A Writer's Edge

Five of #LetterMo Challenge

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 16:42:00 -0800

Today's missive continues the holiday greeting card saga/series with a few flourishes left over from my Artist Trading Cards mania. Yes, those are puffy stickers that say "family" and "Time" - two items I know Dear Drain cherishes.

The joke's on me, though, because I had to email her to learn her physical address.

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Four of #LetterMo Challenge

Sat, 04 Feb 2012 08:16:00 -0800

Today I was going to start using up my supply of postcards - until I found I'd thrown them out. It is part of an ongoing attempt to "de-clutter" my home. My eyes fell upon my mother's notepad, in danger of becoming a coaster for libations. It had been among many sorts of stationery I found after she died in May 2006. So I wrote her a little letter to let her know how I am doing.

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Three of #LetterMo Challenge

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 10:58:00 -0800

The stationery of today's handwritten letter was just toooo cute not to show. It's a self-folding card with bunny-babies nibbling new root vegetables. Perfect for my friend Eileen who entertains critters in her garden and home, probably year 'round. Also a perfect reminder for her because she lives outside Chicago where, if we have winter, she usually has it bad. Spring is coming, so hang on, Sloopy!

Both of us write poorly these days, and it took Eileen a long time to adopt email. Thus, there have been gapping spaces in our correspondence, which spans almost six decades. She's the only friend left from my childhood. However, she is a never-fail Christmas card writer, and that's when I catch up on her activities.

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Two of #LetterMo Challenge

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 10:38:00 -0800

This second day of letter writing finds me still catching up on thank yous for holiday cards sent to me last month. Um, month before last. I send few, if any, this year.

Today I write to high school classmates (MHS '61 Yay, Middies!) who live across the street from my mother's last home. Yesterday's recipients are next door.

This time, however, Charlene seldom writes (much) but sends email with amusing content, a practice began at my request over five years ago when I began breast cancer treatment.

#LetterMo

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One of A Month of Letters Challenge

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 11:41:00 -0800

Mary Robinette Kowal challenges us to a month of writing letters by hand in "The Month of Letters Challenge".

My first continues belated acknowledgements for holiday cards. This particular correspondent has no computer, hence no email. Mostly she calls me with free minutes from her cell phone plan.

You can read more about Kowal's challenge at The Challenge.

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Farewell to This Blog

Thu, 30 Jun 2011 08:48:00 -0700

For the last six months, this blog has been "on sabbatical," but I have posted as the spirit moved me.

All ventures have a natural cycle, and I think this blog has come to the end of it's life. (I may start others and the writers' books rev iews one continues @GLHancock Reviews.

There just aren't enough hours in the day to pound the keyboard for all that I want to accomplish. That and recurring tendonitis in my right arm combine to make regular blogging a less desirable activity. I've already given up designing websites for writers. I'll leave this account open on Posterous because it houses the last year of posts. If I can find a way to integrate them into my website, I will do that eventually.

The main archive of these posts is at http://www.writers-edge.info/Blog.html and will remain available with it's infinitely more useful Google Search feature. If you receive the posts via FeedBlitz emails, please switch to the FeedBurner service: Subscribe to A Writer's Edge by Email - I will be closing the other email service and consolidating all account with Google's FeedBurner. If I begin a new blog, FeedBurner will automatically notify you. The RSS feed is http://feeds.feedburner.com/writers-edge/EElx. I'll also use that feed as well as Twitter to notify you if/when I begin a new blog or service.

My deep gratitude to all of you who have remained readers from the beginning in 2004, and to all who have joined along the way. I wish you well in your writing endeavors. You can still contact me by mail, phone and email via "A Writer's Edge" website -- writers.edge@gmail.com

Georganna Hancock, editor/writer/publisher
10725 Escobar Drive
San Diego CA 92124
858-571-5390
A Writer's Edge http://www.writers-edge.info
Amazon Author Page http://www.amazon.com/georganna-hancock/e/B002X0CX50

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Gild, Guild, & Geld

Sat, 25 Jun 2011 13:53:00 -0700

Artists and other creatives often join together in craft guilds, so it is understandable that one would claim she "guilded" a piece of art. I don't think "guild" can be used as a verb, however. What the artist meant was that she coated the work with gold in some form, and that calls for the verb "to gild." Think of the cliché 'gilding the lily.'

