the resolution should strike an emotional note that resonates with the tone of the book as a whole (funny, romantic, melancholy, etc.) and leaves the reader completely satisfied.

And happily, there’s still another segment in Weiland’s series to come. Next week, she’ll be getting into story-structure FAQs. I find this series from Weiland the sort of thing you specifically need if you think you don’t need it. Know what I mean?

amazon is adding all 7 harry potter e-books to the Kindle Owners' Lending library tip @techmeme http://t.co/6ZQVw6xb

May 10, 2012 9:06 am via TweetDeckReplyRetweetFavorite

@laurahazardowen

Laura Hazard Owen

While we’re at it, a new Weiland read on a topic dear to me and other supercilious critics:

The author’s need to balance on the narrow line between treating readers like they’re idiots and assuming they should know things they can’t.

Hey, I’ve met the readers. But, fortunately, this is Weiland writing, not me. She’ll handle it so much more gracefully than I could. Join her for The Fine Line Between Insulting and Bewildering Readers (both video and — so smart! — a full transcript for those of us who are sick, sick, sick of video).

I’m laughing all the way to the next section of Ether.

Click here to comment

That moment when someone puts a quiet bug in your ear about something and suddenly you have a different perspective on everything...

May 6, 2012 11:08 am via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@ColleenLindsay

Colleen Lindsay

Quotes of the week: Madrigal, Howard

Readers aren’t stupid. They know when your product is cheap.

Doubly useful. ↬ Brian O’Leary

(1) Alexis Madrigal wrote this as the lead of his piece, The Pernicious Myth That Slideshows Drive ‘Traffic’ for The Atlantic. It’s a write I’d love to have slapped a few faces with in a couple of newsrooms that shall remain undesignated here. Here’s Madrigal, and his topic is the corporate fondness for slideshows on news sites (hey, 20 clicks out of one unique user!)

This myth that slideshows are the path to salvation has got to be put into a rocket and sent hurtling into the sun. People know when your product is cheap; there is no “trick” of the web. The sad truth is that to win on the Internet you have to do good reporting and analysis, write great headlines, empower individual staffers to embed themselves in communities that can serve up scoops and distribute finished stories, and understand the social ecosystems that bring visitors to your site.

It's "Doesn't JIBE with the facts" not "JIVE with the facts." It isn't a jitterbug contest.

May 10, 2012 12:35 pm via HootSuiteReplyRetweetFavorite

@jamesscottbell

James Scott Bell

(2) This could be a banner on Catherine Ryan Howard’s How To Sell Self-Published Books: Read This First, ↬ Jane Friedman, which includes this passage:

That’s what a copyedit and a proofread does: it brings your book up to the minimum industry standard. Every time I mention this, I get comments and e-mails saying things like, “But if a reader likes the story, they’ll overlook misspellings, etc.” I’m just going to say this once, okay? ONLY IF THE READER IS YOUR MUM. Take an hour to read a few Amazon Customer Reviews and then see if you still feel the same way.

Click here to comment

Goddam typo. Do Over!

May 6, 2012 11:31 am via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@mikecane

Mike Cane

Head spinners’ special: What’s going on

I hope, Ethernaut, you’ll consider leaving your eustachian tubes to science. Because I get these comments after each Etherly edition from folks who claim, “My head is spinning!” Balance appears challenging to so many in publishing, maybe you’ve noticed. Well, of course you have.

So, head spinner, if you find yourself wishing somebody would just sit you down and talk you through how on Earth we got here, don’t look at me. Instead, check Nancy K. Herther’s The eBook Wars: Amazon Versus the Rest. ↬ Don Linn ↬ Joseph Esposito

“It isn’t so much that publishers are entrenched as that this is a much more complex issue than readers might think—legal issues, and the rest of it. We are changing, but like with libraries, change takes time to do it right.”

That is — guess who — a publisher speaking with Herther for her piece, which comes to us from the academy. She’s a sociology and anthropology librarian at the University of Minnesota Libraries. Beyond a basic accounting of things, notably well-organized and sane, you’ll also find here a refreshing absence of the sort of the industry! the industry! mania that tends to afflict so many of the rest of us. There’s that word “rational.” Remember it? Herther is able to present things here in a rational way.

A few examples of how transactional occasions are described without emotional fervor — you may find this rational tone interesting — then I’ll leave you to gnash your teeth over it.

• Amazon isn’t the first company powerful enough to impose concessions out of its suppliers.
• Quoting Mathew Ingram: The e-book marketplace is a kind of oligopoly involving a few major players—primarily Amazon, Apple, and B&N.
• “I’ve had giants of self-publishing assure me that my problem is that I have to price all of my books at $0.99,” explains author Jim C. Hines, “but plenty of $0.99 e-books fail.”
• Except for DOJ and other potential legal/regulatory pressures, Amazon has little to fear. It is sitting on a huge pile of money, has strong customer loyalty, and currently controls the market. No wonder Amazon is so bold in its actions.

Click here to complain about “understatement” and “missing the point.”

Most awards are bullshit.

May 7, 2012 8:55 pm via TwitterrificReplyRetweetFavorite

@paulbogaards

Paul Bogaards

I say this never having won an award personally but having spent a sizable fortune on author nominations through the years.

May 7, 2012 9:09 pm via TwitterrificReplyRetweetFavorite

@paulbogaards

Paul Bogaards

Last gas: The coming D-Day beyond “books”

For trade publishers particularly, Omaha Beach is not about learning how to publish digitally — it’s about becoming software houses that support publishing functions. That’s a steep organizational cliff to climb.

In his column for Publishers Weekly, A soft landing on Normandy, Peter Brantley recognizes the current predicament of the industry as something far more complex than trying to adjust to new business modalities.

It is very much as if we are back in the Middle Ages scribbling on parchment, whittling our own quills from feathers we have on hand, drawing up whatever ink we have available. Our 21st Century parchment is a world-wide digital canvas, but our quills are hand-crafted.

What Brantley is getting at is existing limitations of form and format. They can’t respond fully yet to initiatives of substance. Put another way: never mind traditional vs. digital business relationships — we’re not even sure what we’re going to be publishing soon.

His thoughts, though they start in a different place, bear some relation to Jani Patokallio’s Why e-books will soon be obsolete, covered in the last edition of Ether.

