If you are working towards publication and own an eReader, chances are there’s a copy of APE: Author Publisher Entrepreneur sitting on your Nook. It’s a manifesto on the art of self-promotion and marketing books aimed at the self-published author, but it’s making waves for wordsmiths of all publication inclination. Its author, Guy Kawasaki, wrote most of this bestselling eBook from a 5-by-5 closet of a dorm in UC Santa Barabara, and he had a few choice words about any authors with finicky writing styles in an interview with Upstart Business Journal: Writers should disavow themselves of the concept of an “ideal venue for writing a book” because it leads to “wimpification”: “I cannot write because the conditions are not ideal.” If you wait until conditions are perfect—the kids are asleep, making straight As, the house is clean, and global warming has been reversed, you’ll never write. A great writer can write under any conditions—not only ideal conditions. But don’t be fooled by his humble writing venue – he’s a successful startup engineer, entrepreneur, former Apple Evangelist, and possibly the epitome of a new breed of author brand. As Swenson Book Development wrote about close to two years ago, there are some hard truths about publication and self promotion authors need to understand, and most of it rests on getting out there and making yourself known. It’s definitely not ‘ideal conditions’ to be an author if you don’t like playing the marketing game. once upon a time all marketing was…
That container gently bubbling in the kitchen, a jar of vegetables and spices and antiseptic salt, is an exercise in patience. It’s a testament of expectation. It’s going to be your sauerkraut in just a few weeks if you can just wait, and taste, and trust. Ellie Sandor Katz’s seminal work, Wild Fermentation, has been considered the gateway text into a world of natural fermented… [Read More]
Filed Under: Authors, book review, eli sandor katz, lactofermentation, wild fermentation, wild fermentation book review
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Writing dialogue is about capturing a character’s voice and revealing her or his motivations. Good dialogue engages the reader in a dynamic exchange between characters. It quickens the pace when there is no action and moves the plot forward. Bad dialogue only relays expository information, which doesn’t feel real to the reader who can’t believe your characters would talk like that to each other. Although… [Read More]
Filed Under: Dialogue, Grammar, Italics for internal dialogue, Punctuation, Quotation Marks, Rules, Style
If you are writer who seeks publication you probably know you need to blog. You’ve heard it’s necessary to build an audience platform. So you know WHY to blog. But HOW do you blog so you get found online? Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a subject duller than watching paint dry for most authors. It doesn’t have to be. And it can’t be if you… [Read More]
Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots (Simon & Schuster, 2012) is Deborah Feldman’s memoir of growing up in Brooklyn in the most insular of Chasidic sects, the Satmars. Fathered by the village idiot and abandoned by her mother, Feldman is raised by her grandparents, a bride at 17, a mother at 19, and a divorcee at 22—at which age she enrolls in Sarah… [Read More]
Okay, there’s no real shortcut to writing, per se. Writing requires you sit down, collect your thoughts, organize them, and turn them into text. But as a writer, I sometimes wonder what button or link I inadvertently touched that made my computer do something wacky and unexpected. Then I realize my knowledge of a set of shortcuts on the keyboard may help me get out… [Read More]