Tuesday, January 27, 2009

SOME PUBLISHING TRENDS

For the entire article go to: http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6516743.html
While trends cited were for 2008, most of the items listed will, in our opinion, carry over into 2009 and beyond.

"The popularity of e-books will increase, with titles formatted for Amazon’s Kindle leading the way. Content for the Sony Reader will sell faster than ever, but by this time next year, Kindle-compatible books will be outselling them by more than 2 to 1...e-books will still make up a tiny share of the market—no more than 2% of sales for most titles—and will contribute only a minimal amount to publishers’ bottom lines.

Publishers will start acquiring specialized Web sites to get content for their books and to target niche audiences. By year-end, every major publisher will need to have an understanding of how to put a value on Web sites...

Although overall sales will remain paltry, increased activity by publishers selling direct to consumers from their Web sites, particularly digital downloads, will lead to “read and listen” bundles of e-books and digital audio and other pricing experiments...

Publishers will push harder to publicize books through the Internet channels as print and broadcast media continue to lose audience to the Web, in particular subject-specific sites."

Mike Shatzkin is founder & CEO of the Idea Logical Company (www.idealog.com) and has been speaking, writing and advising on digital change in publishing for nearly two decades.

Monday, January 26, 2009

WOMEN IN AN ISLAMIC CULTURE



THE PUNJABI'S WIFE is a great read for those interested in the plight of women living in an Islamic culture. This true story is revealing to those who have any doubts that Muslim woman are not treated as second class citizens.

During changing American social conditions in 1968, a naïve nineteen year old Midwestern girl marries an older Pakistani man and moves to Lahore where she lives as a Muslim wife for almost two years. This young girl does not realize that her new husband married her to gain American citizenship and return to the United States. Her life in Pakistan is filled with adventures shopping bazaars, dancing girls, an Islamic red light district, historical Moghal architecture and social turmoil. Slowly these Pakistani real life experience begin to teach this girl how Muslims control and mistreat their women. The danger of fanatic Shiite religious practices and exciting road travel are all balanced with her status as a blond American woman in a foreign land at the mercy of her Muslim husband. This true story unveils an informed observation of Muslim women’s status in Pakistani society. The Punjabi’s Wife is a book that asserts itself as a true American odyssey, a brave young woman’s adventure story and lessons for western women contemplating relationships with any Muslim man.

Thursday, January 22, 2009

FROM THE eBOOK GURU

E-Publishing Tips – Submitting Your Manuscript the Right Way

With the last feature I wrote on e-Publishing a couple of questions came up a number of times. These questions came up both in the comments of the last article, and in my inbox. As always we’re here to help, and today we are answering your questions. The questions were:

Do you know of an e-Publisher that will publish poetry anthologies?

What should I do to get my manuscript ready to submit?

David Barber referred me to All Things that Matter Press as one e-Publisher that puts out great poetry eBooks (they do a lot more than that, but we’ll get to that). Phil, the editor from All Things that Matter, was kind enough to answer my questions so that I could share his insight and answer the other question for you.

My original intention when I interviewed Phil was to use the information he provided me to create an article on the topic. In this case though, his answers are very well written, and I don’t think I could possibly say it any better than he did himself. With that said here are the results of my query with All Things that Matter Press.

The email Interview with Phil from All Things that Matter Press:

What is All Things That Matters Press, and what types of work do you publish?

ALL THINGS THAT MATTER PRESS is a new, small press. Our goal is to help authors, new and established, get their books published and into the marketplace. There are no fees or costs to the author. We look primarily for authors with a ‘message’ who have something they would like to say to the reading public. We are pretty much open on genre, and we have published poetry, science fiction, young adult, non-fiction, and even a romance. We do not want to see ‘formula’ type books or those that are just for mindless mass appeal. If the author has something really important to say about the world we all inhabit, we will take a look. We do not do children’s books, books with a strong religious bias (Christian lit), chick lit, or any books that promote violence, hatred or pornography. We really like spiritual self-growth/transformation titles and those stories (including poetry) that reach out to the soul and touch the heart.

What do you look for the most when a new author submits a manuscript to you for publishing?

