Your Reading Place

Do you have a reading place? A room or a chair or a spot where you like to go to read?

I was thinking about that this morning. Our reading room is the living room. Every morning, with an occasional exception, my husband and I sit in the living room and talk and/or read. It’s become something of a ritual. This morning we talked.

We’ve lived in this house for years and until this year we’d never had a TV in that room. For Christmas we got a flat screen TV and the only place to put it was there. We thought a long time about it, but in the end, there it went. So far, we’ve not turned it on in the mornings though.

That room is ours.

We do watch TV in there in the evenings. Perhaps I should rephrase that, my husband dozes on the couch while the TV runs. I watch a bit, leave and go to the computer, watch a bit, do stuff in the kitchen, listen to it from another room, work a bit… It’s hard to keep up with any shows that way, I’ve found.

But that’s okay by me. I’m glad we’ve kept it as the reading and talking room.

You Can’t Buy that Book

We have folks here in the states who keep trying to get books banned from schools and libraries. Sometimes they succeed; sometimes they don’t. For the most part, America is pretty open in what they allow to be printed, sold and read. So much so that sometimes it’s startling to find out that it can be very different in other countries.

A recent article in the Los Angeles called Babylon & Beyond: Israel: Reading with the Enemy caught my eye.

Not many know, but obtaining an Arabic copy of Harry Potter in Israel requires a special permit under the pre-state Trade with the Enemy Ordinance.

It’s not because it’s Harry Potter or by a British author. It’s because it’s published in Lebanon. If you import books from countries Israel is not at peace with, you have to have a license from the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Labor. And that license can be withdrawn under the 1939 Trade with the Enemy Ordinance.

This may sound really odd to Americans.

But did you know that it wasn’t until 1988 that the U.S. allowed books, papers, music and art to be imported from Cuba? And it was after that that an amendment and court case “freed American publishers from the need to secure permission from the governments of Cuba, Iran and Sudan for publishing the works of authors from those countries.”

Capitol City Young Writers

I'm very happy to introduce Verna Dreisbach, President of Capitol City Young Writers. She wrote to tell me about the non-profit she heads up and it sounded like something Straight From Hel readers would want to know about, so I asked her to tell us about CCYW.

In addition to heading up Capitol City Young Writers, Verna is the founder of Dreisbach Literary Management. She’s also an award winning published author who has been featured in books, literary journals, magazines, and newspapers. She not only is the Founder and President of CCYW, she serves on the board of directors for the CSUS Writers Conference in Sacramento, CA. In what's left of her spare time, she's pursuing her MA degree in creative writing.

Please help me welcome Verna. Afterward, leave her a comment or ask a question about Capitol City Young Writers.

Capitol City Young Writers (CCYW) is a national non-profit organization dedicated to educating and inspiring writers, primarily in grades 6 through 12, although limited memberships are available for younger writers. Started in Northern California in 2008, CCYW's goal is to educate today's youth across the United States (and ultimately internationally) on the art and craft of writing and related literary fields, and to encourage talented, young people to pursue their writing and literary dreams. Currently, we have international members in Canada, the UK and Germany. CCYW also fosters opportunity to learn about and experience what it takes to enter a literary career such as editing or broadcast journalism. From fiction and non-fiction, to poetry, screenwriting, memoir, songwriting and broadcast radio, students are supported through day-long workshops bringing professionals and mentors to youth in local communities, through online tutorials, through annual conferences, a youth written and edited literary journal, writing and audio competitions, and mentoring for both journey-level and master-level youth writers.

As a membership organization, CCYW is building a base of aspiring writers and professionals, encouraging networking and peer support, and matching college-aged and professional writers and literary professionals with talented scribes. The objective is to foster creative talents, develop professional skills and savvy, and help connect young writers and motivated youth, merging opportunity, knowledge, and a social network they can rely upon as their educational and professional careers advance. It's all about working to make quality literature and quality literary writing opportunities more available to youth of today, hopefully helping to sustain the ubiquity of quality narrative.

Educators are also an important gateway to identifying and inspiring creative voices and so are especially encouraged to participate formally or informally. The CCYW board and mentors are all volunteers and are actively seeking youth advisors and educational mentors, as well as facilitators interested in hosting member meetings in capitol cities across the US. Members publish several youth works each year and also seek young writers for their newsletters and membership communications.

As a nonprofit, CCYW relies upon the generous support of individuals and public and private organizations. Memberships are $25 annually, with a reduced rate for sponsors who are educators. Scholarships are also available for youth with financial restrictions.

If you or someone you know would like to become involved, contact Verna Dreisbach, President at verna@capitolcityyoungwriters.com.

For more information, visit www.capitolcityyoungwriters.com.

Thank you very much, Verna. And thank the Board for doing such wonderful work. The Comments section is now open!

