Reading, Writing, and Publishing Links: 2/13/13

Hey folks! Happy almost-Valentine's day. I have lots of links for you today--it was a good news week. (Actually, these are more than a week old, because I'm way behind on my reading. I'm trying to catch up though!

While you read, please enjoy Efterklang's "Mirador." It's beautiful, isn't it?

I love weird videos.

1. "Shocker: B&N to cut a third of stores over next decade -- WSJ." Writeup by Shara Tibken of cnet. Apparently Barnes & Noble denies it's doing anything differently at all, but in light of this article from a few weeks ago I'm not sure I believe them. I do know that my regular B&N has cut its operating hours by five a week. Something to keep track of, I guess.

2. "Self-Publishing and Traditional Publishing: Enjoy the Best of Both Worlds." Jane Friedman interviews CJ Lyons, who has some interesting things to say.

3. "Secret Ingredient for Success." Opinion piece by Camille Sweeney and Josh Gosfield, of The New York Times, on the importance of self-awareness. Not specifically written word-related, but relevant to anyone trying to make their own career.

4. "Pulp-O-Mizer: The Customizable Pulp Magazine Cover Generator" (by Thrilling Tales of the Downright Unusual." Thanks To Steve Turnbull of the Google+ Speculative Fiction Writers community for passing along this wonderful toy. Here's mine:

Why do they have ray-guns? A better question would be, WHY DIDN'T THEY BEFORE?

5. "Hell is my own book tour," by Adam Mansbach at Salon. This post basically had me at the first sentence. However, the second and third are pretty great, too:

The publishing industry stopped having new ideas out of respect for the untimely death of Ernest Hemingway in 1961, and has been doing everything the same way ever since. Usually without adjusting for inflation.

Fantastic. However, I must point out that Bonobos aren't monkeys.

6. "Buying is a hard thing for bookstores to do effectively, and that becomes an increasingly important reality for publishers." By Mike Shatzkin of The Idea Logical Company.

7. "This is a Post about Plagiarism." Sarah of Clear Eyes, Full Shelves explains why she takes a hard line.

8. Miriam Forster, author of the upcoming City of a Thousand Dolls, shows us some lovely promo swag. I hadn't thought about quote cards, but they'd be easy to do, and would work for self- or traditional publishing.

9. "Best Business Advice for Writers: January 2013." Good links from Jane Friedman.

10. Via the above: "5 Ways Authors Can Get the Most Out of Goodreads," by Brian A. Klerns of Writer's Digest. A little chirpy, but does have some good ideas. I decided after my manifesto a few weeks back that I wasn't comfortable leaving negative reviews of books by people I might encounter socially (seriously, there are a lot of authors around here). However, an "Inspirations" shelf is a great idea, and I've been meaning to set up a proper author page.

11. Also via #9: "The complete and unabridged guide to GoodReads for authors: Account set-up, customization, and widgets, lots of widgets." Guest post by John Corwin at Novel Publicity & Co. Seems to be part one of a series.

12. "A Stake Through the Heart."  Patricia Wrede on character motivation. Helped me clarify a problem I was having conceptualizing the sequel to WOODS.

13. "State of the Digital World 2013."Janet Kobobel Grant of Books & Such sums up some of the key points from this year's Digital Book World Conference.

14. "Have You Planned For Success?" Lynn Price of Behler Blog lists things authors should think about before they make it to the "publication" stage. She raises some good points, but I'm not sure an author who's only gotten one offer of publication is going to turn down that offer just because s/he's not happy with the editors or distribution at that house.

15. On Galleycat, via Cuddlebuggery: "Tor UK Now Accepts Direct Submissions from Writers." So there's that.

16. Also via Cuddlebuggery: "Tamora Pierce wince 2013 Edwards Award for Song of the Lioness series and Protector of the Small quartet." Congratulations, Ms. Pierce! The Song of the Lioness quartet was really important to me when I was in elementary and middle school. Alanna was one of the first books I picked up off the YA paperback shelf at the library when I moved to North Carolina. (Two others were The Hero and the Crown and The Blue Sword.)  I was nine at that point, and I think these books had a lot of influence on what heroes, and stories, I looked for after that. So thank you very much, Ms. Pierce, and please keep writing. : )

And I think that's enough for right now, don't you? Have a great day!

