1966... rec room party by James Vaughan

On this episode of The Books & Beer Hangout, we tackled the topic of collaboration, inviting author Bliss Morgan and editor Doug Lance to share their stories with us. Both make great use of digital tools in their collaboration efforts with authors. Over the course of 25 minutes we talked about:

• How collaboration today is dependent on digital technology
• How to encourage collaboration with digital technology without being a geek
• How “happy accidents” can turn into great collaborative projects
• How Bliss uses collaborative writing circles
• How Lance crowd-sources a 150-page fiction magazine every month
• The best free collaborative writing tool you’re probably not using
• AND THEN GOOGLE HANGOUTS DIE FOR 15 SECONDS! (9:42)
• How to move from collaborative content to final publication
• Collaborating on scales large and small
• How emerging technology might improve to enable even more collaboration
• Dealing with trolls, idiots, and generally not helpful people that tend to gravitate toward teh internets

And there was the obligatory drinking of beers. Tonight’s choices: Harpoon’s Catamount Maple Wheat, Hofbräu Munich Weize, Bell’s Hopslam & the Left Hand Nitro Milk Stout. Tasty!

The Books & Beer Hangout is broadcast live every Thursday night at 6P/9E as a Google+ Hangout on Air and on YouTube Live! Circle ePublish Unum on Google+ to watch live, and to join The Books & Beer Hangover right after the show to chat with hosts and participants live!

Can’t see the video embedded above? Download the video or watch it on YouTube.

New ways to get naked by Daniela Vladimirova

Today on The Books & Beer Hangout we talk about narrating audio books, an increasingly popular option for indie authors and publishers large and small. We brought on professional narrators Chris Snelgrove (Darkfire Productions) &  Veronica Giguere (Voices by Veronica) to discuss the challenges authors and publishers face when creating their own audio books. Here are some of the juicy nuggets and choice bits you’ll takeaway from the show: 

• How to use narration to get a tighter, better edited book
• How audio requires additional edits to existing books
• The difference between narrating a book and telling a great story
• What types of books work best in audio
• What POV works best in audio
• What you need to make the right recording environment
• How to use your body to enhance your voice
• How to eliminate page noises
• Dealing with multiple character voices that stay true to the book
• Tips to help communicate the style of voice you want to your narrator
• Budgeting to have a pro narrate your audio book

Oh, and we drank some beer! Beers! Jeff had a Green Flash Palate Wrecker. Evo had the Sheltownee Hop-a-Lot IPA. Veronica had a Sam Adams Summer Ale, and Chris drank root beer. Hey, at least it’s “beer”.

Want to hear from Chris and Veronica? Check out The House of Grey and The Secret World Chronicle as good starting places. And they have much, much more.

The Books & Beer Hangout is broadcast live every Thursday night at 6P/9E as a Google+ Hangout on Air and on YouTube Live! Circle ePublish Unum on Google+ to watch live, and to join The Books & Beer Hangover right after the show to chat with hosts and participants live!

Can’t see the link above? Download the video or watch it on YouTube.

Books & Beer w/ J.C. Hutchins & Lynette Young

Our weekly Books & Beer video chat takes a big step this week with our first Hangout On Air!

If you don’t frequent Google+ you may not be aware of our weekly chat session, where we crack open a tasty beverage and discuss all things digital publishing. To date we’ve had open discussions, but with the Hangout on Air function we get the ability to stream the discussion to our Google+ page and record it for later. We’re kicking this off in style tonight with two guests discussing their own from-the-trenches digital publishing tales!

J.C. Hutchins is a 15-year writing veteran and successful New Media storytelling pioneer and marketer, best known for his innovative use of written fiction, podcasting, video and fan-fueled crowdsourcing to create thriller stories.

Lynette Young is a social media coach, social technology specialist, and a strategist for businesses regarding implementation services. She’s deeply involved in the social media and technology front, and is currently writing her first book.

The discussion will last about half an hour, during which we will watch our Google+ page for comments and input. After the discussion, we will open up the Hangout for another half an hour for anyone who wants to join in. We will post a video of the discussion with J.C. and Lynette after it concludes.

