Today’s guest post is by Orna Ross (@OrnaRoss), director of the Alliance of Independent Authors.

Self-publishing is not for every writer. In order to succeed, you need to have or develop specific traits, along with certain ways of approaching the publication of a book. Consider the following questions.

1. Are you positive and proactive?

Many writers wait for permission from an agent or publisher to say they are fit for publication—or for a PR campaign to explain why somebody should buy their book. The flip side of this passivity is chronic complaint syndrome: writers moaning about the vagaries of agents or publishers, about the death of bookstores, the dominance of Amazon, etc.

Not independent authors. You must take responsibility for the risks, as well as the rewards, of publishing your own work.

2. Are you brave?

Risk is the core activity of self-publishing. You must risk time on ideas, promotions, or concepts that may come to naught. You must risk money to pay for editorial and design upfront. You must also risk, in some circles, reputation. Family, friends, and many others may see self-publishing as a second-best option. Independent authors must put themselves out there twice over, once in the writing, again in the publishing.

3. Are you hardworking?

If there’s one quality that all successful independent authors have in common, this is it. You must be full of energy and commitment, not only to your writing but to educating yourself about all aspects of craft, editing, design, and promotion. You must recognize opportunities and make the most of them, without derailing your writing, the engine of it all.

4. Are you entrepreneurial?

Independent authors who do best have an entrepreneurial mindset. You must always be on the lookout for new ways to reach readers, new communities who might be interested in your books, new opportunities to get your message out. You should be a savvy user of social media and know how to engage resources like e-mail lists, newsletters, promotions, competitions, and book giveaways to extend your readership. You must be open to failure and willing to learn from mistakes, while excited by the prospect of new projects and creative collaborations.

5. Are you resilient?

Successful self-publishers, by definition, are those who have kept on keeping on, adapting where necessary, and following their hearts. Mark McGuinness says in his new book, Resilience: Facing Down Rejection and Criticism on the Road to Success, in going indie, you must ensure you haven’t exchanged traditional forms of rejection and criticism for others that can be just as painful and costly. “Anyone who says, ‘Don’t take it so personally’ doesn’t understand what it’s like when you are hit by a major rejection or biting criticism,” says Mark. “Successful indies have found ways to acknowledge the pain—and bounce back from the impact.”

6. Do you base decisions on research?

You must follow gut feelings and intuitions, yes, but successful self-published authors generally back such horse sense with researched facts and figures to stay smart, sharp, and up to date—to search out their readers, stay in touch with influencers in their field, and give their books an advantage. Whether it’s keyword research, marketing studies, direct mail tests or just dear old Professor Google, you should enjoy learning, growing, and getting it right.

7. Do you have good financial sense?

Successful self-publishers don’t tend to be the kind of writers who say, “I don’t care about money,” unless they have a benefactor or obliging day job. Controlling costs is important for all businesses, and you must be able to take care of your resources and make sure you spend money where it will produce the biggest effect.

8. Are you collaborative and supportive?

That literary communities can be a tad, shall we say, bitchy, is well known—but the camaraderie between successful self-published authors is outstanding. Indies are likely to work from the co-opetition model, where competitors cooperate for mutual benefit.

Answering yes so far? Good—you’re half way there. With those personality traits in place, it is necessary to work them in a certain way in order to succeed in self-publishing.

9. Have you tried to find an agent or publisher?

Yes, great books can fail to make it through the gatekeeping process, especially books that are literary, or unusual, or in genres that the industry does not perceive as selling well. On the other hand, many books fail to find an agent or publisher because the writing isn’t ready for publication. The process of trying to get through the gates—taking the rejection, learning and applying the lessons, mastering your craft over time—is often a necessary one, if you want to get real about what’s involved in putting together a book worth reading.

10. Have you made a plan for copyediting, formatting, cover design, and ISBNs?

There’s more to making a book than writing it. Have you taken on board all the functions you will need to master if you are to successfully self-publish? They are all very much learn-by-doing activities, but you need to be realistic about the time and energy commitment.

11. Have you thought about your team?

Just because it’s called self-publishing doesn’t mean you’ll do everything yourself. You will need to draw on the services of some or all of the following: critique groups, beta readers, designers, editors, formatters, and promotional services. Have you at least begun to research how you will approach your workflow, and who you will use to deliver the services you need?

12. Do you understand your niche?

Niche markets addressing special interests are often seen as too unprofitable to be of interest to trade publishing. These overlooked niches is where many indie authors prosper. Even if you’re not that niche, to succeed as an indie you need to go where your readers are, which means understanding your place within the reading ecosystem.

13. Do you know who your reader is?

Some authors become self-publishers because they are recognised experts, or to enhance their standing in their field, or to justify an increase in their fees. Some they are committed to a cause, or have a story that just has to be told.

Regardless of your primary motive for writing, you must have a marketer‘s sensibility. You may not use marketing terms, but you will not survive, never mind thrive, if you are not attuned to the needs of your readership or don’t communicate with them. You will need to to go where most of your readers are most likely to be found online, to their forums and blogs, and make it your business to understand their concerns.

14. Do you have a marketing plan—a plan to reach readers?

Book sales happen only if you make them happen. How are you going to make people aware of your book? How will you make them interested? How will you find your audience?

15. Have you made a plan for your next book?

Are you using a self-published book to attract an agent or trade publisher? Or do you want to keep your own rights and grow your own audience, long term? To make the smartest choices possible, you should have a goal or strategy that extends past your first book.

If you’re considering the self-publishing path, then I recommend taking a look at the annual guide from the Alliance of Independent Authors: Choosing a Self-Publishing Service 2013. The guide compares twenty of the most significant publishing services, in terms of price, royalties, and terms. Click here to preview or sample on Amazon.

The post Should You Self-Publish? 15 Questions appeared first on Jane Friedman.

Table of Contents

1. A Renowned Author in the Inferno
2. Not-So Divine
3. Writers Selling to Writers

A Renowned Author in the Inferno

Renowned author Dan Brown got out of his luxurious four-poster bed in his expensive $10 million house and paced the bedroom, using the feet located at the ends of his two legs to propel him forwards. He knew he shouldn’t care what a few jealous critics thought. His new book Inferno was coming out on Tuesday, and the 480-page hardback published by Doubleday with a recommended US retail price of $29.95 was sure to be a hit. Wasn’t it?

Michael Deacon

I declare The Telegraph’s Michael Deacon our Ethernaut of the Week.

He has a caricaturist’s ear for Dan Brownese. His skill is arrayed in Don’t make fun of renowned Dan Brown. Sub-headline: The snobs and critics will have a field day with the US author’s latest work – but I’m not joining in.

Here you go:

I’ll call my agent, pondered the prosperous scribe. He reached for the telephone using one of his two hands. “Hello, this is renowned author Dan Brown,” spoke renowned author Dan Brown.

