Beyond the Elements of Style

Kirkus Lives Again!

Kirkus Reviews, which describes itself as posting “over 500 pre-publication book reviews every month in multiple genres,” and was (to our horror) shut down in December by the Nielson Company, has been resurrected! Oh, frabjus joy!

Kirkus’s new owner is Herb Simon, “the owner of the Indiana Pacers, the NBA team, and chairman emeritus of Simon Property Group, a shopping mall developer,” according to the New York Times. Plans are for Kirkus to continue to be published “as a print magazine while beefing up its digital offerings.”

“With the growth of e-books and e-reading devices, no one can really see the future of publishing. But turmoil like this creates opportunities,” said Simon in the NYT article. “At a time when even the definition of a book is changing, my love of books makes me want to be part of the solution for the book publishing industry.”

Simon is apparently just as interested in publishing as he is in sports: he is already the owner of an independent bookseller (and we love independent booksellers!).

So there is hope in these changing times, and your next book in prepublication may yet see the light of day in the new and possibly improved Kirkus Reviews. And then you’ll be … beyond the elements of style!

And Yet More on Blogging: RSS Feeds

I’ve been writing recently about a number of ways to market your books, and I received an email from one of my readers asking what an RSS feed is.

A lot of people use RSS to subscribe to blogs. Here’s the quick-and-dirty Wikipedia take on it. Instead of having to remember to visit a blog every now and then to see what’s new there (and who can remember?), you can use an RSS reader. It will notify you when there’s a new listing.

Both the Mozilla Firefox browser and the Mozilla Thunderbird mail and news client have RSS tools, as do many other browsers. I use Safari, and the blogs I subscribe to just show up in a blogs folder, looking very much like a mail folder. Each blog is its own subfolder, and the blog article titles show up like email messages.

Try subscribing to blogs that you read, and you’ll both save time and get more information. And then you’ll be … beyond the elements of style!

Hope for Authors?

Does Apple’s new iPad represent hope for authors?

Okay, yeah, so I’m a Mac girl, and of course my cult believes that the world will be saved by the Macintosh. But a new product offering hope to those of us who spend our days sitting in a room and writing?

Bear with me for a moment here. Let me take you back to the beginning of the century, when record labels suddenly realized that musicians could make a perfectly good living without them. Creation and recording? Online. Distribution? Online. Marketing? Online. And while the music consumer in me loved the change (iTunes rocks, let’s face it), the author in me said, hey, wait … at least there’s still an income stream here for musicians. The song itself isn’t the product: the concerts, the t-shirts, those have become the products. Musicians can thumb their noses at the establishment and still pay the rent. But what about authors? Come on, who’s going to spend $75 for a favorite author’s face on a sweatshirt? Or pay $150 to go to a reading?

Ain’t going to happen.

So along with other writers I’ve been watching events unfold with some trepidation. And while I will admit to owning a Kindle and having become addicted to the ease of download and portability, I also have concern about the monolithic control of Amazon. So I was interested in this article by Eliot Van Buskirk in Wired magazine (and thanks to my friend Pete Tedlie for turning me on to the article!):

Wired.com’s Brian Chen and Dylan Tweney were right about Apple launching a book store to complement the iPad. The new iBook store will work pretty much the same as iTunes, functioning as one of 12 new apps that come installed on every tablet, and allowing users to choose books from a growing catalog. People who may never have contemplated actually buying an e-book before might consider it, now that it’s something they can do on their shiny new tablet. Authors and book publishers will have a larger market to pitch to, and they could take more risks on lower-selling authors, given the low cost of distributing e-books.

Still, books have not fared well during the growth of other electronic media and will face the same stiff competition on the iPad that they face elsewhere. Either way, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos should feel a bit tense today facing new competition from an extensible device that also does e-books and can be had for less than the price of a DX Kindle.

I was able to perceive some hope there. I have an acquaintance who makes a very nice living, thank you very much, exclusively writing ebooks. Right now the only categories that afford that kind of income are erotica and romance, but where they lead others may follow.

And anytime more people have books accessible to them, it’s a Good Thing. Consider the possibilities of the future, and then you’ll be … beyond the elements of style!

More on Blogging

So we’ve talked about book marketing via a blog, but haven’t really discussed how you can find and receive the information that you need from others’ blogs. Reading others’ blogs and commenting on them (always being sure to include a signature line with your name, your website, and your book’s title) is a terrific way to create an internet presence for yourself, network, and market your book.