Brantley sees a Normandy yet to be fought, a struggle on the other side of publishing’s supposed “soft landing” in terms of digital format. He writes:

Regardless of the kind of content new publishing startups are thinking about building services around, at heart, they are oriented toward the web, not the page. Yet, quixotically, the web itself is not quite ready.

So wheels are being invented on all sides.

Almost every single startup that is delivering authoring tools…is building their own proprietary web-based layer…In other words, everything is baroque, and nothing in the standards space works well enough across the range of possible uses to be a default rendering environment.

What interests me here is a subtle signal that creative people — those writers we see madly rushing to get to market with self- or traditionally published books — may do better if they slow down, hang on to their new content for a bit, see what shakes out in terms of format, production platform, audience receptivity, and collaborative possibilities.

In craft sections of the Ether this time, the question has been “Where’s the fire?” Even for purposes of quality control, there are good reasons for unpublished content developers to bide their time, sit things out for a bit, improve the content while waiting to see where this transition takes us. Brantley:

It will get better, and likely quite rapidly, but what will be left after our whittling is an authoring environment that will be very, very different from what we have known before.

Click here to comment

I write to startups in publishing and get response immediately. I write to SVPs at Big 6 and made to feel like I am petitioning royalty.

May 7, 2012 12:11 pm via TweetDeckReplyRetweetFavorite

@naypinya

Peter Brantley

Main image: iStockphoto / donvanstaden

Aurelio Asiain / Flickr

Today’s guest post is by Emily Latham. Emily has been one of my students this past academic year at the University of Cincinnati and will graduate soon. In response to Jonathan Fields’ new release, Uncertainty, she wrote the following. The honesty was so remarkable that I asked her if she’d allow me to share her thoughts here.

I wasn’t sure if I should laugh, cry, slap myself on the forehead, or just nod erratically in agreement to this book. I relate to the fear of uncertainty, worry of judgment, and the suppression of creativity—and to the overall inclination to just play it safe.

I also couldn’t help but notice (not judge) that a lot of my peers act the same way in the face of uncertainty and judgment.

“I feel the fear of uncertainty stinging clear.” Those are lyrics to one of my favorite songs, “Drive” by Incubus. I don’t think that I’ve ever thought about how much uncertainty plays a role in how I make decisions. The dark unknown is something that humans are not very comfortable with, and sadly I am not exempt. We are constantly searching to define the unknown. Not many people are complacent with not knowing.

What makes uncertainty hard for me is the possibility of failure. Not to succeed is a very hard reality to deal with. Will I be able to rebound if I do fail? Do I need to change my life goals if I do not succeed? Does failure mean I am doomed?

Those questions then lead to: If I do fail, how am I going to deal with telling people I failed? What are friends, family, coworkers going to think? What kind of judgments will people be passing on me? The fear of uncertainty certainly stings clear in my mind when thinking about the future.

I commonly deal with this fear of uncertainty and public scrutiny in two ways:

1. Try with minimal effort.
2. Don’t tell anyone until you succeed.

The age-old minimal effort deal is something that I have perfected. My peers also employ this method. It looks something like this:

I only studied for 30 minutes for the test.

I wrote this response right before class.

This class is stupid.

These are things I hear a lot from my peers, and I find myself doing it too. Studying a week for a test, or actually working on papers in advance, or admitting that classes are not stupid is probably the first step to recovery on this one. I tend to put in minimal effort to minimize the fear of failure. If you only try a little bit, then the failure isn’t so great. Furthermore, you make it known to everyone that you aren’t trying, so when your C- or B is handed back to you, it was because you didn’t try—not because you weren’t good enough.

The fear of trying your hardest and being rejected is ego crumbling. But how can I really improve if I don’t put myself out there?

The real mantra should be: “I don’t know the outcome, but I’m going to use whatever outcome there is to make it better.”

With the other tactic I employ—don’t tell anyone until you succeed—no one has to know I have failed, and better yet no one can judge me for it. But, as Fields discusses, I don’t have a certainty anchor. With no one to rely on, or without input, I might as well fail before I even try. It’s important put the ego and fear aside to learn to lean on people.

I don’t have all the answers—and clearly, after writing this, I should be thinking that I don’t need all the answers. My anchors won’t have all the answers either, but without support, facing the fear of uncertainty is a lot harder.

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.

Note from Jane: For the first time ever, you will notice a sponsor this month for Writing on the Ether by Porter Anderson. Our initial sponsor is L.L. Barkat, author of Rumors of Water, as well as the managing editor behind Tweetspeak Poetry. I am grateful to Laura for offering her support of this weekly feature, which takes considerable time and effort to deliver. Thank you!

Rumors of Water:
Thoughts on Creativity & Writing

Table of Contents

1. Worth more than a thousand words
2. Publishing: The here and now
3. Agents: Remember them?
4. Agents: Another one heard from
5. Media coverage: When it sucks
6. Publishing: Bwana Mike in Amazonia
7. Publishing: Driven-through window
8. ‘Social’ media: Undiscovered on Twitter
9. Writing craft: Donnie Appleseed
10. Nevil Shute: On the shelf
11. Writing craft: Novelists as superstitious ninnies
12. Writing Craft: Structured time
13. Marketing: That on-air interview you’re doing
14. Marketing: James Scott Bell & his new gatekeepers
15. Last gas: Right(s) of way

Worth more than a thousand words

Microsoft Monday had them all betting on Barnes & Noble’s chances.

Screamin’ Mike Cane raised everyone’s blood pressure with an immediate pooh-pooh, lacking only the caps-lock of his tweets, in Microsoft Reduces Nook To An App For $300M:

Barnes & Noble doesn’t realize it yet, but Microsoft just stole their college textbook business and wiped out the Nook tablets.

Vertical that it is, everything was looking up at Digital Book World, Jeremy Greenfield manning the pompoms in Possibilities Abound in Microsoft, Barnes & Noble Deal:

Imagine a Windows-powered Nook tablet that breaks the iOS and Android stranglehold on the mobile device market.

Thad McIlroy, came up with an “inspiring haiku-styled poem,” based on part of the Microsoft-B&N press release:

With rapid growth
To solidify our position
A leader in an exploding market
Our exciting collaboration
Our world-class technologies
and content

It is the beginning of a journey
For our complementary assets
We’re at the cusp of a revolution

But McIlroy’s piece was headlined Barnes & Noble Marries Microsoft, and described the “strategic partnership” this way:

Two losers stumbling to the altar without bridesmaids or witnesses…Worse still it’s a marriage of the Hatfields and the McCoys. They were feuding something nasty, and if they hadn’t exchanged vows they were about to exchange bullets.