It is so springtime for us snobs and critics. Dan Brown has heaved another one at us. And despite the fact that I may be killed in a dark cathedral vestibule in Europe by a rogue member of the Druid Daughters of St. Daniel, I’m just going to deliver myself of this opinion right now: Dan Brown’s popularity does little to help promote or even encourage genuinely good writing.

Sextante antecipa lançamento de ‘Inferno’, de Dan Brown

May 16, 2013 8:14 am via LinkedInReplyRetweetFavorite

@JuniorGalvaoMVP

Junior Galvão

Of course this is just one guy’s opinion. Do I look like a committee to you?

Many agree with me. But it’s just fine if you don’t. You’re wrong, needless to say, but I’ll respect your wrong-headedness to the ends of the Earth and here’s another of Deacon’s delights to get us out of this corner:

She pointed now to a writhing pair of legs, which protruded upside down from the earth, apparently belonging to some poor soul who had been buried headfirst to his waist….Langdon probed his memory and then shook his head, which pounded in protest.

Oh, gosh, wait. Sorry, that’s the real thing. How silly of me. Somehow I got hold of a line from the sample I picked up on Amazon.

That’s from Brown’s new Inferno.

Such prose is what Telegraph critic Jake Kerridge calls Brown’s “stylish gaucherie,” a lovely, apt phrase.

In Inferno by Dan Brown, review—sub-head: Dan Brown’s take on Dante’s Inferno is the thriller-writer’s most ambitious novel yet – and his worst— Kerridge actually gives Brown some meager ground:

As a stylist Brown gets better and better: where once he was abysmal he is now just very poor. His prose, for all its detailing of brand names and the exact heights of buildings, is characterised by imprecision. It works to prevent the reader from engaging with the story.

Jake Kerridge

In the end, Kerridge writes, ”this is his worst book, and for a sad, even noble, reason – his ambition here wildly exceeds his ability.”

And, as we know, Kerridge’s fellow critics (myself included) are lining up to decry the sausage-making sentences and save-the-world belly laughs of Brown’s work—while copies fly off the shelves (where you can still find a shelf) and the online sales pages. The book, as usual, will be cheered by readers who don’t care.

For that matter, not even the critics are chanting in unison, which is good—and not just because Gregorian plainchant predates Dante Alighieri by centuries.

Molly Driscoll

Molly Driscoll in Dan Brown’s ‘Inferno’ gets mixed reviews but tops sales charts at the Christian Science Monitor has a much more balanced approach than the drubbing I offer you here.

Each time a Brown book is shot out of the big publishing cannon, we see this collision: the disciples of quality against the armies of entertainment.

And you know what?—Brown actually has a pretty sweet sense of humor. When Stephen Colbert calls him, at 80 million copies, “the second most popular author next to God,” Brown doesn’t miss a beat: “God has had two-thousand years to sell books, though.”

Still waiting.

May 14, 2013 1:20 pm via Twitter for iPhoneReplyRetweetFavorite

@DonLinn

Don Linn

Here, you can see his somewhat ungainly Colbert interview. Brown, whatever I may think of his writing, is a really affable “renowned author.”

I took over an apartment in Rome from one of the directorial staff on the Angels and Demons shoots and felt compelled to make the pilgrimage through that one.

I couldn’t get all the way through The Lost Symbol, which remains The Missing Film in the Brown oeuvre. Brad Meltzer had already done the Masonic DC business, in The Book of Fate.

Nicole Sperling at the Los Angeles Times in January’s Dan Brown: What’s the film status of his book ‘The Lost Symbol’? pegged pre-production to start sometime this year, but Ron Howard has ducked the direction of that one, can you blame him?

And while our purpose here today isn’t a full excommunication, I can’t help myself: one more “tiny cup of grace,” as Rev. Daddy liked to call the communion service at church, from deacon Deacon before we move on.

This time it’s really Michael Deacon again, I won’t pull another Unreliable Virgil on you:

Renowned author Dan Brown smiled, the ends of his mouth curving upwards in a physical expression of pleasure. He felt much better. If your books brought innocent delight to millions of readers, what did it matter whether you knew the difference between a transitive and an intransitive verb?

Spoiler alert in Maslin’s embargo-breaking review of Dan Brown’s INFERNO: there’s a Fifty Shades joke in the book. http://t.co/G881VoIuvI

May 12, 2013 6:03 pm via Seesmic twhirlReplyRetweetFavorite

@sarahw

Sarah Weinman

By the way, that “renowned author” business? Deacon gets it honest. When Brown’s Lincoln Center event was streamed to Exeter, New Hampshire, his hometown, Aaron Sanborn began his report at SeacoastOnline:

Local fans of renowned author and Exeter native Dan Brown had a unique chance to be close to the novelist as he launched his book “Inferno,” on Wednesday night, even though he wasn’t physically present.

@Melissa_Maria Never mind that, did Hilary Mantel not win anything? #bia13

May 13, 2013 5:50 pm via TweetDeckReplyRetweetFavorite

@FanaticMrFox

Paul Fox

Even Brown’s Wikipedia entry: “Dan Brown (born June 22, 1964) is a renowned American author of thriller fiction…”

So we can just wipe those smirks off our faces. Charles Durning was forever a “veteran character actor.” Dan Brown is a “renowned author.”

Dan Brown en la presentación de ‘Inferno’: “No hay nada más difícil que escribir un libro fácil”: Nueva York. … http://t.co/QBVsHRosge

May 16, 2013 7:26 am via twitterfeedReplyRetweetFavorite

@CirculolecRoma

Círculo Lectura Roma

And with that, the actual effluvium of today’s Ether finally is enveloping us and we’re going to have to get on with it. I have not come (only) to bury Dan Brown, but also to point out a couple of bad binds in which less-well-paid-and-visible authors find themselves today.

There’s a parallel here to the wrenching struggle many writers are experiencing with platforming.

In Monday’s Ether for Authors: The Author Solutions Lawsuit (hellish topic, in itself) at Publishing Perspectives, I touched on this battle.

It’s about creative focus and energy, and clawing your way back to the inspirational side amid the commercial demands of the marketplace.

@AmieKaufman OH MY GOD OH MY GOD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

May 15, 2013 9:38 am via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@Ginger_Clark

Ginger Clark

We’re lucky enough in that discussion—here’s a direct link—to have compelling commentary from authors Robin LaFevers at Writer Unboxed and Roz Morris in London, with some good input from Donald Maass along the way.

I want to look now at a couple of larger-scale dilemmas facing authors. And I’ll warn you, I don’t come with answers here. I’d just like to see the debate brought forward so it rides a little higher in the community’s consciousness.

That would be good, opined the talented person.

Thank you, Deacon.

