eBook Issues

The Internet is so tempting for a writer, isn't it: Unlimited space online! Inexpensive! Accessible!

And a whole 'nuther batch of issues to contemplate.

Here's an excerpt from Media Morning Newsfeed (put out free by Media Bistro):

Navigating A Tightrope With Amazon (NYT)
Last Tuesday, Buzz Bissinger hopped the Amtrak train to Philadelphia from New York, where he had done a bit of publicity for After Friday Night Lights, a 12,000-word eBook that had been performing nicely since its release. But when he opened his laptop to check his ranking on Amazon, he found the book was no longer for sale there. GalleyCat Through an Apple and Starbucks promotion, customers could redeem the book for free. To compete with the lowest price available, Amazon dropped its price to zero. Unhappy with this move, Bissinger's publisher Byliner.com pulled the title. Philadelphia Inquirer Bissinger wrote the eBook for Byliner, a publisher specializing in electronic "long-form" books (say, 5,000 to 30,000 words). Byliner published it through Amazon and other venues -- including iTunes, the Apple shop -- and priced it at $2.99. It's also for sale at Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and other digital stores. And it was doing pretty well. paidContent This means authors will have to make the decision: Will they gain more new readers and sales by having their book promoted in Starbucks, or will the sales lost through Amazon that week outweigh any Starbucks benefit?

Another venue, another factors to balance.

Lord knows, I don't have any answers. I just like to bring up the questions.

Has anyone used Byliner, as an author or a read4er? Just curious.

Oh, That Pesky Platform Thing

Yesterday I received an advance copy of THE YEAR OF LEARNING DANGEROUSLY: Adventures in Homeschooling (Perigee Hardcover; $23.95; August 7, 2012).

I toyed with the idea of homeschooling one of my kids--believe me, there were weird circumstances involved because I am genuinely not the type to do this. So, my first question when I saw this book was, How did this person manage to get a memoir on this subject published?

Checking the bio in the press material, I found that "popular blogger, author, and former child actor Quinn Cummings explores her family’s decision to wade into the unfamiliar waters of homeschooling."

Bingo. This writer has a platform--a way to reach people to tell them about the book. (I am petty enough to think that former child actors [FCA] get undeserved bonus points in publishers' brains, but it can't be argued that FCAs must be media savvy.)

All writers improve their chances of being published if they have a platform. So, when Ericka Dreifus's blog Practicing Writing mentioned a platform-building challenge on a blog named My Name Is Not Bob, I thought I'd pass it along.

I hope to take Not Bob up on the challenge. But I also hope to the do the Etsy store-building boot camp, too, so we'll see how these work out.

Start with a Bang

Standard advice: Start your story in the middle of action. Readers want to be grabbed and pulled in. Those books that start with lengthy descriptions of weather, for example, are so 18th century.

Today's tidbit is from Booklist, which reviews umpteen million books for "librarians, book groups, and book lovers--from the trusted experts at the American Library Association," as they put it. Two middle school librarians (nobody goes to junior high anymore?) put together a list of great first lines, but regardless of your specialty, it's a fun list. Here's a sample:

“That nice Mrs. Kramer lied to me about third grade.”
–from Marty McGuire by Kate Messner (Scholastic 2011)

I'd love to hear what your favorite first lines from CNF books are!

Advice for Unfolding Your Story

niemanstory Nieman Storyboard

How do you unfold a story that keeps the reader going?http://bit.ly/id0nzu

Will the Public Pay for Long, Detailed Stories?

Amid the Seattle Post-Intelligencer closing and the shocking talk of the Boston Globe being shuttered, I ran across an interesting approach to the public getting news: a pay-per-story kind of arrangement.

An article in Always On reports on Spot.Us, wherein (real, ordinary, joe public) people can make small donations to cover the expenses of producing a local news story. "Local" in this case being the San Francisco Bay area. The resulting investigative piece, researched and written by (real, trained, experienced) journalists, gets published on the Spot.Us site. The Center for Media Change put the project together in an attempt to fill a growing local news hole. One of the stories up for donations would focus on the deteriorating Oakland infrastructure (a troubling tale of policy and potholes, I guess).

Crowdfunding has been used for making movies and supporting indie bands, among other things.
(No, I had never heard the word "crowdfunding" before five minutes ago, although the examples and citations on the pbwiki show people have been doing this for years, including Obama in microfinancing his campaign.)

Another such experiment is under way in Minnesota, according to Media Shift, where a full-time journalist is funded to cover news in the community online. The Media Shift piece explains a lot more about how crowdfunding might function in journalism. Fascinating stuff. Seriously. I'd use an exclamation point here, but I'm not an ! kind of writer.

The Media Shift story has examples of how individuals have used crowdfunding. Writing about this reminds me that someone years ago in the Goucher MFA alum crowd hooked into an online "hub" where people could look through creative projects and decide what to donate to. She was working on a book. In return, the donors got various reports, depending on their level of support. Unfortunately, I don't know how the project turned out. I vaguely remember that a hub didn't have many writers involved, so I don't know if she attracted the kind of interest (and $) she needed. Obviously, whether this works has a lot to do with finding people interested in the story you want to tell.

Fighting Off Writing Demons

Maryn McKenna on the WriterL e-mail list (subscription-only) suggests a book for keeping you from going crazy while you're writing: The War of Art, by Steven Pressfield (his site has excerpts and reviews). She says she usually reads one of the many one- or two-page chapters each day. She applauds it for "dispelling--or at least helping you to name and identify--your own internal resistance."

Anyone read it & have any thoughts? Or have another book to recommend for dealing with writing (as opposed to the joy of having written)?

I'm gonna click over to my library's catalog now to see if I can find a copy of The War of Art.

category: resources

Craft Essays on Brevity

How recently have you checked out the nitty-gritty writing craft advice by writers who know what they're talking about on Brevity, an online publication featuring CNF of 750 or fewer words? [Possibly the world's longest question, there.] What are you waiting for?