Hi! My Name is Helen

Ever wear one of those nametags at a conference or meeting? I have. And I’ve got one on today. See it? No? Then jump over to The Blood-Red Pencil.

I’m featured today as the editor on “Meet The Editor.”

I’ve been contributing to this co-op blog since its inception, but we’re just getting around to meeting each editor a bit more in-depth. The wonderful Jesaka Long came up with questions for each of us to answer. If you zip over, you’ll find my answers to these questions:

When did you first notice you were hung-up on typos?

What advice would you give someone interested in becoming an editor?

What’s the best advice you have ever received from a writer?

What the best advice you’ve given a writer?

In your opinion, what makes an editor great?

What the one misconception about editors you want to clear up?

Why should a writer choose to work with you?

What genres do you focus on? Why?

And be sure you come back here tomorrow. Verna Dreisbach, founder of Dreisbach Literary Management, award-winning published author, and President of Capitol City Young Writers, is going to tell us about the non-profit CCYW. Capitol City Young Writers is dedicated to educating and inspiring writers, primarily in grades 6 through 12. The group is fairly new but making a powerful footprint. She’ll tell us all about it tomorrow.

I’ll be gone to Fort Worth all day doing interviews for the book I’m working on (with a due date of early April - yikes!). I hope you’ll ask questions, leave comments and make Verna feel welcome.

Citizen Journalists

Slyvia Forbes, publisher of Bylines Writer’s Desk Calendar, sent me the link to an article on the Stinky Journalism site about the tax responsibilities of Citizen Journalists. Sylvia is a full-time freelance writer in Missouri and has published over 400 non-fiction articles. I’m not a Citizen Journalist, but if you give (not sell) content to newspapers and sites that then make a profit off your material, you may be hit up for taxes. Even though you made no money on the material your wrote. Even if you received no credit or byline. Even though it was the paper that made the profit, not you.

Here’s just a tiny snippet of what Rhonda Roland Shearer and Danielle Elliot have to say in this article:

While not all citizen journalists are celebrities, many are producing reports, videos and photographs that are viewed around the world. For profit-seeking media companies, it's literally the gift that keeps on giving. As the number of hits any individual content generates increases, so does the ad revenue and the overall asset value of the media web site. The amount of visitor traffic the content generates is a direct measure of the site's asset worth to investors. Web sites themselves are appraised as part of due diligence for investors that accesses the aggregate asset value of all the articles and videos. Hence, the site value is directly dependent on the donated content value when that is the business model employed.

The article was posted back in January. It’s quite long, with lots of contrary comments at the end. But if you are preparing your taxes and have contributed to for-profit papers or media without being paid, you’ll want to look into this. And read the comments as well, since most of them argue with some of the points made in the article. On the other side, the article quotes a lot of professionals.

And if you’d like to learn more about Sylvia’s Bylines Writer’s Desk Calendar, a planning tool for writers, visit that site. I’m hoping to talk about it here soon.

Celebrate Authors

I’ve got quite a few author friends – some whose books I’ve edited or consulted on, some not. But for every one of them, I’m happy when they have a book coming out or when they email or call to say they’ve made a deal or gotten an agent. How can you not want to jump up and down and yell when someone tells you they’ve achieved a step in their dream?

Stop and think of the authors you know. How many of them have books coming out this year? I couldn’t even name all my friends’ books due out this year. That means I know a lot of happy people. But more importantly, it also means that local authors are getting picked up. Not just the big name celebrities. Not just the major names already known around the world. There are some people outside of Hollywood coming out with books.

That’s another reason why I believe in supporting the authors in your area. Go to their events, buy their books, read the reviews in your local paper and write the reviewer to say thanks for reviewing a local author, let your bookstore know you want to see more local authors, give their books as presents, read their blogs, go to their websites, visit their My Spaces, do whatever you can to support them. Not only do they need your support a whole lot more than Paris Hilton or Stephen King, but some day you may be that new local author.

For every author, even the big names, be happy. For those you know, celebrate, whether it’s their first book or the ninth. And when your first book or you next book comes out, email me. I’ll do my Yippee Dance. And I'll mention it on Straight From Hel!

Never Say Never

My daughter played the clarinet in middle school. She was actually quite good at it. But when high school came, she closed the clarinet case and said, you can throw this away, I'm never playing it again. And she was true to her word. She hasn't.

But the other day I got an email from her (she's now living in San Francisco). She asked me to send the clarinet to her. She didn't ask if I still had it. She knew I wouldn't have actually thrown it away.

Now, before you jump to conclusions, she isn't going to start practicing again. Actually, she's going to give it to a friend who wants to learn to play. She, meanwhile, is learning the banjo.

How does this relate to writing?

