Give Books

Last month at the 12th annual San Diego Book Awards, Susan Vreeland issued a challenge to listeners. She received her third Theodore Geisel Award, plus the Short Fiction Award for Life Studies. While accepting the honors, Vreeland suggested that "the decline of reading literature in America ought to be a vital concern for all. To counter that, I invite you to give a book between now and next year's Book Awards to an adult whom you suspect is not a reader. Not for an occasion. Let the book itself be the occasion. This doesn't have to be a new book, but a book carefully selected for a thoughtfully chosen person."

This would help foster compassion in people who have become isolated. I can't imagine anyone more isolated than someone who doesn't read. Vreeland explained, "Without compassion, then community, commitment, lovingkindness, human understanding, and respect all shrivel. Individuals become isolated, the isolated turn cruel, and the tragic hovers in the form of holocausts and terrorism. Art--and literature--are antidotes to that."

The quotes were reported by Richard Lederer in the June issue of The Writer's Life, newsletter of the San Diego Writers/Editors Guild. How about taking up Vreeland's challenge during the next Buy a Friend a Book Week coming up in July?

[books]

Technical Dictionary

Smart Site - Where Smart Things Happen

700 simple definitions in everyday language so you can quickly find technocratic words, abbreviations, acronyms, or letter and number combinations.

It's a free .PDF file.

[words]

Authors' Law

Tasini Case Final Decision: Authors Win:

The court noted that if "there is demand for a freelance article standing alone or in a new collection, the Copyright Act allows the freelancer to benefit from that demand; after authorizing the initial publication, the freelancer may also sell the article to others.... It would scarcely 'preserve the author's copyright in a contribution' as contemplated by Congress, if a newspaper or magazine publisher were permitted to reproduce or distribute copies of the author's contribution in isolation or within new collective works." The court referred to the belief that "freelance authors have experienced significant economic loss" due to a "digital revolution that has given publishers [new] opportunities to exploit authors' works." The court went on to note that the "Databases' reproduction and distribution of individual Articles--simply as individual articles--would invade the core of the Authors' exclusive rights...."

And in another win for an author, reported by Publishers Weekly:

A Kansas jury ... found print-on-demand subsidy publisher AuthorHouse guilty of publishing a work that libeled the author's ex-wife, and ordered the company to pay $230,000 in actual damages to Rebecca Brandewyne, a bestselling author of mass-market historical romances.

And for a chilling look at the difficulties writers can get themselves into, check out Google's take on the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

[copyrights]

Fewer Blog Posts?

One principle of blogging often advocated is to be provocative, controversial. It doesn't matter what you say, as long as it runs contrary to the GAAP, no, that's accounting, GARP? Oh, you know, what everybody just "knows" but has no scientific proof to support. Generally Recognized as Safe or True or The American Way.

Along comes Eric Kintz, contemporary Young Turk, to tell us Why Blog Post Frequency Does Not Matter Anymore He offers ten reasons to lay off the blogs, ranging from the dangers of "blogging addiction" to "RSS fatigue" and lower quality and credibility. I had to smirk at #2 Traffic is irrelevant to your blog's success anyway. Maybe, depending on how you measure "blog success", but what if the goal is high traffic for advertising purposes?

Well, he is VP of Global Marketing Strategy & Excellence for Hewlett-Packard, where he runs The Marketing Excellence blog. He posts about three times a month, whether he has anything of quality to add to the conversation or not. Like his controversial post in the MarketingProfs blog.

[blogging]

Image Resource

The venerable Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution now offers an Image Library. Although the service requires a registration to use, the login box accepts "guest" for a name and password in order for visitors to browse. According to Tara Calishain at Research Buzz:

it contains images spanning 75 years of ocean exploration. At the moment the library contains 36,000 images but many more are being added every week ... Searching is by simple keyword or by metadata; not all images have metadata and I'd stick to keywords. A keyword search for coral found 29 results, ten to a page -- lovely underwater photography. Click on a picture and you get a slightly larger picture (with WHOI WHOI WHOI watermarks on it) and metadata including date picture was taken, keywords, notes, and credit line. Unlike many image libraries you do not get a still-larger picture of the image just by clicking on the one on the image information page. Instead, click on the "View High-Resolutions" link on the left nav to get a popup window with an a) slightly larger image with b) the WHOI watermarks intact.

