Directory of Book Reviewers

Self-published and independent authors seek resource for book reviews.

Christy Pinheiro, a colleague in another writing group put together this fabulous directory.

Go forth and get reviewed!

Book Review: The Nighttime Novelist: Finish Your Novel in Your Spare Time, by Joseph Bates

I posted this on BlogCritics yesterday -and NANOWRIMO is the perfect time to read it and get inspired to write a draft of your novel this month. Published by Writer's Digest, they were kind enough to tweet my review on their page, resulting in a huge number of Facebook updates.

And yes, the book is gorgeous, as mentioned in the original review here.   The Nighttime Novelist

Worldwide Blogs

In workshops, I always remind people that the Web is indeed Worldwide. As such, we are missing a huge market if we don't attempt to reach beyond US borders in our blogs. As a reminder, here's where the US stands in the global picture. Notice the tremendous potential you are missing if you aren't targeting our Canadian friends, with useful blog posts, links to Amazon in Canada, etc.   Make a goal for the 4th quarter of 2010 to stretch your reach:  Plan now to expand your reach in 2011.

11-10-11 NOTICE Chart has been corrected by provider:

Graph source: Technorati.com / State of the Blogosphere

Ever wonder why you should keep plugging along at social media? Think no one will notice you online? One of the many sites I visit and update is scribd.com.




And, Laura Novak found out that it really does pay. A former New York Times writer, TV news reporter  and now author of Finding Clarity:  A Mom, a Dwarf and a Posh Private School in the People’s Republic of Berkeley, she rose to the top on Scribd.com. As she says:

"In less than a year, I have become a top female author on Scribd.com, with 43,000 followers. As a result, the Scribd team invited me to read from Finding Clarity at this year’s Lit Quake festival in San Francisco. 

Read her full guest post here at Chuck Sambuchino's Guide to Literary Agents blog.

Learn about her work touring the book circuit and doing in-store readings BEFORE her book is even published.  Talk about a great way to build a following, and to improve her manuscript by reading live with an audience!!

Cheers,
Helen Gallagher

Library of Congress chooses POD to re-issue out-of-print books

As print-on-demand surges ahead of traditional publishing for authors, the U.S. Library of Congress is even using POD, through CreateSpace, to re-issue thousands of out-of-print titles. I chose CreateSpace for my newest book: Blog Power & Social Media Handbook, to have a fast and inexpensive blogging guide for my publishing clients and fans of my earlier book, Release Your Writing.

CHARLESTON, S.C. – Oct. 5th, 2010 – CreateSpace, part of the Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) group of companies, today announced an agreement with The Library of Congress to make at least 50,000 public books available through www.amazon.com. The Library of Congress also reached an agreement with Amazon Europe to make tens of thousands of books in the public domain available around the world to customers on www.amazon.co.uk, www.amazon.de and www.amazon.fr using print on-demand technology, an inventory-free, cost-efficient publishing solution that only manufactures titles as customers order them.

"We are pleased to now give the public a way to enjoy print on-demand access to library collections around the world," said Dr. Deanna Marcum, associate librarian for Library Services, The Library of Congress.

With Createspace Print on-Demand, these national libraries will make a large selection of content available quickly and easily via CreateSpace's host of U.S. distribution channels, including www.amazon.com, ensuring wide public access with little economic investment. Since titles are only manufactured in response to customer demand, no inventory is needed and the titles will never go out of stock, making print on-demand an economic, convenient, and environmentally responsible public access solution for libraries.

Your books can receive the same good distribution at very low cost.

read full release here

Pub-It latest self-publishing service from Barnes & Noble

Publishers Weekly reports: "Barnes & Noble officially launched PubIt! today, its digital self-publishing platform for authors and independent publishers. Under the PubIt model, authors are charged no startup fee and will receive a royalty that ranges from 40% to 65%, depending on price of the e-book (or other digital content). Using a Web-based platform, publishers, upload their e-books, set the list price and track their sales and payments. Titles can be priced between 99 cents and $199.99. For e-books priced at or between $2.99 and $9.99, publishers receive 65% percent of the list price with B&N receiving the balance. For those priced at $2.98 or less, or $10.00 or more, publishers receive 40%."

So PubIt! joins Lulu and CreateSpace as great options to get your book produced and made available for sale online. Remember, though, no one will buy your book if they aren't aware of it. so, after the easy publishing process, put your energies into author marketing.

International Freelancers Day

Are you ready? International Freelancers Day starts tomorrow, and runs through Saturday - that's 9/24 and 25.

This online conference is partly run by the authors of The Wealthy Freelancer, a book I reviewed a few months ago. Read review here.



Release Your Writing, Kindle edition



Here's an introductory 90-second video if you're not aware of the conference. It's free and will have loads of video programs non-stop online.

September: What happened to your summer goals?

