After taking a break to set the world record for most meetings attended in a single hour (we also came close to most meetings in a single day), we return to our interview with the brilliant mind that is Booksquare. In theory, this interview covers the who, what, when, where, why, and how of character blogging. So far, we’ve touched on how, a little bit of who, and where with a bit of what. Let’s get this party started (yes, hello, caffeine!):
As the week continues to break the World Crawling Record, we continue our lengthy discussion with one of our favorite people. For those just catching up — and, yes, we are implying that you missed yesterday’s brilliance — we are answering the question that nobody has bothered to ask us. Yet. Sad but true: we could pretty much do this forever. You’ve been warned. Yesterday, we discussed the “how” of character blogs. Today, we’re thinking about where and what. Let’s jump right in.
So it’s like the slowest week in the history of the world — and we can’t find a thing to inspire us. Thus, we turn, well, to us. Yeah, well, you try to find inspiration on a Tuesday morning in August. Not so easy, is it? We’re heading up to Yosemite for the annual Yosemite Writer’s Conference this coming weekend. We’ll be speaking on various aspects of blogging and online promotion. As we mentally prepared to Talk To People, we got to thinking about character blogs — you know them, and either love or loathe them. We were thinking so
The current war in Hollywood about reality shows and writers will not be the stuff of legend…unless you happen to believe that reality shows are off-the-cuff and spontaneous and, well, real. In that case, you’re going to have more than a few illusions shattered. Sorry. There is scripting on those shows, and the writers are seeking union representation under the auspices of the Writers Guild of America. This action will lead to increased production costs for the shows. Right now, they are management darlings because, relatively speaking, they are cheap to produce. Fair wages and benefits have a nasty habit
With the smash success of “The Da Vinci Code,†publishers have been increasingly attracted to entertaining fiction with a dollop of erudition. Holt Bets on Mystery Novel as a Fall Best Seller
Apparently, there is a rise in agents charging upfront and reading fees in the United Kingdom. Of course predators exist everywhere — if there is a sucker born every minute, then there is also a huckster born soon after. What perplexes us is the fact that people fall for these tricks over and over. We were particularly struck by this notion: One reason for the rise in complaints is that demand for agents vastly outstrips supply. “Too many people want to be published,†[Clare ]Alexander [president of the Association of Authors’ Agents] says. But why? Are there really so many
We know that the book-buying audience is diminishing, and it’s just such a heroic effort to stay alive. We know that the reading audience is diminishing; we know that certainly this generation of kids has a lot more to do to distract them from reading books than one or two generations ago even. So part of it is the changing economics of publishing, and the need to have a healthy bottom line. And commercial work always, in the history of publishing, ensures the bottom line whereas literary work never does. And that’s just the way it is, and that makes
Maybe it’s because the BS husband has been practicing to be old since he discovered that old people can say whatever they want and get away with it, but we find Otto Penzler’s brand of crotchety sort of cute, in a “huh?” sort of way. See, Penzler hates chicklit for its cynicism — but his argument is, hmm, peculiar at best. He chides Jennifer Weiner for her realistic (realistic not necessarily being the the same thing as cynical) attitude toward the publishing industry; he lauds Mickey Spillane for writing blatantly commercial work and referring to his readers as “customers”. Penzler
If we have learned anything from MediaBistro’s “From the Editors” series, it is that editors are scary young. Naturally, we also went for real-life verification of this fact, discovered that the ages noted in the articles largely correspond to what we’re seeing in the real editor world, and slumped into a mild depression. That is what you do when you realize you still haven’t figured out what you want to be when you grow up. But this isn’t about our emotional problems — today, we are excited to point you to a lovely interview with John Williams of HarperPerennial. Let
Recently, a friend asked, “How do I get friends on MySpace?” Now, while the snarky answer was, “You have to be a friend first”, it wasn’t entirely untrue. Social media sites are often part of an elaborate numbers game — the most popular user of MySpace has over a million friends. Let’s all be honest here: she’s not sending that many Christmas cards every year. Rachel Kramer Bussel’s article at MediaBistro about MySpace discusses how authors can use the social network to build audience. It’s a cautionary tale if we’ve ever read one. The key to remember is that MySpace
