I have to warn you, however, that not all of those mentioned will be to your taste; in fact, it seemed to me that a couple were misplaced, and their creators were looking instead for the Bulwer Lytton contest instead.
I’m off to a day away from my desk, but I’ll be adding in my own favorite opening line … and I’ll be sure to include it here!
So share your favorite with the world, and see what others have to say. And then you’ll be … beyond the elements of style!
]]>We believe that…
• A good idea, communicated well, can spread fast and wide.
• A large group of people can be a tremendous source of money and encouragement.REWARDS! Project creators inspire people to open their wallets by offering smart, fun, and tangible rewards (products, benefits, and experiences).
ALL-OR-NOTHING FUNDING! Every Kickstarter project must be fully funded before its time expires or no money changes hands. (It’s less risk for everyone. If you need $5,000, it’s tough having $2,000 and a bunch of people expecting you to complete a $5,000 project. It allows people to test concepts (or conditionally sell stuff) without risk. If you don’t receive the support you want, you’re not compelled to follow through. This is huge! It motivates. If people want to see a project come to life, they’re going to spread the word.
STORIES! Kickstarter projects are efforts by real people to do something they love, something fun, or at least something of note. These stories unfold through blog posts, pics, and videos as people bring their ideas to life. Take a peek around the site and see what we’re talking about. Stories abound.
You need to be absolutely clear about what your needs are and where the money will go, but if you have a business plan for your project (um, you do have a business plan for your project, right?) and feel that it’s possible to get it completed within the time allotted by Kickstarter, this may be the way to go. It’s certainly an interesting concept.
And if you’re actually looking for a project to fund, looking through the available opportunities is a lot of fun. It just goes to show how many creative people there are working out there.
Consider different and unusual ways of getting your project to see the light of day. And then you’ll be .. beyond the elements of style!
]]>The Internet Archive, a 501(c)(3) non-profit, is building a digital library of Internet sites and other cultural artifacts in digital form. Like a paper library, we provide free access to researchers, historians, scholars, and the general public.
I’ve just begun to explore it, but it seems to be a grand resource for writers … Here’s more about it:
Libraries exist to preserve society’s cultural artifacts and to provide access to them. If libraries are to continue to foster education and scholarship in this era of digital technology, it’s essential for them to extend those functions into the digital world.
Many early movies were recycled to recover the silver in the film. The Library of Alexandria – an ancient center of learning containing a copy of every book in the world – was eventually burned to the ground. Even now, at the turn of the 21st century, no comprehensive archives of television or radio programs exist.
But without cultural artifacts, civilization has no memory and no mechanism to learn from its successes and failures. And paradoxically, with the explosion of the Internet, we live in what Danny Hillis has referred to as our “digital dark age.”
The Internet Archive is working to prevent the Internet – a new medium with major historical significance – and other “born-digital” materials from disappearing into the past. Collaborating with institutions including the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian, we are working to preserve a record for generations to come.
Open and free access to literature and other writings has long been considered essential to education and to the maintenance of an open society. Public and philanthropic enterprises have supported it through the ages.
The Internet Archive is opening its collections to researchers, historians, and scholars. The Archive has no vested interest in the discoveries of the users of its collections, nor is it a grant-making organization.
At present, the size of our Web collection is such that using it requires programming skills. However, we are hopeful about the development of tools and methods that will give the general public easy and meaningful access to our collective history. In addition to developing our own collections, we are working to promote the formation of other Internet libraries in the United States and elsewhere.
As both a writer and historian, I’m very much in favor of the Internet Archive’s mission, particularly this statement: “without cultural artifacts, civilization has no memory and no mechanism to learn from its successes and failures.” We can all benefit from these cultural artifacts, whether to learn from them, write about them, or be enlightened by them. Visit the archives soon, and often, at archive.org. And then you’ll be … beyond the elements of style!
]]>There’s something about revisiting an author you haven’t read for some time; it’s like spending time with an old friend. Comfortable and pleasant and sometimes (when you’re lucky) a little surprising. Yesterday a blizzard hit the Cape, where I live, and I allowed myself a pleasant snow day: I stayed in my pajamas and did very little but re-read old friends. Phil Rickman. Dennis Lehane. Michael Malone. And, of course, Jodi herself.
There is a lot of joy in reading (as I discuss in some length in Open Your Heart with Reading), and it doesn’t always have to be something new and challenging.
Spend some time this holiday week with one of your old friends and see what a great experience it can be for you! And then you’ll be … beyond the elements of style!
]]>I hope that you’re doing it somewhere, because integration of different media is the cutting edge of any kind of marketing these days. And it’s become easier and easier to do your own book trailer (think of what you see on movie trailers and translate it into a book) than ever before. You don’t even need a video camera.
There are a lot of different ways to create your book trailer (both Macs and Windows machines have software that does it more than adequately), so I’ll leave that explanation to the experts: just Google “create book trailer” or something of the sort and read about it. And—this may be the most important step—watch as may book trailers as you can stand. It’s essential to see what’s out there, what people are responding to, etc.