Back to Table of Contents

It’s Dan Brown day at Sainsburys #inferno right next to the BBQs twitter.com/thecreativepen…

— Joanna Penn (@thecreativepenn) May 14, 2013

Not-So Divine

As I revolved with the eternal twins, I saw revealed, from hills to river outlets, the threshing-floor that makes us so ferocious.

You don’t have to be so renowned as Dan or Dante to enjoy your own not-so-private Purgatory these days.

That passage from La Divina Commedia by il Somma Poeta has led scholars to deduce that renowned author Dante Alighieri, born around 1265, was a Gemini. This might have helped him sympathize with the competing pressures on authors today.

And he has an author page at Amazon—that is backlist.

It’s dawning on me what this is all about. Another very controversial topic, if I’m correct. #Inferno

May 16, 2013 7:40 am via Twitter for iPhoneReplyRetweetFavorite

@papercuts1

papercuts1

I can divide these pressures, like his Comedy, into three parts or, for our purposes, three conflicts:

(1) There’s the one we’ve mentioned and won’t re-hash here today, the push and pull of the writer’s creative life and platform. How much damage is the art taking in the service of new marketing demands on writers? We don’t actually know the answer to that. Our gurus of writerly fan-base-building will claim they do know. They don’t know. Only time will tell us this.

The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their neutrality in times of moral crisis – Dan Brown #Inferno

May 16, 2013 7:08 am via Twitter for iPhoneReplyRetweetFavorite

@trafels

Tip

(2) Then, there’s the one we’ve been flogging today, the writing vs. the renown; the reclaim that may or may not not be earned. This is the same dilemma that makes a classically trained tenor envy his brother the rock star. But what if it leaves you, as Deacon has it, “as happy as a man who has something to be happy about and is suitably happy about it”?

“I’m definitely gonna read this book… I’ve never said that before!” – @StephenAtHome http://t.co/jChfluMawR #Inferno

May 15, 2013 9:34 am via HootSuiteReplyRetweetFavorite

@doubledaypub

Doubleday

(3) And one more. This one I haven’t gone into before but every time a writer puts out another book about how to write a book, it gets more compelling. Rather than going directly to “mutual cannibalism,” let’s call it “facing out vs. facing in.”

In honour of Dan Brown Day I have an Inferno raging in my brain #inferno #bia13

May 14, 2013 4:50 am via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@philipdsjones

Philip Jones

As the industry chokes on a flood tide of new and mostly wretched content, when does the ploy of books about books start looking like cannibalism?—writers preying on other writers, the community facing in on itself instead of “writing outward” to the wider audience (we have to hope) of readers?

Back to Table of Contents

And behold promotional partnership with Lego: The nine circles of hell from Dante’s #Inferno recreatedsoa.li/IkAhqaE Dan Brown — Alison Barrow (@alisonbarrow) May 4, 2013

Writers Selling to Writers

There’s no way to do this without appearing to pick on someone, so I want to apologize in advance for that.  It’s not my intention to unfairly single out anyone.

It’s slightly easier, if not much, to point to a company.

So let’s look at PBS MediaShift, for which I have a lot of regard, mind you. Let’s keep this one issue tightly contained in what it is: a new venture in publishing for a long-established and recently rising element of our community. No lack of respect is intended here.

This week, we’ve had the news—not in itself at all unwelcome—that, as our friend Laura Hazard Owen reported it at paidContent: PBS MediaShift starts publishing ebooks; first topics: cord-cutting and self-publishing.

Owen writes:

MediaShift’s first two titles are How to Self-Publish Your Book (80 pages, $3.99) and Your Guide to Cutting the Cord to Cable TV (50 pages, $2.99). (I have to point out here that GigaOM’s also got a cord-cutting ebook, written by our own Janko Roettgers.) The titles are available through Kindle and the iBookstore for now and will eventually be available through Nook; print-on-demand editions will also be released, priced at $4.99 to $6.99.

Self-publishing can give you sticker shock if you do it right; @miralsattar gives it to you straight: http://t.co/HwnWJ0r0ZT

May 16, 2013 2:01 am via SocialFlowReplyRetweetFavorite

@PBSMediaShift

PBS MediaShift

To MediaShift and its executive editor Mark Glaser, welcome to publishing, sincerely.

But How to Self-Publish Your Book? It’s by Carla King, whom you may know as Miss Adventuring, the adventure-travel writer.

And King? Already has another how-to-self-publish book out: Self-Publishing Boot Camp.

Of course, so do Guy Kawasaki and Shawn Welch, Mark Coker, Shelley Hitz, Tim Daly, Jason Rich, David Gaughran, Kayla Fioravanti, Adam Jackson, Aaron Shepard, Daphne Dangerlove, Edwin Scroggins, Christopher David, Chris McMullen, John Tighe, Kate Harper, Tony Caputo, Jimmy Clay, Josh Blaylock, Shari Faden Donahue,  Euan Mitchell, Von Money, Mary Payton and Christopher Cole, Melvin Powers, Ted Nicholas, Dan Poynter, Robert Kroese, Peggy BarnesDeKay, Donna Monday, Anna Crosbie, Marilyn Ross and Sue Collier, Nicole Simmons, Ed Peppitt, Blake Webster and Steve Boga, Richard Jagger, Steve Weber, Darius D. Himes and Mary Virginia Swanson, Lisa Rusczyk and Joshua Grimes and Scott James.

Carla King

Those are from the first four of 75 pages of results in a search on Amazon/Books for “How To Self-Publish.”

In other words, we already have that book. And we have it in many iterations. Some of them have appreciable distinctions. Others seem blindly duplicative.

Whatever happened to checking the marketplace to be sure you weren’t trying to invent an already widely rolling wheel? Is anybody offering that transcendent bit of wisdom in their redundant book on how to self-publish?

Dan Brown’s books are popular. So are Stephenie Meyer’s and many others you love to hate. Get over it! Focus on what you like. #cmonson

May 16, 2013 11:51 am via HootSuiteReplyRetweetFavorite

@glecharles

Guy L. Gonzalez

Laura Hazard Owen

Owen, as you might have noticed, even points out that her company, GigaOM, has a book out on cord-cutting, Cut the Cord: All You Need to Know to Drop Cable by Janko Roettgers. (It’s much to GigaOM’s credit that it hasn’t hurled yet another book about self-publishing on us.) Try a search in Books at Amazon on cord-cutting.

And before you throw your iPad across the room, yelling, “I have the right to publish whatever I damned well please,” I’m not talking about your rights. Yes, you have the right to publish whatever you damned well please. You also have the right to shoot yourself in one of the feet located at the ends of your two legs. Having the right to do something doesn’t make it the right thing to do.

OMG! Need some advice for your ebook cover? amazon.de/Create-Change-…

— Sebastian Posth (@sposth) May 15, 2013

One of the books I’ve highlighted on self-publishing has this subtitle: “See How Easy You Can Design Amazing eBook Covers for Self-Publishing.”  No, that should be See Why You Should Never Design Your Own Cover or Buy This Book.