Another view of the record-breaking #Scream at our post sale press conference tonight. http://t.co/LK7g4XyH

May 2, 2012 11:13 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@Sothebys

Sotheby's

Mary Jo Foley at CNET was in and out of her Could Microsoft-B&N deal foretell Windows 8-powered Nook? as answers to questions turned up. (Part of reporting in the digital age is that you have to publish before either shoe drops. I’m impressed with how clearly Foley updates her material in the body of the story.)

Was today’s creation of NewCo predicated on B&N settling with Microsoft? Does B&N still have to pay Microsoft royalties on every Nook sold as part of the settlement? (Update: The answer to that one is yes, according to a Microsoft spokesperson.) No word on any of these questions so far…

Clear, concise. Way to keep up.

Art prices. They're a scream. RT @Storyful: The Scream that shattered an art world record http://t.co/tnKb5Let #thescream

May 3, 2012 6:15 am via Twitter for MacReplyRetweetFavorite

@markhamnolan

Markham

At Publishers Lunch, Sarah Weinman ably made the initial announcement, of course, in BN Puts Nook and College Business Into New Subsidiary, With Microsoft Investing $300 Million, quoting Microsoft’s president, Andy Lees, saying:

We’re going to have a larger role to play than just being the platform provider; that’s what this partnership allows us to do.

Weinman’s colleague Michael Cader then went to work in the followup, Is the Barnes & Noble Spinoff Really A Leave Behind?

Many in the publishing world greeted yesterday’s news with excitement that the Nook business is assured of substantial funding in order to both compete and grow, and is aligned with the interests of a cash rich technology company. Rather than a spin-off of Nook and associated businesses, however, people may come to the reasoned conclusion that Barnes & Noble is really preparing to leave behind the retail stores, quarantined in a unit of their own.

The 120 million dollar emoticon: 😱 #thescream

May 3, 2012 2:51 am via Twitter for iPhoneReplyRetweetFavorite

@Ryyyan_

Ryan Giroux

Laura Hazard Owen dutifully quoted B&N’s CEO happy-talking in her timely Microsoft invests $300m in Barnes & Noble’s Nook; more e-books for Windows. The quotes here are William Lynch’s:

Part of that expansion is a Nook app for Windows 8, “which will extend the reach of Barnes & Noble’s digital bookstore by providing one of the world’s largest digital catalogues of e-books, magazines and newspapers to hundreds of millions of Windows customers in the U.S. and internationally.”

Being in the saleroom when a big picture sells is amazing #thescream ($107m)-memories of days @christies when Van Gogh & Picasso went crazy

May 3, 2012 1:58 am via Twitter for iPhoneReplyRetweetFavorite

@VintageExpert

Katherine Higgins

Look hard at the CNNMoney interview JP Mangalindan did with Lynch — Barnes & Noble CEO: NFC coming to the Nook — and you’ll find Lynch apparently including self-publishing authors in his “hundreds of thousands of publishers.”

Really the most valuable part is a vast digital content repository that we’ve built with our relationships with now hundreds of thousands of publishers…

While Laura Dawson in B&N and Microsoft  joined the shove-off chorus –“I do believe the @Nook arm will be spun off separately from the B&N mothership” – she had good company in Jay Yarow at BusinessInsider in Microsoft Is Investing $300 Million In Barnes & Noble! who concurred, and added: “Amusingly, Barnes & Noble’s entire market cap was $792 million at the time of the investment.”

#thescream Art "means nothing if it simply decorates the dinner table of the power which holds it hostage."

May 3, 2012 1:35 am via Twitter for BlackBerry®ReplyRetweetFavorite

@d_w_wright

Daniel W Wright

Kevin C. Tofel at GigaOM joined Philp Jones at TheFutureBook in recalling earlier efforts in ebooks by Microsoft.

Jones, in Microsoft looking to be third time lucky in its bid for ebooks, wrote:

Twelve years ago I attended the first ever Frankfurt E-book Awards, a lavish evening held at the Frankfurt Opera House…At the time Microsoft was touting its Microsoft(R) Reader with ClearType(TM) display technology that allowed digital books to be read on home computers (this was pre-smart phones and pre-tablets).

The drama! RT @Sothebys: Seven bidders battled for more than twelve minutes for Munch's #TheScream

May 2, 2012 8:23 pm via EchofonReplyRetweetFavorite

@hannahtpsky

Hannah Thomas-Peter

Joe Wikert at O’Reilly Media, in B&N and Microsoft: Why It’s Not About Ebooks, speculated on how B&N’s brick-and-mortar stores could come into play:

What if B&N stores added mini Microsoft Stores in each of their locations? The foot traffic is already there and what a great place to showcase and sell that new Windows 8-based nook they’ll undoubtedly create…Xbox is one of the brightest stars in the Microsoft product portfolio…Given the ongoing decline of print book sales it might make a lot of sense for B&N to reduce their superstore title count inventory and make even more room for that Microsoft section I described above.

It’s interesting that Wikert was one of the few who mentioned Amazon at any length in the context of the Microsoft-B&N news. And even as he was talking about terrestrial stores — and the fact, of course, that Amazon doesn’t have any nor want any — CNBC was running a quick-vote viewer poll, asking, “If Barnes and Noble goes extinct, what would you do with all that real estate?”

Sotheby's pretty much cleared out after #thescream. $BID should get a nice pop in the morning.

May 2, 2012 8:52 pm via Twitter for AndroidReplyRetweetFavorite

@coombscnbc

Bertha Coombs

A good bit of real estate away from CNBC’s studios, Eoin Purcell in Dublin was taking the broader look, On THE Platform And What That Means.

Purcell’s not talking author platforming here, by the way, but digital platforms. I like the quick-view line-up of platform assets he puts together here to open his piece:

When you look at this ebook game from a distance it seems to make a little sense:

1) Microsoft & NewCo. [for the moment, the name of the entity formed with B&N] = Content, Device, Apps + possible future Mobile play via Nokia & Windows 8

2) Apple = Content+ Device, Apps + Mobile play

3) Amazon = Content, Device, Apps + Whispersync making Mobile already a significant play in my book but an actual partnership not yet to hand

4) Google = Content (-ish), Apps + Mobile (with Motorola) and a Device neutral stance

Purcell then goes on to note that while each of the major players has “some fashion of a flaw,” the entire exercise of adding up cannon vs. battering rams is largely pointless.

