Characters on Characters

Characters on Characters: I listened to Walter Mosley, Edwidge Danticat, and Dennis Lehane discuss their characters with Harold Augenbraum of the National Book Foundation. Highlights: Lehane said the best opening line is one such as “Joe realized he was out of milk,” because your readers will keep following Joe until he gets that milk. Mosley said he never does research, because a fiction writer is “in the business of telling lies,” and Danticat said that she has to leave a place before she can write about it, otherwise the reality gets in the way of the place she’s creating. All of them objected to the idea of their characters as “dark,” saying that exploring what people do in difficult situations, and the complexity of human nature, is what they are really interested in.

Publish A Cook Book

Now why can’t somebody publish a cook book like that for me? Save me from the dinner I just had:

Open one can of tuna fish and drain oil. Use a fork to extract the tuna from the can onto a plate. Rinse one tomato and one small cucumber (pickling size). Dice the tomato and the cucumber onto the plate. Take an unsliced loaf of bread, slice off bread to taste, plate with the tuna, tomatoes and cucumber. Add salt. Sit in front of the TV, use the fork to get some of the tuna fish and vegetables onto a piece of bread, eat like a starving man.

A niche cook book for non-cooking bachelors might be a hit with a self publisher. I suppose it might even work for a trade publisher if it were humorous enough. The ideal for me would be a cookbook that features meals that can be prepared in seconds from ingredients that keep for years, and nutritional information. Focus on the fiber and the protein, please.

Cultural Places

There is a new publishing at Roosevelt High School, and they are looking for submissions to their literary anthology, Between Two Rivers. This will be a collection of pieces about unique and cultural places and people in Portland. The intended audience is anyone who is seeking out places that make Portland special, whether as residents or visitors.

The anthology will be multi-generational and feature new and established writers of all ages. Kim Stafford, Eva Williams, and Lidia Yuknavitch have already contributed pieces. There are plans to distribute to local bookstores and businesses.

Submissions can be short fiction, nonfiction, poems, vignettes, or drawings about your relationship to the people and places of Portland. They could also be interesting facts or historic information that enrich one's appreciation of Portland's community or places.

PRINTING On Demand Is A Technology

 In responses, Dick Margulis emphasizes: "PRINTING on demand is a technology, digital printing, that can be used by all kinds of publishers, from Random House down to the individual self-publishing her first book....you can buy print-on-demand service directly from a printer with no middleman. So-called PUBLISHING on demand is a phrase vanity presses latched onto to co-opt the “POD” initialism and suck people into the vanity press business model. The problem is that a lot of people who understand the difference nonetheless play into the vanity presses’ hands by tossing around “POD” without clarifying the distinction between print-on-demand (the technology) and publish-on-demand (the business model)."

Fern Reiss (whose five books have been successfully self-published) points out that using a POD subsidy publisher precludes many sales or makes them difficult: "by the time you pay the POD/​subsidy company, and factor in the wholesale discount that the middlemen require, the price points are too narrow for most bookstores or libraries." (Bookstores generally want a 40% discount and the right to return books.) POD subsidy editing is substandard and although major review media such as Publishers Weekly and Library Journal occasionally review self-published books, they never review POD subsidy books. Digital printing may be a good idea in some circumstances, but you don't need to "sign with" a POD subsidy publishing to do digital printing.

What you want to do is arm yourself with enough knowledge that you can take advantage of POD printing if it makes sense for you, but not if it doesn't. One way to use it, for example, to create an early version of a book to test on readers, get reactions, and then improve the book (it's like asking people to read a manuscript, but making it more readable and portable for them). Maybe do this more than once. Then use POD to create a test run of the book. Then, if the book seems to have potential, do a regular print run with an offset press. Be sure to protect your rights and weigh the economics of each approach.

Put one teaspoon of Taster’s Choice instant coffee in a ceramic mug

Back in those aforementioned college days, my basic bachelor’s diet was dark tuna fish every other day (88 cents for two cans at Star on sale) and macaroni on the days that fell in between for dinner. I used to melt American cheese on the macaroni, not realizing at the time that it wasn’t so much cheese as solidified vegetable oil with cheese flavor. Sometimes I’d get creative and boil some rice and fry an onion instead. My roommate used to accuse me of being ascetic, but I saved my pennies for lunch, which was either a meatball sub from the roach coach on the quad or a slice of Sicilian pizza from the Greek place on Huntington Ave. Breakfast was coffee and a cigarette.

