Confessions of a Shameless Promoter

Back Cover Copy

2013-05-23T07:00:00.000-04:00

From The Book Designer

Make your copy “at-a-glance” friendly

If your headline draws readers in, don’t lose them by using large blocks of text to fill out your back cover. Instead, make it “at-a-glance” friendly by employing a liberal use of headlines, subheads, short paragraphs and bullet points. This common sales writing technique creates a lot of open space around your copy, which visually makes it look fast and easy to read.

READ MORE

National Book Awards

2013-05-22T07:00:00.000-04:00

"We are now accepting entries for the 2013 National Book Awards via our new online entry form. Publishers who meet the criteria may register, fill out the form, and pay the entry fee online; however, books should still be mailed to the Judges and to our office as usual. The form will only be available through June 3, and the books themselves are due to the Judges by July 15."

READ MORE

On Typography

2013-05-21T07:00:00.000-04:00

Plot Lines...Infographic by Christian Tate

2013-05-20T07:00:00.000-04:00

Click here to expand.

YouTube Trends

2013-05-19T07:00:00.000-04:00

Want to know what videos are the most popular? Check out the You Tube Trends Map.

Looking for a Book with No Title or Author?

2013-05-18T07:00:00.000-04:00

A recent dilemma since I didn't remember the correct title. Found at Google Books using their advanced search engine.

Go To Search

Salacious Sex Lives of Writers?

2013-05-17T07:00:00.000-04:00

Simone de Beauvoir

The author of The Second Sex is one of our favorite literary intellectuals, and she applied her wide open mind to her love life as well as her feminist philosophy. Freed by her family’s inability to provide a dowry, she declined to marry her boyfriend, Jean Paul Sartre, but the two shared a fruitful and revolutionary lifelong relationship. Not so juicy, you say? Both de Beauvoir and Sartre had other affairs, and were quite open about them, even sharing some of them. De Beauvoir also apparently had a penchant for her young students. In 1943, she was suspended from her teaching job after word spread that, four years earlier, she had seduced one of her 17-year-old students, Nathalie Sorokine. The girl’s parents leveled charges against de Beauvoir, who had her teaching license revoked.

READ MORE

Photography: Created Equal

2013-05-16T07:00:00.000-04:00

SEE MORE

Haiku

2013-05-15T07:00:00.000-04:00

sleepy fairies yawn

inside tulip poster beds

til petals open

Free Download for All E-Readers

2013-05-14T07:00:00.000-04:00

Available at Smashwords. Scroll down page to download into your device.

Previously published, mystery and relationships stories. Includes "The Accident", honorable mention for Penzler's Best Short Stories.

Patti Smith on Living

2013-05-13T07:00:00.000-04:00

Exactly

2013-05-12T07:00:00.000-04:00

Wisdom from Margaret Atwood that I do (we're like twins)...
"Don’t sit down in the middle of the woods. If you’re lost in the plot or blocked, retrace your steps to where you went wrong. Then take the other road. And/or change the person. Change the tense. Change the opening page."

On Comedy & Tragedy

2013-05-11T07:00:00.000-04:00

Mel Brooks: The Difference Between Comedy & Tragedy Is... American Masters.

About Simple Mechanic

2013-05-10T07:00:00.000-04:00

This novella is a confluence of impressions I absorbed, deconstructed, and subsequently repurposed from: Calvino's If on a winter's night a traveler; telescopic and microscopic renderings of scientific discovery; flotsam of mind-bending definitions such as, but not limited to, consensual rape; neuroscience and pop psychology that, to be honest, I probably misconstrued; the Bible; dreams; meditative sessions; drug use;* and on the rarest occasion, my actual life. In the beginning, this was a regurgitation on how one develops a sexual identity. In the end, it became about me and my continuing confusion in making sense of this three-dimensional plane.

Rethink Typing

2013-05-09T07:00:00.000-04:00

Truman Capote's 1958 typed manuscript of Breakfast at Tiffany's with the author's handwritten edits has sold for about $306,000 at auction to Russian billionaire, Igor Sosin, who plans to display it in Moscow and Monaco.

thestar.com

Book Club Resource

2013-05-08T07:00:00.000-04:00

Would you travel to visit a book club and talk about your book? Fill out our free and simple form and we will add you to our directory of writers who will travel, host Skype visits or accept telephone chats with book clubs.

Want to spice up your book club? Explore our Authors Who Visit Book Clubs directory and invite a nearby author to visit your group. You can also download the directory as an Excel spreadsheet to explore (and sort!) the genres, websites and contact information for more than 1,500 writers around the world.