Just as Google is failing to maintain its grip on attention and Facebook is growing stronger every day, someone will rise to take Facebook’s place and then another will rise to take theirs. This impermanence of predominance is, for me, a defining characteristic of the web, and it is driven by the incredibly low to non-existent barriers to entry online because the WEB IS THE PLATFORM, which fosters competition, innovation and experimentation.

Can't wait for my new purchase to be delivered- shouldn't be allowed to online shop a $120 million later and a new painting #thescream

May 3, 2012 6:36 am via Twitter for iPhoneReplyRetweetFavorite

@letitiataylor

Letitia Taylor

Now, take a breath. Frequently one of the comments I get from Ethernauts is that they feel their heads are spinning after reading the weekly gas. Light-headed? Are you ready to believe my announcement that Apple and Amana are teaming up to introduce Iced iPads, and just in time for summer?

Good. Then you’re ready to listen to Fran Toolan. And so am I.

@jtallent standards are already breaking down in the walled gardens of ebooks. you know that as well as anyone

May 2, 2012 2:42 pm via TweetDeckReplyRetweetFavorite

@ftoolan

Fran Toolan

Publishing: The here and now

In his sharply grounding piece, The Book Industry is Dead, Long Live the Book Customer, Toolan of Firebrand Technologies starts with the gemutlichkeit out there on Ninth Avenue:

Microsoft’s partnership with Barnes & Noble is probably welcome news in many publishers’ boardrooms. After all, this represents the hope that someone can loosen Amazon’s grip on reading public and hence loosen the grip on those that supply that content. But does anyone really think that Microsoft is getting into the book game because they care about books?

“Relentless” comes to mind, as Toolan just scrubs the silly grin right off the moment.

If anything, Microsoft going into business with Barnes & Noble signals something more ominous in my opinion. It signals Barnes & Nobles’ departure from the book industry and formal entrance into the technology industry.

There’s some courage here, as Toolan talks about years when “everyone was happy to live in a bubble called the book industry.”

We were free to create our own rules, set our own standards, and be proud that our work was not only for profit, but was sort of a public service. There was always contention between the publishers and the retail community, but it was genteel, as each side realized that they ultimately needed the other to survive.

In recounting what has happened, Toolan observes the rise of the Internet, the multi-channeling of digital distribution, the Borders collapse.

The result, aside from Barnes & Noble, (is that) the four or five largest customers of every publisher have completely turned over into different entities. Even the major wholesalers, Ingram and Baker & Taylor, who were used and abused by Amazon, are in deep peril as the number of retail partners they have continue to diminish. The new behemoths are all technology companies, Amazon, Apple, Google, and to a far lesser extent, Sony.

Which sets the stage for Toolan’s coup de grace:

With Barnes & Nobles’ departure to the technology industry, I think it’s fair to say that book industry that we all know and love is on its deathbed.

Could Microsoft influence B&N to deeply discount nooks w/ 2-year content purchase requirement like Xbox plan? http://t.co/7peFYoXS #TOCcon

May 2, 2012 2:35 pm via TweetDeckReplyRetweetFavorite

@jwikert

Joe Wikert

There is, however, in Toolan’s purview, what might be called difficult hope.

The good news is that customers for books and book-like products are still out there, consuming as much as ever…What we need to recognize is that the rules have all changed, our standards and trade organizations are losing their relevance every day, and that really the new retail giants do have some objectives in alignment with those of publishers.

I’d like to recommend this to our good colleague Mike Shatzkin, who’s asking in a column this week what’s needed in the DBW Conference next year. This is an honest conference scene-setter, if ever there was one. I’d like to see DBW consider making it the lead blurb for the conference. Here you go:

To survive and thrive, publishers need to accept their demoted status in the balance of power and move on… Publishers need to work with the new retail giants in order to best understand how to build, market, and promote their products in a way that achieves the maximum return for all involved.

I’m going to get us back to our big theme here — the industry! the industry! — in a bit. And we’ll be hearing more from Shatzkin. If you’d like to move right on to those parts of the Ether, just use the table of contents above to drop down to the sections with “Publishing” in their titles.

If you’re feeling linear, come along as we head off in a few other interesting directions before returning to Our Common Crisis.

In unrelated news, last night I tweeted this photo. Best photo I have ever taken of myself: http://t.co/uB1tMX8g

May 1, 2012 12:50 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@Ginger_Clark

Ginger Clark

Agents: Remember them?

There was a time when the relationships that mattered most to an agent were the publishers or rights developers he or she sold to…Now when we roll calls, we’re as likely to be dialing up biz dev VPs at dozens of startups: Ebook designers, app developers, distribution specialists, direct sales engines, digital marketing consultants, online publicists, community managers, daily deal site owners, social reading platform developers, and more.

So as the industry’s orbit coasts lower and dangerously lower, I notice an intriguing pang of anxiety at times in certain colleagues. Have you heard it, too? “What about agents?” Those asking are often the ones who might once have enjoyed third and fourth rounds of “those damned agents” with a few fellow happy-hour query-writers. But now? When “strategic partnerships” whiz past and begin to burn up in the toxic debate of pundits and pedants — i.e. when the ground starts rushing up at you — maybe the guidance of a specialist wasn’t so bad, after all.

Jason Allen Ashlock’s essay at DBW’s Expert Publishing Blogs, Build something. Learn from it. Repeat. is one knees-up proof of performance and an important answer to the question, “What about agents?”

Every agent ought to consider himself, at least in part, in a biz dev role for his or her firm and his or her clients, a role that requires one select the very best strategic partners. If the Literary Agent is going to be the instigator of experimentation, he or she must be the hub of the collaborative relationships, determining which partners to work with, at what level, and to what end.

Ashlock has been ahead of several curves. Merging with California’s Artists and Artisans late last summer, he managed to “build something” unique, himself, deepening his literary agency services with a performance wing led by Adam Chromy. The resulting bi-coastal Movable Type Management (no longer solely an agency) gets at the dense array of services that digitally empowered authors and other clients need. Ashlock writes about the developing construct of his approach:

There are no experts. There are informed experimenters, each using a combination of the scientific method and the holy word of Eric Reis to find their way forward into new markets…These experimenters, us included, will have our share of failures and modest successes, but by simply acting now, the experimenters among us are learning what works and what doesn’t. By the time the marketplace for these digital goods has matured, the experimenters will be the ones who own it.