To geld, on the other hand, requires little art and probably no gold at all. It is a synonym for neutering or castrating an animal. Ouch! There's a grammar error you don't want to make.

For example, "I belong to the San Diego Writers/Editors Geld." Reminds me of a toothless lion.

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Anti-Bucket List

Sat, 18 Jun 2011 19:06:00 -0700

Following an experience with breast cancer five years ago, I began to have curious thoughts.They started with joy at hearing an early morning bird's song.

"I'll miss that when I'm dead," I thought. The incongruity of the idea immediately followed. It was an especially unfitting response because I am agnostic, analytic, and well-schooled in psychology. In other words, dreadfully intellectual. Wow! It was a rare utterly emotional reaction to an unmediated experience of reality.

In the time since that first "What I'll miss when I'm dead" episode, I've noticed others. Everyone else seems to be creating a "bucket list" of experiences to have before death, so I thought I might chronicle these events. I don't have a bucket list, though I've tried diligently to come up with one.

The most pervasive reaction to having cancer seems to be to take a long trip or perform some outrageous action like parasailing or climbing Mt. Everest. There's nothing left that I want to do. Really, I just don't care anymore. All those experiences seem pointless if I won't be around to recollect and enjoy them again.

So, I treasure the here and now as much as I can. Illogical as they may be, what I'll miss most---if I can---are sensual activities rather than intellectual achievements. This will come as a surprise to most anyone who knows me. Nonetheless:

I am dumbstruck by intensely blue skies, especially with contrasting puffy white clouds -- rare in SoCal.

The satiny slide of great chocolate on my tongue and upper palate is orgasmic.

A tree viewed against the sky, limbs akimbo, still astonishes the artist within.

Fragrances that evoke nostalgic memories bring tears, especially the smell of my mother.

The feel and odor of a warm, milky kitten is the essence of cats I loved through the years.

Losing my Self in a mystic moment is bliss enough for eternity.

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Ebook Sales Not So Fast

Mon, 06 Jun 2011 12:03:00 -0700

Predicted growth of digital publishing--in four years digital sales will still be only half as much as printed book sales.

In the table below, the total numbers for both print and digital represent sales of hardbound and paperbound books in these categories: adult/juvenile/YA fiction and non-fiction and mass market paperbacks fiction and non-fiction. Future numbers are projections

Professor Albert Greco of Fordham University’s extrapolated the predictive numbers from U.S. Department of Commerce data.

Read the whole story in The Miami Herald

	2008	2009	2010	2011	2012	2013	2014	2015
Print	$10.2 billion	$10.1 billion	$9.6 billion	$9.3 billion	$9 billion	$8.4 billion	$7.9 billion	$7.4 billion
Digital	$78 million	$166 million	$625 million	$1.2 billion	$2.1 billion	$2.6 billion	$3.1 billion	$3.6 billion
% Digital	.76	1.62	6.10	11.44	18.88	23.55	28.28	32.82

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People Prefer Opinions?

Fri, 27 May 2011 10:16:00 -0700

Many developments on the electronic publishing front happen at a breath-taking speed. Consider the latest Amazon data showing ebooks outselling tree books (my last post). And at Amazon, the new features popping up in Author Central pages (I'm struggling to get my publications listed in Shelfari where we can add material that will show up back on Amazon books' listing pages).

Just this morning I read in the LNJDawson.com newsletter:

The new Big Six (Apple, Amazon, BN, Sony, Kobo, Google) are very very different from traditional book retailers.

"Big Six" is what we used to call the major New York print book publishers, of course. The new ones are almost all digital media only.

Meanwhile, I continue reviewing print books and publishing the reviews on the Amazon Kindle platform. Available just this morning is "Review of The Dante Club by Matthew Pearl" which I souped up just for this version.

Because Amazon does not automatically add a title to one's Author Page Bibliography, I began snooping the listings with the site's search engine. I was astounded to find different listings, depending on whether you search for material by an author's name (in quotation marks) in Books > "Author Name" or with Books > Advanced Search > "Author Name." Now the resulting pages display blurbs about the author as well as a seldom complete listing of publications.

In fact, in the result for searching my name just in Books, the second listing when sorted for Relevance (default setting) provides a link to "Amazon's Complete Selection of Georganna Hancock's Books" which is the advanced search results, but not quite complete. And what do they mean by "selection?"

