Bookstore Tourism

We're all familiar with tourism based on a book like viewing covered bridges mentioned in The Bridges of Madison County or European escapades of The Da Vinci Code. Now enterprising marketers are hawking tours of bookstores. I first noticed one in San Diego a couple of months ago, then advertising for trips to L.A. Being an original, creative cogitator, I thought, "Huh?" Now I'm finding mentions of this phenom in chatrooms and fora and stumbled across The Bookstore Tourism Blog.

Bookstore Tourism is a type of "cultural tourism" that promotes independent bookstores as a group travel destination. It started as a grassroots effort to support locally owned and operated bookshops, many of which have struggled to compete with large bookstore chains and online retailers.

More info on the trend is found at Bookstore Tourism [books]

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Google What?

You need a scorecard these days to keep track of Google services' names, as well as what services are offered. Recently opened Google Analytics and Google Base must now accommodate a recent change from Google Print to Google Book Search as announced in the Official Google Blog: Judging Book Search by its cover. [Google]

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Shear Genius

I was planning another rant along the lines of "you know a scam is really lucrative if it starts creating spin-offs", when I found advertising for Article Submitter Pro ~ Automated Article Submission Software, but it read:

"Article Submitter Pro has taken nearly a full year to produce, and was painstakingly created, code by code, through the shear genius of Hubert Daul, a master programmer."

Now that's just what I'm looking for, software developed by a top wool cutter! [spelling]

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Research Pitfalls

At eHarlequin.com Melinda Giles has written an article on Research Pitfalls: What Not to Do. Don't snicker or sneer because you know Harlequin as a major publisher of romance novels. If I could write formula fiction, I'd crank out these babies by the dozen! Good research applies to all genres, and while this piece refers to researching for novels, you might learn something that applies to nonfiction fact-finding.

[research]

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News Releases

When I was learning to write good new articles, I remember my editor stressing that I should write every story for the person who just moved to town. PR Guru, Marcia Yudkin offers similar advice:

ALWAYS include the basic facts in any press release, and follow 5-Ws news writing style by explaining the Who, What, When, Where and Why or How in the first paragraph. If you look at newspaper articles carefully, you will notice that they always briefly include an identifier for any named person and a brief snippet of background even for a story or person who's dominated the news for the last week. Thus, if you have just come out of the woods after a month and pick up the newspaper, or have flown over from another continent, you will understand the story.

Yudkin wrote 6 Steps to Free Publicity and Marcia's Makeovers: 24 Press Releases Transformed from So-So to Sizzling [releases]

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eMail Call

None of the entries in the posting queue attracted my interest this morning. It's been a while since we shook those funny cards and letters out of the mail bag. Let's see what the ePost yields:

Lee Eisenberg -- asks if he can send me a book to review. Name sounds familiar. I examine the envelope, and the message appears authentic, originally addressed just to me, and sent through a service not known for handling bulk deliveries well. I checked his nicely done website, and I'm impressed enough to root out a different email address for him. Respect for his professional presentation demands I comply with instructions to use an online form to request the review copy. I also send a brief message to both his email addresses. He responds politely from the one I had to dig for!

Dawn Groves -- asks permission to put a link to Writer's Edge on her website. I look and lurk. This appears to be a legitimate, though ingenuous, request. I tell her no one has ever asked before. Ya, sure, it's fine with me. She isn't even asking for a link exchange. How cool is that?

Google Analytics -- acknowledges they're having problems, reassures, makes vague promises. At least they bothered to write.

Dr. Hsien-Hsien Lei -- asks where I find the graphics for this blog. She says "They're always so appropriate. I think they're great."

Hmm. No turkeys in my mailbox this season. Yay!

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Whore Presents

For those who don't think punctuation matters, the title of this post may have caught your eyes. It's one way that the whoRepresents...? website's domain name reads in some people's minds. Actually, Who Represents is a low cost way to try to reach the stars, say for contacting people you'd like to provide testimonials for a book, to interview for an article or podcast, to verify a quote. [research]

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Writing Newsletters

"Your blog is perfect for a newsletter!" a fan enthused. "Why haven't you started one?" There's a simple reason: time is money. Putting together and distributing newsletters takes time; I need money. A newsletter writer has a couple of choices, either sell advertising to be placed within the useful material and annoy readers, or charge for the newsletter. I know, online marketers insist free newsletters are a great way to sell a product/service, but that's quibbling the ad issue, I think. Another opinion is that people will pay for the convenience of having information gathered together and available in a bundle. So, I'm thinking. If you have an opinion, please leave it in a comment. How much would it be worth to you to receive this blog's content (maybe expanded) by weekly or monthly email? [newsletters]