Lastly, Ashlock’s vision includes a clear call to authors who are ready to be experimentors, themselves. And what I like about this is the onus placed on the writers. There may be many great things ahead. Free lunch is not among them. With my emphasis, here’s Ashlock:

We might embrace a less straightforward representation model, bring on the capable partners, and launch ourselves into a more networked management role, but we need the authors to bring their ideas, their insights, and their bravery. We need all the eyes on the market that we can get, all the ideas that we can produce, all the hands we can get on deck, and all the fearless enthusiasm we can muster if we’re going to experiment enough to stretch toward confidence and eventual expertise. We need our authors to be educated, curious, willing sometimes to lead and sometimes to be led.

Why is the best hope always the last?

April 26, 2012 11:00 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@jasonashlock

Jason Allen Ashlock

Agents: Another one heard from

Don’t feel bad for all of us poor agents who supposedly may be out of a job in a few years. We’re not the equivalent of buggy-whip makers in the era of the automobile. Maybe we’re more like the road maintenance crew—we facilitated transportation via horse and buggy, and now we’re going to facilitate transportation by automobile, so we just have to figure out how to make the roads better.

Rachelle Gardner, no stranger to Ethernauts, does her best daily to demystify agenting. She turns up right in front of you in her blog posts, shaking off voodoo like a dog shakes off his bathwater — joyously, and with humor.

In Are Agents Running Scared? she takes on that question I’m hearing from authors (who are running scared, yes) and echoes Ashlock, emphasis hers:

The difference is that in our role of career partner and advisor, we’re helping our authors to be aware of all their publishing options beyond the “traditional” ones of the past.

There it is again, see? As Movable Type is doing, Gardner (who’s with the Books and Such agency of Santa Rosa) is researching the amalgam of services authors can need as the wheels fall off our old pageant wagon and thumbs go up for a lift.

Most of us can think of twenty different ways our roles could morph into something related yet different. Those who aren’t interested in rolling with the changes are looking at the possibility of a different career down the road.

The agents are working on it.

I’m fairly sure that the same skills that led us to be agents in the first place will serve us as we each figure out our next step.

"Top 10 Reasons Men Shouldn't be Ordained." Funny. http://t.co/CsfjYOxn

April 30, 2012 1:18 pm via TweetDeckReplyRetweetFavorite

@RachelleGardner

Rachelle Gardner

Media coverage: When it sucks

If there were one lesson I’d want to impress upon people who are interested in succeeding in the technology industry, it would be, as I’ve said before, know your shit.

That’s Anil Dash in Why You Can’t Trust Tech Press To Teach You About the Tech Industry. He writes of “sites that attract attention from technology developers and startup aficionados (which) are woefully myopic in their understanding and perspective of the disciplines they cover.”

Dash goes on to cover an key omission in recent tech-blog coverage of a reported new Google commenting service, namely that the company had just shut down a similar commenting service.

The work comes to the Ether from Guy LeCharles Gonzalez, who writes:

Most of publishing’s media coverage — in mainstream and trade press, old and new media — suffers from a similar case of myopia and fascination with the new shiny.

In Why Most Tech Media Coverage Sucks… and Publishing’s, too, Gonzalez writes:

Historical context and a clear understanding of the long game are as rare as prominent corrections.

I wrote two weeks ago of my own disappointment in corrections that are mentioned only at the top or bottom of a post but not changed in the body of the write.

Gonzalez goes on to mention another issue we all run into:

Peripheral bloggers attempting to “cover” the industry are even worse, either grinding barely concealed axes or fishing for suckers to pay them for bad advice.

I’m grateful to be mentioned in Gonzalez’ post among some fine regular beat folks, including Jane Friedman, host of the Ether. The point is to take seriously the responsibility of working in public media, especially during the kind of major upheaval both tech and publishing are encountering. Gonzalez’ and Dash’s posts are good reminders for all of us.

The problem with fiction, it has to be plausible. That’s not true with non-fiction. TOM WOLFE #writing #writetip

April 30, 2012 12:27 pm via Tweetie for MacReplyRetweetFavorite

@AdviceToWriters

Jon Winokur

Publishing: Bwana Mike in Amazonia

If you start from the point that the manuscript is completed, it is easy to see why many aspiring authors would choose self-publishing, primarly through Amazon (because they reach the most customers), rather than take weeks or months to find an agent who will take weeks or months to put a proposal in shape to then take weeks or months to find a publisher. And the publisher will then take months, at least, to put a book into distribution. And that’s if you succeed. Most attempts even to secure an agent — just the first step — fail.

In Amazon’s growth and its lengthening shadow, you read what I think is a new stage in Mike Shatzkin’s considered, thoroughgoing overview of the industry’s progress (or its backslide, if you see it that way).  He goes to no small length to lay out a really compelling case for authors who are moving into self-publication, particularly with Amazon.

In fact, he even assigns a rationale to the sometimes overheated, belligerent tone we hear from some self-publishing evangelists. There’s a line in the following paragraph that I’d say it’s probably safe to assume applies to Barry Eisler, the author who passed up a St. Martin’s contract and signed with Amazon in a deal with which he says he’s well-pleased:

If you’ve got the manuscript in hand and you have a choice between going that route and having books to show your friends within days at just about no cost, why wouldn’t you seriously consider it? Why wouldn’t you do it? It seems like a no-brainer. That explains the conviction with which writers who have succeeded through this means, even those who didn’t quite do it themselves but instead just agreed to be published by Amazon, are so unsympathetic to the concern that Amazon’s business practices could cripple the legacy publishing business.

Shatzkin mentions both Eisler by name and the usually vociferous Joe Konrath to introduce what he terms “four serious qualifiers to the logic advocating self- or Amazon-centric-publishing.”  Bulleted, those four points are:

1. Is your manuscript really finished?
2. You must assume the print-in-store component (which Amazon does not supply) “already doesn’t matter.”
3. Traditional publishing shifts financial risk to the publisher. Self-publication “shifts the risk back.”
4. “Legacy publishers sell ebooks for higher prices than the self-published authors do. Expressing things in percentages might elide realities in dollars.”