What impresses us the most is if the author seems really excited about their book. Even if the manuscript is submitted elsewhere, they have taken the time to gear their letter to us. It is not that we want the author to tell us how great their book may be, but rather they present a tone that says “I have something really important to say to the world and I have done my best to put it into words.” It is also crucial that the author follows the submission guidelines and appears to have read our web site. A turn off is when someone asks questions that are ‘clearly’ posted on our web page. We also have received emails that start out saying something like, “Before I send my manuscript you need to answer these questions.” Well, while we do not at all mind answering questions, an attitude that our press may not be worthy of their submission is not the best way to start. So if an author sends a submission that shows excitement and clearly demonstrates they are attuned to who we are as a publisher, the door opens a bit wider.

What are your suggestions to those new authors when preparing their manuscript for submission?

You would be amazed at how many authors have not even done a simple spelling and grammar check. I saw a post on a web site where they were all upset that we wanted the manuscript to be edited prior to submission. Go to any publisher’s site and count the times you see the word “edit.” Go to any book marketing site or read any article on how to submit a manuscript; lack of ‘editing’ is top on the list of major mistakes that an author makes. We even get queries with typos. If an author does not take the time to do editing of their own work then any publisher will question that author’s commitment to their project. Does this mean that the ms must be perfect? No. We edit all books that we publish for both mechanics and content (consistency, time lines, etc.). No editing is perfect as there are many way to say the same thing, and even grammar is not really an exact science. We always send a ‘redlined’ edit to the author for review and approval. Finally, it is important that a submission be sent in the format required by the publisher. Each publisher is different so if the author has not made the effort to follow simple submission formats they are not starting off on the right foot.

FOR THE REST OF THE INTERVIEW GO TO:

http://www.ebookguru.org/index.php/2009/01/e-publishing-tips-%E2%80%93-submitting-your-manuscript-the-right-way/

BOOKS UNBOUND


The following excerpts are from an article in Time Magazine dated 1/21/09. The url for the article is at the end of this post. It is a must read! This is one of the growing reasons why ALL THINGS THAT MATTER PRESS is focusing its efforts on internet marketing and not 'brick and mortar" stores.

"Fast-forward to the early 21st century: the publishing industry is in distress. Publishing houses--among them Simon & Schuster, Macmillan, HarperCollins, Doubleday and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt--are laying off staff left and right. Random House is in the midst of a drastic reorganization. Salaries are frozen across the industry. Whispers of bankruptcy are fluttering around Borders; Barnes & Noble just cut 100 jobs at its headquarters, a measure unprecedented in the company's history. Publishers Weekly (PW) predicts that 2009 will be "the worst year for publishing in decades."
A lot of headlines and blogs to the contrary, publishing isn't dying. But it is evolving, and so radically that we may hardly recognize it when it's done. Literature interprets the world, but it's also shaped by that world, and we're living through one of the greatest economic and technological transformations since--well, since the early 18th century... If you think about it, shipping physical books back and forth across the country is starting to seem pretty 20th century. Novels are getting restless, shrugging off their expensive papery husks and transmigrating digitally into other forms. Devices like the Sony Reader and Amazon's Kindle have gained devoted followings. Google has scanned more than 7 million books into its online database; the plan is to scan them all, every single one, within 10 years.

And what will that fiction look like? Like fan fiction, it will be ravenously referential and intertextual in ways that will strain copyright law to the breaking point. Novels will get longer--electronic books aren't bound by physical constraints--and they'll be patchable and updatable, like software. We'll see more novels doled out episodically, on the model of TV series or, for that matter, the serial novels of the 19th century. We can expect a literary culture of pleasure and immediate gratification. Reading on a screen speeds you up: you don't linger on the language; you just click through. We'll see less modernist-style difficulty and more romance-novel-style sentiment and high-speed-narrative throughput. Novels will compete to hook you in the first paragraph and then hang on for dear life.

