Fascinating - to me anyway -interview with Elizabeth Gilbert

I guess I'm one of the three people in the US that hasn't read or seen Eat Pray Love. But a few months back, I was driving along listening to WI Public Radio and this show was on and I started listening and it was riveting. As in really really interesting. Turns out that it was an interview with Elizabeth Gilbert, the author of Eat Pray Love, who now has a new book, The Signature of All Things. I did something for a first time while I listened to that show. I got my phone out and used the voice recorder for the first time to remind myself of this author and this interview. Last night in a dark freezing Janesville parking lot at midnight, I was waiting for my wife to arrive on a Van Galder bus, which by the way is the ONLY way to go to O'Hare from Madison. If you're into stress free driving thru congestion that is. The bus is late. Construction issues. Way late and I am bored stiff. So I get out my phone and happen to open that voice recorder app and shazam! there's that note about E.G.'s awesome 45 North interview with Anne Strainchamps. So I sat there in the dark of a cold midnight Jville bus lot and happily listened to the podcast of the interview. First one I have ever downloaded. Here it is - Elizabeth Gilbert talk go have a listen. Good stuff! I'm a new fan of the author. Her perspective on things like women in literature, and story types makes for a great listen!

Konrath Howey Shatzkin oh my!

We live in interesting times. JA Konrath, Hugh Howey, and Mike Shatzkin are making it even more interesting. Konrath and Howey are successful indie authors and maybe the largest, most active evangelists for the ecosystem of indie publishing.  Self made successes.  Mike Shatzkin, from what I have found so far, seems to be the lone voice crying out in the wilderness in defense of traditional publishing.

For the most part, Konrath and Howey are looking forward and offering their perspective, experience and expertise on a growing, moving forward industry. The Wild West.

Mike Shatzkin, at 66 yo, offers value in his perspective on the traditional publishing world. But this is almost solely done in defense and justification of an aging, collapsing, rigid, and shrinking industry, that is still the 800 pound gorilla. This is more like an austere Madison Avenue.

Once again we see the same old same old. Big established industry pays no attention to the little yappy dog barking at its heels. It plows on the same as it always has, while the little yappy dog, actually a puppy, keeps finding food and water and keeps on growing.  The little puppy that used to be heel height is now snapping at their kneecaps and still it is ignored. Music has gone through this destructive evolution. It's basically not there anymore. Can traditional publishing not see the similarities in play here? Software is mostly through this and numerous other industries can be described by this same conceptual model.

Big, comfortable, no threat perceived, no need to evolve, sit back and let the good times roll.  Given the number of established industries that have gone through this disruptive evolution, you would think traditional publishing would at least acknowledge that what has happened to others could happen to them. Not so far.  Everyone must still be in the sauna on Madison Ave, waiting for their cigars to be clipped and their dry cleaning to be delivered.

Go read what the above three pundits have written.  Well worth your time, if you are interested in this fast evolving world of writing and authoring and publishing.

The First week of authoring

So I'm closing in on the first week of being an author.  So far I've managed a few successes:

• I uploaded the mobi file to Amazon, seen the listed book complete with thumbnail and info in the Kindle store;
• I also managed an Authorcentral page, complete with links to my twitter acct, blog and some author pics;
• I followed that with going through Draft2Digital to get my paddle making book listed on Apple's ecosystem. Specifically, it is now in  the ibookstore, thumbnail, a good sample and the correct list price. Thank you goes to Tara for such fast response to my questions!
• I am still in process with Xinxii for overseas distribution. Matthias and Patricia are both responding across six or seven time zones as I wade through the best way to do an ISBN for an overseas edition of an ebook.
• Kobo also has some intriguing overseas retail partners.  
• Finally today I went ahead and sent my file up to the Barnes & Noble world as well. That was still in process last time I checked.
• Lastly is an entry in the Goodreads system. Even though I see Goodreads as mainly fiction and my ebook is a tiny slice of business non-fiction, I figured Goodreads is worth a shot.
• So far so good!

reading on mobile devices

Over the past few months I have really enjoyed the breadth and depth of content on Joel Friedlander's site, www.theBookDesigner.com. Recently I was lucky enough to write a guest article that he posted on his site. The topic was evaluating an epub file on mobile devices.  Here's the article. I also hope you'll spend a few minutes browsing through his stack. It's pretty tall. I think I read that there's something like 1200+ (it might be 12,000+) articles on the site.  I'll bet you could get a Master's degree from the content alone that you'll find on his site.

Each month he does a cover image review, in which he posts the ebook cover images that readers have submitted of their book covers. He then evaluates each image and offers his viewpoint on the strengths and weaknesses of each cover. A huge learning tool if you are into book covers, or business communication imagery in general.

I hope you'll click the links above and spend some time on theBookDesigner site. It's a great space for book-centric content!