September is here and summer is winding down. Have you moved along on your writing goals? Have you had the time you need to follow through?

If not, here's your motivation: GET IT DONE is NAIWE’s 2010 Summer Challenge.

Visit NAIME.com

The folks at NAIME, National Association of Independent Writers and Editors, offer a challenge to take this summer to learn, grow, and get ready for a busy and successful autumn. There are three parts to the challenge:

1. Read three books that will stretch your mind and inspire your creative spirit.
2. Finish one project that’s been nagging at you for longer than you care to admit.
3. Brainstorm a new project that will bring you an additional stream of income, then take the first step to make it happen.

My goals for the Get It Done challenge are:

1. I'm on book two of the three I committed to reading. The first was The Wealthy Freelancer.

2. After attending a conference in July, I haven't kept my goal of querying one editor each week. I'm back on track now with this.

3. Additional income is easy for any writer with the power of ebooks. I'm issuing a new one in September, and one more by the end of the year. Writing an article for an online marketing is also feasible. It might be an easy goal for you to tackle too. In August, I've had $150 in extra revenue with quick sales to these markets.

Lonely Planet review of the "Eat, Pray, Love" locations

I had the pleasure of seeing the "Eat, Pray, Love" movie with an assignment to then review Lonely Planet's travel guides to the destinations: Italy, India and Bali. The full review is posted on Blogcritics.org.

Cogent POV from Seth Godin

Excerpt from Media Bistro interview 8-25-10

You blog every single day. How do you keep your ideas fresh for your readers?

"I don't buy that the people don't have enough ideas. It is hard for me to imagine how someone can go through the whole day and have talker's block, I have never met anyone who woke up in the morning and had so little to say they were mute until they went to bed that night. People don't get talker's block, so why do we get writer's block? We get writer's block 'cause we are afraid, it's easy to talk because you can deny it later and it disappears, but once you write it down, that's when the fear comes from. That's where you say I don't have any good ideas and all I do is write like I talk. If I have something interesting to say, I say it and then I write it down, it's not that hard. I think that the art here is in chopping down the wall, the barrier between what you want to say and what you are afraid of, and letting people hear your best stuff."

Seth Godin

What it takes to succeed in self-publishing

The Cliff Notes version of an Cathie Beck's articulate blog post about her self-published success story. Read the full post at shewrites.com.

Cathie Beck's take-aways:

Decide what you want. Be specific. (Do you want to sell your book or self-publish for the long haul?)

Take an online book marketing class (I teach one now). Learn what works.

Write a 25-word description of your target market: age, gender, income.

Get in front of every online (and otherwise) audience you know.

Pick a launch date and build a Web site.

Get at least one good review. Use it everywhere.

Have faith and go for it with every ounce of your being.

Well said, Cathie.

Helen Gallagher

East of Eden Writers Conference: September 24-26, 2010

Oops... The following East of Eden Writers Conference has been cancelled.... Salinas is still worth a visit though, and so is the need for all of us to support our writing groups. Sending good wishes to the Santa Clara Valley chapter of the California Writers Club.

*******

It's too darn hot this summer. Plan your autumn getaway to Salinas, California for the East of Eden Writers Conference, Sept. 25-26, 2010. If you've never been to Salinas, you;ll see the land loved by the amazing John Steinbeck is alive with his writing.

And the Steinbeck Center is an amazing museum and tribute to this great American writer. Workshop sessions cover fiction, non-fiction, poetry, mystery, and the business of writing. Learn more at http://www.southbaywriters.com/EastofEden2010/workshops.html


Helen Gallagher
Release Your Writing

A question on sending your manuscript to a POD firm

A client posed this question today, and I thought I'd let my email response do double-duty by posting it here:

Yes, it is safe to send them the manuscript before you have a contract. Until the POD firm approves it, they can't offer you a contract. They need to be sure, first of all, that it is not racist or hate literature. And, they have to be sure the document format and layout is something they can work with.

As the publisher, they have a legal obligation to produce quality, so they have to see it before you sign the contract. Nobody in the publishing book business wants to claim ownership of our work. I always say its like a shoe salesman - chances are they don't want to steal your shoes while you're walking around the shop in theirs.

Best writing of a bad sentence

A sentence comparing a kiss to the sucking of a very thirsty gerbil has won Seattle-based novelist Molly Ringle the world's worst writing contest. Ringle, who says she only writes bad fiction when she fails at good fiction, took the Bulwer-Lytton prize for the opening sentence to the worst of all possible novels yesterday with:

"For the first month of Ricardo and Felicity's affair, they greeted one another at every stolen rendezvous with a kiss – a lengthy, ravenous kiss, Ricardo lapping and sucking at Felicity's mouth as if she were a giant cage-mounted water bottle and he were the world's thirstiest gerbil."

Courtesy: Maggie Ball, CompulsiveReader.com