virtualDavis

Yesterday afternoon at Writer’s Digest Conference 2011 was a game-changer for most participants, indeed for everyone that I’ve spoken to so far. Top notch presenters packing our heads and To Do lists with critical advice. And then the much anticipated opportunity to pitch our manuscripts to multiple literary agents while the coaching is still fresh. Exhilarating, empowering, humbling, encouraging, exhausting…

It was an intense two hours. Personally, the Pitch Slam offered some of the most important feedback and inspiration in my writing experience. Smart, attentive agents telling me what I can do, must do, will do. A road map. And opportunities. Whether or not agents expressed interest in your manuscript, their feedback was priceless. An opportunity to learn how to proceed.

I had fascinating conversations with other writers last night about what they gained from the experience. Even those who were disappointed not to have received as much interest as they’d hoped were grateful for the guidance and feedback they received. Many others were practically giddy with fresh encouragement and hope kindled by the interest of literary agents.

The positive vibe continued this morning, the final day of Writer’s Digest Conference 2011. Here are the offerings:

• How to Use Social Media to Get Noticed and Sell Your Work: Dan Blank, Brent Sampson, Kate Rados, Moriah Jovan, and Guy Gonzalez as moderator on a panel on using social media effectively to build your platform
• Writers and Mobile Apps: The Big Opportunity: Question of the Day creator Al Katkowsky on the mobile app opportunity for writers.
• Showing & Telling: The old adage, “Show, don’t tell” is wrong. Find out why from an experienced novelist, Laurie Alberts.
• The Kindle Publishing Workshop: This is a detailed and technical walk-through of how to get your work on the Kindle (without a publisher) presented by April Hamilton.
• Book or Bestseller: Which Will You Choose?: Patricia V. Davis on working with agent, publishers and booksellers to build your writing career.
• The Writer’s Compass: Using Story Maps to Build Better Fiction: Nancy Ellen Dodd on story mapping.
• Revision: Learn How to Love It: Only James Scott Bell could turn a thing that most writers hate into something that you can attack with confidence—and yes, even a bit of love.
• Successfully Promoting Your Book: Kevin Smokler, Brent Sampson, Kate Rados as moderator present this panel full of personality, wit, and damn good advice.
• Success Strategies and Systems for Writing & Selling More: The lovely and inspiring (and productive!) Sage Cohen offers 10 ways to exponentially increase the results and rewards of your writing life.
• Creating a Backstory: How and Why It Can Make or Break Your Novel: Hallie Ephron tells us how to use backstory to make a reader care about a character (rather than slow down the story).
• Blogging as a Platform and Publicity Machine: Dan Blank on blogging to build your platform.
• The More Things Change… (Benjamin LeRoy)

What follows is a beta mashup from Sunday morning’s sessions. I’m curating digital artifacts from Twitter, blogs, etc. to tell the digital story of Writer’s Digest Conference 2011, but I’m sure to miss great content. Please tweet me (@virtualDavis) or contact me directly with links to great tweets, blog posts, videos, etc. so that I can add them. Thanks!

http://storify.com/virtualdavis/wdc11sunday

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• Buzz: Writer’s Digest Conference 2011 (virtualdavis.com)
• Writer’s Digest Conference 2011, Part #1 (virtualdavis.com)
• Writer’s Digest Conference 2011, Part #2 (virtualdavis.com)
• Writer’s Digest Conference 2011, Part #3 (virtualdavis.com)
• My Best Advice for Writers From 2011 (janefriedman.com)
• Writer’s Digest Launches Self-Publishing Division (prweb.com)

The Writer’s Digest Conference 2011 (NYC 1/21-23) promised exactly the sort of publishing nuts and bolts I’ve been looking for:

• Getting Published in the Digital Age: How to get published in the digital age!
• The Future of Publishing: What is the future of publishing?
• Platforms and Social Media: Why do writers need a platform and how do they build that strong platform?
• Perfecting Your Pitch: Learn how to perfect your pitch at the Writer’s Digest pitch slam!
• Honing Your Craft: Learn how to write a page turner in any genre!

