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Writing

How to give readers their tree-book fix as an indie author?

Apr 2nd, 2009
by Doyce.
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Publishing today is a confusing mess of issues. Am I doomed to slave wages as a mid-list author?  Worse, will I end up losing money? Does the ‘vanity press’ stigma still exist? If so, does it exist for the reader, or just the publishers? If you’re publishing indie, are you stuck with e-books? If not, what kind of solutions out there? Which ones are ripoffs? How can you get listed with libraries?  How can I get my stories out to people who have a book fetish?

It’s an issue that requires a lot of research, and the answers usually lead to more questions (What are my price points? Whose service is really the best deal? What you do you mean ‘it depends’?)

April Hamilton has a great piece up on her blog Indie Author that answers at least some of these questions while comparing venerable Lulu.com to Amazon’s CreateSpace Lulu vs. CreateSpace: Which Is More Economical For The DIY Author?

A quick excerpt:

One advantage of listing your books through Bowkers and Nielsen, whether you do it yourself or let Lulu do it for you, is that doing so makes your books available for order through any retailer, bookstore or library. Personally, I don’t feel indie books receive enough bookstore or library orders to make this worthwhile, but if your motivation is to make your book available to be listed on Amazon.ca, Amazon UK, Barnes & Noble online and even Borders online, it’s probably worth the expense.

As you can see, it’s not all about the price comparisons of the two services, but also a good explanation of what needs to be done to make your POD product function as a proper book in the main venues.   April has some great free ebooks on her site that explain the whole process involved in creating your own book, starting with writing the damn thing and taking through through the whole indie publication process, so this doesn’t surprise me.

The death of the Emoticon

Apr 1st, 2009
by Doyce.
4 comments

2206_mourning_over_dead_friend1A few weeks ago, I noticed an interesting comment from someone I follow on YouTube, which went something like this.

“This is really great news, which I feel calls for a pretty major deviation from my normal internet posting rules. I know you guys hate them, and you know that I hate them, but just this once, in honor of the occasion, I’m going to type a smiley. :-D”

In the replies to the original poster, I saw a number of people surprised (or mock surprised) at the inclusion of the smiley, and it got me thinking about emoticons in general; has there actually been a drop off in their use?

After almost a week of paying desultory attention to painstaking research on the subject, I’ve decided the answer is a qualified yes. Yes, within the group of people whose electronic communication I regularly read, there has been a marked drop off in the use of emotion-indicating text markers. They aren’t completely gone, but there are definitely fewer showing up than there used to be.

Any thoughts on why that might be?

My personal theory is that emoticons emerged (re-emerged, actually, since they were in use in other non-electronic eras) when communication over the (nascent) internet was starting it’s first major uptick, and more and more people were trying to make use of the written word, sans any other medium, to make a point or (harder still) have a conversation and/or debate. The reason given at the time was that communication solely via text was ripe for miscommunication – that text robbed the speaker of tone and inflection critical to conveying the nuances of an ironic or satirical statement. In short, they were saying they needed a smiley face so that people knew they were joking. (Conversely, readers said they needed the smiley to identify such things.)

Are people less sarcastic/ironic/satirical today? Seems unlikely. Sure, most of us use a smiley here and there, but – at least for me – it’s often to take the sting out of a particular harsh statement; less “this is a joke” than “remember we’re all friends here.” My opinion is that we (the global internet-using culture) have so immersed ourselves in text-based communication since those early digital days that we’ve collectively relearned how to clearly communicate nuance in the medium, as well as how to detect it.

We’ve become better readers. And writers.

Now if we could just get people to stop typing “LOL” as though it’s an actual word.

Adrift: 2nd month of posts complete

Mar 31st, 2009
by Doyce.
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You can read the first two months of Adrift-related posts (from the @finnras Twitter site) here:

The posts are organized in chronological, top to bottom order, so you can read the story in something like ‘typical book format’.

Penguin demonstrates it can be taught

Mar 28th, 2009
by Doyce.
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Penguin Reaches out to Literary Bloggers.

Last week, literary bloggers around the country debated the SXSW Festival’s “New Think for Old Publishers” panel that included Penguin marketing director, John Fagan.

The result was a wake-up call to the publishers on the panel – a debate that was described by my lovely wife as “brutal”. Since then Penguin Group USA has invited bloggers to participate in an online forum to “establish clearer ground rules for how we can best work with the blogging community.”

Simon & Schuster reducing e-book royalties

Mar 27th, 2009
by Doyce.
4 comments

Simon & Schuster reducing e-book royalties | TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home.

Doesn’t make any sense.

The main thing publishers do for writers today is handle the complexities of publishing.

The complexities of publishing are vanishing.

The complexities of e-publishing were never there to begin with. What the blue hell do publishers –

How can they justify something like that, based on services provided?

Edit to add: Further info in the comments.

“What did you say?” I asked.

Mar 27th, 2009
by Doyce.
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The Grammar Wench’s Dialogue Dem0.  Very sharp… and somewhat reaffirming, if only because I’m one of those people who puts two spaces after a period, and can’t seem to break the habit. Nice to know I’m not entirely alone in the world.

Storyball idea goes mainstream, pays authors

Mar 25th, 2009
by Doyce.
2 comments

Hey, any of you folks remember those Storyballs we write all the time?

Well, someone figured out how to take the Fun Thing and turn it into the The Fun Thing Where You Get Paid.

Collaborative Creative Writing Community – StoryMash.

Go. Check it out. I’m going to.

Publetariat Interview: New mediums, Twitter, and storytelling

Mar 18th, 2009
by Doyce.
2 comments

Last week, I was interviewed by April over at Publetariat about the story I’m telling via Twitter. As one of the central touchstones for the indie publishing movement, she thought the whole idea of creating a story via Twitter — something that would really never transfer to paper in its original format — was interesting, and that’s where our conversation kind of started.

The interview went on for a bit, so it had to be broken into a couple parts, but part one is over here: Twitter As A New Medium In Authorship.

Because it went on a while (and because I’m unforgivably verbose when I get going) some bits had to be left on the cutting room floor, but I’m really happy with the thing as a whole, even if the transitions from one question to the next are a little herky-jerky, due to the necessities of editing.

One piece that makes me sound nearly intelligent:

I think it’s long past time that writers look at new mediums for their work. Paper is just a medium, and as our world (and the smaller publishing world within it) changes, it makes sense for writers to take a look at the tools around us and see if there aren’t some that we overlooked. Artists and sculptors do this sort of thing all the time; “Maybe I can paint on this building, maybe I can make something out of this old car… wait, even better: maybe I can paint on this building with this old car! Genius!” Tom Waits likes to go into hardware stores with a mallet and see what kind of sounds he can find.

What do storytellers use? Spoken words… and paper. That’s it. Very recently, people have considered the still hotly-contested idea of taking the-thing-that’s-on-the-paper and reproducing that exact same thing electronically, and that’s fine, but that isn’t storytelling intrinsically designed for the electronic medium – I mean so intrinsically designed for that medium that it doesn’t actually translate well back to paper or spoken words.

Maybe this story about Finnras is that kind of non-transferable thing – if so, I’m comfortable with that. It’s fun for me and for the people reading it.

The following sentence, which was cut for good reasons, but which I like: “People are trying to take things that were built in/for an electronic medium and force it ‘back’ into a paper format. I’m starting to think ‘maybe you can’t always do that, and maybe that’s okay.’”
Anyway, it was a lot of fun, and got me thinking about things which, frankly, I usually don’t. Parts 2 and 3 go up next week.

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