Never throw away old manuscripts. Even if you think they suck or fifty agents turned it down. You can throw away the physical copy (or keep one hard copy at most), but save a digital copy on CD or smart stick or hard drive. Some day, years from now, you may pull it up and re-read it. By that time it may not sound so bad. Or you may have learned so much in the writing process since then that you can see where you went wrong and what can be done to salvage it. Or you may see parts of it that are really good and could be salvaged for some other book you're working on or thinking of writing.

My daughter probably will never play the clarinet again. But because she learned, she knows how to read music, she knows how the notes should sound, she has rhythm. It most likely will be easier for her to learn other instruments.

As a writer, you learn as you take classes, you learn as you write, you develop, not a musician's ear, but a writer's ear. And with that new skill, you can go back and read previous writing and learn from it, as well.

Cut the Boring

Ever wonder why you don't see characters paying their bills?

Because it's boring!

I know that because I do that. I pay the bills. And it's boring.

Unless paying the bills has something to do with the plot, it's probably best to leave it out. Don't put in boring, mundane tasks just to increase the word count. When you are editing, stop and ask yourself if what the character is doing is interesting, moves the plot forward, establishes the character, or in some way greatly contributes to the manuscript.

If it doesn't meet one of those criteria, seriously think about cutting it. Or try to think of some way the character could pay the bills that would make it more interesting or show his/her character in a unique way.

If your goal is to demonstrate that the character is in reality boring, then come up with a way to show it so that while the task may be mundane, your way of telling it is not.

Part of your editing process should be to cut the boring stuff. If it's really not necessary for the reader to see it, then cut it. That includes a lot of walking from the house to the car. Certainly includes the fifteen times in the book that your character picks up the phone and says, "Hello." Cut out the introductions, get to the meat of the conversation or encounter. Your protagonist doesn't have to feed the cat every time he comes into the house in order for the reader to know he has a cat and he's responsible in the way he cares for it.

Cut the boring so you won't bore your readers.

Book Selling in Canada

We’re spanning the globe this week. Today, we look at Canada via an article in the Globe and Mail. On the surface, things appear good in our neighbor to the North.

Canadian book sales are up, according to BookNet, which tracks them in approximately 75 per cent of our market. In New York and London, lists and imprints have been trimmed or eliminated and there have been layoffs, but Canadian publishers are not cutting back their lists and staff.

Dig deeper, though, and you find that while book sales are up in Canada, the books that are selling are primarily American-authored books.

Canadian bookstore and library shelves are filled by approximately 80-per-cent foreign-authored and -published books. These are promoted by U.S. television programs and magazines such as 60 Minutes and People, which have, respectively, more viewers in Canada than The Fifth Estate and more readers than Maclean's. Canadian books occupy some 20 per cent of shelf space.

It’s not all caused by American TV and print ads, though.

Even without the benefit of the U.S. taste-setting machinery, certain popular American authors sell 6,000 to 8,000 copies a week in the first months of their release here; the average Canadian book will sell no more than 1,500 copies in its short and brutal life.

The real problem, according to some, is the pervasiveness of the American culture in Canada.

It's the simple fact that our English-language media is dominated by U.S. and British culture.

When the work of Edgar Allen Poe is taught in schools, students learn to read American Gothic horror. As adults, they have a taste for Stephen King, Poe's heir.

It is natural to think of the United States and England as producing better writers than Canada not because that's true (it isn't), but because it's taught and reinforced every day by media that don't review Canadian books in significant numbers, don't interview Canadian authors and prefer the easy bad-news aspects of a story to serious investigation.

Give Away Your Books?

According to The Independent out of the U.K., American novelist Stona Fitch has come up with the idea of giving away books.

"I just woke up one morning and told my wife I'd come up with a new way for writers not to make money," he laughs. "The idea was to produce beautiful, interesting new books and give them away, then ask people to give money to charity instead of paying for them."

And that’s what he’s done. He’s created Concord Free Press.

Its first publication, Fitch's novel Give and Take, came out late last year with a short print run of 1,500 copies, which were all quickly snapped up. Recipients were encouraged to read it, donate some money to a local charity, then pass the book on to someone else to do likewise. According to the publisher's website, the enterprise has notched up over $30,000 in donations in three months, from as far afield as Japan, Tunisia and Slovakia.

He’s gotten some other authors to join him:

As for writers, they just want to get their work out to readers. We've already got our next novel lined up for publication in May, and we've got several more in the pipeline after that."

Personally, I think most authors would like to be able to buy food and pay bills. That includes Fitch:

Giving away a novel is one small step in the fight against excessive commercialism, although Fitch is open about the advantages his raised profile have brought – there's been considerable interest in film and foreign rights for Give and Take, since its publication.