Yet, despite those points and the subsiding value “in the retail channel for print,” Shatzkin writes:

Few big authors  have gone for Amazon’s money. Tell the truth: wouldn’t you have expected that with Amazon’s power, deep pockets, and an experienced book acquirer at the helm, they’d have attracted some bigger “gets” by now? I’ll admit that I did.

Still. Maybe not for much longer.

As bookstores continue to diminish, it will get harder for the publishers to continue to compete for the big authors, particularly if Amazon is the one picking up the share the bookstores relinquish. That could change the status quo and Amazon might start to get big authors then. If and when enough of the big authors move on, the legacy model will break and we’ll be in a different world.

And then you get the measure of the man.

Shatzkin ends by offering you the contact info to make your feelings known to the DoJ during this 60-day comments period. You can go all Kon-wrathful about it, or dissolve into a pool of John Sargent worship. But none of that changes the fact that Shatzkin is one noble soul, faithfully pressing his consultancy’s concepts as far as he can with a lot more class, to be honest, than many of the shrill anti-legacy voices we hear.

He’s big enough to say things may be moving southward as fast as many of us think is happening. But he’s unwilling to watch that happen without making the appropriate moves. Those include offering you the way to make your comments heard to the Department of Justice. Who else has done this for you?

I hope this post contains useful thoughts for some people formulating their response, which I am still doing. Whenever you’re ready, send your letter to: John Read, Chief, Litigation III Section, Antitrust Division, U.S. Department of Justice, 450 5th Street, NW, Suite 4000, Washington, DC 20530

This behavior has a name. It’s called good form. And we’re lucky to have Mike to remind us how it looks.

"World-Class" --> "Barnes & Noble and Microsoft Form Strategic Partnership to Advance World-Class Digital Reading Experiences for Consumers"

April 30, 2012 10:53 am via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@bsandusky

Brett Sandusky

Publishing: Driven-through window

Don’t fail to note the artwork on author Nick Harkaway’s The Window is Closing at TheFutureBook. That’s a lift of Polish artist Henryk Siemiradzki’s “Nero’s Torches.” And Harkaway probably reads Shatzkin as lighter fluid.

The “folks” he addresses, it would seem, are traditional publishers on their super-heating seats.

Seriously, folks, this is it. The window is closing. Time to embrace the new possibilities, be a bit brave, and get in the mix. Time to do the Kindle better than its maker. Time to be bolder than Apple. Time to form relationships with readers, treat them like customers. Time to make the shift to the digital world. The alternative is dying of thirst within arm’s reach of a well. Time, and past time. The window’s closing.

Harkaway – being an author, not a publisher – seems to be feeling the heat of pyres to come.

I have been, in general, optimistic about publishing. I think it’s all there for the industry to take. I think the natural resources of the traditional houses are so staggering that they should have no difficulty in getting into the game and rewriting the rules. What I am beginning to fear, however, is that for whatever imponderable reason they simply never will.

He bases his write on “the beginning of ebook lending” at Amazon, which, of course, isn’t even that new. That window has been open for a while. He’s responding to a piece from the 23^rd of last month, headlined Amazon: your local library? from Alex Christofi at the literary agency Conville and Walsh:

The Kindle is everywhere… Now, it looks as if they are putting the infrastructure in place to make another seismic shift—from ownership to access. As well as Amazon Cloud Drive which, like Apple’s iCloud, lets you store the files you’ve bought securely online, they have created the Lending Library—a name which evokes nostalgic, homely images.

What’s not new, Harkaway writes, as what Sam Missingham terms “a cry from the heart,” is the lack of uptake from the established publishing world. Harkaway:

If Amazon is able to create this new space and thereby get a controlling share of it without any attempt at a fightback from publishers, even I will have to acknowledge that the traditional industry may be determined to earn that ‘legacy’ label so unkindly hung on it by the likes of Barry Eisler.

Of course, when things of this tone are written, the room usually is full of smoke already. On this side of the pond, Harkaway’s article would be the kind of op-ed that’s always led with the arch-cliché, “Wake up, America!”

So many things aren’t making sense in the traditional publishing executives’ responses now that many observers might do well to be reminded of the shock Harkaway evokes so keenly. You read it in him, you read it in Shatzkin, you read it in many who thought, surely, the turnaround would come.

But maybe it won’t, huh? Last week, here on the Ether, we picked up on a new slant being taken in many quarters on Amazon. Take a little time this week to listen as the wind shifts — and smoke gets in your eyes.

@mikecane @DonLinn @TheFutureBook @harkaway Quick! Let's jump out before that window closes. You guys first.

May 1, 2012 6:33 am via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@DigitalDanHouse

Dan Franklin

@DigitalDanHouse @DonLinn @TheFutureBook @harkaway Shit, I've been on the ground telling people to jump for ages.

May 1, 2012 6:34 am via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@mikecane

Mike Cane

‘Social’ media: Undiscovered on Twitter

Obviously, any system based on algorithms is going to be hit and miss — especially one that must sift through the half a billion or so tweets that go streaming through Twitter every day.

Image from GigaOM's story by Mathew Ingram

In Twitter’s big problem: It still needs better filters, Mathew Ingram at GigaOM gets an advance look at the new Discover tab being rolled out now by Twitter – my home in cyberspace, and maybe yours, too.

As usual, Ingram’s willingness to see how high a bar is placed brings a refreshing tone of willing, collegial concern to what in many, many tech commentators’ hands would be the sneering snot-nerd whine that helps no one. Here’s how a sensible thinker describes disappointment in a tech development:

Recommendation services are a little like voice-recognition, in that no one notices when you get it right but everyone hates you when you get it wrong.

And he takes the time to make it clear why a Discover tab on Twitter isn’t just a fanboy frill:

Getting the “interest graph” right is about more than just users. Twitter needs to solve this problem for its advertisers as well, because if their promoted tweets don’t go to the right people then they will be ineffective. As I’ve tried to argue before, Twitter is a new-age media company, and as a new breed of media player it has to be the best at what new-media companies need to do to succeed — and that is curate and filter better than anyone else.

@bsandusky It's like when your hair does that thing, and you can either be embarrassed or be all, "It's SUPPOSED to look this way."