Twenty years later, I’m not really in a good position to write and publish a cook book, but I’d love to find one that met my needs. As a bachelor who really can’t be bothered to do much more than boil water on a hot plate, it would have to show some real imagination. Unlike the me of twenty years ago, I actually care about things like nutrition and dietary fiber these days. For example, I quit smoking cigarettes and started eating a little breakfast some years back, which eventually standardized on oatmeal. Then I got bored with plain oatmeal and wanted more fiber, so I ventured into bran cereal with yogurt, but the stuff requires refrigeration. About two years ago, I finally figured out how to combine the best feature of bran cereal (dietary fiber) with the best features of oatmeal (texture and hot) as follows:

Put one teaspoon of Taster’s Choice instant coffee in a ceramic mug. Fill to within a half-inch of the brim with bran cereal. Next add boiling water, noting that the level of the cereal will drop as the flakes become water logged, and stop adding water when the top flakes are just above the surface. Next, stir the mixture with a tablespoon, making sure to dissolve the instant coffee throughout the mixture, and let stand for 3 to 5 minutes to solidify. Eat bran-coffee cereal with a tablespoon and try not to get it on the laptop keyboard, because it hardens like cement.

That’s Another Story

Fifteen or so years ago when I was unhappy about everything from the way the world worked to the way my stomach didn’t, I went on a vegetarian kick. I kept it up for a year or more, and while I didn’t go so far as eliminating tuna fish (one of my five basic food groups), I stayed away from meat and prepared foods. It’s the only period in my life that I bought any nutrition or cook books. I was actually forced to cook some when I was a vegetarian, and I worked as a cook a few places in my college days, but I do very little of it now. In fact, I haven’t had a stove for around ten years, and I’m currently staying in a temporary apartment in Jerusalem without a refrigerator for three months, but that’s another story.

Adventure Girls books

The seller of the Beverly Gray books also had the complete set of Adventure Girls books.  He mentioned the Adventure Girls books before my Beverly Gray package was shipped, but I waited until after I received the Beverly Gray books to indicate my interest.  The seller did not show the spines of any of the books in the photos, so I wanted to make sure that the books were in as good of condition as expected before I bought any additional books.

Since the Beverly Gray books met my expectations, I let the seller know I was interested and was able to purchase the Adventure Girls books on the day that they were listed.  These are the books that I purchased.

Big Find

I purchased a bunch of Hardy Boys books with dust jackets.  One or two of the higher-numbered ones could be first printings, but I have not yet checked to see.  The rest are nowhere near first printings.  Almost all of the books are tweeds.

I purchased a few Hardy Boys picture covers with the original text.  I could have purchased others with the revised text, but I find those to be about impossible to sell so I chose only the original text books.  I purchased three Trixie Belden books.

While great, the above books are not the ones that excited me.  The books seen in the next photos are the ones that thrilled me.

The truth about print-on-demand (POD) publishing

Fern Reiss (whose five books have been successfully self-published) points out that using a POD subsidy publisher precludes many sales or makes them difficult: "by the time you pay the POD/​subsidy company, and factor in the wholesale discount that the middlemen require, the price points are too narrow for most bookstores or libraries." (Bookstores generally want a 40% discount and the right to return books.) POD subsidy editing is substandard and although major review media such as Publishers Weekly and Library Journal occasionally review self-published books, they never review POD subsidy books. Digital printing may be a good idea in some circumstances, but you don't need to "sign with" a POD subsidy publishing to do digital printing.

What you want to do is arm yourself with enough knowledge that you can take advantage of POD printing if it makes sense for you, but not if it doesn't. One way to use it, for example, to create an early version of a book to test on readers, get reactions, and then improve the book (it's like asking people to read a manuscript, but making it more readable and portable for them). Maybe do this more than once. Then use POD to create a test run of the book. Then, if the book seems to have potential, do a regular print run with an offset press. Be sure to protect your rights and weigh the economics of each approach.