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Find Editors

Lisa Smith at Frugal Marketing offers Six Tips on How to Choose an Editor for Your Nonfiction Manuscript:

comfort
editing experience
contract
sample
publishing experience
multilevel editing service

Although Ms. Smith says to look for someone who will edit four pages of your manuscript for free (as an example of their work), I think I'd opt for editing four pages of something else other than the piece in question. In my experience, the contract is partly on the page describing services and confirmed by an email from the client giving the go-ahead to perform the job at a specified price. [editors editing]

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WD Shorty

The graphic in Writer Digest's announcement of their current Short Short Story Competition so amused me, I just had to use it. The title of the ad was
From the guidelines:

We're looking for fiction that's bold, brilliant...but brief. Send us your best in 1,500 words or fewer. But don't be too long about it—the deadline is Thursday, December 01, 2005.

I'm wondering if it's mandatory that the writing is about boxing?

[writing contests]

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Commitment

From The Writer's Almanac: Today is the birthday of South African novelist Nadine Gordimer, who said: "People make the mistake of regarding commitment as something solely political. A writer is committed to trying to make sense of life. It's a search. So there is that commitment first of all: the commitment to the honesty and determination to go as deeply into things as possible, and to dredge up what little bit of truth you with your talent can then express."

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Writing Tagging

Finally managed to create a first cloud of tags for Writer's Edge at Swiki Eurekster:

This is not the live search image, just a screen capture reduced in size. That is the problem--the images produced are too large for the layout here. It could ride atop or below the Google search image, but with the problems I'm having getting Google Analytics fired up at the same time (doesn't it work with blogs?) well ... [tag cloud Google Analytics]

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Phony Reviewers

If you're not interested in books, you're probably in the wrong place *swinging doors flap as a few depart*. I've seen some bellyaching about reviewers not receiving a "thank you" note from authors after posting pieces on their books. Let's look at the other side of this exchange. If you're a self-promoting author, publicist, or small publisher, you've probably wasted money on reviewers who don't hold up their end of the bargain. Jim Cox, longtime publisher of the venerable Midwest Book Review, put together some advice on How to Spot a Phony Book Reviewer. I'd suggested in one forum thread that the reviewer owed the publisher, and found vindication in Cox's article:

There is new phenomena in book reviewing having to do with the Internet and the World Wide Web. When reviews are posted on the Internet, the reviewer's publisher notification letter will include the text of the review post, and indicate what Web sites, newsgroups, online bookstores, or e-mail lists (Internet discussion groups) were posted to so that the publisher can verify the postings accordingly.

I must admit that I've been remiss in carrying out my responsibility on occasion, in the rush to move on to the next great read. Mea Culpa! [book reviews]

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Yahoo! Podcasts

Podcasts are one of the newest inexpensive modes for learning about writing and publishing. The Yahoo! portal is testing a beta version of a search service for podcasts. A global search on "books" brought up 379 entries and of the 80 about "writing", one of the top returns was The Writing Show, mentioned recently in conjunction with a Halloween event. For free info about self-publishing and selling your books, try this Dan Poynter search. On the other side of the microphone, I'm considering converting some interviews I did with major writers into MP3 files and making them available here. Other writers are using this format to tease with snippets of their writing and selling it by download. If eBooks are replacing pBooks (or tree books), will podcasts replace broadcasts/CD/DVD? [podio]

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Got Enough?

Sophronia Scott gives an interesting twist in response to the agony I see new writers pour out in online fora. In her newsletter Ask The Book Sistah someone wrote:

"With every rejection you receive that nagging little voice sounds in the back of your mind - 'you're wasting your time.' Is there an way of judging if your writing makes the grade, other than the success of publication?"--Anonymous

Ms. Scott responded with:

I've heard this question many times and it's an important one. The answer holds the difference between your being empowered as a writer and your waiting for someone to give you permission to be a writer.