READ MORE from Galley Cat

Fun Ways to Promote

2013-05-07T07:00:00.000-04:00

Create half a dozen brief, 2 minute videos about your digital content.These don’t have to be expensive or fancy – you can use the Webcam on your laptop to make the videos. Answer a single question in each video – things like why you created the digital publication, what problem it solves, who can best benefit from using it. Post the videos on YouTube.

Read the rest of this article on The Future of Ink:http://thefutureofink.com/digital-content/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+tfoi+%28The+Future+of+Ink%29

Artists and Their Cats

2013-05-06T07:00:00.000-04:00

Andy Warhol in his studio with Robert Indiana and cats, 1964. Andy loved animals, and we’re not sure if these are his studio cats, but it’s worth noting that the artist once owned 25 cats — all named Sam. His series of 25 cat prints were not based on his own cats, but that of New York photographer Walter Chandoha.

SEE MORE FROM FLAVORWIRE

Tech Tips

2013-05-05T07:00:00.000-04:00

Pet Fan, Charley Dickens

2013-05-04T07:00:00.000-04:00

Charles Dickens had two ravens, two St. Bernards, two Newfoundlands, a spaniel, a mastiff, a Pomeranian, a cat, a canary, and a pony. Their names, respectively, were Grip I, Grip II, Sultan, Linda, Don, Bumble, Timber, Turk, Mrs. Bouncer, Williamina, Dick, and Newman Noggs. Dickens had Grip I mounted after it died from eating lead paint. It is now in the Philadelphia Free Library, and is thought – via Barnaby Rudge – to have inspired one of Dickens’s American contemporaries to pen a well-known poem.

Pre E-Book

2013-05-03T07:00:00.000-04:00

[Photo via]

From Fahrenheit 451

2013-05-02T07:00:00.000-04:00

“Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you’re there. It doesn’t matter what you do, he said, so as long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that’s like you after you take your hands away.” – Ray Bradbury

Simple Mechanic Excerpt

2013-05-01T07:00:00.000-04:00

Due out this summer....

Yes. A single woman’s life tends to be habitual. I suspect it’s a matter of having fewer variables, that is to say interruptions, caused by demanding children, husbands, and the losing battle of staying one step ahead of nature’s incessant désordre - dirt, dust, hairiness; and two steps ahead of household management duties where the clock is always ticking and, Kristin's counterpart, the married woman, is always running.

However, having taken a hairpin turn by fucking a stranger at work, Kristin’s day is not habitual.

Every so often, she puts down the fork and stares into space, like a zombie. Poor girl. Has she been traumatized after the fact? Does she feel used, minimized, objectified? Is she taking the rap for being a wanton slut? I want to tell her it takes two to tango. She glances in my direction and smiles sweetly, vacuously, like a bridesmaid. The woman is hard to read.

Blocked? You are not alone...

2013-04-30T07:00:00.000-04:00

From the Guardian and Dave Eggers

“I need eight hours to get maybe 20 minutes of work done. I had one of those yesterday: seven hours of self-loathing. I used to write in the middle of the night. I suppose I was surprised by the sedentary nature of writing: like, wow, most of this is sitting down and typing! So I used to add a bit of adventure by starting at midnight and working until five. That was excitement! But now I have two kids…So it’s bankers hours for me…Writing is a deep-sea dive. You need hours just to get into it: down, down, down. If you’re called back to the surface every couple of minutes by an email, you can’t ever get back down. I have a great friend who became a Twitterer and he says he hasn’t written anything for a year.”

READ MORE

On Writing from Don Delillo

2013-04-29T07:00:00.000-04:00

From The Guardian

“It took a long time. I was very slow to begin. I lacked the discipline for the enormous commitment one has to make. Even when I had all day to write, and sometimes all week, I took forever finally to enter my first novel. It was only after two years’ work that it occurred to me that I was a writer. I had no particular expectation that the novel would ever be published, because it was sort of a mess. It was only when I found myself writing things I didn’t realize I knew that I said, ‘I’m a writer now.’ The novel had become an incentive to deeper thinking. That’s really what writing is — an intense form of thought.”

READ MORE

Confessions of a Shameless Promoter

Back Cover Copy

National Book Awards

On Typography

Plot Lines...Infographic by Christian Tate

YouTube Trends

Related articles

Looking for a Book with No Title or Author?

Salacious Sex Lives of Writers?

Photography: Created Equal

Haiku

Free Download for All E-Readers

Patti Smith on Living

Exactly

On Comedy & Tragedy

About Simple Mechanic

Rethink Typing

Book Club Resource

Fun Ways to Promote

Artists and Their Cats

Tech Tips

Pet Fan, Charley Dickens

Pre E-Book

From Fahrenheit 451

Simple Mechanic Excerpt

Blocked? You are not alone...

On Writing from Don Delillo