Another good agent research site

After learning one of my agent-finding recommendations was charging about $12/month for a subscription, I hunted around for an alternative.

I'm happy to recommend LitMatch (what a great name!). With free registration, you can:

* Track the queries, proposals and manuscripts you send to literary agents and view your entire submission history at a glance.

* Store information for multiple titles and track your submissions for each one independently.

* Use our matching search to find the agents who will be most receptive to your work.

* Save literary agents and agencies to your Hotlist for future reference.

If you're seeking representation for an upcoming book, sign up now at LitMatch.

BlogHer Conference in Chicago: July 23-25, 2009

Here are the details on the BlogHer Conference for Chicago this summer.

BlogHer '09 will be at the The Chicago Sheraton and Towers from July 23-25, 2009. We will kick off on Thursday July 23rd with out third annual BlogHer Business Conference, and will continue with the two-day 5th annual BlogHer Annual Conference on Friday and Saturday, July 24-25.

If you're a semi-pro1 blogger, and you are if you've paid attention to my workshops these last few years!) come and see what the online blogging life does to people once they show up in a group of thousands enjoying all Chicago has to offer. It's a chance to "celebrate blogging, whether personal, professional or political, has brought us real work, real friends, real satisfaction and is most definitely a significant part of our real life!" - Read more on their site.

Cross-posted at CClarity.blogspot.com

A Rising Tide Lifts All Books

We've all been reading about the rise in book sales, partly because Amazon's Kindle making people lust for bedtime reading, as an instant download for a flat $9.99. And, partly because more people are choosing Print-on-Demand to bypass the rejection channels, and have a book published in months rather than years.

Today, Salon.com pulled this from the AP Wire...

May 19th, 2009 | NEW YORK -- A shrinking economy and rising technology have transformed how, and how many, books are being published.

With publishers cutting back new releases in response to declining sales, an estimated 275,000 traditional books were released in the United States last year, a drop of about 9,000 from 2007, according to Bowker, a New Providence, N.J.-based company that compiles industry statistics.

Categories with the biggest reductions included travel, religion and biography, Bowker said Tuesday.

But the number of "on-demand" books, a category featuring works with tiny, digitally stored print runs, topped 285,000 in 2008, the first time they outnumbered traditional texts. In 2006, there were fewer than 22,000 on-demand titles, which have become an increasingly popular way to bring old books back in print or keep recent releases from going out of print.

Today is Writers Worth Day

Lori Widmer launched the 2nd Annual Writers Worth Day.

Here is her press release promoting fair pay for writers:

United States of America (Press Release) May 6, 2009 --
May 6, 2009 (Valley Forge, PA) – The Second Annual Writers Worth Day has been scheduled for May 15, 2009. This online event, the brainchild of Lori Widmer, a Philadelphia-based writer and editor, is designed to promote the fair market value of writers through education, awareness, and ongoing support.

“Writers Worth Day was established in response to the increasing amount of job postings that offer little, if any, compensation for the amount of work expected,” says Widmer, a veteran writer and editor, who has seen a decline in market rates. “More beginning freelancers accept abominable rates. The message of Writers Worth Day is every writer has marketable skills, and those skills should be compensated fairly and within industry-acceptable standards.”

All this month, Widmer’s weblog – Words on the Page – is highlighting numerous career tips for new writers and extending into the blogging community to inspire other established writers to educate and offer guidance to their followers and all within the writing community. Numerous other bloggers have already joined Writers Worth Day and will be posting their own tips and inspirational posts to extend the reach of the Writers Worth Day message.
source: FPR

“While we cannot change the rates job posters offer, we can educate our ranks to accept no less than we are worth. It hurts all of us when writers devalue themselves and operate on the mistaken notion that they must accept nonpayment or low payment in order to establish a portfolio. It sets an unreal precedent that makes it difficult for professional, educated writers and editors to earn reasonable wages for their skills.”

For more information, please contact Lori Widmer at lwbean AT gmail DOT com.

Writers write & Bloggers blog

At a blogging panel this week, the audience, comprised of sophisticated journalists and serious freelancers, learned the value of having a blog. It's a vehicle to create visibility, share your voice and your opinions. If you need a reminder to begin or update your blog, use this image as a reminder. You're free to download it, by right-clicking and choose to save it to your computer. Why not make it your desktop background instead of last year's family photo?

Have you seen BookTour.com lately? WOW

Take another look at BookTour.com. A major surprise overhaul has it looking fantastic. As a reminder, BookTour.com is where you find out all the author events coming up in Chicago, where you can follow you favorite author and of course, where you can keep up with my events...

Social networking sites: You may already be out there...

Things move fast in the online world. A few days ago I learned of a site that profiles authors, and when I went to make a page, my books were already there. Maybe you're out there too:
Go to filedby.com and search for your name.

The firm built a site in March, with over 1.8 million pre-assembled author pages, according to a report in the Wall St. Journal.

ObamaRama debuts on BlogCritics.org new site

BlogCritics Magazine launched a new site yesterday, loaded with great reviews and commentary on books, music, movies, culture and more.

BlogCritics publisher, Eric Olsen, compiled an long, thoughtful article here, with contributions from many of the BlogCritics.org team, looking at the relationship between President Obama and our popular culture. It's a fascinating article, including an analysis on how Obama affects book sales, contributed by Tim Gebhart. It's astonishing!

Especially for you writers, I'm pointing out my own contribution to the article here:
The Power of Words, Helen Gallagher

NPR audio on 3 inspiring writing books

Heard this on NPR and thought you might enjoy the audio essay by an author who succeeded in getting her novel published... Link

How shall I blog thee? Let me click the ways...

Today is Shakespeare's 445th birthday, and here in Chicago, our Mayor Daley wants everyone to talk like The Bard today.

Here is a resource to give you the complete works of Shakespeare's 38 plays on your Windows computer: Follow link thusly, to New York Times article.

The European version of our new world digital library

Referring to my most recent post on the World Digital Library, Europe now launches Europena, where you can search cultural collections of Europe's greatest treasures from libraries and museums.

That means millions of digital items provided by Europe's museums and galleries, archives, libraries and audio-visual organsiations, available to you at home. What a marvelous boon to American writers and researchers.

Spring Writing Reminder

Reminder - get out from behind your keyboard and desk. Join fellow writers at some of Chicago's fantastic writing resource groups:

Chicago Women in Publishing
International Women's Writing Guild (Chicago critique groups)
Independent Writers of Chicago
Midwest Writers Association
Off-Campus Writer's Workshop

The World Digital Library will be a reality on April 21, 2009

Until now, I always loved the U.S. Library of Congress for its majestic reading room.

Since 2005, the LOC has been working through the National Archives & Records Administration to create a digital archive and share it with the works of other countries in what is now being birthed as the

World Digital Library

The U.S. images contributed to the World Digital Library are now available at www.archives.gov/research/arc/topics/world-digital-library.

The entire project lives at http://www.worlddigitallibrary.org


The World Digital Library will make available on the Internet, free of charge and in multilingual format, significant primary materials from cultures around the world, including manuscripts, maps, rare books, musical scores, recordings, films, prints, photographs, architectural drawings, and other significant cultural materials.

The project’s goal is to promote international understanding and to provide a resource for use by students, teachers, and general audiences.

Writing!

It's a great life when you have the desire and talent to write. It opens up a world of ideas and creativity. The next time you lose your edge, and feel that the writing process is a grind, visualize writing in a whole new way:



Release Your Writing...

Image: VisualThesaurus.com