Entries Tagged 'Stuff' ↓

It’s about time for another Fri(edbrain)day of random links:

Advance, or no advance: romance writer Jackie Barbosa divides the royalties pie.

This London Grip article on Emerging Trends in Business and Social Technology takes us from Consumers to Prosumers to Selfsumers to … sumer-wrestling, perhaps?

For Legal Reasons, enclosed CD-R contains no music  – the new Sparklehorse and Danger Mouse album.  Such a great CD,  but if someone hadn’t accidentally dropped it onto the interwebz, we’d never have heard it. There’s a legal stream here.

And finally, new book smell in a can for e-readers? Don’t be ridiculous. "Eau, you have cats!"

I am now a quiet fan of e-readers. I don’t own one, or foresee myself getting one in the next 3-5 years (maybe I should before they turn into this) just cause there isn’t any great choice in the Australian market yet. Anyway this great article from Kasia over at BookSquare once again highlights the discrepancies in e-book pricing.
With the GFC and all that biz, you’d think that publishers would want people to spend money on their books, not have consumers turn against them.
In other news, as someone who volunteered for an arts organisation to get experience and the kudos of having that organisation’s name on my resume, I found this really weird. When you get your foot in the door, you don’t take it out again and run away. (Maybe he got trapped in a Kindle?)

I guess when it comes to digital publishing and ‘the future of the book’ we all just need to take a leaf out of Dave Eggers’ book and ‘calm the f*** down’. People will still love reading and the written word. No need to get all crazy about it.
But if you do feel the need to get active and save the book personally, join in the fight to save Salt Publishing. The publisher was set up after Oxford University Press closed its poetry list 10 years ago. But now they no longer have funding to operate. So they need YOU! They started a viral campaign on Facebook (as well as this). Go and buy a book now!

Ahem, excuse me, writers? I have something rather delicate to discuss with you.
How’s your website going? Brand new design eh? That’s great. Just got a new commission from a popular magazine? Awesome.
Still using that same old headshot? You know, the promo shot your sister took in your backyard with her old digital camera? Or that arty one your photographer mate took with you looking pensive in a fur coat?
I see. Well, I just have to get this off my chest – stop using them. Writing doesn’t sell itself. If you want to be taken seriously as a professional writer, then make sure you look professional while you’re doing it. Image matters, whether you like it or not.
This doesn’t mean you have to ditch creativity in your photos. Just make sure you look presentable. Some smart clothes, lick of face paint or a bit of brylcreem through the ol hair-helmet would be a great start.
Just a thought.

The Brisbane Writers Festival Committee has announced their former Youth Coordinator Jane O’Hara as the new Artistic Director. We’re excited because she knows how the festival works, and she has vision for regional Queensland … hurrah!

And here’s Friday’s links for your clicking pleasure:

• Writing Raw literary sharing website
• Eureka Street writers Awards
• Victoria has voted: Top Five summer read

Writing Race: Special Guest next week is emerging speculative fiction author, Angela Slatter, Aurealis Award nominee and Clarion South graduate. Writing race word count update: 14,816. Join us Tuesdays 8-9pm at AWMonline [you need to be a subscriber - subs start at $19.95].

Have a great weekend of writing, folks!

Us! Speakeasy has been reskinned to match our website and aren’t we looking freshhh…

So here’s what I’m clicking right now:

Write in Your face supports emerging forms of writing practice by young writers, and closes 24 April: http://www.expressmedia.org.au/events.php?content_id=489

Which made me think about this:

http://www.johnmarsden.com.au/home.html and it is now my new fave website, for the look’n'feel.

And then I checked out this new awmonline listing http://www.pulp.co.nz/

because I wish I was groovy enough to submit to it.

This one is not writing and publishing news: http://www.cakespy.com/

It’s just because writers deserve to have our cake and eat it, too.

There. Now I’m going to go and re-read my treasured two-line ‘thanks but no thanks’ email from Nathan Bransford, literary agent. Be still, my beating heart!

What’s your fave writing and publishing blog/website today?

Need something new to read but not really sure what to start on next? Visit reading trails. It is also a social networking site, so you can create trails of your own and share them with others. Pick a trail that interests you and you can either follow a certain trail or head off on a different one when one trail intersects with another one.
Fans of Jane Austen are taking their fandom a bit far. People have started to leave the ashes of loved ones in the gardens surrounding the Jane Austen House Museum and it’s making people a little upset. The collections manager Louise West says ‘is is distressing for visitors to see mounds of human ash particularly so for our gardener. On three or four occasions, our gardener Celia Simpson has found piles of human ash placed in the garden secretly’. That’s taking fandom a step too far isn’t it? And surely in a polite Regency society no-one would be so vulgar as to leave ashes in the garden?

Pan Macmillan books are now available to download from your iPhone. The publishing company has partnered with the e-reader company Lexcycle and will offer a range of titles for download.

Editorial Anonymous has answered an interesting question somebody sent in about whether children’s books can be frivolous or not. Check it out here.

A counterfeiter in the UK has been convicted of illegally selling more than 1 million pounds worth of counterfeit audio books over the internet. The counterfeit books include the Harry Potter series, Lemony Snicket series. In 2005, counterfeiting in the publishing industry alone was estimated to account for £150 million of retail value goods every year, translating into an estimated criminal gain of £30 million (UK figures only).