Early in my writing career, I covered the Indian River Study, which used a WHOI ship. I found some photos of that boat, but none suitable for an illustration here. Then I searched in the main website's database of research vessels and found the "Gosnold was transferred to the Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institution, Florida, in October 1973, where it continued to work" with the photo above. When I wrote about the study, the facility was known as the "Harbor Branch Foundation".

[resource]

Avoid Scams

Jayne Hitchcock, a freelance writer and author of six books, knows a bit about falling victim to writing scams and online dangers. She alerts us on at least one website and with an article at Writing World. Avoiding Writing Scams suggests ways to miss getting caught up with scam agencies and agents. In three vignettes of duped customers, Hitchcock names names. She also draws on the advice of Victoria Strauss and A.C. Crispin who also named those to run from:

Requests for up-front fees
Referrals to paid services
Recommendations to use a specific editor
Offers of a "co-publishing" contract
Requests to buy something
Quick offers of representation/publication
No details of a track record

In addition, make sure any publishers an agent claims to have worked with are real ones and those you can easily find on bookshelves. Perhaps most important, don't let your desire to be published overcome your good sense. Join a local or national writer's organization and see if they have a list of known writing scams. Get involved in an online writing newsgroup, forum or message board; if you have a question about an agent or publisher, you may get answers there.

[agents]

Silly Saturday

You Should Be a Romance Novelist

You see the world as it should be, and this goes double for all matters of the heart. You can find the romance in any situation, and you would make a talented romance story writer... And while you may be a traditional romantic, you're just as likely to be drawn to quirky or dark love stories. As long as it deals with infatuation, heartbreak, and soulmates - you could write it.

What Type of Writer Should You Be?

[creativity]

Fifty Writing Tools

I've long praised Roy Peter Clark's series of Fifty Writing Tools at Poynter Online. Now they're becoming a book, as reported in Poynter Online - Fifty Writing Tools: What's in Store. If you want 'em free, get 'em now because Clark says:

At the request of the publisher, we'll soon be taking these 50 essays down from the Poynter site. They are yours to peruse until July 1.

[nonfiction resource]

Weird Phrases

Is it just me, or do you notice weird phrases, titles and advertising? I've written a couple of times about a local alternative paper listing certain Mexican activities as "Day of the Dead Sugar Skulls." I wondered at first, now chuckle to myself, "What is a dead sugar skull?" I have a similar reaction at the car wash businesses that advertise "HAND CAR WASH." I don't have a hand car, I think, remembering the gandy dancers pumping away down the railroad tracks. The most recent entry into this silliness is a product from the Glade company, "Car Scented Oil." Who wants to their home to smell like a car, I ask. Do they also make the Fragrance Story Disks?

[words]

Google AdWords

If you see this ad, let me know where it comes up--on a web page or on a Google Search results page:

Editing and Proofreading
all manuscripts, business copy,

and website content. Fiction critiques.

www.writers-edge.info

I'm trying out this Google AdWords advertising for a while. Apparently, it has to show up hundreds of times before someone clicks on it (and then I must pay, so don't click on it unless you are interested in the services, please!)

Magazine Startups

Roughly 1,000 magazines are launched every year, says Samir "Mr. Magazine" Husni, a magazine consultant and chair of the journalism department at the University of Mississippi. Nearly 20,000 consumer and trade publications exist in North America, according to the National Directory of Magazines. So how can you launch a magazine that stands out?

asks Steve Cooper of Entrepreneur.com, writing at MSNBC.com in Secrets of Starting a Magazine. Many of the startups fail because of faulty or lack of a sound business plan. Planning takes research and time. Others don't make the hurdle due to the lack of capital in an Ouroboros of advertising and readership chasing each other. Having a complementary website isn't to be ignored, either. If the print version doesn't fly, you can always call it an ezine! The point Cooper drives home is that magazines are businesses. Nowhere are writers mentioned. Oh, to be sure there's a little squiggle somewhere in the financials that represents expenditures for content, a miniscule amount among the costs for printing, advertising, promotions, and marketing.

