Gutenberg Bible

According to The Writers Almanac

today is the anniversary of the printing of the Gutenberg Bible in Mainz, Germany in 1452. It was the first book ever printed with movable type. What made Gutenberg's invention revolutionary was not that it allowed you to print letters on paper, but that you could print an infinite number of different pages from a small number of letter blocks simply by rearranging them.

You can read all about this book in the Online Exhibition at the Ransom Center of the University of Texas. [books]

Providing Content1

I've mentioned providing content for websites as a writing job, as an aspect of creating a website, and most recently as a scam that newbies can inadvertently fall for. I found one such business I thought might do my own some good. It allows authors to post articles (for no pay) with links to their businesses and profiles (containing more links and ads). It also allows "publishers" to use the articles, providing they don't alter them. I tried it out in mid-August with a piece on monetizing websites, and I included links to Hancock Websites and an eBook. Then I promptly forgot about it. Until last night. During a routine link check on one of my web pages, I discovered my article is being displayed on a new website. All the links were stripped out of the article, effectively negating the advertising value to me. I've complained to both sites and sent statements for $100 for 90 days' use. Before I begin naming names ALL OVER THE WEB, I'll give them both a week to respond or correct or pay. Stay tuned. [writers' ripoffs]

Online Library

Today marks a significant milestone for LibraryThing. More than 250,000 books have been cataloged online through this new service.

A free account allows you to catalog up to 200 books. A paid lifetime account allows you to catalog any number of books. At present and for the forseeable future lifetime accounts cost just $10. I conservatively predict the revenue will enable me to recline all day on an enormous pile of gold.

When I left college 40 years ago, I had more books than shoes. (That says a lot about legacy shoe freak who started off to Northwestern with 17 pair!) Through the years those dozens of books proliferated, disappeared, reappeared, and special collections waxed and waned. If there'd been a service like LibraryThing (if there'd been PCs!), I could have done a better job of building and maintaining the different collections, some of which are incomplete and some contain duplicates simply because I no longer know which books I have, have had, or I'm still seeking.[books]

Free Photos

Was I ever delighted to find Yotophoto . When I typed "books" into its search engine, 579 images returned. Photos and other images are a vital part of a writer's website. The accompanying "writer" photo of a painting of Sappho is in the public domain and came from Wikipedia.
[free photos]

Book Publicists

In an online forum in which I participate, I noticed a heated exchange about self-publishers hiring publicists. I recalled the pitfalls of such a move that a local writer told me about. Scams abound. In A Newbie's Guide to Publishing interview, David Morrell Part Deux: The Publicist Speaks, the publicist happens to be the very experienced Sarie Morrell-Sanchez. She points out that problems getting a book noticed are not limited to self-publishing endeavors. One of the most comprehensive and insightful discussions I've seen on the realities of book promotion includes these chilling paragraphs:

Authors sign contracts with the expectation that their publisher will promote the heck out of their book in an effort to increase sales and make the bestseller list. This is not the case, for a variety of reasons beyond anyone's control - including the publishers'.

On the flip side of this, promoting a book has become very elaborate. It takes much more nowadays than a press release and a pitch letter to get noticed. My advice is that authors should expect to do a large portion of their own publicity. Ask questions. Find out exactly what the publisher plans to do and create a marketing and promotional plan of your own. Even if you feel satisfied with what they are doing, there is always more that can be done - for either a lot of money or virtually nothing. Whether you decide to hire someone to help you with this or not, an author should expect to invest a significant amount of their own time prior to and after publication date to promote their book.

[book publicity]

Free Contests

No byline appears on free writing contests on the Writing Stuff website, but I suspect the site's owner, Shelley Ann Wake, probably wrote the thought-provoking, Free Contests May Not Cost You Money, But They Can Still Cost You.

Very few contests are run only for the benefit of writers. But even if the organizer gets something out of it, it still should be fair to writers. Think about what the organizer is gaining and ask yourself if they're taking advantage of writers.

[writing contests]

Idea Generator

Stuck for a plot or a twist? You might try CALLIHOO Writing Idea Generators: The 37 Dramatic Situations for some suggestions. The random generator served up this questionable one:

Your situation: 1. Supplication (To Humbly Peition) (Elements: a persecutor, a humble petitioner, and a power in authority whose decision is doubtful)

[writer's block]

Authors Online

In the October issue of Writer's Digest, Assistant Editor Chuck Sambuchino speaks with the winner of their Best Writer's Web Site contest, Tim Bete. This humor writer uses his site to keep his freelance career going strong. He says:

One hundred percent of the success I've had is because of the Web site. My book publisher came to me because of it. I'm a big believer in e-marketing and creating your platform online. It's the only true way to have a national presence without a huge budget.