Here's the interesting (to me) part: on the Books search results page, the blurb contains this paragraph with individual links to the cited material:

Bestselling Books: Review of THE MAN WHO LOVED BOOKS TOO MUCH (Books Reviewed by Georganna Hancock), IRS & Writers (Be a Successful Writer!, Vol 3), Review of ARIEL RESTORED by Sylvia Plath (Books Reviewed by Georganna Hancock).

What's so great about that? It's the first time I can see which of my pubs are doing best in sales! Two of the top three are book reviews. This is as I suspected from looking at individual monthly sales reports (the only reporting KDP offers). People seem to prefer my opinions more than the information provided in my other publications. Can anyone explain this?

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ebooks outsell treebooks

Thu, 19 May 2011 10:01:00 -0700

Since April 1, for every 100 print books Amazon.com has sold, it has sold 105 Kindle books. This includes sales of hardcover and paperback books by Amazon where there is no Kindle edition. Free Kindle books are excluded and if included would make the number even higher.

Amazon - May 19, 2011

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New Copyright Article

Mon, 16 May 2011 09:11:45 -0700

UPLOADING TO THE INTERNET: WHERE TO SUE? This is the title of a new article on copyright matters of interest to writers who post material online. How appropriate! I just found much material that I've written for several sites jumbled together on many pages of a site, apparently from Indonesia. (They just love me to death in that part of the world!)

From a post today to a publishers' mailing list:

Given the breadth of the Internet,

what happens if someone infringes on your work? Where can you sue? I have written a new article about an important case dealing with this question: Where is the proper location for bringing suit against a claimed infringer when the infringement involves copyrighted materials which have been uploaded to the Internet? This is an exceptionally important question because the leverage available to a plaintiff suing in a home state, where the defendant does not reside and to where the defendant would have to travel, obtain legal counsel in etc. can be very significant. And that leverage can possibly help you avoid litigation.

This has implications for all copyright proprietors as well as web site developers and site owners.

You can find it at http://www.ivanhoffman.com/uploading.html

Reprinted with permission of Ivan Hoffman, B.A., J.D., Attorney at Law

http://www.ivanhoffman.com

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Fox in Sox

Mon, 09 May 2011 11:53:04 -0700

I was just sitting around in my socks when the phone rang. A prospective client with a novel manuscript asked about my services. The conversation went weird fast -

He: So how do I know I won't get cheated?

Me: huh?

He: Yeah, how do I know you won't ...

Me: Steal your writing? Plagiarize it?

He: No ... uh ... I read about all these writing scams

Me: *brain finally engages* I write about all those scams and try to help people avoid them (chuckling). In fact, I think I have piece on avoiding scams in my Kindle Store on Amazon. You should always research someone before hiring him or her.

He: How?

Me: You can look at my profile on LinkedIn.com. Some people have recommended me there. Oh, and there are testimonials on the editorial services page of my website. I'm sure any of those people would be happy to verify them. I can put you in touch with them. *smacks forehead* Or you could just Google me. You'll see I'm all over the Internet. Or search on my name plus complaints or scams...

We concluded, and I thought I'd probably never hear from him again. A few hours later he emailed me his manuscript. He wrote:

I hope I didn't sound to blunt over the phone concerning your credentials but, I have read so many horror stories that I was only trying to be cautious. As suggested, I did do a bit of research and I feel that you are quite reputable.

Whew! I've never done a search as I suggested. I'm sure there are a few disgruntled people out there, like the ones who accuse me of rudeness in Twitter chats. In less than 140 characters, it's hard to be tactical, and Google indexes EVERYTHING including those tweets you pop off the top of your head. And the responses.

Still, I felt a little like the fox that the hen asked, "Are you going to eat me?"

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Celebrate Yo Mama!

Sun, 08 May 2011 00:01:00 -0700

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More Kindle, Please

Fri, 06 May 2011 16:17:00 -0700

My latest publication in the Kindle Store. Tips for book signing -- even for e-books like mine. It's pretty presumptuous to call what might be a handout a "book" but that's the term the Kindle system uses, even though they don't limit the amount of content only the minimum price, so this one is just 99 cents.