The survival statistics say "don't do it," but they don't tell the full story. "Big companies put a title on newsstands just to see what happens and then fold it within the same year," says Woodward, explaining that this skews the stats.

Husni says that of the magazines that fail, 70 percent never make it past their first issue. Starting a magazine is relatively cheap and easy--at least for the first issue. Woodward estimates you can put the first issue on newsstands for as little as $15,000.

And this is why I counsel new writers to stay away from startup magazines, although those are the ones you see advertising for writers. Chances are, they won't be around to cut you a paycheck next month.

[magazines]

Book Publishing

anna louise genoese, an editor at Tor who apparently eschews capital letters, writes at Anna's Red Pen posts on Demystifying Publishing and in anna louise's Journal at the Live Journal website. Two of her series on "P&Ls and how books make (or don't) money" (her lack of capitals, not mine) have raised: eyebrows, hackles, and other portions of the writing community's anatomy.

See part the first: the mass market original complete failure
and part the second: the hardcover to mass market profitable/neutral book. Warning to newbies: prepare yourself for shock, awe, and General Disillusionment to make an appearance.

[book publishing]

Writers E-Learning

Back in April, Howard Finberg of the Poynter Institute celebrated the first anniversary of News University, an online training program for journalists. In This Is (Not) a Test: Adventures in E-Learning, Finberg outlines the progress that has taken NewsU out of the venue of unsuccessful, expensive programs of questionable effectiveness to initiate conversations about what else can we do to help journalists do their jobs better. They developed short courses with a tight focus, engaging activities, and abundant ongoing resources. More than 14,000 "students", 25% from 35 areas outside the U.S., participated in over 25 different courses, most of which are free. Oh, and journalism courses aren't just for journalists, y' know?

[journalism]

No More Books

Please don't send any more books to Gulf Coast where hurricanes devastated 50 public libraries last year. That's the word from library officials, according to USATODAY.com - Gulf Coast libraries bursting with donated books. I tried to make the point during the crises that books were the last items people needed after losing their homes and possessions. Now it's the last for libraries, too. They need money to clean up, repair, rebuild and restaff. Forget FEMA. If you want to help, visit the American Library Association. You can also see a map of the affected libraries at the website of the Normative Data Project for libraries.

[books]

Science Alerts

Science.gov is a gateway to authoritative selected science information provided by U.S. Government agencies, including research and development results. You can see all the sources from which the service draws info. If you're a science or scifi writer, the better news is that Science.gov Now Offering Alerts 3.0, according to Tara Calishan at Research Buzz.

When it comes to the results sent with the alerts, there is a limit. You will not get more than 35 items per alert in your e-mail. However, when you register with Science.gov you'll get your own "Personal Archive" that'll contain ALL the matching results for the last six weeks' worth of alerts, not just the first 35.

[resource]

Contest Judges

Two more Writing Show Contest judges Chris Baty and Micah Dubinko are featured in the blog. Entries are due on the first anniversary of The Writing Show, which is July 6, 2006. Read all about the contest and send in your best stuff, well, your best first chapter of a novel. Don't wait until the last minute because contest mistress Paula has out her whip, and she'll crack it at the stroke of midnight.

[writing contest]

Writers' Blogs

In the current issue of the Worldwide Freelance Writer newsletter, Deanna Mascle offers seven reasons why every writer needs to blog.

1. Give your audience access
2. Attract new readers
3. Get higher search engine rank
4. Build niche reputation
5. Make money
6. Generate leads for sales
7. Get online easier/cheaper

While I find numbers five and six questionable, I must agree that:

In truth blogs are much more than a simple web diary. They are actually a content management system and/or an easy web site template. Blogging software allows you to begin posting your content to the internet in minutes and when you harness that ability with an RSS feed you have a powerful traffic magnet.

[blogging]

Poet Laureate

Donald Hall is the United States' new Poet Laureate, selected by the Library of Congress. Just what does this mean? According to the NY Times, it means about $35,000 and a $5,000 travel allowance for what is usually a year's appointment. And what will he do?

