This is why Hugh Howey talks of self-publishing authors being “maniacally focused” on their readers. Those writers are doing it without even the apparatus and muscle of publishing houses. They’re conquering that fan-fulfillment challenge one reader at a time—a reader earned must be a reader retained. Read More
Scale: That All the Books Should Be Counted
#EtherIssue is on holiday hiatus now, but we’ll return to our regular schedule with Issues on the Ether on Tuesday, January 7, and our weekly #EtherIssue live Twitter discussion on the topic on Wednesday, January 8, at 11 a.m. ET / 4 p.m. GMT. This week, review our big recap of our robust discussion on ebooks and that alleged “flattening” of the market. Read More
Self-Publishing’s Parallel Disruptions
It comes as news to no one in the industry! the industry! that self-publishing is controversial. We may tend, however, to think of it as controversial for that industry, while not looking at what it can mean for writers and writing. It is, in fact, a development full of argument not only for publishers but also for literature. Read More
Leveling Up: In Praise of Writer Dads
I’m grateful to Gonzalez for spotlighting this subject so many are hesitant to touch, not with a 10-foot poll of how many among us think family men can have as viable and praiseworthy a challenge in writing as family women do. Try putting writer dad into the search field on Twitter. Stand well back from your computer. The hits you get will stretch from here to China. Or from Beijing to us.
So why would so many intelligent people, including Tuch—who is with The Review Review and Beyond the Margins and teaches in Boston’s pivotal Grub Street program)—see women and not men as well, when they hear or read or write the phrase “writer-parent?” Read More
Kobo & WHSmith: Said the Online Retailer to the Entrepreneurial Author
For all the promises and expectations of control, authors are still very much at the mercy of the marketplaces in which they’re establishing new prominence. Read More
Rafa, Writing, and "The Inflexible Routines"
When you hear talk about the “joyous chaos” in which creative types are supposed to revel, you’re hearing from people who aren’t creative. The discipline reflected in a few “inflexible routines” can anchor dedication and devotion. I’ve seen a lot of chaos. Little of it has been joyous. Read More
Are You Lonesome Tonight? The Dreaded Solitude of Writing
At Writer Unboxed, Porter Anderson takes on the stereotype of the “loneliness” of the solitary writing life, as discussed on a recent BBC Radio 4 show. Read More
Writer Unboxed: I Know Nothing of Your Work
Porter Anderson, at Writer Unboxed, paraphrases the old Marshall McLuhan line to ask whether we’re more concerned with how we publish than what we write. Read More
Literary Fiction in Tempore Digital
Writing on the Ether is a collection of news and perspectives on publishing. It is written by journalist and critic Porter Anderson for Jane Friedman and it appears at JaneFriedman.com each Thursday. Sponsorship opportunities are available and offer generous promotion. Join us on Tuesdays at Ed Nawotka’s and Frankfurt Book Fair’s Publishing Perspectives for the new Ether for Authors column. Read More
Writer Unboxed | On 'Social' Media
When did we all descend into the Valley of the Corporate-Cute? Shall we say with straight faces that the brave Tunisians – whose dogged grace inaugurated the Arab Spring — tweeted their way to freedom? I suppose they’re lucky that Twitter co-founders Jack Dorsey and “Biz” Stone didn’t consign them to quacking in glory or chirping their triumph. And does it make you love a social networking/sharing/bookmarking service better to find it spelled Tumblr instead of Tumbler? Flickr instead of Flicker? Licorize, Pinterest, YouTube. Read More