It even offered a speed-dating-esque Pitch Slam for writers to practice manuscript pitching techniques taught in the presentation sessions. Throw in the opportunity to meet other writers and the single best opportunity to crowdsource Rosslyn Redux among a targeted book audience, and I’ve been anticipating the Writer’s Digest Conference the way teenagers anticipate summer vacation.

And I wasn’t alone! The pre-conference buzz grew frenzied in the days leading up to Friday’s opening session. What follows is a beta mashup from Friday’s sessions. I’ve aggregated and curated digital artifacts from Twitter, blogs, etc. to tell the digital story of Writer’s Digest Conference 2011. I hope you enjoy the journey. And I genuinely hope you’ll let me know what I’ve missed so that I can include and preserve it for writers who were unable to attend the conference. Please tweet me (@virtualDavis) or contact me directly if you come across great tweets, blog posts, videos, etc. that I should add. Thanks!

All the #wdc11 graffiti that’s fit to curate! I’m gathering and sorting the most compelling digital artifacts from the 2011 Writer’s Digest Conference taking place in New York City on January 21-23. The data wave is swelling, so I’m sure to miss plenty. Don’t hesitate to bring more goodies to my attention.

All the #wdc11 graffiti that’s fit to curate! I’m gathering and sorting the most compelling digital artifacts from the 2011 Writer’s Digest Conference taking place in New York City on January 21-23. The data wave is swelling, so I’m sure to miss plenty. Don’t hesitate to bring more goodies to my attention.

http://storify.com/virtualdavis/writers-digest-conference-2011

Related articles

• My Best Advice for Writers From 2011 (janefriedman.com)
• Book Proposals in the Digital Age (janefriedman.com)
• The 18 Most Popular Articles on Writing of 2011 | WritersDigest.com (diannagraveman.wordpress.com)
• 12 Simple Writing Exercises from Writer’s Digest (danasitar.com)
• Recommendation For Your Writing Quest Pt. 2 (jenowenby.wordpress.com)
• Fifty Ways to Build an Author Platform (digitalbookworld.com)

This oral storytelling mashup germinated from “The Monti and The Moth” and was initially intended as a scrapbook of storytelling venues around the United States. It has evolved to include rumination on traditional storytelling versus digital storytelling. Never mind the irony of non-digital oral storytelling being filmed, shared and enjoyed digitally!

Amidst the buzz and clang of digital storytelling, there are still those who practice the simpler, “purer” art of oral storytelling unfettered by connectivity, bandwidth, electricity… Whether by preference or as one of many modes of sharing a narrative Storytelling Unplugged aims to explore the enduring art of oral recounting. Less manifesto; more rumination. (And yes, I realize that the title is a bit of a misnomer since microphones are largely ubiquitous in the venues included below,)

http://storify.com/virtualdavis/storytelling-unplugged

Open Road is a digital content company that publishes and markets ebooks by creating connections between authors and their audiences across multiple platforms.

Brendan Cahill, VP and Publisher of Open Road Integrated Media (ORIM), was lead presenter during eBook Summit 2010 last week in NYC. He set the tone for a forward looking agenda in the publishing industry, “pioneering an alternative publishing model”, where digital books replace print books at the epicenter.

Although Open Road (@openroadmedia) is only a year old, they’ve already made a major push in publishing ebooks and have set an ambitious target of 2,000 new books to be published in 2011! They are effectively producing more content per title than traditional print publishers (including HD video author and book trailers) and yet they’ve slashed the standard industry production time line from a year or more among traditional publishers to approximately 120 days at Open Road.

How is this possible? This shrinking book cycle (rights acquisition, manuscript editing, cataloguing, soliciting, fulfillment and marketing) critical to their rapid upscaling and early mover success depends upon a new publishing model: outsource, outstource, outsource. Virtually every stage of the traditional publishing process is outsourced except for acquiring rights and marketing which allows ample flexibility for editing, art directing, etc. Check out the first few slides of Cahill’s presentation below.

Debbie Stier speaking at BookExpo America 2009

Debbie Stier (@debbiestier) first came across my radar when HarperStudio was born… A book publishing outlet that made sense in the 21st century! Publishers who understood (or wanted to understand) the digital migration. Unfortunately bravery and vision weren’t sufficient, and HarperStudio was recycled. (Read the HarperCollins explanation memo to employees.) I was disappointed that the project was abbreviated, but proud of HarperCollins for taking the risk in the first place.