Books & Beer is co-produced and co-hosted by Evo Terra & Jeff Moriarty, publishing pioneers and craft beer enthusiasts. We Hangout every Thursday, at 6:00 pm PT/9:00 pm ET, and all you need is a free Google+ account and a webcam to participate.

Join us for a half an hour of good fun, lively discussion on the realities authors face in a digital world, and great beer!

Update: Here’s the link to download the show. Or you can just watch it on YouTube!

High Velocity Cheetah by Flickrfavorites

Don’t wait, get published!

If you have content, we can teach you how to turn it into a digitally published book in our new six-week online epublishing course!

Two of the biggest things holding people back from entering the digital publishing world are a fear of not having content worth publishing, and not knowing how to navigate the process the first time. Neither of these should slow you down!

Publish your short ebook

Your dream may be a 60,000 word epic you plan to finish sometime in 2014, but there are other options open to you right now. There’s a huge demand for niche content, and if you already write then you probably have something others would like to read. Here are just a few suggestions of content that you could repurpose into an ebook:

Or take the first few chapters of your epic novel and start releasing it as a serialized collection. If you have about 10,000 words ready to go, this course is geared to take your short content all the way through to publication.

We’ll walk you through the steps

Digital publishing is new, but it isn’t difficult. Doing it correctly on your own is just a little intimidating to people who haven’t been through it before.

We will talk you through editing your book, designing a cover, creating proper sales copy, setting a proper price, and getting it uploaded and published to Amazon.com. Once you’ve been through the process it will be much easier for you to do on your next book — or your next thirty!

Sign up now and publish your book!

You will get six one-hour-long online classes, structured homework to keep you moving, and tips and tricks to make the process as easy as possible. Lots more details on what we’re offering (and what you need to have ready in advance) are on the class signup page.

The first session begins Monday, April 23rd Tuesday, May 22nd, and we’re limiting enrollment to only six participants to make sure everyone gets enough attention. If you’re a writer and been looking to make the leap into publishing your own ebook, then make the investment in this class today, and become a digitally published author in just six weeks!

Laplace by Harold Hoyer

“Published author” is used all over the place, but is a slippery beast to define. At South by Southwest I heard it dozens of times, and I’m not sure any two people used it exactly the same way. Hearing it at the Wiley Author Party was very different from hearing it at digital publishing panels, or just talking with people about it over beers.

Do you have to charge for your book to be “published”? Does it have to be in print? Can a PDF ebook download on a website qualify? It’s all shades of gray, but since the term is so prevalent I thought I could pin it down.

I started the discussion with a Google+ discussion, then followed it up in our weekly Books & Beer video chat. Things got interesting.

How does someone qualify as a published author?

Here is where I started, with a list of things that seemed like a reasonable litmus test:

• Work can be digital or print – Digital-only publication is well able to support an author as a career. Trees need not die in your name.
• Self-publishing is still publishing – A contract with a big publishing house may be cool, but is no longer required. Most of the same work needs to happen, and the end result is often the same.
• Work must be available in a major outlet(s) – Could be Amazon.com, iBooks, or the end-cap at Barnes & Noble. Readers should be able to have easy access to get your work in the largest marketplaces. A PDF ebook download on your website can take a long time to create, but people aren’t going to find it while shopping.
• Must have an ISBN number – This is table stakes, even if you’re self-publishing. It makes you easily compatible with all major book tracking systems, and isn’t a step you can skip just because you’re flying solo.
• Price is irrelevant – Books have multiple funding models, and there is great published material out there available for free. You do not have to be charging the reader.

Two things I intentionally left off this list after some debate:

• Quality doesn’t matter - There is a lot of junk in the ebook market, but there has been junk on bookshelves since Gutenberg finished his little project. Probably before. This is always the amusing asterisk when someone brags they are a published author – “published” has never guaranteed someone is any damned good.
• Word count doesn’t matter – I struggled with this one, because a 10,000 word short-story could legitimately be a popular published work, so why not 9,000? 8? Part of me feels there should be some lower level to this, but I’m having a hard time justifying it or deciding what it should be.