YouTube is making the distribution process easier and easier. Check out these two YouTube features:
So take time to learn about the process and play around with creating your own book trailer—again, even before the book is published. Creating buzz takes a strategy and video should play a prominent part in your online marketing plan. And then you’ll be … beyond the elements of style!
]]>Any book proposal, fiction or nonfiction, must include a marketing plan, and the more specific it is, the better. Publishers don’t want to hear that you’ll go along with their ideas, they want to know that you’ll be constantly coming up with ideas of your own, and following through on them. A website. An email list to which you belong. Flyers. Lectures. Giveaways. SEO. Social media. Direct mail. Local cable broadcasts. The list is limited only by your imagination.
And to help that imagination, enter a new blog by PR expert Rebecca Kellogg, Creative Marketing Campaigns. It’s still in its infancy, so don’t expect a plethora of ideas; but I’ve listened to Rebecca’s ideas for some time and I’m excited about the potential for this blog. Try it and see what you think!
An older post (but still relevant) that I think is particularly useful about creative book marketing is called, oddly enough, Creative Book Marketing, and is well worth the read.
If you want a little humor with your research on book marketing, check out the idea of book trailers here.
In any case, remember that it’s no longer up to you to simply write the best book you can. You have to market, market, market. And then you’ll be … beyond the elements of style!
]]>And just as many people helped President Obama on his way to Washington, so too did many ideas, ideas he encountered through … books. His speeches are brilliant and, in many way, erudite. This is a man who has read much and often, and has pondered what he has read.
In a day when publishers are cutting back and even closing their doors, when bestsellers are often vacuous repetitions of the same message or story in different packaging, it’s worth our while to pause and ponder what we do read. Everyone is talking about format (ebooks! print on demand! whither are we drifting?) without considering content.
What’s on your to-be-read pile? Are there new ideas there? Books that will challenge your thinking and help you grow? Where are you going this year, and what books will take you there?
Why not add one to that pile now, just one, that will make you think, and even perhaps think differently about something? And then you’ll be … beyond the elements of style!
]]>A Salon article from the end of December posits one of the (unexpected) benefits of the crash: the reemergence of the small publisher.
At the Frankfurt Book Fair this year, Open Letter Books, a small press based at the University of Rochester, illustrated how a more nimble firm can benefit from the freeze. The publisher bid on the English translation of Mathias Enard’s novel, “Zone” — a single sentence that stretches for 500 pages. An influential translator had called the work the “book of the decade,” and Open Letter director Chad Post expected tight competition for the rights. But no one topped his offer, and he hopes to publish the translation in 2010.
“There’s not much to cut at smaller presses, so they are going to stay the same — they will have an identity coming into the recession, and they will be the same when they come out,” Post says. “It will open up opportunities for the smaller, more stable presses. The bigger houses like Knopf and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt are going through an identity shift. It will become very murky what kinds of books they produce.”
(for the full story, click here)
Years ago in this column I wrote that, in essence, the mills are closing. When the economy forced the closure of New England’s textile mills, there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth, and a lot of people—a whole lot of people—found themselves without work, without help, without hope. An entire industry had changed. Those who survived were those able to take their skill sets and refashion them for other opportunities.
Sound familiar?
The mills are closing—most of the big ones are having fire sales as we speak—and the production of literature is changing, too. We too need to refashion our skill sets as well as our expectations of how we will continue to read. Reading isn’t going away any more than the wearing of textiles has. You’ll still be buying (and, some of you, writing) books ten years from now. Will they be different? Probably. But isn’t the essence of literature—communicating ideas, enabling readers to fly away on a magic carpet of fantasy—more important than how it’s delivered?
Just trying to keep things in perspective, which keeps me … beyond the elements of style!
]]>Need a literary agent? Don’t ask your favorite author for a referral to his or hers — it puts that person in an awkward position (I know whereof I speak; I’ve been there). Instead, visit Agent Query and click the resources link. You may also wish to check out the Association of Authors’ Representatives both for listings and for a sense of how the industry views particular agents.
If the literary agent sites don’t tire you out and you still want to move toward publication, then sample some of the fare at Sensible Solutions, where you can click the — wait for it — “especially valuable links”!
Do you do children’s writing? Then it’s essential for you to know about Harold Underdown’s Purple Crayon site; it’s a fabulous website itself but also gives you helpful links to still more. Also be sure to check out the Children’s Literature Web Guide.
Are you a poet? Then take a look at the Poetry Society and click the resources link.
Here’s a site that’s filled with links to publishers, journals, conferences, magazines, and lots more: it’s the Literature Line.
Bookwire has a number of resources for writers under its “featured links” section.
Google as always needs to weigh in: check out its writers’ resources … but only if you have a lot of time to spend following links!
Good luck with all of it, and as always, feel free to share your own “especially valuable links” with me; I’ll be sure to credit you and your website for a little free SEO in the bargain. And then you’ll be … beyond the elements of style!
]]>So I turn to you. What are your experiences? What works, and what doesn’t? In particular …
Do please email me at jcezanne@jeannettecezanne.com and tell me your experiences and advice! It will all be greatly appreciated, and will put me well … beyond the elements of style!