AmericanAuthor suggests a well-designed website will:

*Confirm your credibility as a serious writer
*Give readers direct access to you and your writing
*Create a network of supporters and followers
*Promote events and book signings
*Develop distribution lists for marketing and newsletters
*Allow testing of new ideas with your audience
*Provide accurate and immediate resources to the media
*Supplement query letters, submissions and important communications
*Make it easy for readers to purchase your book
*Ensure a global presence to the 1 BILLION people online in 2005 [writers' websites]

Google Suit

Writers sue Google Print over copyright:

The Authors Guild has issued legal proceedings in a New York court claiming damages and demanding the search engine stops uploading the contents of library books.

Visit The Author's Guild website for more news about writers' suits and settlements.

Shakespeare Insults

Say you're writing about actors doing a small town version of Romeo and Juliet. One character gets caught up in the language. The inevitable conflict erupts. You want the character to, well, stay in character and the dialog to reflect his frame of mind. Find "Thou surly beef-witted fustilarian!" and other random Shakespearean insults in the Shakespeare Insults Generator.

[insults]

Public Domain

Lolly Gasaway charts WHEN WORKS PASS INTO THE PUBLIC DOMAIN from the University of North Carolina

Definition: A public domain work is a creative work that is not protected by copyright and which may be freely used by everyone. The reasons that the work is not protected include: (1) the term of copyright for the work has expired; (2) the author failed to satisfy statutory formalities to perfect the copyright or (3) the work is a work of the U.S. Government.

Hint: U.S. Government documents are great resources for informational articles. When I was starting my career, I salivated over the U.S. Government Printing Office catalogs. The booklets were free or low cost and provided content for many of my writings on budgeting, gardening, cooking, and other homemaking topics. [writers' resources]

Typographical Errors

If you're self-publishing a book, you need to be concerned with typography mistakes. This isn't the same as typing errors (which you must alwas guard against.) The Aeonix website asks, "What are the two most common typographical errors that instantly identify a book as non-professional?" See Common Typographical Errors for the answer and much more about preparing an electronic version of a manuscript for printing. [typography]

FAP Auction

There's still time to bid for being mentioned in a books by John Grisham, Nora Roberts, Neil Gaiman, Dave Eggers, Rick Moody, ZZ Packer, Brad Meltzer, Chris Offutt, and David Brin during the auction at eBay for the F.A.P.

The First Amendment Project is a nonprofit advocacy organization dedicated to protecting and promoting freedom of information, expression, and petition. For nearly ten years, FAP has provided advice, educational materials, and legal representation to its core constituency of activists, journalists, and artists in service of these fundamental liberties.

[writers' freedoms]

Copyright Licensing

One of the more comprehensive resources I've found for all sorts of copyright information resides in an article by Therese A. Clarke Arado on the LLRX.com website. Copyright and Licensing Digital Materials - A Resource Guide lists a whole slew of music issues and resources, motion picture and television, and web-based and blog rights. From the latter, she warns:

If you have found images or clips on the web that you wish to incorporate into your own web page or a presentation you still need to obtain permission. As we all know, just because it is available on the web it is not free to use at any time. Hopefully, the web page has contact information provided. In order to obtain permission you want to contact the author and provide a written description of what you would like to use and how you plan to use it (e.g. in a presentation, on another web page etc.). If an author of the site is not easily discernible contacting the page's Webmaster is your next alternative. It is possible that a third party owns the material used, at the site you are viewing, and permission was obtained to use it. If that is the case you will have to go to the original owner in order to seek proper permission.

Does the quote above violate a copyright? [copyright]

Fiction Rules

I really like Gordon Bennet's semi-fictitious "At Last! The Rules of Fiction Listed and Explained" . Rules 11 - 13 are especially insightful in a tongue-in-cheek way:

11. Choose the right word; choose several right words.
12. Put the right words together into right sentences.
13. Put the right sentences together into right paragraphs.

I think I've come up with another "writers' rules" to add to my list: learn touch typing. Yes, I believe in it strongly because it saves much time, increasing a writer's output.

