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Twitter, Facebook, Good Reads and More When and where should authors use social media? I recently read a blog post about how businesses are using social media. Here, I go through these 10 purposes and muse about how authors might use social media for the same reasons.
Create Vivid Images to Bring a Novel to Life “Vivid imagery makes a story world come alive,” says Stacy Whitman, Associate Editor at Wizards of the Coast (Update March, 2010: Whitman is now editorial director of the Tu Books imprint at Lee & Low.) Everyone agrees that a writer’s ability to create an image in [...]
Book Trailer Case Study: The Book of Spam Some book trailers are sponsored and developed by the publisher; others are done entirely by the author. Witness this glorious book trailer by Dan Armstrong and Dustin Black about The Book of Spam: A Most Glorious and Definitive Compendium of the World’s Favorite Canned Meat. (Atria Books, [...]
Random Acts of Publicity: Word of Mouth About a dozen times these past few weeks, I’ve found myself saying, “Have you seen ‘Julie and Julia’? It’s so funny. Meryl Streep just becomes Julia.” Yes, word-of-mouth is still the best publicity.
Kindle 2 Great for Novels, But Still Needs Improvement Have you been keeping up with the reviews of the Kindle 2, Amazon’s ebook reader? Here are a couple of the most interesting comments I’ve seen:
Many speakers used quotes in their presentations or made memorable statements. Here’s my collection of quotes from the conference: About True Love: “It’s great when a publisher loves my work, but a contract is better; a contract is True Love.” Jarrett J. Krosocka, picture book and graphic novel author and illustrator. Humorous Take on True [...]
One main reason to attend a national conference is to meet editors, listen to how they describe their lists, and find out what they are looking for. Attendees are usually offered an opportunity to submit for a short period of time, even if the house policy is no unsolicited manuscripts. Needs Contemporary, Upper Middle Grade [...]
Where do you find your ideas? Every author gets this question, but I’m one of the few who has a straightforward answer. Go to www.illustrationfriday.com. Friday Ideas 2008 Last year, in the midst of lots of family struggles, I asked several people to join me in trying to come up with more original picturebook ideas. [...]
5 Days on Psychology of Revising For six years, I’ve taught the Novel Revision Retreat across the country and I’ve thought a lot about the psychological issues that writers face as they face the work of revising a novel. It’s interesting that most psychological discussions of writing involve writer’s block. Not much discussion of everyday [...]
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