April 30, 2012 10:12 am via TweetDeckReplyRetweetFavorite

@ljndawson

ljndawson

Writing craft: Donnie Appleseed

Many manuscripts feel narrowly focused and small even when the fate of the world is at stake. Conversely, there are novels in which the setting is local, the protagonist isn’t anyone important, and their problems are unique. Even so, those novels sometimes seem to be talking about us all. How is it that big scale stories can seem small, while small scale stories can feel big?

Agent Donald Maass, one of my fellow monthly contributors to Writer Unboxed, is into that intriguing phenomenon of capturing major issues through the comparatively minor realities of character life. In The Good Seed, Part II, Maass writes:

Here are the relevant principles: Fate-of-the-world stakes won’t feel truly big until they’re also scaled down to affect your protagonist personally. Meanwhile, small-scale stories become bigger when they grow more particular.

In the course of some back-and-forth on this, Maass and I have discovered we have a mutual fondness for the work of the late Nevil Shute. His On the Beach wiped me out with its characters’-eye view of an approaching radiation cloud following nuclear war. The effect was so disturbing that I could easily internalize the dread of the coming, certain death. This is something Maass is referring to here:

When a main problem or central conflict gets personal, it gets strong. Make it strong enough and we readers will begin to make it our own.

Is there such a thing as 'blogging block'?

April 27, 2012 10:21 am via TweetDeckReplyRetweetFavorite

@DonLinn

Don Linn

@DonLinn I'm shifting to consulting on 'blogging block'; the audience is said to be huge

April 27, 2012 10:30 am via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@brianoleary

Brian O'Leary

@brianoleary You will clean up. Though most of your payments will be in the form of cat photos.

April 27, 2012 10:32 am via TweetDeckReplyRetweetFavorite

@DonLinn

Don Linn

@DonLinn I can live with that. The occasional paying customer will be so refreshing. Kind of like now :)

April 27, 2012 10:33 am via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@brianoleary

Brian O'Leary

Nevil Shute: On the shelf

Speaking of Shute, while in touch with Maass about his column, I made the happy discovery that Random House Digital and Vintage have published a handsome set of Nevil Shute titles as ebooks: 23 titles of what I count as 25 of his total output.

You can see them here at the Random House site.

Shute died in 1960 and was a London-born aeronautical engineer who dropped his surname — he was born Nevil Shute Norway — to protect his engineering career from any bad consequences of his writing. Of course, today we know him as an author, not as an engineer.

Congratulations to Random House and Vintage — this is a use of digital capability that no one can complain about.

As I was saying to Maass, I’d love to see this treatment given to the body of work produced by the late Helen MacInnes. What does it mean when you’re nostalgic for deadly serious cold-war espionage drama?

Craft a good first line: http://t.co/Ij6YiXkQ Not sure that "impatience" is your best guide, though. #writing #add

April 30, 2012 12:25 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@MirabilisDave

Dave Morris

Writing craft: Novelists as superstitious ninnies

Novelists can be superstitious ninnies sometimes. The good-luck coffee mug we set next to the keyboard every morning, the song we put on six-hour repeat, the Ideal Reader we summon to mind who kisses the tops of our heads and sends us off on a new day’s fabrications. Some of these fixations are helpful, others worrying symptoms of obsessive compulsive disorder. But no writerly preoccupation is more universally shared – or has been the cause of more agonized hours staring at the blank page – than the First Line.

Superstitious ninny Andrew Pyper gets into the Globe and Mail with Crafting the novel’s crucial first line. In his write, Pyper gets at the kind of myth-making we all enjoy around the importance of the opener:

Interviews about the writing process are littered with mystical declarations of how the first line came to the author well before the “idea” for the novel itself, and that it never changed. People like this kind of stuff. I like this kind of stuff. Believing that opening lines can come to our minds, whole and perfect, before our even knowing what they are or where they might lead us, has an appeal as potent as life after death.

But, refreshingly, he brings things down to “Planet Mortal Writer,” in the end:

Regard our own openings as impatiently as our readers will. Craft the right grab to suit the story at hand.

A first line cannot, under any circumstances, be dull -Crafting the novel’s crucial first line http://t.co/zACfQ1C6 via @globeandmail

April 30, 2012 12:19 pm via Tweet ButtonReplyRetweetFavorite

@jonnygeller

jonny geller

I asked for a plastic bag and the girl behind the cash gave me a dirty look. I have a dog, I explained. It was obvious she was a cat person.

May 1, 2012 10:02 am via TweetDeckReplyRetweetFavorite

@arjunbasu

Arjun Basu

Writing Craft: Structured time

The climax occurs very near to the end of the third act. More often than not, it will be the penultimate scene, just before the denouement.

Yes, I keep bringing you the newest installment of K.M. Weiland’s series on story structure. This week, it’s The Secrets of Story Structure, Pt. 10: The Climax:

The climax is where we pull out our big guns. This is a scene that needs to wow readers, so dig deep for your most extraordinary and imaginative ideas.

There’s a cautionary note before Weiland gets into her usual examples from film and literature:

Faux climaxes do nothing to change the requirements of the actual climax…Since the climax says everything there is to be said, with the exception of a little emotional mopping up, there’s no need for the story to continue long after its completion.

By way of demonstrating the one-two punch style of climax (both an action that ends conflict and a revelation), Weiland refers to Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game (**Spoiler alert**):

(Ender) looses his frustrated aggression on the “game” and completely destroys the enemy. Then comes the revelation that he wasn’t playing a game at all, but rather commanding the faraway troops who were fighting the Formics in real time.

And once again I’m impressed with the level of excitement Weiland seems to be able to invest in her descriptive work and formulations of what many could see as dry instruction. This is an editor whose own enthusiasm can make you want to go back and check your own structure.

Each climax is unique since each one must bear out the needs and reflect the tone of its story.

OK, fine fine. I'll buy my underwear on Kickstarter, too.

April 26, 2012 8:23 pm via Twitter for MacReplyRetweetFavorite

@craigmod

Craig Mod

Marketing: That on-air interview you’re doing

Do not “pitch” your book as an “answer.”  The book is a vehicle to reach your readers, and responding to a question with “Read my book!” is not an answer. You and the information you are imparting are the topics of the day. Prove you know your stuff and you will win the readers’ hearts and minds.