Digital publishing through Amazon's Kindle Digital Publishing (KDP) service just keeps improving. In March my dozen or so pieces began appearing on the German version of Amazon. On the other hand, Amazon requires works listed at the 70% royalty level to be available for customers to "lend" to others. I think it is for a short time, like two weeks, but I'd count that as a lost sale.

Authors can opt out of the lending feature if they choose the 35% royalty. I am experimenting with that royalty level and option with this latest piece on book signing. I wanted to make it available for free, but the minimum price allowed is 99 cents. If I uploaded the same work to Smashwords (another self-publishing service) and listed it there for free, if and when Amazon noticed, it would automatically drop the cost on its site. Sounds like a lot of extra work to me, so I settled for selling Book Signing Tips for the minimum.

More new features include making book notes and highlights on your Kindle books available for others to see. You can connect with readers as you annotate your own books in the Your Books section Amazon Kindle Page at https://kindle.amazon.com/. If you have an account at Shelfari, you can add Book Extras like lists of characters, quotations, locations and more for each of your books. These show up in details about your books, but you enter them in the Books tab of your Author Page. Don't have one yet? I have not fully exploited the possibilities of mine yet, but you can see the basics available at http://www.amazon.com/Georganna-Hancock/e/B002X0CX50/.

More madness for Author Pages: you can now add up to eight videos to the Author Page! And link up your Twitter account as well as displaying blog posts. I have a different blog that feeds mine from http://glhancock.posterous.com - and it's all free.

Finally, you can have an Author Page for Amazon sites in France, The United Kingdom, Germany and Japan. You can self-publish through KDP in English, German French, Spanish, Portuguese and Italian and specify pricing in US dollars, Pounds Sterling, and Euros. I feel so cosmopolitan now! I also feel that the more markets and more Amazon marketing, the better for my writing.

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Get Books Reviewed

Mon, 02 May 2011 03:28:00 -0700

Paul Krupin of Direct Contact PR shared the following information in a list posting titled, Getting reviews - how hard it really is... He received an invitation from an editor at The Plain Dealer, the Cleveland, OH metro newspaper to look at the paper's books section "to glean a sense of our selections in book coverage." She added, "Some 350-450 books arrive here for review consideration each week -- on a good week we perhaps mention and review 12-15 in print."

Below are Krupin's thoughts about the editor's information and the paper's books page (reprinted here with his permission). He warned, "the news is intimidating to say the least."

Some observations:

1. I clicked on her link and found the Book section in
Entertainment section of the website. It's not listed on the home
page at all. It's buried in the secondary navigation links.

2.. There are a team of active book reviewers in a variety of
categories. The book reviewers bio's I looked at demonstrated
that they tended to be college graduates, many of whom were
teaching on college campuses and even had degrees in medicine and
other professional areas. I saw one reviewers with the following
qualifications: a Bachelors in English (Magna Cum Laude), and a
Doctorate in Medicine, who "practices medicine and book
criticism in Columbus, Ohio."

3. If you click on other books, other categories open, and if you
look at who reviewed the book, there may be a contact email.

4. I clicked on the first link and the category of mysteries
opened, and the book critic is Michelle Ross, CNN

5. They do appear to be open to lots of genres, but recognize
that the competition for coverage is intense and goes to authors
and publishers who have demonstrated a track record and created a
perception for quality.

6. The reviewers are tough. Some of those reviews are critical
and honest and tell it like they see it. In some categories, The
Plain Dealer reviews even identify grades for each of the books
reviewed. I saw A's to B-'s but no C's.

7. Not one web site link was provided to a publisher or author
website.

8. The Plain Dealer has an active social network of followers,
but the numbers of tweets and links to Facebook off the book
reviews is very low.

9. The Plain Dealer has a very clear focus on quality mainstream
publishers. I looked at the past 30 days and the 45 books covered
and did not identify one small press publisher.

10. A few of the reviewers seem to selectively responsive to
comments from the LA Times book reviewers. I also only noted one
review that made any mention at all of a book award. The one they
mentioned was notable: The National Book Critics Winner's Circle.

Live and learn.