The library deliberately avoids attaching specific duties to the post so that the poet can do his or her own writing. But in recent years holders of the title have used the platform to enlarge the presence of poetry in the culture. Mr. Hall said that he would like to follow in the tradition of Mr. Kooser and other laureates who have tried to expand poetry's reach.

Good luck. It seems to me that the only people who pay attention are those of us already interested in poetry and other literary endeavors. Perhaps the L.O.C. could specify that the Poet Laureate become a more public figure, enlisting contemporary media cooperation. How about a poem instead of a prayer at the start of public functions? Do we need a Poet Laureate, anyway?

[poetry]

Novel Notions

John Coyne offers a type of fiction writers' book of days, a whole three-month plan for completing a book at How to write a novel in 100 days or less.

[resource]

Field Trips

Wouldn't it be great if you could take your students on a trip to the location for every book they read--fiction or nonfiction? Imagine walking the streets that Jack the Ripper haunted at the turn of the century, reading Where the Red Fern Grows and exploring the Ozarks, or visiting the Great Pyramid of Giza while you learn about the Pharaohs. Of course, most people can't take a classroom full of kids on a world tour. But with Google Earth, you can take them on a virtual tour--"flying" anywhere on the planet and zooming down to street level with ease.

Google Librarian Center tells you how to accomplish the journey using Google Earth. Why save the good stuff for kids? Visit a novel setting for free. Discover details for an article. Beef up your genealogy or family histories with facts about the places your ancestors lived.

[research]

MySpace Copyrights

Meg Weaver writes in her current Wooden Horse News Alert:

Writers, be careful what you post on popular sites.

For example, English songwriter Billy Bragg claims that the popular teenage hang-out MySpace.com's "terms of service" give Rupert Murdoch's News Corp the right to use any of the content on the site.
Many musicians often release new material on the site, but Bragg has deleted his, explaining on his own website that the MySpace.com owners "can do what they want with it, throughout the world without paying the artist."

The MySpace.com fine print informs users that by posting any content, "you hereby grant to MySpace.com a non-exclusive, fully-paid and royalty-free, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense through unlimited levels of sublicensees) to use, copy, modify, adapt, translate, publicly perform, publicly display, store, eproduce, transmit, and distribute such Content on and through the Services."

According to nydailynews.com ... Myspace.com spokesman Jeff Berman said not to worry. "Because the legalese has caused some confusion, we are at work revising it to make it very clear that MySpace is not seeking a license to do anything with an artist's work other than allow it to be shared in the manner the artist intends. Obviously, we don't own their music or do anything with it that they don't want."

Right. The legalese is just there for fun.

Have you checked the fine print where you post material?

I had similar concerns with Orkut.com, Google's social networking site with many writers' groups. The administration assured me that, although the site sports similar legalese, members retain copyrights to anything they post in their profiles or in groups.

[copyrights ]

Writer's Sensitivity

In one of the essays in "Regards," John Gregory Dunne recalls attending a screenwriter's funeral in Beverly Hills, Calif. During the service, his friend Gore Vidal leaned over and asked, "Are you working?" No, Mr. Dunne thinks, he "had no intention of using the scene in a book," but "yes, it was always there waiting to be retrieved." So, he concludes, "the answer to Gore Vidal's question should have been, 'Always.'" from: 'Regards: The Selected Nonfiction of John Gregory Dunne'

This is a good illustration of what I mean when I say that some of the elements of a good writer include sensitivity, noticing changes, and remembering experiences. As my mother lay dying last month, one part of me just tried to keep from making an emotional scene, but the analytical writerly part reminded me I'd never seen human death-in-action. "Pay attention!" it commanded. I could no more ignore the order than fly away on my own power.

[creativity]

Writing Ideas

Yesterday a pizza company in San Diego qualified for the Guinness World Records with a massive delivery of 13,500 pizzas delivered in a half-hour. I looked at the Guinness website and thought, "What a wonderful source for fiction notions." Look at all the wacky acts people commit just to set a record. Imagine the stories behind them. Imagine what all can go wrong! The creators of "The Simpsons" TV cartoon ran with this one, having Homer make multiple attempts to be the best in idiotic endeavors.

