Publishing in the Digital Age

[We want stories that are] adventure-oriented, certainly, but hopefully with an emphasis on some literary or artistic merit, something to catch the eye and let people know that it’s a little bit different from other genre work they’ve seen.

At what point should publishers expose the book’s entire content to all the search engines?

I suggest using a few keywords that represent your brand – i.e., genre, interests, business or service, and using hashtags (#) with them. Why? This makes it a hot link (this one goes to #snark) to Search – important for you to have more visibility in Twitter’s internal search engine.Also, this is how you show up on Google.

If you’re using a header for your Facebook timeline, now you can use the same one for your Twitter header. Very cool.

EBooks accounted for 6.4% of all publishing in 2010, according to the American Association of Publishers, and 114 million electronic books were sold last year.

EBook lending is growing at a fast pace at the New York Public Library. The number of downloads of electronic books on the library's website grew by 81% in the last 12 months

why would someone pay for an eBook if they can download it free from a library's website?

the internet is potentially lethal to middlemen.

more profitable for authors

make sure that you are really adding value to that relationship with an author,

Not all groups are useful. Group-think can be dangerous. One or two empathy-challenged control freaks can goad a group of mild-mannered scribblers into a verbal Lord of the Flies attack-fest that will stifle the most faithful muse and damage a fragile creative spirit.

“A good writer is not, per se, a good critic. No more so than a good drunk is automatically a good bartender.”

In the United States we’ve developed a concept for these books that relies on the subtle interplay between text and art—a trapeze act, as it were, between writer and artist.

I was shocked to see how few picture books made the new hardcover best-seller list, aside from Jane O’Connor’s “Fancy Nancy” books and titles such as Lane Smith’s It’s a Book. Looking at the list, it’s easy to understand the pressures on editors who love to create picture books. Any bottom-line-driven publishing executive looking at what’s selling in America would order them to hunt for more werewolves, zombies, and vampires.

So possibly the problem isn’t with the genre itself, but what’s happened to it.

Although children sometimes read picture books by themselves, most of the dearest picture book experiences arise from an activity shared between parent and child. The parent is an actor, performing for the child; the two are teammates as they jointly explore illustrations.

moving a work that relies heavily on visual and spatial elements from one medium to another is extremely hard to do well.

Publishers must commission some digital-only picture books to explore what the creative possibilities are when print is not the starting point.

When they’re illustrated to better explain, such as showing you how to knit a stitch or make a candle or a piece of jewelry, wouldn’t a video be a better option most of the time?

Books are illustrated for two reasons: beauty or explanatory purpose, more the latter than the former.

But the illustrated books are in the single-digit percentages most of the time, with some of the more successful categories in the very low double-digits.

Don’t worry about making word counts each day.

writing in a notebook instead of a word processor

a weekly writing day/coffee with a friend.

A Behind-the-Scenes Look. Give us a sense of what it is like to be a novelist. How did you feel when you finally landed an agent? What does a typical writing day look like for you? What’s it like to see your book in print and hold a copy in your hand for the first time?

What are those authors doing in those precious first pages? In every book I looked at they were introducing me to a character so unique and compelling that I cared about what happened when the high stakes action came into play a few pages later. They opened not with a bang but with a voice—a choice well worth emulating. 

Rosanne Parry is teaching "Vampire-Free Fiction: Writing Real-World Novels for Young Readers"

I'm not talking about throwing in the towel on writing.

if a writer is pursuing publication with the goal of making money, they're going to find themselves sorely disappointed.

hose who are pursuing publication for the money are probably better off getting a job at Walmart for a much steadier and reliable income.

publishing is like Hollywood — nobody ever does the marketing they promise.

Mr. Mamet is taking advantage of a new service being offered by his literary agency, ICM Partners, as a way to assume more control over the way his book is promoted.

New Publisher Authors Trust: Themselves