[fiction rules]

EZine Database

AMAZINES.COM - The EZine Publishers Database returns an amazing 139 ezines devoted to writing. Chances are, most of them are, like the site on which I found them, are actually devoted to advertising. Listings sometimes indicate circulation (not verified) and advertising rates, or contain links to articles. This relates to yesterday's post about content providers. I found one ezine that solicits free articles listed three times, and did not find one paying pub with the same name in the listings. Inconsistency reigns, but you might find this resource helpful, or at least, amusing. [writing resources]

Free Writing

Continuing in the vein of posting your work online, Yuwanda Black makes a case against writing for free, especially for Internet content providers in Writing For Free: When & When Not to Do It:

However, if what you are selling is your writing skill and are not promoting anything, then don't give it away. You'd be better off doing a direct mail campaign and spending your time creating pieces for your portfolio--even if they are only make-believe companies.

I've noticed a proliferation of businesses on the Internet recently soliciting writers to "contribute" articles (for no pay) with the teasers suggesting this will "build your clippings" and "display your work to editors". Editors are too busy to be web surfing in search of writers, and the quality of a publication does count. Providing freebies for someone else to profit from (content providers sell your efforts to others) does not promote your credibility or reputation. [writing]

Online Portfolios

At Poynter Online, Chip Scanlon comments on the world of online resumes and portfolios in The World Wide Resume: Posting Your Clips Online. Posting a resume online was one of my first uses of the World Wide Web (you can see the last version of that effort archived). From a British professor, I acquired software that more or less interfaced with Microsoft Word to create a web page. A year later Netscape released the "Composer" component of its suite that included the first useful browser, Navigator. I also learned web page composition with Home Page (I think that was the name of a program for Apple computers) as part of my employment with a school district. Composing in HTML code was the standard until I decided to get serious about web design. That introduced me to the Big Boys, MS Front Page and Macromedia's Dreamweaver. Now I couldn't survive without Macromedia products. The best model for an online portfolio of writing still eludes me. My first attempt (here) includes a downloadable text file, .JPG images and a scrolling DIV of text. Downloadable files in .PDF format is a possibility, as are .EXE files that would open in a browser, although I have the suspicion that editors want to see the stories right away. Some people construct the entire article as an image, attempting to prevent plagiarism, but that risks making the text unreadable. One example I recently reviewed is Bonnie Boots' method. I'm still pondering. It's a lot of work to scan paper copies, clean up the image, run OCR and make corrections, and convert the file into another format for inclusion with a website. [writers' portfolios]

Book Machines

I love this AP story By Jenny Barchfield via AOL that Paris Book Vending Machines Feed the Mind Day or Night. One wit suggested Americans try this in public schools where junk food machines are removed. Food for thought, eh? [books]

Textual Harassment

Just cruising around the web one day (O.K., I was Googling the website), I ran into a Writer's Edge Workshop. First I found it mentioned on a forum, textual harassment:: fc2's writer's edge: innovative writing summer workshops. The workshop topics listed there sound interesting, innovative. Usually I discover these activities about two days before they occur, but this one is scheduled for next summer--enough time to dream, to plan, to save pennies. [fiction writers' workshops]

October BAFAB

It's almost time for the quarterly Buy a Friend a Book. See the recommendations at the website if you need help deciding what to buy for your friend. Or yourself. Or me. Or why.

Journalist Safety

Poynter Online website delivered a poignant lesson to my inbox Friday. The Design Desk shows the power of an image and few words with examples like the one below. Another story and graphic caught my eye. Staying Safe While Covering Katrina relates how one St. Petersburg Times reporter was shot covering this unfolding disaster. A colleague, photographer Doug Clifford offers this insight:

I am appalled but not surprised that journalists are being threatened, assaulted and injured. I felt personally threatened," Clifford said. "You must understand that people are desperate for resources there and that makes them highly motivated to take what you have.

The article by Kenny Irby suggests security measures and health precautions to take when working in dangerous situations. I especially like this one: Give up the money. Cash and equipment can be replaced. Your life cannot. So what if you miss a story. Another one will come along. Trust me. [writers]

Free eBooks

At the Fear of Writing website, you can download four free eBooks on the page for The Word Nerd's e-Store. For yet another example of authors using the power of the Internet to promote books by giving them away, To Bee or Not to Bee Book, inspirational allegory is available as a free eBook. They also have a cute 60-second A/V preview. The authors say:

To Bee or Not to Bee is a perennial gift book and we know from experience that a healthy percentage of you who download the ebook will buy paperback copies for friends and relatives.