Does this represent a good threshold for someone to consider themselves a “published author”? Most people seemed to agree it was, but a few people asked whether the number of copies you sold should factor in. Do you need to sell any at all? This is a question of reach, and probably gets closer to a discussion of quality. If “published author” just means you’ve accomplished some technical steps, how many books you actually sell is a different (but valid) discussion.

Where things really got interesting were from people who said the whole topic was meaningless.

Why define published author at all?

105119 by El Bibliomata

Not having been around the publishing sphere much prior to things going digital I looked at the term as some measure of technical experience.

I never saw it as a mark of quality, as I’ve known fantastic unpublished authors and horrible published ones, but more like a merit badge for having navigated the halls of publishing, contracts, writing deadlines, editing, and all those hoops you have to jump through to get your book on a shelf. Not everyone sees it that way. At all.

I ran headlong into some very raw feelings about the term, and the impression that many people use it simply to be exclusionary or elitist. I’d already noticed people often defined it so that whatever they had previously accomplished qualified, but I was surprised by the level of derision. Several people didn’t see any value from using the term at all. Hated it, in fact.

Maybe the idea behind “published author” has come to an end in an age where some people who publish blog posts on a regular basis get more readers than many mainstream books. Perhaps its use won’t settle out until the publishing industry itself finishes transforming itself.

Either way, the term is still popping up quite often, so I’ll be rolling with my definition above for the next little while.

Big line for SXSW

SxSW Interactive for 2012 has come to a close. Bizarre weather, perennial connectivity issues and abused feet aside; I’m calling the show a success. Any wrap-up post you read will be by definition narrowly focused, as it’s impossible for one person or dedicated small group of collaborators to see everything. SXSW is simply too large for that. My attention was focused on digital publishing, Google+, and cigars & beer. In that order. As the latter two aren’t topics we cover on this blog, I’ll share my thoughts on the former with you.

Digital Publishing Nuggets from SXSW 2012

Remember that SXSW is not a publishing conference. Even so, I found 40 panels that would be of interest to the digital author, with the majority being laser-focused on digital publishing. I attended many (but by no means all) and came away with the following insights. If you attended others, YMMV.

Publishing is in chaos

No surprise there, right? But that chaos is having an interesting effect on industry insiders, established authors and lone indie or self-published authors. The group that got the most attention by far were the industry insiders. Even in 2012, deep within the self-publishing revolution, the industry still has pull. And pull is important when trying to get picked for a panel at SXSW. (Note to self: invite a friendly insider to be part of your proposed presentation next year.)

I already knew the industry was not happy with the realities of digital publishing. But I was a little taken aback by how vehemently they would fight to maintain the status quo. Which is an inevitable losing battle. The insiders I heard spent most of their time trying to convince fellow panelists, the audience, and perhaps themselves that their existing model was still relevant. And I agree. Digital publishing doesn’t negate publishing-as-a-business at all. But what they didn’t talk about was how digital publishing is changing their existing business practices to allow them to do more great things for more authors. And even if that isn’t their goal, I expected them to talk about how they can at least do better things for their existing authors with the changes digital publishing provides.

The juxtaposition from established authors published through the Big Six was interesting. Most are experimenting with self-publishing, choosing titles that their publisher/agent didn’t pick up for one reason or another. Some are finding success on their own, only to find themselves wooed back to the comfy folds of the publishing industry. But they are wiser for their actions, and have learned valuable lessons about what publishers can and can’t do for them in today’s digital publishing world.

And finally, the indie or self-published author was well represented. In the audience, at least. Many publishing panels were packed, with a slew of underpublished authors trying to gain some insight into the changing world of digital publishing. If they attended the panels I did, then they received a mixed bag of information. I had private conversations with a few that I hope continue. I’m sure others have a similar story to tell. Next year, I think the voice of the indie author needs to be better represented on stage, not just in the audience. I have some ideas on how we can do that better. Stay tuned.

No presence for digital technology vendors

As previously stated, SxSW isn’t a publishing conference. But it most certainly is a technology conference, and I expected to see some representation from digital publishing vendors on the expo floor. No marketplaces. No software vendors. Nothing. And I was looking; trust me. Maybe it’s too early. Maybe the other giant publishing conferences are taking all the spotlight. Maybe the audience they need to reach just doesn’t attend SXSW in appreciable numbers. I hope that changes next year.