In fact, you know the one book I can’t find? How To Reconsider Publishing: Grill Yourself on Who Needs That Thing and What Your Real Motivation is in Trying to Publish It, Trad, Self, or Otherwise.

@NansiKunze No problem. I cringe when I do my own shout-outs. Social media is full of people crying out “buy my book!”…

May 15, 2013 11:28 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@sjbgilmour

Sam Gilmour

One problem with so much how-to-write and how-to-publish material is that it’s a key source of the “Buy my book!” bombardment. Writers on many social media are speaking as much or more to other writers. Facing in, not out. If other writers are your customers, you want an especially deft touch in how you offer your wares.

This goes to all you authors out there who randomly DM people on Twitter: HEY PERSON I DON’T KNOW I GOT THIS BOOK MOVIE COMIC GAME KICKSTARTER BLOG POST THAT I THINK YOU MIGHT LIKE FOR NO REASON BECAUSE I DON’T KNOW YOU LET ME UNCEREMONIOUSLY HAMMER YOU ABOUT THE HEAD AND NECK WITH IT.

Chuck Wendig

Could you guess? That’s renowned author Chuck Wendig, leaving writers-who-sell-to-writers (loudly) face down in his wake.

This goes to all your authors who spam me with: “Hey I think you might like my blog post on writer’s block / self-publishing / bacon enemas / donkey shows / blargleflargle [insert link I'm never going to click here].” At first I’m like, “Oh, are they actually talking to me,” but then I see they’ve sent the same goddamn message to 150 other people oh, and they follow like, 35,000 people and yet I’m not one of them.

In How Not To Market or Promote Your Shit, Wendig takes no prisoners.

Unwanted and invasive advertisement doesn’t work. We skip past commercials. We close any window that pops up that tries to elbow its message into our brains. Marketing and promotion needs to seduce us, and it does not seduce us with a hand grenade to the face.

The face. In which direction does it gaze?

Authors promoting their work on Twitter should have their own acronym- how about ACE – Altruistic Cultural Enhancement

May 15, 2013 2:55 pm via Twitter for iPhoneReplyRetweetFavorite

@jonnygeller

jonny geller

Look, these are bad times economically. Some writers probably feel the only way to churn up cash is by selling cupcakes to each other, as John Updike had Rev. March describe the fund-raising ladies of his church.

And we have several strong community members who are “writing both ways,” if you will, both producing effective material for their readerships and creating valuable instructional material to sell to colleagues. That market viability is one criterion, of course, of real experience, although it still doesn’t mean we need another how-to book until the next Italian Renaissance.

Well another Dan Brown blockbuster I won’t be reading! The eight worst sentences in Inferno via @Telegraph http://t.co/Y9qx0c1pJu

May 16, 2013 8:01 am via Tweet ButtonReplyRetweetFavorite

@Tim_Pilcher

Tim Pilcher

We’ve never needed to put more attention into facing out, looking for audience, developing readers. Can’t we cool it on the how-to’s? Can’t we just let Writer’s Digest’s bottomless catalog take care of that? Okay, more Deacon. He’s more fun than me chewing you out:

“Thanks, John,” he thanked. Then he put down the telephone and perambulated on foot to the desk behind which he habitually sat on a chair to write his famous books on an Apple iMac MD093B/A computer. New book Inferno, the latest in his celebrated series about fictional Harvard professor Robert Langdon, was inspired by top Italian poet Dante. It wouldn’t be the last in the lucrative sequence, either. He had all the sequels mapped out. The Mozart Acrostic. The Michelangelo Wordsearch. The Newton Sudoku.

Or am I wrong? (Imagine that.) How many authors do you know who seem more renowned among their peers than among readers—not because these “thriving ink-slingers” (Deacon) are writing books only other authors could love, but because their output seems to focus on these redundant how-to’s designed to crib a few more bucks from fellow would-be renowned authors?

Back to Table of Contents

Dan Brown still can’t write, but he deserves some respect | Alan Yuhas: His books make a mess of ‘fact’, but t… bit.ly/16k2ajB

— rafaela sara (@rafaelasara20) May 16, 2013

Main image: iStockphoto: The scupture of Alighieri at Santa Croce, by Emorae

The post WRITING ON THE ETHER: Writers in the Inferno appeared first on Jane Friedman.

Today’s guest post is adapted from Red Hot Internet Publicity by Penny Sansevieri.

Between Los Angeles and Las Vegas there’s a stretch of I-15 that’s just barren desert with you, sand, a cactus or two, a few vultures hoping to get lucky, and endless billboards. Most people speed down this stretch of highway as fast as possible, passing billboards at maybe 85 miles an hour. Most of the billboards you see will be fairly simple and easy to read. 

If you think of your website as a billboard instead of a website, you’ll be much further along than most people. Why? Because at the rate people surf these days, your website might as well be a billboard people glance at while speeding down the interstate. You have only a snippet of time to prove your site is worthy of a visit.

Here are three ways to improve your site design with this in mind.

1. Go light on the copy.

As surfers, we don’t read, we scan. Web copy (the text on your website) isn’t about writing; it’s about writing less. We don’t want to think, we just want to click, and preferably we want to be told what to do. A well-designed site is not just one that’s light on copy; it’s also uncomplicated and very obvious.

2. Don’t clutter the homepage.

When we’re getting a site designed, we have a tendency to want to push everything onto our home page. We cram it full of every piece of everything we’ve ever done. Just like that billboard crammed with stuff, we want to fill every inch of our home page with words and pictures and all the kinds of things—which send surfers scrambling for the exit button. I call it surf shock when you land on a site that seems to scream at you from your monitor.

3. Don’t provide endless choices.

Does your site resemble Starbucks? A million buttons and links with endless choices for the user? Is it intricate and complicated? Unfortunately, while it works well for Starbucks, it won’t work for your site. Giving your user too many options turns into “analysis paralysis,” and they’ll click off faster than you can say, “double tall, non-fat, no-foam latte.”

Whatever you do and whatever your business is, your home page should have only one goal. Whether that’s selling a product, selling a service or selling you, you need to pick one overarching objective for the home page.

What’s your goal? What do you want people to do when they land on your site?

The Most Important Area of Your Site

Numerous studies have been performed about how people surf. As we discussed above, people scan text. They don’t read every word, but look for the most important pieces that will directly benefit them. Remember that it’s all about the WIIFM factor (what’s in it for me?).

In the illustration above, you’ll see three areas of my site numbered, which correspond with their level of importance.

1. This is the most important piece of the home page. The primary goal of your home page should be reflected here. If you want to sell a product, get newsletter sign-ups or any other important activity, this will be a key spot. Why? Because we read from left to right, so when someone lands on your site, they scan landing on the right side first.

