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‘Social’ Media: Muse Abuse

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 author, authors, book, critic, criticism, critique, e-book, e-reader, ebook, publishing, publisher, writer, writing, Jane Friedman, VQR, Virginia Quarterly Review, University of Cincinnati, University of Virginia, UVA, Charlottesville, Porter Anderson, Writing on the Ether, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Google, Laura Hazard Owen, paidContent, reading, Joe Wikert, Mike Cane, Don Linn, Jenn Webb, Kat Meyer, pundits, Department of Justice, DoJ, legacy publishers, Apple, lawsuit, Bookigee, WriterCube, Kristen McLean, TOC Latin America, Buenos Aires, London Book Fair, Mike Shatzkin, Mathew Ingram

 

Nay, ’tis strange, ’tis very strange, that is the
brief and the tedious of it.

All’s Well That Ends Well, II, iii

 

Here in The Prime of Miss Jane Friedman, I surely hope you took in the comments following the excellent Writing she Unboxed here yesterday.

Fiddler on the You Know What was invoked at one point. Sunrise, sunset. And the comments still are trickling in.

So, you know, it happened about the time I fell off that lump of concrete we call a platform. Looked ungainly (when do I not?) but we were all unbalanced, not to say staggered, by the industry study our good colleague Donald Maass brought in, particularly its assertion that “the greatest influence on book purchases, by far, are store displays and word of mouth.”

Word of mouth, sure. We all know that. We got it by word of mouth. Especially from Otis Chandler’s mouth. He runs Goodreads. He has to hope that word of mouth thing is true.

But stores? Stores? I think they meant bookstores. What bookstores? Authors are supposed to be doing advance work for their books in stores?

The only person I know who’s even seen the inside of a bookstore lately is Jonah Lehrer. And that’s only because Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (I miss Brace & World, don’t you?) seems to have read this same study and sent him, bodily, on a tour of every single remaining book emporium in the country. Imagine. I think he was back in time for a late lunch. [Read more…]

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‘Social’ Media: Wishing You Were You

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  O! that you were your self; but, love, you are No longer yours, than you your self here live... Sonnet 13   Now, take Joe Cocker. Mr. "You Are So Beautiful" (really high note:) "to me." Ever heard him talk? Here you go: Terrific interview on NPR – great job by Rachel Martin -- from earlier this month on Weekend Edition Sunday. Cocker's torching for his new CD, of course, Hard Knocks. And I want you to hear him talk. Get a snootful of that dialect. When he speaks … [Read more...]

‘Social’ Media: What isn’t in a name

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    O thou, my lovely boy, who in thy power Dost hold Time's fickle glass, his sickle, hour... Sonnet 126       The so-called "social" media, currently our lovely boy of  communication, hold in their darting packets of data, surely, unimaginable power. They collapse distance across continents and seas we once showed on no maps. Ariel, himself, would weep. They erase the time -- days, weeks, months, even years -- we once waited for … [Read more...]

The State of the Stigma

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The media -- both traditional and social -- is doing a fabulous job spreading the word that self-publishing has officially lost its stigma.  Outlets as venerable as The New York Times Sunday Book Review and PBS.org and have weighed in on the pros of going solo and how the changing landscape has brought this phenomenon into the mainstream. But two major caveats to the stigma’s end seem to have been left out of the conversation.  As an author about to self-publish who’s learned a lot the hard … [Read more...]

Naked

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At this year’s end, with temperatures near twenty and snow fluttering to the ground, I stand before you naked. Don’t blush.  Don’t turn your head. Just look directly at these words. They wear no cover, no jacket.  No pages.  Just like the words of my novel, Veronica’s Nap. In September, I launched Veronica’s Nap…on a blog.  Having had agency contracts for two previous novels that didn’t lead to publishing deals, I realized early in the submissions process this third time around that I … [Read more...]