How Wattpad helps amateur writers become professionals.
How author kits can be the number one tool for building a cooperative publisher-author relationship
What's in a Name? Using a Nom de Plume
Yesterday’s piece in the New York Times about the author who used a pen name to sell a manuscript is piquing the curiosity of authors, literary agents and publishers. But using a nom de plume to find a new audience is nothing new.
We take a look at the PR implications for publishers of the pen name.
They're Always After Me Red Lemonade!
Richard Nash needs no introduction but if he does you can do no better than to tune into the talk he gave at the 2010 BookNet Technology Forum. Nash has been re-imagining the business of publishing for some time and, in fact, left his post at Soft Skull to begin building that re-imagining.
Red Lemonade, his new project, is all about connecting readers and writers and has that social community goodness baked right in. There are no walled gardens here.
Does this on its own reinvent publishing?
E-Book Advertising Is Here
There was a piece in the Wall Street Journal yesterday about Harry Hurt III’s upcoming e-book. Hurt sought out many sponsors for his book, which sounds like it involved a lot of travel (i.e., is expensive for the author to write). The sponsors gave him money, equipment and products in exchange for ads inside the book and “significant product placement woven throughout [the book’s] narrative.”
Will readers mind the advertisements in the book? Is it possible to work product placement into your narrative seamlessly?
The Conflict of Interest: Agents as Publishers
Do Sales Make an Author Overrated?
On Tuesday, Alex Good and Steven W. Beattie gave another good stir to the CanLit pot by listing who, in their opinion, are the ten most overrated fiction writers in Canada. Now, I’m not going to take sides; BookNet Canada officially loves all books equally. But working for BNC, whose SalesData service tracks approximately 75% of the Canadian book market, does make you wonder about “real value” in publishing.
Midlist: I Will Survive!
Chelsea wrote about James McGrath Morris’s piece in HuffPo last Tuesday and made some really enlightening observations (“Every title is ‘face-out’ online’—Chelsea, you’re blowing my mind!).
It’s true that metadata, a.k.a. the ONIX files that publishers craft so carefully and thoroughly, can actually make midlist authors more visible online. This not only impacts ebooks, but regular books too.
Midlist Authors Might Actually Be More Visible Online: A Rebuttal to HuffPo
New Publishing Business Model #10: The Complete Guide to Google Wave
Discuss: Google Wave is the Tickle-Me-Elmo of Fall 2009 for web denizens. Everyone wants to play with it but it’s not clear whether it will end up changing everything or just get crammed in the back of closets with an Alf doll and a some old Barbies who got innovative hair cuts thanks to scissor-happy pre-teens.
