If Anybody Mentions ‘Talent,’ Just Gobble Louder At the heart of mystique is talent. Which is the ultimate mystery. Why do some people have it while others do not? Shelley Souza That’s the writer Shelley Souza in one of several fine, thoughtful comments from Writer Unboxed late last week. In the lead essay there, I… Read More
Paywall Parkour: How to Rip Off Your Friends
Very pleased to have this essay made the first in a new “Dealbreaker” series at Jane Friedman and Manjula Martin’s terrific new quarterly Scratch — to which I hope you’ll subscribe. This piece is in the “Community” section, not behind the paywall, and you can read it free along with other sample posts at the site.… Read More
#FutureChat: How can we pay authors what they deserve?
Each Friday, join us for a #FutureChat session, live on Twitter, at 4 p.m. London time, 11 a.m. New York time, 8 a.m. Los Angeles, 5 p.m. Berlin, 3 p.m. GMT. As Philip Jones writes in his leader piece, Author yearnings, in The Bookseller today, “That authors are paid too little and that their situation has worsened is indisputable.” Note… Read More
The Muse’s Town Hall: Jane Friedman on Literary in Digital Times
Jane Friedman: “Thoughtful, intelligent ‘literary’ work is doing quite well digitally if you step away from book-length or novel publishing and into journalism-driven or nonfiction-driven publishing…I wish there were a community aspect to it (maybe there will be), which the literary world needs. Where’s the literary person’s version of Wattpad? Does that even make sense? I’m… Read More
Provocations in Publishing: “Engineering Serendipity” at PubSmart
As for serendipity and its engineers, I’ve been looking over my shoulder all week. Surely some wry creature, probably in a Citadel cadet’s dress whites, is there to get off a big wink at me. It’s an odd, if pleasant, thing to find yourself returned to your Deeply Southern hometown by a career that’s moved you as far away as Rome, Copenhagen, Bath, London, Moscow, Sofia, Berlin, Athens. Read More
The Ether Is Moving to Thought Catalog
Ich bin ein millennial. I’m just not telling them which millennium. Launched in February 2010, ThoughtCatalog.com, a property of Thought.Is, is known, not without controversy, as a buslting, cool hub of self-expression for smart writers whose perspective, talent, and purview skew quite young. By Porter Anderson | @Porter_Anderson Writing on the Ether: The Ether Is Moving to ThoughtCatalog.com Read the… Read More
And If the Readership Pulls in Different Directions?
While lots of authors are fond of saying that readers don’t care whether something is traditionally published or self-published, many of them also want to tell you there’s this marching army of indie-only reading author. Read More
A Most Audible Alarm: ACX Chops Royalties
ACX has positioned itself as an enabler of rights “liberation” for entrepreneurial authors…only to then yank half the rug out from under those authors by dropping royalties of up to 90 percent down to 40 percent. Read More
Sir Hugh and the Snail
This champion of self-publishing is signing a new contract, a traditional deal, with Random House UK’s Century imprint for SAND as he did for the WOOL trilogy. Guess what: This is not about self-publishing vs. traditional publishing. Read More
Hugh Howey's Convention: "Organized Advocacy"
Howey’s new Author Earnings report (with more than 150 comments so far) went live at about 1 p.m. ET Tuesday and was quickly and admiringly classified as a “bombshell” by the longtime independence-warrior Barry Eisler. Another deeply pedigreed hair-tearer in the cause, Joe Konrath, picked up the large report and posted it for his avid readers to help out when Howey’s new AuthorEarnings.com site was crashed by eager newcomers. They stepped right up, the leadership did. Notice that? Read More