China and ISBNs

Here in the U.S., we pretty much take the ISBN number on books for granted. They certainly don’t in China. An article from Danwei called “Snags in China’s New ISBN Distribution System” talks about its history there, the ongoing snags and the upcoming overhaul.

In the past, authorized publishers applied to GAPP for a batch of ISBNs a few times each year, which they then assigned to the books they published during that period. No one else was able to obtain ISBNs from GAPP, but because many publishers received more ISBNs than they needed, a black market sprung up with authorized publishers acting as book number dealers to private companies that handled acquisitions, editing, marketing, and most of the other tasks a publisher traditionally takes on.

To stop this practice, the administration started issuing ISBNs on a per-book basis instead of in batches.

However, because of platform development issues in GAPP's network, Guangdong's publishers have yet to be granted a single title-based book number: new book licenses for 2009 are unable to be issued.

The issuance of ISBNs is not the only problem the Chinese system is having:

Many publishers worry that after the title-based system goes into effect, the book data they need to submit to GAPP, including an author bio, a book title, a price, and a total character count, in order to obtain a unique book number and bar code will require working from a complete manuscript that has been edited, laid-out, and fully inspected, and that once this has been done, there will be no chance for further changes.

The kinks are being worked out, hopefully. Another Danwei article said:

… the General Administration of Press and Publication, the national media regulating body, has declared: "By the end of 2010, all for-profit news media and publishing entities will be decoupled from the government institutions they are affiliated with and transformed into separate companies. The government will no longer place restrictions on them in terms of ISBN numbers, publication licenses, and content."

Novel Platform

Yesterday, CompletelyNovel.com launched. According to a press release in BookTrade:

The website is a unique social network of readers and writers integrated with printers, literary agents and publishers to bring the publishing process into the world of web 2.0….Through CompletelyNovel new and unpublished writers can now upload manuscripts and instantly tap into a vibrant book-loving community of readers, establishing almost immediately whether their work is marketable. These writers can publish straight into paperback format through print-on-demand printers also on the site.

According to the press release, CompletelyNovel is also good for readers:

CompletelyNovel keeps readers entertained with book reviews, discussions to join and debate, and author information. This is alongside the opportunity to read all the self-published works online for free or purchase the paperback directly from the writer.

And it has something for publishers as well:

A profile on the website enables them to promote their books and engage directly with a network of potential customers, keen to find their next read….Publishers and agents can also find new writing talent through the website, using the community to crowd-source the best work.

It’s too new to give any kind of review or prediction for the future. But if you check it out, let me know what you think.

Chain Reaction

I have a chain going here. Friday it was Romance in honor of the upcoming Valentine’s Day, which led me, of course, to Stephen King’s horror book for the actual day of Valentine’s, which led me to Stephen King’s smack talk about Stephen Meyer on Sunday, which leads me to … John Grisham knocking Meyer off the #1 spot on USA Today’s weekly top 150 best sellers.

See how it all connects?

For the week that ended February 8th, John Grisham’s The Associate took the number 1 spot … again. Meyer is no slouch, though. She took the number 2 spot. And the number 3 spot. And the number 4 spot. And the number 6 spot.

Wait, what happened to number 5? Ah, Joe Torre and Tom Verducci took that with The Yankee Years. Either a lot of baseball fans buy books or New Yorkers do.

Check out the entire list. It’s quite a mix, with young adult, romance, paranormal, mystery, nonfiction…

Cat Fight!

Yesterday’s post talked about Stephen King’s belief in ebooks and the Kindle. Today, more about King. One thing he apparently does NOT believe in is author Stephenie Meyer.

According to The Guardian, here’s what he said in an interview earlier this month:

"The real difference is that Jo Rowling is a terrific writer and Stephenie Meyer can't write worth a darn.”

How then, does King explain Meyer’s huge success?

King also drew a comparison between Meyer and Perry Mason mystery writer Erle Stanley Gardner. "He was a terrible writer, too, but he was very successful," he said, going on to criticise prolific thriller author James Patterson - "a terrible writer but he's very successful" - and fellow horror author Dean Koontz, who although he "can write like hell", is sometimes "just awful".

I don’t know if Meyer has responded to King, but her fans certainly have.

"Steven [sic] King doesn't know what a real book was if it hit him in the face. He's just a bloody guy who is jealous of Edward's good looks."

Ooh, ooh, cat fight! King vs. Gardner (in spirit), Patterson, Koontz, Meyer, and 50 million teenagers.

Happy Valentine’s Day

In honor of Valentine’s Day, let’s talk … horror … and Stephen King.

You may or may not remember that Stephen King was the author who released the first ever mass market e-book. That was just 8 years ago in 2000. His book, Riding the Bullet, was downloaded by half a million readers in a couple of days. He followed that up by releasing, in installments, another book -- and letting his readers pay for each installment on the honor system.