[writing fiction]

Duotrope Markets

A find from Erika Dreifus' Practicing Writer newsletter: a database of over 925 current markets for short fiction and poetry called Duotrope's Digest of Fiction Fields (Markets for Writers). Duotrope says they update about once a day, and check all the listings at least once a week to ensure the most up-to-date database possible. Because this new service is available, Dr. Dreifus is currently offering her ebook on short story markets for free. She also produces a blog, Practicing Writing. [fiction]

Entering Contests

In this week's newsletter from Writer's Digest, editor Brian Klems advocates entering contests:

Winning a writing contest can be extremely beneficial to your career. While it not only can validate all the blood, sweat and tears (and chocolate) you've put into your writing career, it can also cause an agent to actually pay attention to your work. And, if anything, you can at least brag to your friends, family and that silly third grade English teacher who "acknowledged" your greatness by giving you a "C" on your What-I-Did-This-Summer essay.

That said, there's less than a month left before the deadline to enter The Writing Show fiction contest. I've read a few of the entries and have a tip: proper punctuation counts. Good writing ain't written rotten!

[writing contests]

Bloggers Protected

Read in AsiaMedia US: Bloggers can shield sources, court rules: "California appeals court rules on new journalism regulations, online writers possess same rights to protect sources as print journalists"

From the Electronic Frontiers Foundation main page:

A California state appeals court ruled in favor of the Electronic Frontier Foundation's (EFF's) petition on behalf of three online journalists Friday, holding that the online journalists have the same right to protect the confidentiality of their sources as offline reporters do. "Today's decision is a victory for the rights of journalists, whether online or offline, and for the public at large," said EFF Staff Attorney Kurt Opsahl, who argued the case before the appeals court last month. "The court has upheld the strong protections for the free flow of information to the press, and from the press to the public.

[blogging]

WHOI Images

In the ever-constant search for images to use to illustrate writings, I found a new source (still in beta testing) from Woods Hole. The news excited me because one of the first freelance articles I sold concerned the WHOI Indian River Study conducted with the RV Gosnold. Available photos of the research vessel proved disappointing, but they exist. Find out more about the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution On-Line Image Library.

The Research Buzz newsletter offers this information about the library that contains images spanning 75 years of ocean exploration. At the moment the library contains 36,000 images but many more are being added every week.

Though you'll see a login page when you get there, you can browse the publicly-accessible libraries by logging in as guest with a password of guest. Searching is by simple keyword or by metadata; not all images have metadata and I'd stick to keywords. A keyword search for coral found 29 results, ten to a page -- lovely underwater photography. Click on a picture and you get a slightly larger picture (with WHOI WHOI WHOI watermarks on it) and metadata including date picture was taken, keywords, notes, and credit line. Unlike many image libraries you do not get a still-larger picture of the image just by clicking on the one on the image information page. Instead, click on the "View High-Resolutions" link on the left nav to get a popup window with an a) slightly larger image with b) the WHOI watermarks intact.

[resource]

Bain News Photos

From a recent Research Buzz newsletter: LOC Announces Complete Digitization of News Photo Collection

The Library of Congress has announced that all the negatives in the George Grantham Bain news photograph collection (about 40,000 glass negatives) have been digitized and are available in the LOC's Prints and Photographs Online Catalog. You can start at http://memory.loc.gov/pp/ggbainhtml/ggbainabt.html . The entire collection spans from the 1860s to the 1930s, but the majority of the photographs in the collection span the 1900s to the 1920s. You can search the collection at http://memory.loc.gov/pp/ggbainquery.html. The search page is a little odd; there are two forms on it. The top one is for searching the full keywords of the prints while the bottom one is for just searching subject headings and formats. Think full text search engine versus searchable subject index.

Learn more about the Bain Collection. [resource]

Nonfiction Book Debate

To book or not to book is the question for contention over on David Maister's Passion, People and Principles blog.

In today's world, it makes no sense to take nine months, on average, to get your material together and the same amount of time again (amazingly) to get it through the process of publication. Then begins the complicated business of marketing the book and by that time, the thoughts contained in the book are largely historic. By the time you're in print, the odds are high that someone else has already put similar thoughts into play online. ... By publishing work yourself online, through a fast and efficient website, those who want to read the work can be notified electronically of any new material and can read it at their leisure. Who needs a physical book and a bookstore when there's an RSS feed around? If you absolutely have to mail out print copies, you can still do that, too!