Let’s put digital publishing on the map at SXSW 2013

I made some great connections at SXSW 2012. I hope we can keep talking over the next few months. If things go well, I’m looking forward to an onslaught of digital publishing submissions next year, enticing even more authors to get to SXSW 2013. I look forward to seeing you there!

Disclaimer – SXSW is a long conference, with lots of hiking and late night activities. I wrote this in the airport waiting to return home, with some quick self-edits prior to hitting the PUBLISH button. If I were a smarter man, I’d let someone proof this. But I want it out. So please forgive if you find anything terribly heinous. I blame it on little sleep! – Evo

Fake Protest Part Deux 2011 by Sheila Dee

I’m stealing a page — literally — from Jay Baer. Luckily, he’s a friend and will probably forgive the intrusion or be flattered by the mimicry. On Sunday, he published 14 Ways Facebook Betrays Small Businesses. His post is less scathing than it sounds, but it is a warning cry. I’m taking his post as inspiration, giving you the 4 Ways Authors Need to Prepare For and Adapt To Facebook Timeline.

First of all, the info below applies to those authors who’ve opted to engage on Facebook with a Page, not a Profile. As we have discussed before, authors reluctant to join the social space of Facebook may be better off with a Page. And if you’re one of those who took my advice from months back; sorry. Your world just changed. Here’s how:

1. Cover image
   You need one. Not just a nice profile image. But a gigantic, 850×315 pixel shot that shows you at your best as an author. What, you don’t have one of those? Well… tough. Get one. Maybe from a signing you did. Or make a collage of your book covers. Whatever it is, it needs to look great. And it needs to be 850 pixels wide by 315 pixels tall. And don’t make is salesy: Facebook has prohibited including things like your website, price-points for your books, or any sort of call-to-action. It’s intended to be an image that represents you as a brand. Leave it that way.
2. Pin, for the win!
   The new vertical timeline flow is a little strange, and looks totally different from the “wall” you’re probably used to seeing. One of the neat things you can do with your timeline is highlight a post. It takes up twice the space of anything else posted, making a very clear landmark. Use this for the dates when your books were published, or any other major milestones in your career as an author. Pinning is something special that moves a post to the top of the page. This is only for serious stuff, and anything pinned goes back to its normal timeline position after 7 days.
3. Be on the lookout for Direct Messages
   People (and by that I mean Profiles) can now send direct messages to brands (and by that I mean Pages). So a “fan” could send you a direct message and expect a response from you. Yikes! Couple that with the fact that Facebook’s notifications of these events to Pages currently is less-than-optimal, and it means regular policing of these messages so you don’t look like you’re ignoring your fans. I anticipate Facebook will provide a fix for this soon, so that you are notified when someone sends a DM to your Page. But for now, that doesn’t happen. Check your Page at least daily for new messages. And don’t trust Facebook’s built-in notification system. Log into Facebook. Select your page. Visit the Admin panel. And _then_ check for new messages. Don’t leave your fans hanging!
4. Be active!
   Activity now displays for every page to anyone who happens to look. Fans can see how many of their friends like your Page, and have easy access to how often you’ve been engaging. Or not. This means you have to be posting often — daily is good — to make sure that you have solid engagement. If not, the page may look abandoned. And who wants to fan a page that isn’t interacting? Answer: few.

So take note, authors. Facebook has changed the game. They will again. And so will the other social properties in which you engage. Or should be engaging. They don’t do this to penalize you. They do it to benefit them. And as long as their users see benefits as well, they’ll continue to do so. So stop lamenting. Stop pining for stability and uniformity. Embrace change, for it is the only constant in this world.

And go get your Facebook Page set up for Timeline. You have until the end of the month. Then Facebook is gonna do it for you.

SXSW Interactive 2012

SXSW is the premier “future of everything” conference. While not specifically a publishing conference, some sessions should not be missed for the attending author. Especially if the attending author is interested in digital publishing, where they are in control of their career as an author.