Now he’s releasing a new horror novella exclusively for the new Kindle.

King definitely believes in e-books. And, according to The Guardian, he doesn’t believe they will bring about the downfall of the publishing world.

"People when they want music, they have a tendency to be selective, and they can be – take a song like Money for Nothing by Dire Straits – you can pull it out of the album, it's eight-and-a-half minutes long. [But] when you talk about a book you have to have the whole thing, so it seems to me there is a much more level playing field. Yes, mp3s and iTunes kind of destroyed the CD industry because nobody is going to buy the whole if you can just get a part that stands on its own, but you can't do that with books – you've got to have the whole thing."

Love of Romance

Is Romance, or at least the writing of it, all fluff? If you think so, then you might consider this:

Publishing, romance fiction generated $1.375 billion in U.S. sales in 2007 - a 5 percent increase over 2006 - which made it the biggest fiction publishing category for that year. In fact, romance consistently holds the largest market share for fiction; in 2006, for example, the next largest market (sci-fi/fantasy) generated $495 million. And Harlequin Enterprises, the Ontario-based queen of romance publishing, celebrates its 60th anniversary this year; in that time, it has shipped more than five billion books worldwide.

What do you think now?

But what about Romance writers? They’re all fluff heads, spending time either alone at their typewriters or with their two dozen cats, right?

Shobhan Bantwal, 57, of Robbinsville, N.J., has two master's degrees. She works as a supervisor in the New Jersey state government and came to this country from India 35 years ago …

Well, but, those books, they’re all clothes ripping and hair flowing, both men and women, right?

"Romance authors are some of the most creative and prolific writers with their capacity to take the basic theme of boy-meets-girl and make it uniquely theirs by adding intrigue, drama, suspense, horror, paranormal elements, and a whole lot more."

Hmm. In honor or tomorrow’s Valentine’s Day, you might want to read up on Romance. Check out Philly.com for the full story.

An Author's Take on E-Books

We’ve been talking ebooks recently here on Straight From Hel. I think we mostly agree that ebooks are here to stay. We seem a bit divided as to whether reading ebooks on your cellphone is the wave of the future, though.

Author Pat Browning gives us her take on the subject:

My first look at Google Books blew my wig off. There are thousands of books displayed -- l,053 alone in the Fiction/Mystery and Detective/General category. You can search by title or author. When I searched by "Pat Browning", my book cover came up. I clicked on it and got a full-size cover, plus a summary and the first 49 pages of the book. There were links to Amazon, etc. for more info and purchase.

Google has stiff competition from Amazon, which just unveiled its new Kindle version. Jeff Bezos, founder and chief executive, is quoted in the New York Times as saying: "Our vision is every book ever printed, in any language, all available (for download) in less than 60 seconds." The same article reports that "Google has scanned some seven million books, many of them out of print," and Google claims that some of its books will soon be available on mobile devices like the iPhone.

The article, plus an audio clip of an interview with Jeff Bezos, is in the Personal Tech section of the New York Times at: http://www.nytimes.com.

Meanwhile, there's a dark horse in this race. Plastic Logic, a start up focused on newspapers, magazines and business papers, will introduce an e-reader almost the size of a print newspaper. It's busy lining up content partrners for a 2010 launch. See an arrticle and photo at the Crave blog on http://news.cnet.com.

MobiPocket is a French e-book company that Amazon bought in 2005. It produces Mobipocket Reader software, a universal reader for PDAs. The software package is free and consists of various publishing and reading tools for PDA, Smartphones, cellular phones and e-book devices (Symbian, Windows Mobile, Palm OS, Java ME, BlackBerry, Psion, Kindle and iLiad).

An alpha release of the java-based version of the mobipocket reader was made available for cellphones in June, and it has 65,000 titles for dowloading. Now if I can find time to download the free Mobipocket reader.

Right now there's so much going on, so many changes, in the world of books and publishing that I don't know how anyone can keep up and still find time to promote. But taking advantage of free advertising on Internet sites like Google Books and MobiPocket is one way to go.

Thank you, Pat!

Pat is the author of Absinthe of Malice, a Penny Mackenzie Mystery (Krill Press 2008). Also, zip over to her blog and read her post about the tornadoes hitting Oklahoma yesterday. She recounts her day of sirens going off and repeated trips to her safe closet. Plus, look at the picture of hail outside her place. I have never seen hail that huge!

Twitter Power

I’ve been twittering for, I don’t know, quite a few months now. For the most part, I’ve gotten the hang of it.

I don’t go out and follow a hundred tweeters every day. I do seem to follow about 5 or 6 new tweeters every day, though. Either I notice someone online and follow them, then they follow me back. Or people find me and follow me, then I check out their profiles and decide to follow them. By the way, if you have no bio and no tweets and I don’t have a clue who you are, I’m very unlikely to follow you back. I like to know a little bit about who I’m following.