I'd not experienced a feeling of longing for validation outside of someone paying me. Maybe this angst explains the explosive popularity of blogs among the young, and the subsequent flowering of schemes and scams to help wanabees feel like they are really writers by posting their work on the Internet "where editors and publishers can see your work". [evaluating writing]

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Tagging

Some time back I started adding "tags" to these posts. The words in brackets at the end of each post connect with Technorati, a blog search and recovery service. The tags supposedly allow you to find similar posts in other blogs. I'm hoping they help when searching this blog for info on particular topics, because Blogger doesn't have a way to classify posts. Tags are what Clay Shirkey (and many others) calls "folksonomy", the people's way of organizing knowledge. I've been trying to make a "tag cloud" for this blog (no success yet) like the one below, swiped from Ian, who made it at Swiki Eurekster



Also, Tara Calishain recently wrote in her newsletter
ResearchBuzz: Why I Love Tagging. I found her fifth reason especially compelling for writers:

It helps me learn your language -- When I do a tag search in Del and get a list of related keywords, I'm learning the language of people who are tagging the kinds of resources I'm interested in.

And I don't think we get into that enough, but it's simple: I have to learn your language to find the kinds of things you're finding when you search. Everything has its own language; every topic, perspective, desire, state, need, or interaction contains its own vocabulary. Sometimes as a searcher you find yourself required to research a topic but you don't know the language; you have to learn the vocabulary. You can do that with tag sites because you can see what kinds of tags are grouped together; what tags seem to "hang together" in a folksonomy. Once you learn the language you can, again, take that information to larger data pools like Google and do more thorough searching. But larger data pools like Google are a difficult place to learn new vocabulary because of the huge amount of noise and irrelevance (see #3) that you can get in your searching.

[tags]

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Book Snobs

Maybe I've discovered the reason why the UK has so many book awards! According to this Guardian report One in three has bought a book just to look intelligent.

Driven partly by pressure from incessant literary prize shortlists, more than one in three consumers in London and the south-east admit having bought a book "solely to look intelligent", the YouGov survey says.

While disclosing that less than ten percent of those surveyed read prize-winning books, "more than two in every five people, follows the traditional method of choosing their reading; relying on recommendations from close family and friends." I wonder if that includes "cyber friends"? Some of the books I read, and occasionally enjoy, are selected by my book club. Often they are books I would never have chosen myself. Others appear at my doorstep from publishers seeking reviews. [books reading]

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Business Cards

The Writer Magazine website contains several solutions to writers' conundrums like how to get editors' attention, make a good impression, function as a professional. Assistant Editor Robert Lee Brewer suggests Use Business Cards to Sell More Articles. Here's a list of tips he discusses:

include a logo
include a slogan
include the best means of contact
include your codes
use heavy card stock

My first writer's cards simply said "Photojournalist" as a descriptor, but then I found the industry had separated the photo part, so I added the phrase "Writing and Photography since 1970". Then too many people wanted me to take their pictures, so I've reframed my work to be "Writing, Editing, Critiques". [writing business

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Poetry

Poetry magazine's Adam Travis interviewed Samuel Menashe, a New York poet to whom homeland notice and accolades have come very late in life.

So, there are merits to obscurity?

NO! No, no, no, no, no! You want your work to be read. Obscurity means you're not read.

You can also find Danielle Chapman's review of Menashe's work. [poetry]

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AmazonPages

A few months ago I wrote about Amazon Shorts, a new program to sell electronic material for 49 cents a piece. Now Amazon is ripping out pages from books to sell, according to this Associated Press story from Yahoo! News. The plan has the stamp of approval from the Authors Guild, too (the same folks who are suing Google over copyright infringement via Google Print.) Previously the Authors Guild joined the ASJA in grumbling over Amazon selling articles without permission. [copyright]

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Ghost Father

George Hancock, died 45 years ago on November 10, 1960.

Daddy encouraged me to take risks

He stood at the foot of her bed, watching her restless sleep. His only living daughter, only living child, a little girl on the brink of womanhood. Read the whole story at http://www.writers-edge.info/ghost-father.htm [memoirs [creative nonfiction]

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Eat Words

Eat Your Words is student Srinivas Sundaragopal's ambitious web design project either coming or going at the New York State University at Buffalo. I liked the banner and the recycling concept. [recycling]

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Free Publishing

Found in one of Day Poynter's recent newsletters:

Until the end of this year we will be publishing MEMOIRS on our exciting new website called "Posterity" for F.REE! In an effort to build our archives before the official launch in the New Year. Authors and everyday people are invited to send us memoirs, life stories, or anecdotes along with photographs of their choice. And we will publish them on the internet indefinitely. Please visit our site at www.posterity.com.au and if you require more information you can contact me via email. -- Andy McDermott

Just keep in mind my warnings about giving away your writing, first and all rights, and read the fine print. In essence, your work will be used to sell this man's product. If the business fails, I wonder how the website hosting charges will be paid "indefinitely"? [writing]