To help, I’ve compiled a list of sessions related to digital book publishing. Where the title of the session isn’t clear, I’ve added some narrative as to why it’s important. And if that doesn’t help, each are linked to the full description.

Digital Publishing Related Sessions at SXSW 2012

Friday, March 9th

• 2:00p - Making a Grand Entrance: How to Launch a Product Because launching a book is a product launch. Learn.
• 3:30p -Potterize It! Sharing the Magic of Fan Culture As in Harry Potter. Understand now?
  Unstuck: Get (and Keep) Your Creativity Flowing Because you should be writing now.
• 5:00p – Get Lit: Why Story Matters You might know more than most attendees here. Make connections. Ask smart questions.

Saturday, March 10th

• 9:30a - Rhapsody to Year 0: Music & Publishing Go Digital
  Creating The Code: A BBC Transmedia Documentary
  The Present of Print: Paper’s Persistence
  How to Be Yourself When Everyone Else Is Faking It Some authors struggle with sharing too much from their private lives.
• 11:00a – Anime: More Than Cartoons
  Making Stories: Libraries & Community Publishing
  Intellectual Property Issues in Social Media Because your content will be shared. Are you ready for that?
  ePublishing Meet Up
• 12:30p – Everything Is a Remix, so Steal Like an Artist
  The Freelance Rockstar
  The Great Library Swindle: Your Rights Are at Risk
  Rise of Analytics: Impacting the Editorial Process?
• 1:00p – A Creator’s Guide to Transmedia Storytelling 
• 3:30p – How to Become a Next-Generation Media Company  Incorporating text, video, web… it’s the future.
• 3:45p – Books Win the Attention Economy
• 6:00p – Tracking Trends to Make Great Content Timely ebooks can make a mint!

Sunday, March 11th

• 9:30a - Multiplatform Storytelling: Frontline War Stories
  Publishing Models Transforming the Book
  Storytelling Beyond Words: New Forms of Journalism Books can consist of much more than just text.
• 11:00a – Discoverability and the New World of Book PR
  Mother Goose Got Punked: Next Gen Visual Stories
  140 Characters vs. 14000 Words: The New Long Form
• 3:30p – How Comedy Writers are Changing the Way We Laugh Give your readers what they want. Not funny? You can still learn.
  How to Be an Idea Factory Because you can never have enough!
  Libros digitales para todos/eBooks for Everybody
  Passion For Typography Meet Up Your mission: find your next interior designer!
• 5:00p – Reinventing the Graphic Novel for the iPad

Monday, March 12th

• 9:30a – The iPad: The Second Coming of the CD-ROM $749 ebook reader = iPad. Learn how to get content on that device.
• 3:30p – Knitting a Long Tail in Niche Publishing
• 5:00p – Self-Publishing: A Revolution for Midlist Authors?
  Snackable Content: Working in a Bite-Sized Future Smaller means more titles of yours in the marketplace.
• Tricking People into Reading Again

Tuesday, March 13th

• 9:30a – 3 Secrets to a Killer Elevator Pitch Because you need to know how to make one.
• 12:30p – Digital Age Editing: A Magazine Editor’s View Not quite the same as editing for a book, but close enough to learn some of these tricks.
• 3:30p – American Copyright: Will Government Go Too Far?
  Making eBooks Smarter: Responsive Page Design

Since they overlap, I can’t attend them all. And luckily, there’s some free time to walk the expo floor or seek out new cool talks. See you at SXSW! And if you can’t find me, check The Ginger Man. I’ll be holding court there!

Reality by Andrew Coulter Enright

Advice on getting books published litters the internet. In this easy seven-step tutorial, I’ll teach you the skills you’ve been shying away from for far too long. Because if you’ve never been published, most of what you think you know is bunk. It’s not just that the rules have changed. The whole industry is changed. Can you handle it? Let’s find out:

7 Easy Steps To Publishing Your Book in 2012

1. Work with already written material.

Book publishing today is about speed and agility. If you’re serious about publishing, chances are you have a plethora of source material to draw from. Blog posts. Podcast transcriptions. A collection of short stories. A series of lectures. Content creation today is in the hands of the people. Starting with material you’ve already written gives you an edge on those starting from scratch.