So far, I’ve rarely un-followed someone. I did one person. He posted something I considered obnoxious and I decided I’d rather just drop him from my list than have to put up with reading his tweets. But he’s the only one.

Incidentally, a good way to find people to follow is to pick someone you’re following that you like or who have interests similar to you. Click on their profile. Then click on their list of people they’re following. Go through their list and see if you’d like to follow any of them. It won’t take long, just hover your pointer over each follower’s Twitter name and a short bio will show up. If you like what you see, click follow. If that person has a humongous list, break it up into sessions.

If you’re a new tweeter, here are some other things I’ve discovered along the way.

Interact. If someone tweets something interesting, reply to him or her. If they say something really worthwhile re-tweet it.

Tweet yourself. Tweet about what your blogging about - be sure to include the link to your blog. Or do a marketing tweet about your book or service, with link. You can do that three or four or five times over the course of a day, but spread them out. The people who are there early in the morning probably won’t be around at noon, so you can tweet it again without people feeling like you’re bombarding them.

Tweet others. While you’re out visiting other blogs, if you come across an interesting one, pop over to Twitter and tweet it and the link. It gives you something else to tweet about and makes friends. For example, on Monday I blogged about a tag I’d been hit with and then tagged five others. That day I tweeted about each of those blogs and included a link to their blogs. I have a Google Alert on my name and the name of my blog. Each day, if Google tells me I’ve been mentioned (even if it’s in a sidebar) on someone’s blog, I go over and, most of the time, leave a comment - and then, again, most of the time, tweet them with a link.

Announce that you’re a tweeter. Put your Twitter link in your sig line. I’ve found a lot of people to follow by clicking on that link in their sig line. When you visit blogs, sign your name and put your Twitter link or put your blog link (and make sure your Twitter link is in the sidebar of your blog). I know, some people don’t think that’s “cool.” But once again, I’ve found a lot of interesting blogs and some fellow tweeters that way. Yeah, if you don’t leave your link, I will click on your profile and find it, but not everyone will.

Don’t let Twitter take over your life. Seriously. You don’t have to spend all day on Twitter. Either pop on a few times a day and tweet. Or pop on whenever you have something to tweet, such as while you’re visiting blogs. Do not become a Twitter slave.

Offer something valuable. Yes, your book is valuable and Twitter can be a good way to drive people to your blog, website or book. But doing only that can be boring and a turn-off. What else can you tweet about? Friends, movies, other people’s books and blogs, advice, contests, free giveaways you know about, funny videos. Whatever tickles your fancy will probably tickle other fancies as well.

If you make strategic use of it, Twitter can be a great tool to market yourself and your books, to make cyber friends, to find out new things, ideas, and friends, and to practice writing concisely.

Leave a comment and tweet me sometime.
http://twitter.com/MermaidHel

Japanese Invasion

You knew it had to happen. The craze of writing books on cellphones for cellphone reading started in Japan. It was trickling into the U.S. Looks like it may become a full-blown invasion.

According to the New York Times,

In a move that could bolster the growing popularity of e-books, Google said Thursday that the 1.5 million public domain books it had scanned and made available free on PCs were now accessible on mobile devices like the iPhone and the T-Mobile G1.

These, of course, weren’t written on a cellphone, but they will be available to download to your cellphone for you to read.

Amazon’s also getting in on the plot to make all Americans squint and develop permanent forehead wrinkles:

Amazon said that it was working on making the titles for its popular e-book reader, the Kindle, available on a variety of mobile phones. The company, which is expected to unveil a new version of the Kindle next week, did not say when Kindle titles would be available on mobile phones.

As of today, the dedicated e-book readers like the Kindle are easier on the eyes.

These specialized devices have screens about the size of a paperback book and use a technology that does not require backlighting, which makes them easier to read in most light conditions. They also have longer battery life.

But if reading books on cellphones takes off as it did in Japan, the technology will probably adapt to the demand.

Scrabble Tag

Heidi of HeidiWriter tagged me. I’m not sure if the tag is called “The Love of the Written Word” or the “Scrabble Tag.” But here are the rules:

List at least five things you do to support and spread a love of the written word, then tag five people. (If you list something that touches youngsters, you get a bonus letter!)

Here goes:

1. Every week I send out a free e-newsletter to writers across the globe. It includes publishing news, contests, conferences or other events, and links.

2. Every day I post here on Straight From Hel. I talk about writing, editing, publishing and just about anything having to do with books.

3. Each year I volunteer for the Bess Whitehead Scott Scholarship Fund. This Journalism Scholarship is given out each year to a junior or senior university student.

4. Each year I volunteer at the Texas Book Festival. The Festival has lots of children’s authors, readings, and events, as well as events for adults.