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Google Analytics

Just a moment ago, as I attempted to post a response to a comment, using Firefox, the comments window stuck with a notation that it was downloading information from "http://www.google-analytics.com". After the Google Base debacle last week or so I thought, "WTF?" Sure enough, Google registered that domain name last July. Attempting to access the site results in a Google ERROR message. Now the question becomes, "What are they doing with it, and my blog?" [Google Analytics

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Book Covers

Earlier this year, I began sprucing up this place with more images. I also noticed numerous articles about the impact of book cover graphics. Some pundits claimed that alone accounts for a large percentage of sales (others credit titles). This seemed like so much cyber-hyper until I unwrapped A Son Called Gabriel and beheld the full-size dust cover in person. It stirred up a covey of questions I just had to find answered by opening the book and reading. The Bright Forever had the same effect, and now the Writer's Digest has sent me Maybe a Miracle to review for their new online book discussion group (more on this in a later post). I had the same reaction to this book's cover art. See all three below. I'll admit the graphics lose their impact when reduced to a size that will fit on this web page, but I defy any of you to deny there's at least one book you bought just because you liked the cover.


Some places to read about book cover art include:
Bookgraphics
Dunn + Associates
Para Publishing [book covers]

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Confusing Words

I really liked the Fiction Factor newsletter this week because of Lee Masterson's article on Heteronyms, Homonyms, Homographs and Homophones. At first glance you might think this a pretty sexy list of words. "Homo" as in similar or alike, "hetero" as in different or opposite, but what are "nyms", "graphs" and "phones"? Think names, maps, and sounds. I especially like Masterson's sentence following this confusing list: pair, pear, pare.

The English language is riddled with such aural ambiguities.

Don't miss the lists at the bottom of the page. They contain probably most of the mistakes that litter digital diaries, other than outright misspellings like misteak and treet, two I spotted last week. [confusing words]

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Reader Privacy

[privacy security]

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Wikibooks

Wikibooks

Book of the month

The book of the month for November is Consciousness studies--a rich-illustrated textbook on the neuroscience and philosophy of consciousness.

Have authors lost their minds?

Are "Wikibooks" real books?

[Wikibooks books publishing]

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Funny Business

In one of the fora (my plural for 'forum') on Orkut, someone asked if it is easier to write about sorrow or humor. This was my response: "I find humor to be the most difficult writing of all that I've attempted (and I've been around long enough to have tried just about everything!) First of all, you have to be FUNNY. That's a stretch for me right there. Humour needs brevity, too. The readers are always looking for the punch line. Then there's pacing, and that is so very important in the funny business. Think about the sound that signifies a rim shot (a type of joke) BA-DA-BOOM! Just three beats.

Yeah, I think humor is hard." [writing humor]

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Guerilla Marketing

Oh, those crazy New York kids. What will they think of next? Debra Matsumoto, Publicity Manager for North Atlantic Books asked me to promote the following:

Dirty Laundry: Loads of Prose was the brainchild of some freelance producers who love books. On Nov. 10, 9:30-11 pm, laundry and language will spin together at the Avenue C Laundromat, 69 Avenue C @ 5th St. in the heart of the East Village. ... will feature Rob Brezsny, the syndicated astrology columnist for The Village Voice and Jungian beatnik, and fiction writer Kelly Link. This format is urban multi-tasking genius and creative guerrilla bookselling for fly-over city centers where competition for attendance is the most challenging and competitive.

Wothehell is a "fly-over city center" this hick left-coast rube wants to know. I keep seeing advice for book promoters to abandon book store signings and to get creative, but doing laundry? Sounds more like the product of a crazed publicity agent's bad acid trip. Sure, "loads of prose" is cute, and "laundry and language" are alliterative (Are Alliterative--get it?) hyuk! hyuk! but the laundry's not a spacious, quiet place for either reading aloud or signing books. [book marketing]

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Dialog Tags

An article in Writer's Digest, Who Said That?, continues the controversy about using dialog tags. Some contemporary writers eschew any attribution other than "said" and "asked". Author Nancy Kress admits a pageful of them can be boring, but warns that using synonyms can also be distracting.

But when used reasonably, readers don't actually notice dialogue tags; they should blend into the page. Some words that identify tone of voice can sharpen the reader's mental image without calling undue attention to themselves. These include "shouted," "whispered," "gasped" and "murmured."

Sometimes writers try to skirt the issue adverbially, using a modifying adverb after a plain tag. They risk being hooted out of their critique groups as "Tom Swiftie" creators. Another alternative is to omit tags completely, which works fine until the characters get deep into a runaway conversation and readers begin to wonder "who said that"? [dialog]

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