2. Ditch your notions about proper length.

Skip the epic fantasy and write shorter. Five thousand well-written and concise words can be more valuable than a 350-page tome. Readers today want to get it, read it, and move on to the next piece. Do you have that next piece? Excellent. They’ll buy it. Feed that hunger with lots of content. And that means lots of books. Not a single book that is the  be-all end-all of a topic. Why? Because things and tastes change. Be in front of those changes with your next book.

3. Editing is a must, not an option.

Removing the green and red squiggles does not equate editing. Give readers a crappy book at any price — free is a price — and you’re on their blacklist forever. Readers aren’t stupid. And even cheap or free books are to be found of impeccable quality. If you don’t want to go through the editing process, do us all a favor and leave the manuscript in your desk drawer. We’ll spend our attention (and maybe money) on those who respect our time as much as their own reputation.

4. Eschew spine-space for mindshare.

A handful of lucky (?) authors get picked by an agent and offered lucrative publishing contracts each year. Their numbers are declining as Big Publishing struggles for relevance in an Amazon-dominated world. You can fight for shrinking shelf-space on bookstores that are closing right and left, or you can follow the smart wave of authors going digital and taking control of their career. Is it easier? Not even a little. But it is the future. Accept and adapt.

5. Beg, borrow and steal.

Those smart authors I just mentioned? They’re doing a lot more than just shoving a book on Amazon and letting fate run its course. They shake their asses to draw attention to themselves and their books. They know their published book won’t sell unless they make it sell. And when they aren’t making sales happen, they are busy writing their next book. Because it’s what the readers of 2012 demand. These are the rules of the game today.

6. Embrace the death of privacy.

With quick Google search, damn near anyone can find out where you live. If that scares you; so what? It’s reality. So stop being afraid of the boogyman and get out there and engage with your fans. Social media? Of course. But also local events, if you can get them. Post your phone number and let them call you. Faithfully read every comment, status update and tweet with your name on it; and respond. Ignore your audience at your peril, because someone is ready to take better care of them than you.

7. Profit!

Sounds easy, right? Well… no, it’s not. But it is profitable. It may not be immediately, and you certainly won’t get a big fat advance just starting out. But you can make a career out of digital publishing in 2012 if you treat it like a career. It’s a full-time job to be a digital author today, so start treating it as such. You already have a full-time job? Suck it up, Buttercup. Work your writing career every waking moment you can spare. And then some.

I’ve seen publishing go through many changes in the decade I’ve been following the industry. What I describe above has been happening for a long time. And the changes continue. If you pine for a return to a more civilized publishing environment; expect disappointment. This is the new reality, and it’s only going to get even more strange. Accept. Adapt. And embrace the reality of book publishing in 2012.

But I’m not going to leave you hanging. Helping authors adapt to today’s publishing reality is what we do here at ePublish Unum. In the coming weeks, we’ll announce a six-week online author training course that walks you through much of what I’ve covered above. For now, sign up for our email list (this page, upper right-hand side) and you’ll be among the first to hear about it once we’ve announce the start-date.

In the mean time… go start scouring your source material. That’s just the beginning of the fun!

Say Hello to Garfield:-) by Kasia

The good news is that digital publishing tools make it easy for nearly anyone to sell their ebooks in online marketplaces.

The bad news is that an awful lot of that work just isn’t very good. At any price.

Maybe they weren’t well edited (if at all), maybe they weren’t well formatted, maybe the description was poor… and maybe the author just wasn’t that talented to start with.

Does it matter that these bad books wind up on Amazon.com and other marketplaces? After all, who is it hurting? And isn’t the burden on the purchaser?

Many would argue the marketplace has rating and social sharing tools to help people identify good content from bad. Other people say Garbage In, Garbage Out, and authors should keep their material off the major marketplaces unless it has some quality behind it.

Evo and Jeff tackle this question on their Isn’t Rocket Surgery video show – Are bad books hurting the world of ebooks?

We know this is a topic where opinions are strong and emotions run high.  What do think? When is “good enough” really good enough? And how do you know when you’ve reached that point, authors? We’d love to hear from you in the comments below.