Old Books

I saw an ad for an estate sale that advertised "hundreds of books."  Estate sales almost never have series books, and when they do, the books are of minimal interest and hugely overpriced.  I had this nagging feeling that a big stash of books was waiting for me today, and that I had to go out to find it.  I get this feeling sometimes, and I have to act on it or else I will worry for the rest of the day about what I might have missed.

Gasoline costs too much these days to go out on very many random searches for books, and I did not want to go to yet another estate sale that advertised books and would have absolutely nothing of interest.  I have had very little luck lately.  But I could not shake that nagging feeling that today was a day for a big book find.  Most of the time when I have that feeling, nothing ever comes of it.  Since occasionally I am right, I just cannot ignore it.

I decided to go to the sale even though I would end up burning at least $10 in gasoline.  The estate sale did indeed have hundreds of books, but the books were all modern softcover general fiction books from the last 20 years.  As usual, that sale had books that were of no interest to me.

While I found nothing at that particular estate sale, going to it resulted in me checking a couple other locations which did result in a big book find.  My nagging feeling about a big book find was correct!  Here are photos of some of the books that I purchased.

Finding David Douglas

"The Oregon Cultural Heritage Commission in partnership with the U.S. Forest Service and Forestry Commission Scotland has completed the documentary film Finding David Douglas (FDD). More than four years in the making, it is the first film ever produced on David Douglas (1799-1834), the remarkable botanist / plant hunter from Scotland who explored western North America in the 1820s and 1830s — a time before white settlement altered the landscape. Today, we widely remember Douglas through the tree named in his honor — the Douglas fir.

FDD focuses on David Douglas’s contributions to science — forestry, botany, and horticulture — and his relationships with Indians and Hudson’s Bay Company employees he met during his travels. Douglas introduced more than 200 new species to the gardens and forests of Europe. Words from his journals and letters form the structure of the narrative script. Douglas’s enthusiasm, sense of adventure, curiosity and determination shine through Finding David Douglas.

This film portrait of Douglas — an environmentalist before his time — encourages today’s audience to appreciate fully the natural world and how one person’s efforts can make a difference. The production team collaborated with Parks Canada, the World Forestry Center, and an international advisory coalition of scholars and scientists from across North America, the United Kingdom, Hawaii and France.

The documentary was filmed in locations that David Douglas actually appeared — in Scotland, England, throughout the Pacific Northwest, into northern Canada and remote York Factory on Hudson Bay, and in California and Hawaii. Rare botanical illustrations and period images (paintings, drawings, photographs and maps) join on-camera interviews in creating the visual magic of Finding David Douglas."

Amazon pulled the titles

I've been in publishing only a short while, but I've been around it enough to have seen some of the big brew-ha-has involving Amazon. The first was when Amazon yanked all print-on-demand titles not produced through their print-on-demand arm. The second was when all MacMillan ebook titles were pulled during the great agency debate. Well it's happening again.

Independent Publishers Group, a large distributor for independent presses and authors has had all 5,000 of their ebooks pulled from the Amazon kindle. The print versions of their books are still for sale.

The reason, is that their ebook contract was up for renewal and IPG wanted the same terms, and Amazon wanted a deeper discount. When they couldn't agree, Amazon pulled the titles.

the purpose of art

On being published, diversity, the poet's task, the purpose of art.

What does it mean to be published now? 
An interesting discussion on writing and being published started in the fictionaut forum and continued in the blog of author Marcus Speh.

A More Diverse Universe Reading Tour 
Concerned by the lack of diversity in fantasy fiction, particularly fantasy fiction of the epic nature, a group of bloggers who got together to create a "More Diverse Universe". The idea of the blog tour: to highlight fantasy/sci fi/magical realism novels written by a person of color. The full blog page with links is now online.

The Purpose of Art + The Poet's Task
Ponderings on art, poetry and words, from the quote: "A poem is a machine made of words" to the Modern & Contemporary American Poetry (ModPo) class, which sparked the discussion on the purpose of art (" Is the purpose of art to think about what art is?") - and: What's the task of a poet?
 

Facebook

his might be interesting for all who follow literary magazines, indie publishers, authors, books etc. on facebook: in the last weeks, facebook changed their algorithms (again..), to the effect that posts from pages you "liked" now are listed less often on your personal facebook pages.