2. Once the eye scans #1, it heads right over to the #2 spot with one question in mind: WIIFM? So #2 and #3 must answer that question for them. The headline is the most important part, and the copy should lead with the most important information.

When visitors land on my business page, it is not about the company or the products we have, it’s about visitors and how we can help them navigate the maze of marketing and publicity options. And did you happen to notice the calls to action on the page: Find Out More, Call Now, Download Our Catalog? It’s important to tell people what you want them to do.

Finally, bear in mind that social proof is powerful, which is why we have the row of books at the top of the page and the reference to bestsellers in the copy.

If you enjoyed this post, then take a look at Red Hot Internet Publicity by Penny Sansevieri. It’s a terrific primer on online marketing for any author getting ready to launch a book marketing campaign.

The post 3 Ways to Improve Your Website Design appeared first on Jane Friedman.

The following guest post from Elizabeth Sims is adapted from her newest book, You’ve Got a Book in You, from Writer’s Digest.

As you plunge into writing your book, here’s the main thing to do:

Strive for the ordinary. Because that’s what the greats do.

If I were a person who used vulgarities, I would say, “You are shitting me.”

I am so not shitting you.

Do not even strive for near-greatness. Look, do you think that every time Joe DiMaggio stepped into the batter’s box he strove to make the most perfect swing in all of baseball? No, he strove to hit the ball.

Do you think that every time Picasso picked up a paintbrush he scrunched up his face and said to himself, “OK, boy, whatever you do, don’t blow it. Don’t ruin this canvas. What you’ve got to do is try really hard to produce another triumph that will make the art world sob with emotion.”

Right.

Picasso probably didn’t say anything to himself, he dove into that canvas with a child’s bright, open anticipation.

Do you suppose that every time Shakespeare or Jane Austen or Virginia Woolf, Henry David Thoreau, J.D. Salinger, Martin Luther King, Jr., F. Scott Fitzgerald, Winston Churchill, Dorothy Parker, Charles Dickens, or Isaac Asimov sharpened their quill or uncapped their Parker Duofold or clicked their Bic or sat down to their massive gorgeous loud clunky Underwood, they thought, “Ah! Now to unveil brilliance to the world!”

They sat down merely expecting themselves to relax and write.

So, then: I want you to behave just as the greatest geniuses behaved. I want you to strive to write an average book. A decent book. An OK book. In order to do this, you must first write an average sentence. And you have to start somewhere. And that is no sweat.

“The funicular car bucked once more and then stopped.”

That is the first sentence of Ernest Hemingway’s short story “Cross-Country Snow.” It’s fashionable to bash Hemingway these days (mostly in the form of scoffing at his machismo), but whatever you think of him, you have to love that sentence. A whole writing lesson lies in it: There’s the lesson of beginning a story by writing a simple, declarative sentence, and there’s the lesson of where to start your story.

Whenever I get to feeling anxious about the writing I’m doing, I remember, “The funicular car bucked once more and then stopped.” In fact, if you pick up my second novel, Damn Straight, you’ll notice that I sort of ripped off the structure of Hemingway’s sentence for my first sentence:

The power struggled back up for about ten seconds—ten brown little seconds—then failed again.

You don’t have to start at any obvious beginning, no matter whether you’re at sentence one or in the middle of Chapter Fifty. Get right going.

Unleashing Your True Voice

Another aspect of being ordinary—and being yourself as a writer—is unleashing your own voice.

What does that really mean?

Voice. English teachers talk about it; writing teachers talk about it. Agents and editors talk about it.

Professional authors never talk about it. We just write the best we know how. Voice is simply your style of writing, your way of expressing yourself. Authors write in different styles, we know this. Ernest Hemingway wrote blunt and punchy, for example, while Virginia Woolf wrote smooth and delicate.

Readers love a unique, authentic-sounding voice. Agents and editors hunt assiduously for original voices.

Your voice as a writer is the words you choose, the rhythm you use, the colors and inflections that characterize you.

No one kind of voice is better than another. All you want to do is be yourself. Like everything else good in writing, a free, unique voice stems from flow: from you, the writer, being in harmony with your world and your material.

How to Kill Your Voice and Disappoint Your Readers

• Overthink your writing.
• Be extremely careful; that is, try to write totally grammatically, as if the world’s meanest teacher were looking over your shoulder.
• Try to write as if you’re smarter or dumber than you are.
• When you want to show that you’re being casual, write down the first cliché that comes to mind.
• When in doubt, get tight.

How do you write with your own original voice? Stay in touch with your heartbrain, and write it how you’d say it.

If you enjoyed this post, I highly recommend Elizabeth Sims’ You’ve Got a Book in You. It’s perfect for writers about to tackle their first manuscript or writing project. Click here to get a sample from Amazon.

The post To Be Great, Strive to Be Ordinary appeared first on Jane Friedman.

Table of Contents

1. Ether En-Gendered
2. Judging Your Books’ Covers: Are They Sexist?
3. A Game of Thrones, reinterpreted by Electric Sheep Comix
4. Stardust, Reinterpreted by Librarian Monica Fumarolo
5. Throne of Glass, Reinterpreted by Ardawling
6. Franzen’s Freedom, Reinterpreted by Book Revels
7. A Clockwork Orange, Reinterpreted by “Brandy”
8. Lord of the Flies, Reinterpreted by BGM
9. And Claire Messud: No Reinterpretation Needed

Ether En-Gendered

I proposed a little experiment on Twitter. I asked people to take a well-known book, then to imagine the author of that book was of the opposite gender, or was gender-queer, and imagine what that cover might look like. Because we have these expectations in our heads already.

Maureen Johnson

And author Maureen Johnson’s “little experiment” helps me seed our cloud of weekly single-issue Ether here on Thursdays at JaneFriedman.com with a cluster of topics I want to focus on from time to time in coming months.

I want to tell you about it here first and see if I can get some outlines on a legendarily unweildy subject. Then we’ll have some structure. Maybe.

I’m thinking Ether En-Gendered because to “engender” means, primarily, “to produce by a union of the sexes.”

Literature—of absolutely all types, just turn off your genre head for a moment, please—should be en-gendered (not un-gendered, quit snarling), engendered as a thing of both male and female impulse and availability. 

My hetero-life-partner @Jason_Rowley is the fucking man.

May 7, 2013 10:15 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@alex

Alex Wilhelm

Yes, some writings may be created mainly for men or mainly for women, nothing wrong with that.

But in the aggregate, the overall compendium, the uber pile of pages and pixels, the idea of literature, of books, should be the first art we expect to escape the scourge of gender discrimination. 

YES! BRING US SCIENCE! “‏@jenlynnbarnes #coverflip has put me in the mood for some SCIENCE! Shall I run an experiment on this topic?”