In Authors: How To Be a Great Radio Interview, guest Lin A. Lacombe at Joel Friedlander’s site has some good advice on preparing and getting through an interview. In line with her advice on not pitching your book as an answer, be really careful to avoid this “that’s why I go into so much detail in my book about so-and-so” way of handling questions. A lot of writers think this is a clever way of plugging their work without being obvious. Guess what. It’s obvious. Assume your listeners are smarter than you are, and you’ll have your best chance of coming across well.

Tell the truth.  No explanation here. You want to hear the truth, so does your audience.  “I don’t know” or “I will find out, and follow-up with you,” is better than stammering or contriving a half-baked response.

Lacombe also has you put together a set of questions and answers ahead. Excellent advice. Just be sure you get this to the station for the host well before your interview. Don’t turn up on the day of, and hand that thing over to your unsuspecting host – who may actually have been up all night reading your stuff and planning questions.

Listen! Listen to the question from the host or from the caller.

I’d add one big note here: Learn your host’s name. And try to catch – and use – each caller’s name, if it’s a call-in show. Knowing and using your interviewer’s name doesn’t just flatter him or her, it also puts your listeners into a good mood. They like the idea that you know and like this radio personality they listen to on a regular basis. It makes you sound cordial, interested, aware. Don’t overdo it. Top and bottom of the interview. Goes a long way.

Why are Brits so afraid of using Zs? Like in "realised"? Bunch of non-Z-using panzies... ;)

May 1, 2012 9:13 am via Twitter for iPhoneReplyRetweetFavorite

@ChrisKubica

Chris Kubica

Marketing: James Scott Bell & his new gatekeepers

I started adding a cast of characters. And then I thought of plotlines, and the idea of a series started to unfold. These would be in novelette form, around 15k words each. I think that’s a good pulp fiction value for the reading dollar. I even went so far as to commission a talented young artist to do a series logo for me, a nun issuing a flying kick.

And now, author James Scott Bell is soliciting input from his “new gatekeepers” – the readers – to find out if they’d like Force of Habit — $1.49 on Kindle — become a series.

In I Am Going to Let the Readers Decide, he blames this whole thing on his poor son, who innocently joked:

“Hey Pop, how about a thriller about a nun who is secretly a vigilante? She knows martial arts, and can kick butt when necessary? … “You can call it FORCE OF HABIT.”

Not the “Flying Nun” of Sally Fields’ day, Bell’s Sister Justicia Marie sounds more Like the gladiatorial ladies of scant mercy I’ve met on the Rome metro at rush hour. Duck and cover.

As I like to dig into themes in my books, I thought this raised a most intriguing question: could a devout nun actually justify violence if it was in the course of doing good, like stopping violent criminals? When a cop asks her the same question, I heard her say this about the criminal element: “They are the knuckles. I am the ruler.”

Careful what you pray for.

If you ever have a tough day, remember this: there are people out there with tattoos in comic sans font. #couldbeworse

April 29, 2012 10:53 pm via EchofonReplyRetweetFavorite

@danwho

Dan

Last gas: Right(s) of way

When e-books rolled along with the promise to obliterate barriers to distribution, the publishing industry was faced with either changing everything they do, or sticking to what they’ve always done. Naturally, they opted to circle wagons, stick their fingers in their ears and pretend digital is print.

We’re so busy, busy, busy, here in the industry! the industry! with Damnable DRM issues that, as Jani Patokallio writes, we don’t always get around to yet another level of deep denial on the part of Old Publishing. Currently Publishing Platform Architect (nice title, really) at Lonely Planet, Patokallio headlines his piece Why e-books will soon be obsolete (and no, it’s not just because of DRM).

Since my iTunes account has a Singaporean billing address, the Kindle application does not show up in my search results. If I switch countries, I will lose access to everything I’ve previously downloaded. And if I do bite the bullet and switch to Australia, a good chunk of apps, music and more on offer will no longer be available on iTunes, iBooks or Amazon, and I’ll pay around 50% extra on what remains.

Unfortunately, this eloquent article brings us yet one more reason to have to concede that the publishing establishment hasn’t just shot itself in a foot but blown both feet right off. I’ve run into issues of this kind overseas, too. Because:

Publishers insist on selling e-books the way they sell printed books, and customers simply don’t figure in the equation.

What makes this article especially interesting is how much capacity to extrapolate Patokallio gets from his perspective in a Singaporean-Australian pathway. (I feel as if I’ve hit on a latter-day Nevil Shute chapter.)

Once publishers start breaking ranks (as they are already doing) and major authors start to self-publish (as they are already doing), the illusion of e-books being a necessary simulacrum of printed books will start to dissipate.

At the risk of offering you yet another whiplash in a single Ether, yes, our friend here is thinking beyond ebooks. Maintain a solid grip and read on:

What will replace them? The same medium that already killed off the encyclopedia, the telephone directory and the atlas: the Web. For your regular linear fiction novel, or even readable tomes of non-fiction, a no-frills PDF does the job just fine and Lonely Planet has been selling its travel guidebooks and phrasebooks a chapter at a time, no DRM or other silliness, as PDFs for years now. For more complicated, interactive, Web-like stuff, throw away the artificial shackles of ePub and embrace the full scope of HTML5, already supported by all major browsers and usable right now by several billion people.

Not quite yet. This is what passes for reassurance in Patokallio’s bloggery (which is rather fittingly titled, by the way, Gyrovague):

There’s still a good couple of years of life left in the e-book market before the alternatives work out the kinks of presentation, distribution and retailing. But e-readers will be obsolete in a few years.

So keep your helmet on, Ethernaut. We’re not on the other side of this thing yet by a very long shot and this guy’s lighting some Kindling:

Any publisher banking on e-books being around 5 years from now is in for a rude surprise.

@fakebaldur Me too. Damn skeuomorphism...

April 30, 2012 12:45 pm via Tweetbot for iOSReplyRetweetFavorite

@pressfuturist

alastair horne

Ω

Main image: Sotheby’s sold one of the four extant versions of Edvard Munch’s “The Scream” for $119.9 million Wednesday evening in New York, making the pastel the most expensive artwork ever to sell at auction. Our images are details from the auction house’s triumphant Twitter page just after the sale. Auctioneer Tobias Meyer, who gaveled the evening, at $99 million headed for the $100 million mark, told the Sotheby’s bidders, “I have all the time in the world.”

this week’s sponsor

Rumors of Water:
Thoughts on Creativity & Writing