For purchasers, there's free shipping through this month, and just in time for Christmas, they're releasing an audio version. It's book marketing to the max within a lovely and well-made website. [book marketing]

Search Engines

According to Bill Tancer, VP of research at Hitwise:

"People are using search to navigate over the Web," Tancer told ClickZ Stats. "At first I thought it was due to less sophisticated searchers. But more and more, I'm convinced that it's easier to navigate from the search bar instead of going to the URL bar in the browser."

In a review of a recent Hitwise report How Do the Search Engines Stack Up?, ClickZ indicates each engine has its own strengths among search categories. Searchers who want news and media tend to frequent Google and Yahoo! while Google and Ask Jeeves are used most for those who search for education sites. Why am I telling this to writers? Because savvy writers optimize their websites by topic for the search engine that sends the most visitors. [writers' websites]

Email Book

A recurring theme in this production has been that email is valid literature and a form of writing requiring the respectful application of grammar and punctuation and spelling as any other. In the "if: book" project of the Institute for the Future of the Book, Ben Vershbow recently wrote in the selected, annotated inbox of dave eggers:

But a crop of writers is working now whose papers are not in order. The email is rotting away on the network, unorganized, not backed-up, and, to a great extent, simply being lost for good. I actually mused about this in a post last month about an email archive visualization tool by Fernanda Viegas at M.I.T.'s Sociable Media Group that shows years of electronic correspondence as sedimentary levels in a mountain-like mass. And a mountain it is. One novelist I know in Washington has her office stacked high with milk crates containing printouts of each and every email she sends and receives, no matter how trivial. There has to be a better way.

Currently gearing up: email to book services.
[writing email literature]

Comic Relief

Bonnie Boots Of Write Side Out wrote in to say:

I was just Googling my web site to see if anyone knew it existed and saw your blogmention. Thanks for the nod! When I found myself making serious plans to assassinate a publisher, I knew I had to make changes in my life. ... When I think about what the future will bring for writers and artists, it makes me positively giddy! Or maybe that's just the capless magic markers talking. ... I just put up some new designs. Take a peek when you stop for lunch. If you can look at Home Work without snorting milk out your nose, your not the woman I think you are!

Visual courtesy Google SpyCam. [writers' humor]

Hurricane Relief

I found a more effective and efficient way to donate cash for hurricane relief through San Diego's KSWB-TV station. The foundations are paying all administrative expense so that donations WHICH THEY ARE MATCHING go directly to relief organizations.

The Chicago writing community always was a class act!

Travel Grants

The current newsletter from World 66 carries this intriguing note on their travel grants program:

The idea is that if you are planning this cool trip and you think it would be interesting to write about the places you go to on World66.com, you can receive a travel grant. We will be giving away $10,000 in total to the people with the best plans, best writings kills or most enthusiasm!

I'm assuming that's supposed to be writing skills. The Travel Grants program intrigues me not only for the enticing image used (below), but also if you scan my world map you'll notice more unvisited territory (gray) than visited (red).

[travel writing]

Good Writers

Gary Beach, editor of the CIO Magazine, bemoans the current condition of business writing in Needed: Good Writers. He says, "The inability of the American worker to write a good sentence is costing American business good money." He cites a recent report which ranks email as the top form of writing in America (presumably in business).

One respondent to the "Ticket to Work" report wrote, "We're inundated daily with e-mail, and people have to learn to think in 'core points.' We need presentation skills on the same basis. Most of us have experienced 'death by PowerPoint.'" And often, I find, by the dreaded "reply to all" button!

[business writing]

Hard Cases

One genre that held little appeal for me when I was growing up in the 50's were crime stories. If you were a fan of those thrillers, there's good news. You can find some of the classics republished by Hard Case Crime which

brings you the best in hardboiled crime fiction, ranging from lost noir masterpieces to new novels by today's most powerful writers, featuring stunning original cover art in the grand pulp style. Authors include award-winning modern masters like Stephen King, Max Allan Collins, Ed McBain, and Donald E. Westlake, Golden-Age pulp stars like Erle Stanley Gardner, Donald Hamilton, and Wade Miller and newcomers we predict will be the next generation of hardboiled bestsellers.

I also enjoyed this tidbit about the book I selected to display:

Mystery File on BRANDED WOMAN: "This book is remarkable. As good as [Miller's other books are], this is the money shot. This is a book worth rediscovery."

because, according to San Diego Union-Tribune book editor Arthur Salm, "Wade Miller" was the writing team of William Miller and the U-T's current Spadework columnist, Robert Wade. [crime fiction]