May 8, 2013 4:26 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@maureenjohnson

maureenjohnson

In purest form, literature:

• Is working in words, not pictures (as in visual art, for example, or ballet or modern dance, or film);
• Is accomplished in the stir and stretch of a reader’s imagination, not in Dolby sound (as in vocal music and its sexually charged seat in our popular culture today); and
• Is housed in the mind, both of the author and of the reader (not in the marble realm of sculptural majesty or the granite might of architecture).

Because our stories ride the ethers of each other’s guesses and dreams, you’d think we’d have got ’round those flesh-and-blood traps set for other art forms.

Tomorrow I am having a sequel to last night’s launch party, in York @waterstones . Like all sequels it will be darker, and edgier.

May 8, 2013 3:41 am via Twitter for BlackBerry®ReplyRetweetFavorite

@matthaig1

Matt Haig

But we’ve long known we were failing on this. We’ve known that literature wasn’t escaping that surly bond of our fixation on the gender divides. As in so many things, we’ve turned away from the gaze-direct at the problem, and let it flicker off on the side, as inconsequential as that boilerplate that tells us any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental…

You never believed that, did you? Well, of course you didn’t.

Check out @maureenjohnson‘s gender-flipped covers, in case u need even more proof of gender inequality in publishing. http://t.co/Lk9YOVD9cS

May 7, 2013 4:40 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@jodipicoult

Jodi Picoult

Edward Nawotka

In January, for example, Edward Nawotka, Editor-in-Chief at Publishing Perspectives, my host-site for Ether for Authors on Mondays, gave us It’s Time Publishing Tries Something Radical To Entice Readers.

In it, Nawotka asked, in essence, if all of us in publishing wouldn’t run, not walk, if we could woo 47 percent of Americans who don’t routinely buy books.

Oddly, we didn’t run. We didn’t even walk. Know why? Because the biggest part of that target crowd is men.

Nawotka:

Perhaps it’s time for the publishing community to do something radical to entice new readers. I don’t know what that might be, but I might suggest that we start with something specifically targeted at men. My guess is that an overwhelming number of that 47% is male and it seems like a sensible proposition to target the most obvious group we know who don’t regularly buy books and read.

OverDrive and Sourcebooks to Launch Ebook Data Experiment http://t.co/caOc8njeJq Can only be interesting. Hats off to @draccah @OverDrivLibs

May 9, 2013 7:46 am via Tweet ButtonReplyRetweetFavorite

@stephenpub

Stephen Page

Mind you, as Nawotka pointed out, you can always find a glimmer of hope on the horizon, something promising, an inch taken where a mile is needed.

Darrelyn Saloom

Darrelyn Saloom, Ether sponsor (My Call to the Ring with Deirdre Gogarty) was one of only three readers to drop a comment on Nawotka’s post, but it’s a good one:

Southern Living has done it by adding author and Alabama native Rick Bragg to write a monthly column for the magazine. I attended two of his events this year in South Louisiana, and burly, oil-field men were there and saying how much they look forward to reading every new issue of Southern Living.

Just as an aside, Nawotka is also a member of a men’s reading group in Houston. It’s named, with unassailable accuracy, the Men’s Book Club. Guess how long they’ve been at it? Sixteen  years. And in Texas. I throw no stone, I’m a South Carolinian.

But don’t tell me “men won’t read,” I’m sick of hearing that, and you should be, too.

Lunch in the garden. I’ll read there. What book to choose. This could take a while. Probably Elizabeth Bishop. My recent bedtime friend.

May 9, 2013 7:50 am via Twitter for AndroidReplyRetweetFavorite

@MichaelCrossann

Michael Crossan

Eoin Purcell

Just this week, I was tweeting with Eoin Purcell, our good colleague in Dublin, about the fine set of MOS’s about e-reading (“man on the street” comments in broadcast-speak) that precede an interview show he did on UK ebook adoption. It’s the RTE Media Show from Athena Media.

The last voice we hear talking about e-reading in that pre-interview tape is a man who says he likes reading on the train with an e-reader because it’s:

More private, people don’t know what you’re reading.

Tuck that away for now. It’s an important clue, I believe, to the difference in how men and women read today. It may have to do with why we’re told that men are reading so much less than women (or won’t read fiction, or won’t talk about their reading, or won’t read anything without an explosion in each chapter, etc.).

No BEA, I’m not on Instagram and seriously, why are you asking me?

May 8, 2013 5:13 pm via TweetDeckReplyRetweetFavorite

@DonLinn

Don Linn

For now, it’s enough to establish one shapely leg of the Ether En-Gendered conversation we’ll visit from time to time. Let’s summarize its issues:

Are Men Not Reading? Who Told Us That? Is It True? How Can We Get More of Them Doing It? And What Subtle Signals May the Industry Deploy In Its Presentation of Books To Men?

Relax, we won’t go to that one today. It’s one of my faves, but we have another topic, thanks to Johnson and her associates at Huffington Post Books.

@huffpostbooks @maureenjohnson Here’s the cover I mocked up for my book. My publisher was like um thx. twitter.com/andrewtshaffer…

— Andrew Shaffer (@andrewtshaffer) March 20, 2013

    That part of this ongoing discussion, we’ll encapsulate as: How Do Women Fare Both As Writers and Readers? What Subtle Signals May the Industry Deploy to Skew Our Perceptions of Women’s Writing? And Is There a Chance That Women Unwittingly Could Be Helping To Hinder Men Reading?

Jane Friedman

Here, my other Ether-eal host, for the original Writing on the Ether, Jane Friedman, is standing by to offer you a grand compendium of literature-themed articles on women and feminism, in her role as digital editor to Virginia Quarterly Journal. Her array of online writings paralleling the Autumn 2012 edition of the journal (on feminism, “The Female Conscience”) is rich with insights and provocative viewpoints.

Jennifer Niesslein

There’s the down-to-earth near-cinematic progression of scenes in Notes on One’s Self-Identity by author Jennifer Niesslein:

Heads or tails, mothers or not, we’re doing our best to create a rewarding personal life in a culture that’s overly concerned with maternity, and we’re trying to create a professional legacy in a culture that’s biased against women—and might still be after we’re both long dead.

Hallie Ephron

And there’s a pretty intriguing look at News Obituaries: Another Gender Gap from novelist Hallie Ephron, who writes:

Though women live on average five years longer than men, it’s no secret that their death rates are identical. One hundred percent, male or female, all of us die. So, if there were equal opportunity in news obituaries as there is in paid death notices, there should be an equal number of women and men whose lives get written up in the newspaper. But it’s far from equal—at least that’s been my impression reading The Boston Globe.

Of the 304 messages in my spam folder this week, 216 of them are from idiots “fanning” me on @HuffingtonPost.