One option to increase / get back the messages from those pages is to visit each page again in facebook, and then click on the blue control field next to "Liked", and select "Add to Interest List"... and repeat that with all pages..

Or, you could click to a new page that facebook added to their system: it lists all content from the pages you subscribed to is listed, sorted by date and time。

Hybrid-published

Okay, this really isn’t a different publishing model, but rather recognition that authors that do more than one type of publishing simultaneously. Joe Konrath is a great example of a hybrid author as he has self-published titles, big-six titles, and amazon titles. Nathan Lowell is a Ridan author who is also a hybrid as he has his Trader Tales books done through us but has self-published shorter works as well as his fantasy series.

But why should I break out a Hybrid-published author? Because if you plan on being one…you need to pay particular attention to you contract details…or you won’t be able to be a hybrid author. When my husband (author Michael J. Sullivan for those new to my blog) went to sign with big-six Hachette we shocked to discover that we weren’t signing up to just one series, but there were clauses that could affect publication of OTHER yet to be written works. This wasn’t Hachette trying to “put the screws” to Michael…as we learned the clauses are standard and exist in virtually every contract especially offered by the big-six…but that’s exactly the point and why I’m bringing it up. Michael’s original contract could be a career killer. It has stipulations like he couldn’t publish ANYTHING until six months after the book was released but they had up to two years to bring it to market. Seriously? He can’t publish anything for possibly two and a half years? What’s more he could also be prevented from writing fantasy books, so no possibility of sequels or prequels. We considered these restrictions “career killers” and almost didn’t sign. After four months of negotiation, we finally got the clauses adjusted so that both sides were satisfied but I wanted to ensure that he “could” become hybrid if that is a choice he wants to make. Nathan is fortunate that he is signed with Ridan as we place no restrictions on other works…none whatsoever…so becoming a hybrid was an opportunity he could avail himself of.

The Continually Changing Face of Publishing

• First, Amazon is unique in that it has access to the biggest reader database in existence. Not only do they know buying habits, but they have millions of email addresses. As proven by their recent invention “deal of the day” they can place any title in the top 10 anytime they want to and this can mean a pretty big spotlight at any time. This is a good thing for Amazon-published authors.
  
• Second, they have instituted exclusivity practices that limit the distribution of their author’s titles. In particular, if you are published through Amazon your ebooks won’t show up in the ibookstore or Barnes and Noble or anywhere else. To maximize sales you want to make it easy for people to buy your books and cutting out entire segments of the marketplace doesn’t help the author. I realize why Amazon is doing this…and it might turn out the best thing for their authors (high concentration in one place rather than diluted sales) but all in all I think this is very bad for the author.
  
• Third, no bookstore presence. Yeah, I know…bookstores are closing…they aren’t as important as they once was…I get it. But the fact remains there are still a ton of sales sold through stores and for some authors they won’t consider themselves a “real author” until they see the books on a shelf at their local B&N. Originally it was the indie bookstores that banned Amazon produced books. But now Barnes and Noble and Books-a-Million have instituted similar bans. Originally my thought was… “If a book is a bestseller they’ll have it for sale.” Now I’m not so sure. They are drawing battle lines and I don’t think exceptions will be made. This is terrible for authors who signed on with Amazon with the promise that they’ll have both print and ebooks. Sure, they’ll still sell books online…and that is a large number of books but in many respects I think the selling point of going with a publisher is widespread distribution. Since Amazon authors don’t get this it helps to put them in a different category.

bookbinding book

The very first bookbinding book that I got, was the Japanese Bookbinding book by Ikegami. I was entirely impressed with all the history included in this book and I read every word and made every project. One of my favorite notebook structures from this book is this simple account book structure. This structure is called daifuku chō and it was used during the Edo period (1603-1868) for travel diaries, guest registers, and primarily as merchant account books (Ikegami p.68). Ikegami includes a photograph of an account book from the mid-1800s and that always catches my attention when I go through his book.

So a while back, I decided that I would try to replicate the "look" of that mid-1800s current-accounts book. The first thing I had to do, was figure out how to recreate the Japanese calligraphy. Since I'm not a calligrapher, and know nothing of Japanese writing at all, I had to figure out something that I could manage. So I carved some rubber stamps to recreate the Japanese characters on the cover.