None of this is good or bad; it just is."
For the complete article go to: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1873122-2,00.html

Monday, January 19, 2009

USING "I," GUEST BLOG

Using "I" As a Conceit

By Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of The Frugal Editor: Put Your Best Book Forward to Avoid Humiliation and Ensure Success

I don't know when I learned the word "conceited." I was raised in Utah where most of us didn't use "conceit" in the sense of an elaborate or strained metaphor but rather to mean that someone thought they were extra-super special. The little girl across the street who snubbed me because I didn't wear long stockings with garters (which was an immediate tipoff that I was not her kind) was "conceited" rather than prejudiced. The kid who was quick to make a point of how bright he was when I made a mistake was "conceited" rather than arrogant (or insecure). Gawd! I loved the word "conceited." I could apply it to so many situations and avoid learning new vocabulary words.

Of course, in a culture where being extra-super humble was valued, I soon noticed that our English language is, indeed, "conceited."

I'm speaking of the way we capitalize the pronoun "I." None of the other pronouns are capped. So what about this "I," standing tall no matter where you find it in a sentence?

Recently as I tutored students in accent reduction and American culture I noticed that some languages (like Japanese) seem to do quite well without pronouns of any sort. I did a little research. Some languages like Hebrew and Arabic, don't capitalize any of their letters and some, like German, capitalize every darn noun. So, English—a Germanic language at its roots—just carried on the German proclivity for caps.

But the question remained. Why only the "I?" Why not "them" and "you" and all the others. Caroline Winter, a 2008 Fulbright scholar, says "England was where the capital "I" first reared its dotless head . . . .Apparently someone back then decided that just "i" after it had been diminished from the original Germanic 'ich' was not substantial enough to stand alone." It had to do with an artistic approach to fonts. The story goes that long ago in the days of handset type or even teletype machines little sticks and dots standing all alone looked like broken bits of lead or scrappy orphan letters.

Then there is the idea that religion played a part in capitalizing the "I." Rastafarians (and some others, too) think in terms of humankind as being one with God and therefore—one has to presume—it would be rather blasphemous not to capitalize "I" just as one does "God." Capitals, after all, are a way to honor a word or concept.

Which, of course, brings us back to the idea that we speakers of English are just plain "conceited."

------

Carolyn Howard-Johnson is an instructor for UCLA Extension's world-renown Writers' Program, and author of the HowToDoItFrugally series of books for writers including The Frugal Editor: Put Your Best Book Forward to Avoid Humiliation and Ensure Success. It is a USA Book News award-winner as well as the winner of the Reader View's Literary Award and a finalist in the New Generation Book Awards. She is the recipient of both the California Legislature's Woman of the Year in Arts and Entertainment Award and is a popular speaker and actor. Her website is www.HowToDoItFrugally.com.

CONVERSATIONS WITH EDITORS

This notice is re-printed with permission from a post on WelcometoReadersStation@yahoogroups.com

A great group for authors to join!

Below is the link to a pre-recorded "Conversation with Editors"
Carolyn Howard-Johnson and Yvonne Perry, which covers some of the
common mistakes writers make and how to correct them. We have also
provided helpful tips for impressing a publisher with your query
letter
.

Carolyn is an editor and author of The Frugal Editor: Put Your Best
Book Forward To Avoid Humiliation And Ensure Success (How to Do It
Frugally). Yvonne is a full-time freelance ghostwriter and editor,
and the owner of Writers in the Sky Creative Writing Services.

Here are some of the things we have addressed in the podcast:

Writing title and header case
Is a book titled or entitled?
When to use all caps
How many spaces between sentences?
Serial Commas
Writing for Decades
Hyphenating
Internet and Web site
Using Em and En Dashes
Overuse of That
Writing Dialog
Writing Numbers

Listen to the audio here…

http://yvonneperry. blogspot. com/2008/ 12/do-you- have-questions- about-
editing.html

NEWS FROM PUBLISHERS LUNCH

Another Indie Icon Lost: Harry W. Schwartz Bookshops to Close
The Milwaukee-based group of four independent bookstores will close at the end of March after 82 years in business, president Carol Grossmeyer announced on Sunday. General manager Daniel Goldin is buying the store on Downer Avenue, which will be named Boswell Book Company. And Lanora Hurley, manager of the store in Mequon, "is in discussions" to acquire that location, which she would rename Next Chapter Bookshop, the Milwaukee Sentinel reports.

