One of the most perceptive regulars in #FutureChat, The FutureBook digital publishing community’s weekly live discussion, is Carla Douglas of BeyondPaperEditing.com in Kingston, Ontario. And in a recent doing of the discussion, Douglas pointed out that writing, while once among the most isolated and solitary of careers has been made one of the most social by digital… Read More
Music For Writers: Something Of Jeffrey Zeigler’s Life
‘A Scary Move, A Necessary Move’ “When it was announced that I was leaving Kronos,” says cellist Jeffrey Zeigler, “half the people I spoke to said, ‘Wow, you’re really brave.’ And the other half said, ‘Wow, you’re really crazy.’” If anything, Zeigler’s bravery arrives with a bravura that can make you crazy: Something of Life is… Read More
Music For Writers: In Not-So-Dire ‘s_traits’
‘A Sentence Swimming In Uncertainty’ A generous and “generative” heart beats at the conceptual center of composer John Supko and media artist Bill Seaman’ssweetly addictive new release, s_traits, on the Cotton Goods label. The work is among the most writerly studies yet in our series on contemporary composition for authors. The work stands, almost imperceptibly, on a vast… Read More
Is Amazon KU exclusivity a velvet barrier for authors?
It “might be a possibility” at some point that Amazon would consider changing the the Kindle Unlimited (KU) subscription programme’s exclusivity requirement for independent authors, according to Daniel Slater, Amazon Independent Publishing principal. He spoke Thursday (22nd October) on a panel discussion at the 25th anniversary national conference (#ninc14) of Novelists Inc., in St. Pete Beach, Florida. Slater was… Read More
#PorterMeets Crystal Mahey-Morgan: 'Beyond good will'
At the FutureBook Conference on 14th November, Crystal Mahey-Morgan says she intends to to what The Bookseller editor Philip Jones asked for in his Turn up the volume post. Jones, in that reflection on a Frankfurt Book Fair that seemed too quiet to some of us, wrote about #FutureBook14, as we’re hashtagging it, this way:… Read More
Music For Writers: Agata Zubel ‘On Both Sides’
‘The Most Beautiful Place Where The Two Professions Meet’ In earlier #MusicForWriters columns here, I’ve mentioned how many of our contemporary composers are also performers. Caleb Burhans, a composer and multi-instrumentalist, is one. His Excelsior is one of the works in our series. As the notes from Kairos Music on Agata Zubel’s new release, however, point out, the… Read More
Between a Blog and a Hard News Cycle
How Do You Know If You Can Say No to NaNo? The Internet has mutated reasonable people into wannabe writers…We are blind to the harsh truth-light-radiating facts such as ‘half of self-published authors earn less than $500’, facts written about in newspapers by professional writers. That’s Tom Mitchell (@tommycm on Twitter) writing an essay at… Read More
Would You Give An App To a Child?
I really don’t see why adults shouldn’t share apps with their children in just the same way that they share print books with them. Anecdotally, from our social media and other contact with parents, that’s just what the parents who read picture books to their children but also have access to iPads do. That’s Kate… Read More
Crowdsorcery: #FutureChat recap
“Join the crowd” on Friday meant jumping in on our #FutureChat conversation with The FutureBook.net community about all things crowd-ish — crowdfunding, crowdsourcing, a crowded season of releases and new ideas. Even as I create this recap, an email has arrived offering “your very own piece of PeerIndex!” (Exclamation point theirs.) The London-based social analytics platform… Read More
Music for Writers: JACK Quartet + Four áltaVoz Composers
‘The Ride Of Our Repertoire’ “What was that term you used? ‘Screechy?’” John Pickford Richards is laughing at me as he takes a question about how reachy — “not at all screechy, John,” I assure him — some of the music on the JACK Quartet’s new album may be for these artists. As personable a… Read More