Sea Bandits

Sea Bandits is a project from Yay Words! - Poets were invited to submit short form poetry and artwork about the sea and/or thieves/thievery. Each poet who submitted was guaranteed at least one poem into the collection, the formats range from haiku, tanka, sequences, rengay, haibun, haiga to prose poems.

The collection is part of an ongoing series edited by Aubrie Cox, she notes: "As I was putting this collection together, it occurred to me that it’s nearly been a year since I started putting these PDF collaborations together on my blog, starting with the backlit fog at the end of September 2011."

The Kindle

Do you know the Kindle is 5 years old this month?

My first thought on learning this fact was "Damn, the Kindle has only been here for 60 months. Seems its been with us much longer --- Time flies faster when you get older!"

Let's take a look at a little Kindle history tonight --- how and why it (Kindle) came about AND most importantly what was the single magic trick that made it a success (after other such devices failed) --- and further how it '...expanded Amazon’s appetites and put it on an inevitable collision course with other high-tech heavyweights making a play to dominate the coming age of digital media. “It’s no longer about Virgin Media or Barnes & Noble (BKS),” said Scott Devitt, an analyst at Morgan Stanley. “It’s Apple and Google and Samsung and Microsoft..."'

"View From Here"

In a celebration across boundaries that is inspired by the upcoming Frankfurt Book Fair in Germany, where New Zealand is featured country, writers and artists from both countries share their persoanl "View From Here".

"We asked contributors to share entries for the theme "View From Here" and we ended up with a beautiful collection of photography, poetry, story and reports from all around New Zealand and Germany," says Michelle Elvy, who edited the issue.

The views reach from the north of New Zealand and meander through Northland to the west coast, from big city to country meadows, and all the way to ChristChurch — and in between scoot from Bavaria to Scotland, from Berlin to Hikurangi.

Contributors include Trish Nicholson, Beate Jones, Paula Green, Siri Embla, Gus Simonovic, Christopher Allen, Gill Hoffs, Andrew Bell, Marcus Speh, Piet Nieuwland, Leanne Radokjovich, Frances Mountier, Hinemoana Baker, Lesley Marshall, Rae Roadley, Helen Lowe, Karen Tribbe, Vaughan Gunson, Cecelia Wyatt, Maureen Sudlow, Michelle Elvy and Dorothee Lang.

The Frankfurt Book Fair Opened

the Frankfurt Book Fair opened its doors again - it's one of the largest and oldest book fairs, a meeting point for over 7300 exhibitors from more than 100 countries, with a tradition that spans more than 500 years. The first 3 days of the fair are business days, the weekend is for the general public.

The guest country this year is New Zealand. Focus themes were: e-books, science and education, art books, comics. Some impressions with links:

Writers Abroad

Writers Abroad has published their third Anthology entitled "Foreign Encounters" - a collection of stories, non-fiction and poems. All proceeds from the sale of Foreign Encounters will be donated to Books Abroad, an organization that helps to educate children worldwide by sending free school books that are carefully chosen to match the need of each school.


Encounters can be a chance meeting, a planned get-together or even a confrontation. This collection of stories, non-fiction and poems features a variety of foreign encounters: with family, friends, lovers, animals, cultures, or just with one's own prejudices and preconceptions.


Writers Abroad is a community for Expat writers. The group was formed to help overcome the potential isolation and difficulties that Expat writers may face in their adopted country. Therefore the aim of the group is to provide mutual support via feedback, critiques and editing to enable members to develop their writing skills with a view to further publication including competitions.

Publishing Is Changing

In numerous previous posts I often said something to the affect that traditional publishing wasn't dying or dead but merely wasn't the only kid on the block anymore.

Publishing has indeed been changing --- BUT, it has always been changing --- since the beginning of parchment and quill (you get my drift; by the way the history of paper is interesting as well as writing instruments).

We have just been caught up in (experiencing) a link of time in the long chain of publishing change. Call it the digital link, if you will.

So, in this particular publishing link (change-cycle) we call digital publishing alternate publishing. Simply because it's new.

The new, faster and cheaper paths to publishing has caused confusion among writers.