Grossmeyer told the newspaper, "This has been the most emotional six months of my life, and now it's culminating in a decision that was coming for a while. You want to hold onto the bookshops. It feels so much like the fabric of the community. . . . But we really believe that the multiple-store model that we had become, and that had worked so well for us in the 1980s and 1990s, is not feasible anymore." She indicated that sales at the company fell 17 percent in 2008 "on top of a substantial decline the year before."

Goldin says, "I am very excited, though a little sad, too, that Schwartz is closing. This is a very interesting time to be a book retailer. We know there's a lot of change coming, and I feel that you sort of need to start from scratch to do all the things you need to do to make a retailer work.

"I want to be a community destination. I want to work with local groups and I want to keep our reputation for good author events. I'm going to try to be as clever as possible to get the authors to come. . . . And I plan to work with a lot of Shorewood folk, too. I love the Shorewood customers. I've worked there a lot."
Sentinel

Comment: This scenario is being played out across the country. Independent book stores have been a major market for emerging authors but that well is drying up. But as one door closes, another opens. The internet is the future of books. Regardless of the weather or time of day, you can go on-line and order the latest release and have it in a few days. If you like to read on a screen, you can get your book instantly. Okay, it is not like spending a lazy afternoon browsing book shelves, but it is the direction the industry is taking.

Sunday, January 18, 2009

POCKET SIZED eREADER

We received this info from a group:

publishingandpromoting@yahoogroups.com

This is a great group for authors to join.

It is clear that this reader and others coming onto the market will make eBooks a larger part of the publishing world.

As the world’s first pocket eReader, Readius® exploits the versatility of rollable displays to merge the 'reading friendly' strengths of eBook readers with pocket size form factor and world wide connectivity.

With a display larger than the device itself, and designed around ‘ease of use' and mobility, Readius® is optimised for reading for 30 hours without battery charge.

The 3.5G HSDPA tri-band connection allows worldwide high speed instant updates from personally selected news sources, special services and email. The Micro SD High Capacity storage ensures easy access to other favorite information and eBooks. Readius® also features audio capabilities (such as MP3) for podcasts, audio books and music.

You may want to see the video about this reader:
http://www.youtube. com/watch? v=t4tdtzyjFnY

Saturday, January 17, 2009

ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE

Please Pass It On! If you find my newsletter helpful, please forward to everyone you think might find it interesting. If my newsletter was forwarded to you and you would like your own copy, send me an email, jerry@writersreaders.com. With your sign-up you’ll receive free an 20-page eBook titled “What Writers Need to Know About Marketing.”

WE URGE WRITERS TO SUBSCRIBE TO THIS INFORMATIVE NEWSLETTER

Anything is Possible - The Indies best friendBy Barrie David

I think writers become Indies, independent publishers, for many different reasons. Fame and fortune, seeing their work in print, or more probably for not being among the lucky handful chosen from countless submissions to the ever fickle mainstream. Some go it alone simply to share what they know, what they have seen and experienced with others. I like to think I fall into this last category. When your book is as polished and complete as you can get it and the exuberant dust settles, when family and friends, filled with admiration, (and occasionally the mute silence of envy) have finished raving about it, the Indie soon realises there is none of the formidable marketing backup that a mainstream publishing house would provide. At this point there are two basic options. Rest on his/her laurels - Well - at least I wrote a book etc. The other is the Indies best friend, that miracle of modern world wide communication - the Internet. Setting up your own website is not rocket science or vastly expensive. Seeing your work online, out there in hyper space yet available to VIRTUALLY anybody at the click of a mouse, brings potential that is truly infinite. Its the next stage on the long hard road that may well have begun with a notepad, a pencil and the overwhelming urge to tell a story. The best that can happen…? Well, thats in the lap of the Gods. At the very least, you will get what every writer craves feedback not to mention making a huge amount of new friends.

To see what I mean come and visit me at www.barriedavid.com/

Keep writing. My very best wishes, Barrie David. Author Dormant Courage


BLOGGING FOR FIRST-TIME AUTHORS

THE FOLLOW ARTICLE IS FROM THE WHEATMARK NEWSLETTER. Hey, if it is good advice, pass it along.