Every blog has an RSS feed. Once you identify the blogs you want to follow, subscribe to the RSS feeds (one way to do this that is easy and free is Google Reader. By using an RSS feed, you can have the latest posts from all of your chosen blogs updated automatically, all in one place.

But what blogs should you follow? You need to be careful about what you subscibe to, because while blogs can be terrific sources of information, they can also constitute a black hole for your time and energy!

Be aware that searches on the net are all about keywords. If you’re looking for blogs on which you can comment and join the conversation (thus giving your name and book more exposure), then blogs related to the subject of your novel might be more effective than the writing and publishing blogs that most authors think they should subscribe to. With the exception of Beyond The Elements of Style, of course!

Technorati is a good place to start: go there and search for the keyword terms that interest you. The search function on the home page will identify posts with the search term; if you want to find blogs, then use the advanced search function.

Technorati gives blogs an authority rating based on how many other blogs link in to the blog. Although a high rating can indicate lots of traffic, don’t discount a blog just because of a low authority rating. You could still get traffic or search engine lift from being on a blog if it’s good fit with your subject.

There are a number of other blog directories and search engines, including Google Blog Search and Blog Catalog.

When you’re ready to comment on a blog, always make your comments useful and thoughtful. As you start to have a presence on your selected blogs, you’ll find that people start looking to you as an authority on your topics, visiting your website more often, and generally giving you the kind of marketing lift you’re looking for. And then you’ll be … beyond the elements of style!

Need Funding? Try Kickstarter!

Are you a writer, an artist, or a playwright looking for help funding a special project? Instead of going to your local bank, you might want to try another way of endowing your work. Kickstarter is a new way of funding artistic endeavors and other worthy causes. From the website:

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!

Resource for Online Publishing

Many thanks to Michael Brady for this particular resource: a website that will be enormously helpful for those of you who are thinking of true self-publication—that is, designing your own book—or who want to publish online. Thinking of starting your own literary journal? This is the place for it!

The site, Smashing Magazine, includes links to many good, new, free fonts, to CSS and WorldPress templates, to web usage surveys, and more.

It includes free fonts, tips on web usability, links to really useful articles on other sites (from pitfalls in using stock photography to icon use to emerging techniques for web designers, to … even more free fonts.

The site looks like a blog, but don’t let that put you off: the blog posts are from members of the Smashing Magazine network and connect to even more interesting sites, where you can lose a lot of time … but learn a great deal in the process as well. The articles are extremely useful and updated daily, so check back often. And then you’ll be … beyond the elements of style!

The London Book Fair

Full disclosure first: I’m offering this as a resource, but have never myself attended this particular show, so can’t comment first-hand on its usefulness.

But FYI, the London Book Fair will be taking place this spring from the 19th to the 21st of April, 2010.

The London Book Fair is one of the global marketplaces for rights negotiation and the sale and distribution of content across print, audio, TV, film and digital channels. It’s not as large or as famous as the Frankfort one, but well worth taking note of. As the advertisements say,

Even in the digital age, the power of meeting face-to-face cannot be underestimated. Wherever in the world you want to do business, you can do so much more, at The London Book Fair.

Take a look at what’s going on—it’s a lovely time to visit England! And then you’ll be … beyond the elements of style!

The Internet Archive

I keep thinking I know my way around the Net, but this one was new to me:

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!

New Tool: Readability

So I follow techie news, and—like many others—often use David Pogue’s words for guidance on new apps, products, etc.

So what’s his take on the best of 2009? Here it is, in a NYT article:

I’ve installed Readability (yes, you can do the trick he advises with Safari, too) and am not quite as enamoured of it as he is, but that may be because I need to play with my settings some more, and it’s still well worth a try. Internet and computer tools are just that … tools, somthing meant to make your life and work easier. If Readability does that, good. If it doesn’t, move on. And then you’ll be … beyond the elements of style!

The Book Industry in 2009

There’s obviously a lot to say … it’s been an amazing year (not always in a positive way!) for the book industry.

A 2009 roundup of the happenings in the book industry is offered here by USA Today. it covers the emergence of ebooks, the question of whether literary novels are dead, and the rise—yet again—of the vampire genre.

My best advice? Read about the trends, but follow your heart. Write what is in your soul to write. If it’s meant to be out there, it will be, eventually. And then you’ll be … beyond the elements of style!