Reading, Writing, and Publishing Links: 1/9/13

Here are this week's links! While you read, check out this song, which has really been in my head this week:

Flogging Molly: "Paddy's Lament"

1. "Writing Like It's 2009." Kristine Kathryn Rusch discusses how the epublishing world has changed over the last few years.

2. Via the above link: Bill Bryson is suing his former agent for "misconduct and profound neglect of his duties." You'd think, with a client as big as BB, the agent would have been a bit more scrupulous.

3. "Le Tarzan Napoleon," Part I and Part II. Not strictly a writing link, but still funny: Horror/fantasy author Lilith Saintcrow tells the story of an enterprising squirrel, a squirrelproof birdfeeder, and several baffled domestic animals.

4. "All new & revised: On wordcounts and novel length." Colleen Lindsay of The Swivet provides a very specific, and very handy guide to what length publishers are looking for in each genre. Link from KellaKnits.

5. "Smugglivus 2012: The Airing of Grievances." If you missed any of the book-and-publishing-related drama this year, The Book Smugglers have a good roundup here.

6. "Giving Mom's Book Five Stars? Amazon May Cull Your Review." By David Streitfeld at The New York Times.

7. "Show Me the Money!" Brenda Hiatt is maintaining a Glassdoor-style list of average publisher advances in the romance and YA genres. Note the enormous range! I'm really interested in data like this--does anyone have any other good links?

My own updates for this week: Five of my stories are now available as an ebook on Smashwords, titled Five Stories for the Dark Months. Also, I've made my Goodreads account public (and here's why).

And that's all, folks. Happy Wednesday!  

On the Subject of Reviews (or, Goodreads and Me)

Over the past couple of years, there's been a lot of online discussion about whether it's appropriate for writers to post negative reviews--or even positive ones!--of other writers' work. A lot of people seemed to feel that it was unprofessional for writers to criticize other writers--like an artist publishing a critique of somebody else's painting, or a musician panning someone else's song. Because I aspired to publication myself, I decided to play it safe, and posted all of my reviews under an anonymous nickname.

Now that the book is almost finished, I've been thinking a lot about building my platform, and have been trying to link up all my online content so that people who are interested can find me in a lot of places. I've regretted a number of times that I couldn't link to my "anonymous" Goodreads account, both because I put a lot of thought into my reviews, and because reading is basically my primary interest. A lot of my friends are on Goodreads, and I love talking about the books I read. I'd love to widen the discussion by engaging with other fellow readers.

A few days ago, I decided to set up a secondary, "public" Goodreads page, where I could link my name to Five Stories for the Dark Months and any other ebooks I happened to publish. In the process, I accidentally linked the two accounts, and convinced myself for a few horrifying seconds that I had deleted my original account forever. When I finally figured out how to separate them (it was just a matter of disconnecting Facebook from the new account), I really became aware of how important my book reviews are to me, and how much I would have missed the interaction here if I had lost it. For that reason--and because I've always felt it was a teeny bit cowardly to keep my reviews hidden--I've decided to get rid of the secondary account, make the first account more or less public, and continue posting under my own full name.

Honesty is really important to me. If I feel strongly about something, then of course I want to express those feelings, even if they're negative. Since of course no one likes every book they read, there will necessarily be some negative reviews here--as there always have been. My personal book review policy (not to be confused with my movie review policy, wherein anything goes) is to be as kind and considerate to authors I haven't met as I would be to writers I meet in my writing group every two weeks. This means that, while I will not sugarcoat critiques, I will always do my best to refrain from snark. I will also be sure to highlight the good points even of books I find seriously problematic.

If you find a negative review of your work here, I know you're not going to be happy, but please understand that it isn't a personal attack. I know how much work goes into writing and editing a book, and I know that I have my blind spots just as everyone else has theirs. If you'd like to respond with a scathing critique of one of my own stories, then by all means go ahead--I could certainly use the publicity. : ) But I hope that, in the end, there will be no hard feelings from anything I post here, and that if we ever meet in person we can do so as friends.