5. Although I haven’t done it recently, I used to go to local libraries and work with kids on writing mystery. It was always great fun.

Okay, now I’m tagging 5 others.

1. Jean Henry Mead

2. Gwyn Ramsey

3. Katie Hines

4. Christine Verstraete

5. Lauri Kubuitsile

Remember to visit these five people and Heidi, as well.

Thanks for thinking of me, Heidi.

Top Publishers in Sales

While reading a press release about Arbor Books, an “independent” publisher (meaning, in this case, the author pays for the services they need to get their book in print), I came across some interesting statistics. I thought I’d share with you. The statistics are on the top ten book publishing conglomerates in the U.S. Such statistics are not always easy to figure out, but this press release said the stats were from Thomas Nelson CEO, Michael S. Hyatt. These ten publishers apparently represent “just under 70% of the industry's $25 billion sales.”

Here they are:

1. Random House (18.0% market share)
2. Harper Collins (12.4% market share)
3. Pearson (9.1% market share)
4. Simon & Schuster (9.0% market share)
5. Hachette (5.9% market share)
6. Thomas Nelson (4.8% market share)
7. Holtzbrinck (4.6% market share)
8. Tyndale House (2.0% market share)
9. John Wiley (1.7% market share)
10. Scholastic (1.5% market share

More on E-books

Yesterday, I talked about the March 8 - 14 week to celebrate E-books and that Smashwords had signed on to help sponsor the event. Smashwords publishes e-books from what they call “independent authors.” Most interpret that to mean authors who don’t have an agent or publisher behind them, or otherwise unpublished authors who can’t find a small or big house to take them on.

But it’s not authors who can’t get published otherwise who are now publishing e-books. Big name authors are doing it. Big and small publishers are putting their authors out in e-book form. And even Smashwords who touts that they publish “independent authors” is drawing in the bigger names.

In a recent press release, Smashwords announced that best-selling author Dan Poynter will publish his new book, The Self-Publishing Manual Volume 2, via Smashwords. This is not Poynter’s first e-book. According to his bio, he has a dozen e-books out. But he’s putting his weight behind a group that reaches the masses of writers.

Not only is the title a perfect match for Smashwords, the process is fast. Poynter said:

"Authors simply upload their finished manuscript as a Microsoft Word file and then Smashwords automatically converts it into multiple DRM-free ebook formats, ready for immediate sale."

Now, I have no stock in Smashwords and have never used them, but I do think it’s another sign of the changing times in the publishing industry that more and more “big name” authors are turning to e-book form for their books.

E-Book Week

In case you haven’t heard, E-Book Week will be March 8-14. More and more authors are signing on, as are publishers. Smashwords, who publishes ebooks from independent authors, just announced that they’re signing on as an official sponsor of Read an E-Book Week.

According to a Smashwords press release:

"The mission of Read an E-Book Week is to raise international awareness about the benefits of ebooks to authors, readers, educators and the media," said Rita Toews, founder of the non-profit event. "As a sponsor of the event, Smashwords will help promote the initiative, and will work with its authors to develop special Smashwords book promotions during the week."

In the press release, Mark Coker, founder of Smashwords, said:

Thanks to advances in e-reading devices such as the iPhone+Stanza, the Amazon Kindle and the Sony Reader, electronic reading is often more enjoyable than paper reading. Once book lovers try ebooks, they're hooked.

E-Book Week, a not-for-profit initiative, was started in 2004 by novelist and children’s author Rita Toews. The list of sponsors is growing and includes not only Smashwords, but Sony Canada, Steve Jordan Books, and others.

If your books are published in e-book form or you read e-books, be sure to check out the E-Book Week site.

Book Openings

I'm starting a three part series on The Big Edits. It'll be running on the blog, The Blood-Red Pencil.

Today I talk about those edits most likely to affect the start of your book -- things like Point of View, slow beginnings, and back story. In Part Two, we go into pacing of the scenes and dialogue versus narrative. Then in Part Three, we talk about the plot of your book itself, as well as conflict.

For those who visit here on Straight From Hel, I’m giving you an extra, two examples of possible openings for the same book. Here’s the first version:

Birds, squirrels, frogs, and rabbits shared the woods with me. There was nothing to fear, except the occasional snake. I sat on one once. Or more accurately, I plopped down on a rock, only to find a snake crawling out from underneath. Frozen, I watched it slither across bare toes like a cool water current.

And the second version:

Mama knew everything and could kiss away scrapes and bruises, but the summer of my twelfth year, I learned Mama could be wrong.

“Rose! You get yourself back up here, hon. There’s snakes in those woods,” Mama yelled through the backdoor screen. “And that red clay, you can’t get Georgia clay out of clothes. Play in the front yard where there’s grass.”