For a balanced view, however, read through the comments. They make good points for the value of a book, too. [books and blogs]

Serendipity

In a comment yesterday, Paula Offutt asked if we met by serendipity. It reminded me of this part of a NY Times review of The Book of Lost Books, by Stuart Kelly:

More debatable is Mr. Kelly's suggestion that the loss of a suitcase containing the young Ernest Hemingway's apprentice writings--his first wife, Hadley, was transporting his possessions to Switzerland in 1922, when the valise was apparently stolen--was actually a fortuitous event that forced him to develop his famous style and write the books he was capable of writing.

During my recent sojourn in the Midwest hinterlands, I had little access to the Internet. This was good. It forced me out of the house and into the company of real people. The nasal twang of Mother's friend, Marcia, reminded me of the rich power of dialect when we discussed 'stranged (estranged) daughters. Listening to neighbor Jack spin stories stirred memories of the ones Granpa Jap told me about life in eastern Kentucky during the early years of the last century.

Serendipity can revive us, stretch us, cause our writing abilities to grow or reawaken. What events have contributed to your development as a writer?

[creativity]

Link Swaps

Commentors really slammed poor Nick Wilson over at Performancing.com when he wrote in Why Link Swaps for Blogs Are Stupid:

Pretty in yer face statement huh? I'll bet there are quite a few folks reading this that advocate swapping links, and seeking "link partners" to ahem... increase their blogs pagerank. Well, let me let you into a little secret: It doesn't work. Seriously, it's a useless, fruitless waste of time for you, your readers and the poor sods that you hassle in email about a link swap. What's more, there are far, far better things you could be doing with your time if one of your goals is better search engine rankings.

Rummaging about in the mail sack labeled "Junk", I found several of these pleas. A typical one starts, "Hi. I manage a website called newyorkstate***.com and I think your site would be of interest to the visitors that regularly browse my site ..." and then asks for a link back. Is Writer's Edge about New York? Or there's: Thanks for featuring my article on your blog. You may be interested in my freelance writing tips blog which is here: ... Any chance of a linkback? Or there's: "Dear Webmaster, I really like the posts in ... " If you truly read the blog, how come you don't know my name?

Not only are link swaps ineffective, that's not the way I do business here. See the list of websites way down in the left column, headed "Reciprocity"? It exists only because the owners keep a permanent link on their main page to this blog's main page. (Yes, I check regularly, so they come and go.) I add a website when a search engine reports finding a link to Writer's Edge. Often I've never heard of the blog or person writing it, but usually the content centers on writing. It's a tit for tat situation. I don't ask for the links, and I don't toss them out like Lady Bountiful.

Links valuable to their owners are the ones within posts. I hope they're valuable to you readers as well. Post links are the ones latched onto by search engines and especially Technorati. That is what boost your PageRank and traffic. I don't mind the emails suggesting a website, service, article, or even a post or blog that might be useful to readers. I usually look them over and exercise fine discriminatory skills to select the best for inclusion.

[websites]

Elizabeth Hailey Interview

An exciting opportunity is coming up in a few days. The Spirited Woman Circle Presents Author-Icon Elizabeth Forsythe Hailey in Rare Interview. On Tuesday, June 6, 10 am PST, you can participate in a one-hour phone conversation with the author of A Woman of Independent Means published in 1978, when she was 40. This book significantly re-defined the woman's movement. Selling millions of copies, it became a TV miniseries starring Sally Field, and today tours as a one-woman play.

Presented by SpiritedWoman, http://www.TheSpiritedWoman.com a growing and highly-inspirational woman's empowerment community, the Spirited Woman Circle is an interactive conversation series, meant to uplift women and convey the message that anything is possible in your life and career. Several of the women in the series achieved mega-success post 40.

Be sure to visit Nancy Mills' colorful Spirited Woman website, where you can register for the Hailey interview. I hope to be reporting on it soon.

[writing women]