Paul J. Krupin, Direct Contact PR
Reach the Right Media in the Right Market with the Right Message
http://www.DirectContactPR.com Paul@DirectContactPR.com
Blog.DirectContactPR.com
800-457-8746 (TF US) 509-531-8390 (Cell) 509-582-5174 (Direct)

Free eBook download
http://www.directcontactpr.com/files/files/TrashProof2010.pdf

To which I add, why bother sending releases and review copies to major dailies, considering the odds of getting a review and the impossibility of tying sales to any review? This is especially true for small presses and self-publishers. You're much more likely to receive a review from a lit-blogger, which may have more impact anyway.

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Win a Free Book

Sat, 30 Apr 2011 08:49:00 -0700

Hard to believe, but yesterday not one of my Tweeple wanted to win a free copy of National Book Award finalist Jean Thompson's definitive novel, The Year We Left Home. It is her first publication since 2005 and may cap her 30-year glorious career as a novelist and short story mistress. I have a first edition hardbound copy to give away, and now you who read this blog are eligible to enter to win it.

I completely enjoyed this easy read about a Midwester, Norwegian, Lutheran family coping with societal changes in the last three decades of the 20th century. Could it be because I was raised a Midwestern German Lutheran and came of age in the same period? Nah! It's just damn good reading, AND I saw my whole family in Thompson's readily identifiable characters. There was Gran and Beverly and probably my phantom sister Linda, if she'd survived. My uncle Ed is in there, too, with cousins Jane and Tom. The whole damn family!

If you were ever curious about my background -- or the lives of middle class Midwesterners -- read the review an leave a comment on it at BlogCritics. I'll give you until midnight (PDT) Wednesday, May 4, 2011 and then randomly pick a winner. Oh heck! Leave a comment if you just want a chance to win a free book!

For the copy and paste people, the review link is --

http://blogcritics.org/books/article/book-review-the-year-we-left/

Tell 'em A Writer's Edge sent you.

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New $114 Kindle

Fri, 22 Apr 2011 19:36:00 -0700

Kindle Wireless Reading Device, Wi-Fi, Graphite, 6" Display with New E Ink Pearl Technology - includes Special Offers & Sponsored Screensavers This greeted me just now when I hit up Amazon to check my Listmania and Wishlist. How soon until it's in color and below $100?

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May Read or May Not

Fri, 22 Apr 2011 14:10:00 -0700

Twice a year a stack like this piles up on my desk ... and these are the ones TBR, to be read! I have finished the top two, though, so they are also for review (TBR2). Jean Thompson's THE YEAR WE LEFT HOME is particularly interesting. It fits into a Twitter chat (#litchat) this week on connections and family.

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What Good is Poetry?

Thu, 14 Apr 2011 14:30:00 -0700

Children in school and many adults frequently ask the vlaue of studying poetry. They ask the same about philosophy, but I have no answer for that one. About poetry, though, I can say it enriches life in diverse manners. I will illuminate one way that a poem is currently providing joy in the life that is my journey.

I came across a leaf on the sidewalk. Through my mind flashed the phrase, "crispèd and sere." (I had to look up the HTML code for that e with the grave accent which makes the word pronounced as if it were two syllables.) The literary allusion -- for that is what it was -- and the image of the leaf prompted an artistic vision that was both a reminder and a possibility. It made me think of a watercolor I'd painted in the 80s, and I could "see" using the leaf as part of a new artsy-craftsy endeavor, Artist Trading Cards (ATC).

First, the literary allusion. I knew the phrase was part of a poem and the sense I felt about it was gloomy. The word "gloomy" prompted a title, "Ulalume." I hauled out some classic poetry books and, on a hunch, looked up Edgar Allan Poe. There it was, right in the second line:

Ulalume by Edgar Allan Poe

The skies they were ashen and sober

The leaves they were crispèd and sere;

The leaves they were withering and sere;...

and so on and on for many morbid lines about the poet's lost love, Ulalume.

Coincidentally, I am cutting old watercolor paintings into ATC bases and backgrounds. One was perfect for the leaf, providing a good contrast:

The leaf is from a tall Eucalyptus tree, and it's normally smooth edges are insect-eaten into a pleasing pattern. I had to soak it in water (remember, it was crispèd and sere) to flatten it before gluing it to the watercolor paper. A little graphite enhanced shadows of the vague shapes of stones already on the card, and I pronounce it minimalist and done.

I shudder to think how one-dimensional life would be without connections, memories of pieces of literature that teachers forced on us, and the ones I read for pleasure, never knowing when they will return, haunting and bringing delight.

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