I Heart Media

WTF Publishing: Perseus Fails to Disrupt

mediaChick — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 17:13:07 +0000

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. What’s the problem? Let me lay it out for [...]

What is The Miracle in July About?

mediaChick — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 17:38:50 +0000

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.

How To: Get Noticed, Sell Books, Publish Smart

mediaChick — Sat, 17 Sep 2011 21:42:19 +0000

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 [...]

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

mediaChick — Mon, 25 Jul 2011 20:49:34 +0000

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, [...]

“First Draft” Sneak Peak: Editor’s Notes

mediaChick — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 16:57:13 +0000

I 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 [...]

Insert Sensationalist Headline Here

mediaChick — Sun, 24 Apr 2011 19:27:06 +0000

Are 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. [...]

Interview, Pre-Order, Pitch

mediaChick — Wed, 13 Apr 2011 15:00:32 +0000

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 [...]

A Book is a Container (and Other Ugly Truths)

mediaChick — Wed, 30 Mar 2011 11:00:20 +0000

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). Brian’s talk is an honest report on the crumbling “container” metaphor that traditional publishers are still throwing their money [...]

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

mediaChick — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 05:03:17 +0000

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 [...]

A Vision is a Blissfully Unencumbered Plan

mediaChick — Fri, 18 Feb 2011 22:59:58 +0000

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 [...]

I publish. Period.

mediaChick — Mon, 07 Feb 2011 19:04:30 +0000

At the moment of Sputnik the planet became a global theater in which there are no spectators but only actors. — Marshall McLuhan, Journal of Communication (1974) Technology has turned the world into a dimension-less stage of creators and consumers of technology. Anyone paying attention can see technology’s speed-of-light progress flooding the stage of McLuhan’s [...]

POD: Scarlet Letters No More

mediaChick — Sat, 22 Jan 2011 05:21:10 +0000

The Stigma of POD is part of a book by Aaron Shepard called POD for Profit. I read this book in preparation for using Lightning Source as the distributor of I Heart Media Press, because that’s what it’s about. I also wanted to see what the quality of a Lightning Source-printed book was like. I [...]

Academics Appreciate Erotica

mediaChick — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 23:54:48 +0000

I’m thrilled to announce that the first title to be released by I Heart Media Press is the paperback edition of Venice is for Lovers: Erotica from The Miracle in July—Act One! It’ll hit the Amazon “shelf” (and a ton of other places) the 1st Quarter of 2011. That’s very soon, my fellow revolutionaries! The [...]

The ebook clusterfuck explained

mediaChick — Tue, 18 Jan 2011 02:09:33 +0000

The boom of technology means format wars (cough Betamax cough) and right now, the digital reader battle to the death has an uncomfortable number of gladiators in the arena. That would be OK if these were blood-thirsty warriors, but what we have instead are a bunch of pissed off old-timers who loathe to engage with [...]