If you thought Harlequin only publised romance books, think again. They have quite a few imprints like Mira Books, which publishes a lot of diverse stuff, Steeple Hill is their Christian fiction imprint, LUNA is the paranormal and fantasy imprint and Kimani Press publishes African-American fiction and nonfiction. Check out the list here. You might find an imprint that suits you.

Farhad Hakimzadeh, an Iranian scholar and head of the UK’s Iran Heritage Foundation which he formed in 1995, has admitted to defacing at least 150 books in the British Library. He used a scapel to cut leaves for the books from the library’s collection charting the history of European travel in the Middle East and China. Hakimzadeh could have been vandalising books from as far back as 1998.
The Iran Heritage Foundation was set up to ‘promote and preserve the history, languages and culture of Iran’. Dr Kristian Jensen, the head of the library’s early printed collections said ‘Hakimzadeh is eminently characteristic of our traditional groups of readers: he has a profound knowledge of the field. From my point of view, that makes it worse because he actually knew the importance of what he was damaging. What he did was use the cover of serious scholarly purpose to steal historic pieces and abuse our trust’.
This has been going on for 10 years and somebody only just picked up on this? The article didn’t state whether Hakimzadeh gave any reason for the mutilation but as someone in charge of preserving culture, what on earth was he thinking? Is there a black market out there for pages of ancient manuscripts? Apparently when police searched his home, they found some of the valuable pages hidden amongst copies of the less valuable editions that he owned. Does he believe the manuscripts belong to Iran not the UK?

We’ve all heard that different people use different sides of their brain more strongly. In my case, I’m a right-side brain person through and through. I’m “big-picture” orientated (a visionary, as I like to call it). I respond strongly to feeling and am motivated to take risks. I am fascinated by mythology, philosophy and religion and find myself fueled by imagination and inspired by symbols. Sound like you? If it is, us right-brainers tend to be impulsive too – we want big change now… dagnamit! – and we are the kind of people who usually just “get it…” according to News Digital Media, which published a test to determine which side you use.
I attempt to train the left-hand side of my brain, as an athelete trains their body. Left-brainers have got a lot going for them. They’re logical, good at maths, very practical, look at the facts, and are detail-orientated. They recognize patterns, formulate strategies, and tend to stay on the safe side. All good things, when you come to think of it. They’re the people that remember to take lunch to work, look both ways before crossing the street, and always do up their fly up after they’ve been the bathroom.
So I’m training the left-side of my brain by using my mouse with my left-hand. Apart from the semi-valid claims to being ambidextrous, the exercise works so far; I take lunch to work and sometimes look before crossing the street. I’ve since investigated other exercises of right and left brain training, in the hope to benefit my creative writing. I’ve found this: mind-mapping, which is an interesting blend of right-brain creative exploration and left-brain order-making.
Over at The Writers Technology Companion blog, they’ve been looking at where ideas come from. Mind-mapping is a definitely a great tool to record your ideas. Ordinarily, I keep small inspiration notebooks and pens in all my bags, so when ideas strike I don’t forget them! I’ll be trying mind-mapping from now on as it’s defined as “a kind of free-association method in which ideas are generated by association with a central idea, and then each of the generated ideas in turn becomes a source of inspiration for further brainstorming.”
Seems like mind-mapping is like the vesica pisces of your brain – you get to sit on the fence and utilise both sides. Whilst I will continue to bust out my notepad and pen, you could also use an online software tool like iMindMap.

There has been a blogging frenzy at the moment on the topic of Borders (the bookstore) – in particular, their penchant for “skipping” titles. "Skipping" means that a bookstore does not order in a particular title; they "skip" it. Gregory Frost talks about having his new book Lord Tophet “skipped” by Borders on the Wild River Review, despite it being “the lead title from Random House’s fantasy/science fiction imprint, Del Rey Books [and] the sequel to Shadowbridge, a novel that Borders did carry”. Go read it here (cause it’s quite long). While he is aware that Borders is a business and that it can’t stock every title ever published, he thinks the solution to Border-skipping is to skip Borders and head over to your local independent bookstore.
Tobias Buckell also had his book “skipped” but he doesn’t seem as peeved as Gregory. He explains how a Borders store works: “Borders central chooses what books to roll out across the entire chain…Borders stores for the most part aren’t allowed to respond to in-house movement, and are not very independent. When I go around and sign stock (copies of any book stores happen to have on hand) and talk to managers, individual Borders are not able to change their orders.”
So while having Borders skip your book isn’t ideal, he understands it is a company decision. Also, they seem to have been losing money lately and selling the stores, now that could be a glimpse at the industry as a whole or it could be s sign of mismanagement. Other people’s comments on this have been that Borders does stock their books, while Barnes and Noble (another American chain) doesn’t so when it comes right down to it, it is every bookshops right to choose which book they want to sell.
From my point of view, the books that Borders sells aren’t necessarily the ones that I want to read, however you might love the Borders range.
This is just a catch-22 though isn’t it? While a bookstore can never predict how well a book will go, if your book is marketed well and extremely popular bookstores like Borders will want to stock it. But if your book isn’t in Borders, it might not become extremely popular. But that’s publishing for you. You all knew that when you got started didn’t you? If you want a really fantastic post on it all visit Andrew Wheeler’s blog, antickmusings.