Unlike Mama, I know the hardest thing to get out of clothes is not red clay. It’s blood.

I like the first version, but feel the second is better. It's immediate, not backstory, and it sets the tone of the book. Plus, right away, you meet two characters, Mama and Rose (notice Rose is the point of view character).

You’re welcome to comment here or share examples from your own work. You can also stop by The Blood-Red Pencil and ask questions or leave words of wisdom for your fellow writers.

UK POD

Since we discussed Print on Demand yesterday, I thought it only fitting to take the discussion into the United Kingdom. The site, What They Think?, had an article on Lightning Source UK.

The Lightning Source UK operation, founded in 2001, manufactured over 30,000 books on behalf of its publisher partners in its inaugural year. Less than a decade later, the company manufactured over two million books in 2008…

David Taylor, President of Lightning Source, said:

"With print on demand, publishers are able to match supply to demand perfectly – no guesswork, no risk – and with predictable costs. Print on demand is no longer an option; it is a necessity."

Gilles Biscos, President of Interquest, a market and technology research and consulting firm specializing in digital printing and publishing, added:

"Our preliminary data show that digital book printing will continue to experience rapid growth-15 percent to 20 percent annually in volume, both in North America and Europe-while the overall book market will remain flat."

No matter what your opinion is of POD, you have to note that it’s being discussed everywhere.

Self-Publishing

Several commenters on different posts here on Straight From Hel have talked about how self-publishing and POD runs are rising as the mainstream publishers are taking hits because of the economy. So, I thought I’d link you up to an article about this very subject. The author, Marisa Peacock, agrees with you. She feels the POD and self-publishing companies who use POD technology are surviving, even flourishing, because even in hard times, they still make their money off the authors:

Even when a book sells only five copies, self-publishers can still make money because cover design and other printing costs are covered by the author.

Since it’s more difficult now to get a publishing deal with a bigger house, more writers are turning to self-publishing.

In 2008, nearly 480,000 books were published or distributed in the United States, up from close to 375,000 in 2007, according to the industry tracker Bowker. The company attributed a significant proportion of that rise to an increase in the number of print-on-demand books.

Why is Print on Demand such a factor? The reason is in its name. Books are printed when ordered. Authors don’t print out a huge run (number) of books and then warehouse them with hopes of selling them someday. She compares the rise of authors turning to POD and self-publishing to the alternative route some filmmakers have taken:

Like young filmmakers before them who used YouTube and MySpace to promote their cinema arts, self-publishing is helping people get their words out.

Book Promotion on the Web

J. Courtney Sullivan wrote an essay for The New York Times last month that is definitely worth reading. When I read it, I copied the url, wrote “Wow,” and saved it so I could share with you.

It’s about author websites and trailers that are becoming more and more professional. And, as you might guess, those websites are becoming hugely expensive.

AuthorBytes, a multimedia company started in 2003, has built sites for more than 200 clients, including Paul Krugman, Chris Bohjalian and Khaled Hosseini. They cost from $3,500 to $35,000 — with writers paying about 85 percent of the time. The staff of 20 even includes three employees whose entire job is updating.

Sullivan says some book videos are “laughably bad.” But calls others “impressive, full-scale productions.”

Naomi Klein’s nearly seven-minute companion film to “The Shock Doctrine,” directed by Alfonso Cuarón with a full crew and shown at the 2007 Venice and Toronto International Film Festivals, has been downloaded more than a million times. “The film was a thing unto itself; it didn’t feel like an advertisement,” Klein said in a telephone interview. “But it was part of a viral phenomenon that made the book a best seller.”

Let’s face it, even $3,500 is a lot of money for most writers. Forget a production costing $35,000 -- unless you have a big-pocketed and generous publisher or you have a caviar promotion budget.

But it will cost you nothing to read Sullivan’s piece and click the links to see the websites and videos. It might give the rest of us ideas to adapt to our popcorn budgets.

Resource Books

What kind of writing resource books do you have on your shelf? How many?

I have one shelf dedicated to resource books. Mostly books on writing, but quite a few resource books on drugs, poisons, police procedures, baby names, travel, and body decomposition. My husband maintains that if he died under suspicious circumstances, I would be automatically arrested. He’s probably right. I do cringe when a story comes on TV about someone dying and the reporters point out that the police found books on poison or found out that the surviving spouse had visited sites about how to get false IDs. That’s usually told in a voice-over as the spouse is led out in handcuffs with a jacket over his/her head. It’s why I always tell my husband to be careful. Of course, I want him to be safe, but I also don’t look good with clothes draped over my head.

What do you have on your shelves? Do you have a favorite writing book or resource book? One of my favorite reference book is years old. It’s a text book called: Practical Homicide Investigation, Tactics, Procedures and Forensic Techniques.