May 6, 2013 4:00 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@ColleenLindsay

Colleen Lindsay

 
Regular Ether readers will be glad to know we’re not headed for another round of “Where Are the Men at Writing Conferences?”  In this long spring of conference-going, I’ve actually seen a better gender balance among attendees than in the past at major writing events.

• Is I wrote here, the Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP), God bless its gigantic heart, seemed awfully light on sessions themed with men’s interests, but the crowd, itself in a snowy-slushy-freezing Boston, was a real good mix, approaching parity, I’d say.

• At Writer’s Digest Conference East in New York, there was what looked like a far better blend of men and women in attendance this year than we’ve seen there in past years, maybe as many as 40 percent of the crowd male and highly active in Q&A, etc. (not always the case for guys at confabs).

• And in this past weekend’s much balmier Boston than AWP encountered in March, Grub Street’s big The Muse and The Marketplace conference had a gratifying representation of men in the seats, I’d say about a third, which is especially good on a regional platform.

        So we’ll let that irritating conference-attendees subject rest for now, the blue buses and the pink buses are parking in more of the same lots, and I call that progress. Today, let’s pick up on the element of En-Gendered Ether that Johnson has provided: What Subtle Signals May the Industry Deploy to Skew Our Perceptions of Women’s Writing? Back to Table of Contents    
 

I’m saying this in the back of a cab on my way to another work obligation. Lately, all I do in cabs is catch up on personal emails. & tweet.

May 7, 2013 7:14 pm via SeesmicReplyRetweetFavorite

@Ginger_Clark

Ginger Clark

Judging Your Books’ Covers: Are They Sexist?

Shirtless Men Kissing Beautiful Women. How long have I been going on about these romance covers that choke the ebook lists? The trend is somewhere from merely tedious to outright infuriating for all but the millions of romance consumers and the folks feeding that frenzy. (More power to you—the fact that I’d like to see what I hash as #legitlit in sway isn’t your problem. You keep those guys shirtless as long as the ride lasts. I’m just trying to get pants onto the literary team.) Where Johnson takes us this week is in the nearby neighborhood of that ubiquitous cover smooch.  
 

@maureenjohnson MAUREEN JOHNSON I AM IN SUCH A MOOD WITH YOU RIGHT NOW!! I AM 29 AND I AM SULKING LIKE A STROPPY SULKER THING!! #TheThing

May 9, 2013 7:19 am via TweetDeckReplyRetweetFavorite

@Laura_Jennings

Laura Jennings

 
In The Gender Coverup at Huffington Post Books, she does a thoroughgoing job of hitting the inequities now all but indigenous in the world of books—particularly their presentation to young minds (she writes YA).

So, we’re thinking about boys and girls and what they read. The assumption, as I understand it, is that females are flexible and accepting creatures who can read absolutely anything. We’re like acrobats. We can tie our legs over our heads…Boys, on the other hand, are much more delicately balanced. To ask them to read “girl” stories (whatever those might be) will cause the whole venture to fall apart. They are finely tuned, like Formula One cars, which require preheated fluids and warmed tires in order to operate.

It’s a good article, I hope you’ll read it all.

Maybe this idea that there are “girl books” and “boy books” and “chick lit” and “whatever is the guy equivalent of chick lit” gives credit to absolutely no one, especially not the boys who will happily read stories by women, about women. As a lover of books and someone who supports readers and writers of both sexes, I would love a world in which books are freed from some of these constraints.

Where she’s leading, and where we’re going, is that experiment she mentioned.

@erinwert @maureenjohnson I’m not sure if you’re talking about nursing or Seahorse hangouts. — Alice Rourke (@Smooshie1592) May 9, 2013

  What she asked people to do was to reinterpret how the covers of known books might go if those books’ authors were, “of the opposite gender, or was gender-queer.” Cool results. And it’s the heart of our focus today.

We’re told not to judge books by [their covers], but… EVERYBODY DOES. That is what they are for. They are the packages that get your attention, that give you messages about what to expect.

Maureen Johnson’s great @HuffingtonPost #coverflip article on gendered book covers. Completely changes perceptions:http://t.co/sxO1roAawD

May 9, 2013 6:06 am via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@sam_hubble

Sam Hubble

The Post’s team put some of these reinterpretations into a gallery with books’ original covers, in Coverflip: Maureen Johnson Calls For An End To Gendered Book Covers With An Amazing Challenge. I want to take a few of them in pairs, side by side, for comparison. One of the few drawbacks of online galleries is that we tend to bomb through them as fast as our clicks can carry us, and it might be hard to get some nuance at such a clip. In some cases, responding cover designers (re-designers?) changed the author names to help put across the concept.
Back to Table of Contents

“Agility isn’t always about doing the new stuff, the cool stuff, the meme-worthy, and the rest.” David Smith http://t.co/17PF4nDy7t #toccon

May 9, 2013 8:04 am via HootSuiteReplyRetweetFavorite

@glecharles

Guy L. Gonzalez

A Game of Thrones, reinterpreted by Electric Sheep Comix

We have the original cover for George R.R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones in the Book 1 (A Song of Ice and Fire) paperback edition from Bantam, and we have Electric Sheep Comix’s (Patrick Sean Farley) reinterpretation.

From Huffington Post Books, an original cover for A Game of Thrones, left, and a reinterpretation by Electric Sheep Comix

In the reinterpretation, you’ll notice that Martin has become not only Georgette (and a one-R. Martin, not two) but also “The Reigning Queen of modern fantasy.” From Johnson, on the exercise as a whole, not just in terms of this book’s real and reimagined covers:

The simple fact of the matter is, if you are a female author, you are much more likely to get the package that suggests the book is of a lower perceived quality.

Do you agree with that?
Back to Table of Contents

@maureenjohnson Eish! no words… — SHIRLEY JENNER (@SHIRLEYJENNER1) May 9, 2013

Stardust, Reinterpreted by Librarian Monica Fumarolo

At her site, Monica Fumarolo writes:

This is my play on Stardust by Neil Gaiman. Had a woman written it, I feel like the romance side of things would have been played up much more than the action/adventure aspects.

From Huffington Post Books, the first UK edition cover for Neil Gaiman’s Stardust , left, and a reinterpretation by Monica Fumarolo

As you can see, in this instance, Mr. Amanda Palmer has become “Nellie Gaiman” for a new play on the Stardust cover. I’d say Fumarolo might only want to take out that bit of the guy’s collar in the lower right corner. We like our Men Shirtless when Kissing Beautiful Women, you know.