Book Marketing Tip

Blogging for First-time Authors

By Kathryn Gautreaux

One of the essential ingredients to a successful book marketing plan is a blog.

A blog will allow you to post journal entries about your process during the book writing stage, to post entries about your publishing timeline, to write about your published book, and to write about everything else you are interested in between.

On the Wheatmark website we have a blog post that includes step-by-step instructions on how to start a blog using Blogger - one of the free blogging sites available.

How does blogging for book marketing work?

It works by establishing a home base for your marketing efforts. As you read other people's blogs, you can comment from your blog identity, allowing them to follow you back to your blog. When you use Twitter, you can put up tweets about new blog posts and also put the link to your blog in your profile so Twitter users can read more about you. This will drive traffic to your blog.

On your blog site, make sure to add a link to where prospective readers can buy your book.

Why does blogging for book marketing work?

It works because it creates a virtual world where you can be the expert on your book's topic and allows people with similar interests to interact with you. The more readers you gain for your blog, the more readers you are likely to gain for your book! By allowing readers to be a part of your journey as an author-from first inspiration to the exciting book launch-you can form a community of people invested in your project and your success!

It can be difficult to get going... So here is a quick list of topics you could start blogging about today!

List of 5 ideas or thoughts -Numbered lists are always winners. It helps the blog reader understand what they are going to be reading and helps them get to the end. This works in a blog about business very easily. You can write about one of your chapters, offer tips, etc. But it could also work for fiction! Say you are writing a young adult fiction book about battling a demon. Your numbered list could be "5 Things You Need to Battle a Demon." It's entertaining and it brings people into your book.

Publish a list of links -Can't think of anything to write? Has someone else written it already? Post a link to the articles on your blog. They'll appreciate the favor and also your blog readers won't feel like you've abandoned your blog for the day!

Take a recent experience and share it-Maybe it is obvious, but writing about something that made you have an emotion is always good fodder for a blog. It lets other people into your world and also allows them to share their own experiences in the comments section. It may even inspire you!

Are you ready to start blogging for your book? Check out the step-by-step blogging instructions on the Wheatmark blog. To learn about more marketing and publishing-related tips, visit Wheatmark's Author Resources as well.

Friday, January 16, 2009

LATEST RELEASES FROM ATTMPRESS



We will list all of our books on this site as well as links to our author web sites. In the meantime, we would like to begin the list of books that are currently available through ATTMPress. Our latest releases are HUMAN TRIAL, by TIMOTHY N. STELLY, SR and THE PROFILE by Gregory Victor Babic.

HUMAN TRIAL-What happens when all that remains of the world is fear, distrust and desperation?
Daron Turner is the leader of a ragtag collection of small town Americans who've managed to survive a thermal war waged by intergalactic attackers. The survivors have gathered together in a sporting goods store, where they not only endure the heat, but ward off marauders, rabid animals and overcome their own fears and in-fighting.
Aliens hope to manufacture a new race that becomes acclimated to earth's environment. With time running out, Daron and his cohorts must force a confrontation, as the fate of mankind rests in their hands.

THE PROFILE-Danielle McCormack, student at Middlewood High School, wants to be a journalist. However, she could not possibly have anticipated, when Dean Lawrence Polking, head of HRL Enterprises, internationally-renowned retailing magnate and hated Destroyer of the Middlewood Old Town Mall, attended the Annual Awards night at her school as the Honored Guest Speaker and returning 'Favorite Son", that her life would be thrown into turmoil and everything she thought she knew about the man and his dream would have to be re-evaluated. ? How could she have known that everything she thought she knew about herself and her place in the world would come to mean nothing against truths and realities she could never have anticipated?

Both titles are now available from Amazon.com, Mobipocket, Kindle Editions and from the ATTMPress E-Store in paperback. The reviews are great and both books address issues that are relevant to today's society.

WELCOME TO ALL THINGS THAT MATTER PRESS

This is the official blog of ALL THINGS THAT MATTER PRESS. While there is one on our web site, we felt that more exposure would be generated here at Blogger and therefore there would be more exposure for our authors and publishing related issues. We will use this blog to highlight our books, relay publishing related issues and to communicate with our readers. We hope you will feel free to make comments.