What should a writer do? How should s/he publish? Traditional, digital, self-publish or otherwise?

Well, it depends on who your audience is and what purpose your writing serves.

Vegetable-sourced

Concerns for the well-being of our planet can promote avenues for an alternative resource to printing. Vegetable-sourced colours do represent a realistic alternative -- using berries, leaves, flowers, fruits, roots, bark and insects. A mordant (we used alum) can help the dye colour become permanent.

The screen-printing process offers artists a way to produce multiples without the investment of a press and other large apparatus. The basic equipment consists of the screen (a wooden frame with a fine-mesh fabric stretched over it) and the squeegee. This is a rubber blade set in a handle with which the organic ink is pulled across a prepared photo-based screen. The mesh transmits an even coat of ink which adheres to the paper below the screen.

best-selling books

Trafford Publishing, the pioneer in on-demand self-publishing, has announced its top best-selling books from April 2010, according to point-of-sale data from major U.S. booksellers. The following self published titles are listed below.
Poverty and Prison by Chris Napier This memoir narrates Napier’s story as he navigates a childhood of poverty in Prichard, Alabama. He had served more than a decade and a half in prison; and transformed his life by becoming a Muslim.
Teach Your Child to Read in Just Ten Minutes a Day by Sidney LedsonA book that discusses the phonic program that made preschoolers as young as two begin reading at the Sidney Ledson Institute for Intellectual Advancement. This light-hearted, yet scientifically advanced, method permits parents, schoolteachers and even babysitters to quickly teach children of all ages to read.
Yoga Posture Adjustments and Assisting by Ms. Stephanie PappasThe first comprehensive guide for yoga teachers and yoga students that provided all the details on how to adjust or assist someone while they are performing yoga. With yoga’s recent worldwide popularity as one of the best forms of fitness exercises, this book is invaluable to millions of readers who teach or practice yoga.
Better Than Steroids by Dr. Warren Willey A summary of what you need to know to be a successful bodybuilder, athlete or just to look good, Better Than Steroids covers in a stepwise fashion the information you need to succeed. A review of why and how anabolic steroids work will lead you into why food programs, eating plans and tricks like the pre and post workout meal are not only comparable to anabolic steroids, but better!

Mindy’s passion

The highly finished look of this piece is marvelous, as is the delight in imagining all of the things you could wrap paper around to make your own shaped objects—when trying this again at Dartmouth, I made the Scroll Case instead of the Shaped Box. It is slightly easier to wrap, and less finicky to finish. We used heavy cardboard tubes instead of PVC pipe, and they worked well.

Mindy’s passion is “blooks”—book shaped objects and their history. Her personal collection and depth of knowledge is impressive and she was more than ready to share. Her slide show reflected well the depth and breadth of her knowledge. Additionally, Mindy’s extensive materials list, tool hints and tricks of the trade were most appreciated. Recently on the Book Arts listserv, she sent out instructions on how to make “A Successful Ball Point Water Pen, Recycled.” Perfect! She lists in succinct detail exactly how to do this. I want to make one just because she sent out the instructions, and I don’t even need a Successful Water Pen.

Wonderful Handbook

It was a mental mind-bender to understand we were working from the inside out, so the next steps needed to just be done and not over-analyzed—and we successfully planned where our lids would be, making jigs so we'd remember later. After adding spacer layers, more decorative paper to line the inside of the case, and the little gap that would let us know where to stop cutting later, we wrapped more Bugra around the form, for a total of 12 wraps.

After setting our forms in a hot room to dry more quickly overnight, the next morning we were ready to cut. We trimmed the tops and bottoms and cut the whole box down to that little gap that we left (gasp!), slid them off our forms, sanded, and got ready to make the tops and bottoms—very simple, it turns out, as we traced our tops and bottoms onto Museum board, cut them out, and then cut out two more small pieces to be glued on for insets. I was expecting a monumental feat of measuring with complicated tools, and was relieved to find that we were simply tracing!

Finishing these cases took the most time—and I discovered first-hand the delightful camouflaging qualities of marbled paper. More sanding, gluing on strips of leather on the spine to imitate bands, applying the leather spine over the bands, and finishing the outside and top and bottom of the case came next