Back to Table of Contents

La influència del gènere de l’autor en el disseny de la coberta… una notícia curiosa. http://t.co/EhyYqtHhmk

May 9, 2013 2:14 am via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@ricardperis

Ricard Peris

Throne of Glass, Reinterpreted by Ardawling

We’re going the other direction in this one, the hardback cover from the Bloomsbury USA release Throne of Glass, reinterpreted by self-described “graphic hobbyist” Ardawling. Be sure to get “throne” into your next title, right? Ironically, author Sarah J. Maas does tweet as @SJMaas, the masculine-ized name Ardawling gives her on the reinterpreted cover. And even more ironically—as panelists at the Grub Street the Muse and the Marketplace conference this weekend discussed—this thing of women writing under initials has become so prevalent that it’s almost always a sign of a female author, not male.

From Huffington Post Books, the Bloomsbury USA hardcover for Sarah J. Maas’ Throne of Glass, left, and a reinterpretation by Ardawling

Looking at the brittle, Deco-structural interpretation Ardawling produces brings Maureen Johnson’s comments to mind:

If we [women] sell more — and we often don’t — it is simply because we produce candy, and who doesn’t like candy? We’re the high fructose corn syrup of literature, even when our products are the same. It’s okay to sell the girls as long as we have some men to provide protein.

That pretty handily predicts the next one.

Back to Table of Contents

@porter_anderson Duh — Victoria Noe (@Victoria_Noe) May 8, 2013

Franzen’s Freedom, Reinterpreted by Book Revels

Book Revels is a site for “young adult books and pop culture ramblings” from “Ellie”—who describes herself as “a twenty-something librarian completely obsessed with YA literature.” She gives us what Johnson calls “the soft-sell cover with the warm glow and the feeling of smooth jazz blowing off of it.” Which, especially on a title like Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom from Farrar, Straus & Giroux, easily reminds us, in the reinterpretation, of the “feminine products” advertising context, no?

From Huffington Post Books, the FSG original cover for Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom, left, reinterpreted by Book Revels

About her reinterpretation, “Ellie” at Book Revels writes:

Here’s my take on Freedom by Jonathan Franzen as if it were written by a female author. I went with an image of a girl whose entire face you can’t see with a blurred background (i.e. the typical YA cover). I also chose a cursive font, which I see a lot of on “girl” books.

Back to Table of Contents

I am seriously getting that ‘City of Shirtless Simon’ Tshirt. @maureenjohnson Come to Comic Con with @cassieclare and youll get one too

May 8, 2013 11:38 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@Pamelapena

Pamela Pena

A Clockwork Orange, Reinterpreted by “Brandy”

Anthony Burgess becomes Antonia, and we go from the 50th-anniversary Norton hardcover artwork to a conspicuously stylish reinterpretation by “Brandy.”

From Huffington Post Books, the W.W. Norton hardcover anniversary artwork for Anthony Burgess’ A Clockwork Orange, left, and “Brandy’s’ reinterpretation

“Brandy” writes about her reinterpretation:

I did the coverflip. I tried my best… hopefully it reflects both the challenge and the themes of the book, A Clockwork Orange, as written by Anthony Burgess. All in all, Maureen’s a genius.

One more. Back to Table of Contents

@genniferalbin #coverflip not just abt reader appeal. Abt valuing female authors,their expertise & their content. @vida_lit @maureenjohnson — Anna Boll (@annawritedraw) May 8, 2013

Lord of the Flies, Reinterpreted by BGM

This is the original UK cover for William Golding’s classic, then a reinterpretation by Toronto’s BGM. (Just as an unrelated observation, it’s interesting to see how many folks still don’t identify themselves online, even at their sites and on Twitter. They use pseudonyms, first names only, etc. Happily, we don’t have to work on that one today. It’s just worth noting that even as we encourage authors to identify themselves fully and use their names and faces as IDs, handles and avatars for best networking, an awful lot of Netizens do nothing of the sort.)

From Huffington Post Books, the UK cover for William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, left, and a reinterpretation by “BGM”

Note what happens here to Lord of the Flies as the author name switches to Willa Golding and this nurturing, protective evocation of the eternal victim, poor bespectacled Piggy.

There are more covers and reinterpretations in the gallery, which is well worth a bit of your time.

Back to Table of Contents

Meanwhile, could a reporter please get going on the story of women writers explicitly rejecting “likable?” Wolitzer, Shriver, Messud. Go!

May 1, 2013 8:46 am via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@jenniferweiner

Jennifer Weiner

And Claire Messud: No Reinterpretation Needed

I’d be remiss in getting out of this edition of the Ether without mentioning the nicely pointed commentary from author Claire Messud in her short interview with Annasue McCleave Wilson at Publishers Weekly, An Unseemly Emotion: PW Talks with Claire Messud.

Claire Messud

While this incident didn’t involve subtle (and not so subtle) signals transmitted by cover art, it has sparked plenty of healthy comment and debate. Wilson at PW points out that Messud’s character Nora Eldridge in The Woman Upstairs is “angry, really angry.”

Messud’s response invokes Chekhov’s line about not having to defend horse thieves and making a terrific statement about the expectation that women in fiction must not be allowed the harsher emotions male characters are granted. She makes herself perfectly clear on the point while also clarifying that Nora is a complex and rounded character, hardly an emblem of anger:

If it’s unseemly and possibly dangerous for a man to be angry, it’s totally unacceptable for a woman to be angry. I wanted to write a voice that for me, as a reader, had been missing from the chorus: the voice of an angry woman. So yes, Nora Eldridge is middle aged and yes, she is angry. I’m not trying to deliver some “message”—I’m not suggesting that middle age and anger are synonymous, or that being single makes you angry, or anything like that. Nora is an individual, one particular person, whose psyche has been formed by temperament and a series of circumstances. She has just emerged from a long period of suffering, the care for and loss of her mother to a hideous illness. She is trying—like each of us—to do the best she can.

It’s clear the dog didn’t like Boris. MT .@publisherslunch #plnws Visting Claire Messud and James Wood In Cambridge publun.ch/12gkIMF — Paul Bogaards (@paulbogaards) April 24, 2013

And the interview gets even better when Wilson asks Messud, “I wouldn’t want to be friends with Nora, would you? Her outlook is almost unbearably grim.”

As if friendship potential is the criterion for a proper character.

Messud’s “For heaven’s sake, what kind of question is that?” response has been repeated and celebrated for the past week. Part of Messud’s response:

If you’re reading to find friends, you’re in deep trouble. We read to find life, in all its possibilities.

It’s an enlightening exchange, now being reinterpreted, itself, in many ways by folks discussing and sharing it.

So now it’s your turn: Expectations, signals, clues, interpretations, thrown by cover art in particular—how gender-biased can they be? How conscious is the publisher or designer of such bias and message? How aware of this element of bookselling are you on a regular basis? Fill me in, I’m all ears.

*steps out from behind curtain* I’ve been here all along, Twitter. I heard everything you said.

May 10, 2013 9:43 am via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@maureenjohnson

maureenjohnson

Main image: iStockphoto: ep_stock

The post WRITING ON THE ETHER: Are Your Books’ Covers Sexist? appeared first on Jane Friedman.