WTF Publishing: Perseus Fails to Disrupt

on October 4, 2011 in Guerrilla Publishing, Indie Publishing FTW, Truth in Publishing

A client of mine recently started using a hashtag on Twitter to express his feelings about book publishers who do or say things that are questionable at best, and hyperbole at worst: #wtfpub

Here’s his latest #wtfpub tweet.

WTF, indeed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What’s the problem? Let me lay it out for you:

  • Perseus is a legacy publisher that has created a “new service” called Argo Navis Author Services that offers to “handle digital distribution and marketing for authors who want to self-publish titles and who are represented by established agents.” And yet they still call it self-publishing. WTF?
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What is The Miracle in July About?

on September 21, 2011 in Guerrilla Publishing, Tease

Do you have what it takes to follow your bliss?

Let’s start a revolution. Help I Heart Media influence authors to try their hand at anti-stealth publishing by reading and commenting on The Miracle in July.

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How To: Get Noticed, Sell Books, Publish Smart

on September 17, 2011 in Guerrilla Publishing, Indie Publishing FTW

Here’s a collection of articles that provoke inspiration and action in writers and publishers. Click the links if you’re serious about finding readers for your work.

“Book reviews are critical for sales. They provide social proof and help a reader decide whether to try your book or not. There are lots of ways you can increase your chances of reviews and in today’s podcast, I discuss them with Dana Lynn Smith, the Savvy Book Marketer.”

http://www.thecreativepenn.com/2011/09/17/book-reviews-dana-lynn-smith/

“A major component of a successful campaign is content relevance. What is content relevance? It’s matching your book with what is happening in the world.”

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FREE Passes to O’Reilly’s miniTOC PDX (for realsies!)

on July 25, 2011 in Indie Publishing FTW

UPDATE: Contest now over. Sorry!

This Wednesday, intelligent publishing giant O’Reilly Media’s provocative day-long mini Tools of Change in Publishing is in Portland, Oregon, that mossy Pacific Northwest utopia that I Heart Media calls home.

What the heck is a “miniTOC”? In the illuminating words of O’Reilly, it’s a “conversation focusing on Portland’s thriving publishing, tech, and bookish-arts community.”  An impressive line-up of Portland’s publishing/content firestarters are slated to speak to get that conversation hot:

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“First Draft” Sneak Peak: Editor’s Notes

on June 27, 2011 in Guerrilla Publishing, Tease

First Draft: The Miracle in July Web SeriesI Heart Media is THIS CLOSE to the release of First Draft: The Miracle in July Web Series. There have been some throat-clutching delays (the release was originally scheduled for June) but I’m pushing very hard to get the book out as soon as possible and in the hands of readers who want to read the story outside of a web browser.  As promised, the book will also include behind-the-scenes essays, such as what it was like to write the web series and an explanation of the interactive media chosen to helps tell the story, among other intimate content…Like this piece, written by the web series editor Jeremy Holloway, which explains “what it was like to edit the future of storytelling”.

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Insert Sensationalist Headline Here

on April 24, 2011 in Truth in Publishing

DoomsdayAre Books Dead? Are Self-Publishers Killing Their Chances for a Traditional Publishing Deal? Will Libraries Survive in a Digital Book Future?

Ugh.

I usually avoid reading posts with hyperbole headlines about facets of The Future of Publishing. Sometimes, curious, I skim the post with an arresting title quickly, searching for a nugget of credible information. If none is found, I close the tab and fume a little (in the “did-this-writer-have-a-deadline-and-nothing-to-say??” genre which is followed by “I-should-have-known-better”) and then I remind myself that post writers rely on website traffic to justify their value on a blog, and a sensational headline works wonders for that. I know this is Blog Writing 101. I get that.

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Interview, Pre-Order, Pitch

on April 13, 2011 in Guerrilla Publishing, Indie Publishing FTW, Tease

Reading Local Portland recently interviewed me with great questions that let me rant a teeny bit about the State of the Publishing Industry (“Legacy publishers should get an Amanda Hocking/Joe Konrath-sized clue”), reveal my publishing provocateur idols (Sophie Calle and Anaïs Nin), and explain what I’ve learned so far in my effort to influence the way writers work and make money with my storytelling experiment The Miracle in July (“…people respect transparency”).

First Draft: The Miracle in July Web SeriesI also announced that I Heart Media’s next book is First Draft: The Miracle in July Web Series (release date is June 2011) and is available for pre-order (because even provocateurs have gotta eat).

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A Book is a Container (and Other Ugly Truths)

on March 30, 2011 in Truth in Publishing

We need to think about containers as an option, not the starting point.

The quote above is from Brian O’Leary’s presentation Context First: A Unified Field Theory of Publishing. (Video at the end of the post).

books with ribbonsBrian’s talk is an honest report on the crumbling “container” metaphor that traditional publishers are still throwing their money at. He first gave the talk at the Internet Archive’s Books in Browsers conference (October 2010) and then at O’Reilly Media’s Tools of Change in Publishing conference (February 2011). Those big names invited him there because he’s principal at Magellan Media Partners, a company that’s in the business of analyzing financial information and workflow systems for the publishing industries, so he knows what he’s talking about.

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“Sizable advance” is another way of saying “very expensive loan”

on March 3, 2011 in Guerrilla Publishing, Truth in Publishing

Terrill Lee Lankford spent weeks negotiating a book deal with a traditional publisher. The publisher included the “standard” ebook sales split in the contract, which is a 75% cut to the publisher for a digital format with zero distribution cost. Here’s a small, delicious nugget from Terrill’s meaty post explaining why he walked away from negotiations:

While this deal may have given my family a quick infusion of cash, the fact is that by the time I finished the book in question the cash would be gone. And by the time that book “earned out” at a rate of 3-1 in the publisher’s favor in e-book sales, the publisher would have seen a small fortune without noticeable expense. And we would be saddled with a deal that would probably haunt my family long after I was dead and gone.

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A Vision is a Blissfully Unencumbered Plan

on February 18, 2011 in Guerrilla Publishing

Today on Twitter I shared a link to a Wall Street Journal post about whether or not creating a formal business plan—instead of focusing on concept testing, customer interviews, and field research—is anything more than “a waste of time.”

I believe it depends on the visionary’s experience and personality.

For example, I Heart Media’s main title The Miracle in July is a large-scale, long-term project that began with this vision (which I wrote well before I wrote a single word):

Project Overview

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