One of her homeruns with HarperStudio was Crush It! by Gary Vaynerchukwhich I’ve “read” three times (the print edition, the audio edition and the Vook edition) as much for Vaynerchuk’s energy, self-confidence and optimism as for the opportunity to compare assets distinct to each platform. I imagine Vaynerchuk has been a good fit for Publishing’s Optimist Prime. In an interview with Marian Schembari last June Stier conveyed unabashed enthusiasm for the future of publishing.

“I love that word-of-mouth is scalable. I love that anybody can share, and connect, and spread the word about great books and ideas without ever having to get permission… I’m allergic to bureaucracy. Publishing is full of protocols; I find it frustrating when people see their role as putting up barriers and looking for problems. I’d rather make something great happen… It’s liberating to know that you are in control of your own destiny and don’t have to hope that the gatekeepers allow you to be recognized.” (Digital Book World)

Stier’s perspective has encouraged and reassured me during my foray into the book publishing jungle. And it’s not all bluster and bravado. Stier’s track record speaks for itself. And she’s EVERYwhere! (I have a hunch that she may secretly have invented the social web between book launches.) The other day I was speaking to my wife’s cousin, Cali Williams Yost (@caliyost) about her experience publishing Work + Life and now working on her second book, and Stier’s name inevitably popped up: “She is wonderful and amazing!” Scanning some of the titles Stier has worked on I realized that my mother-in-law’s friend, Dotty Frank, has also been touched by Stier. The Stier Factor! And when I registered to attend MediaBistro‘s eBook Summit I discovered that she was slated to be one of the panelists. (Did I mention that Debbie Stier is EVERYwhere?)

During her eBook Summit presentation she announced that she’s departed HarperCollins, and that she hasn’t yet announced her next plan. She did mention that it is somewhat unrelated to book publishing but will draw upon her publishing experience. Hmmm… Perhaps something to do with the SATs?

As for promotion strategies in the publishing industry Stier articulated in no uncertain terms that

“everybody should have a digital presence… You’ve got to be part of it to understand, or else you’re not feeling the culture of it.”

She also skimmed over relevant tech/communication trends that she sees emerging. Mobile, mobile, mobile. There’s an adavantage to early adopters. If you use an iPhone, try out Instagram. In publishing, she explained, mobile strategy is mostly tied to apps (location-based and otherwise), etc. In other industries texting and QR codes are making major inroads, but publishing lags behind! This is an opportunity. First mover advantage. She touched on Foursquare and mused on behaviour changes like the gym rat badge. If you are writing nonfiction, Stier said, think of ways that FourSquare could overlap. Tips are key! And many other smart uses too. Leave breadcrumbs where you wrote the book, ate a meal, had a drink, etc.

Stier also emphasized the importance of “caring”. Adopt the Zappos strategy as DELL has recently learned. Care. Gary Vaynerchuck’s new book, The Thank You Economy, is precisely about this. In only a few short minutes Debbie Stier had nailed it. Boom, boom, boom.

Unfortunately she had to depart earlier than anticipated and we didn’t connect aside from a few tweets and this sad image but kind message on Tumbler. Soon, I hope, to meet the legendary Debbier Stier in person.

In addition to the “write every day” and “create a routine” stuff by which so many other writers swear, Connolly stresses the need for flexibility. “There are many ways to get from start to finish,” he says. The key is to allow each project to be its own thing and deal with it in the way it ought to be dealt instead of tackling a uniform approach.(Kieron Connolly’s Newspaper Novel-Plotting Game)

This kernel of wisdom from Irish writer Kieron Connolly — the author of Water Sign, There is A House and Harold — was harvested during a novel writing workshop at the American Book Center in The Hague by  Avery Oslo. It appealed to me for its candor and an almost unorthodox willingness to step away from the routine, routine, routine mantra which pervades much writerly advice.

Each new work is unique, and its creation may well require different routines, different methods and habits and rhythms than previous creations. This will to adapt the creative process per the needs of each new creation is not only more realistic than the systematic, procrustean assembly line model, it’s more exciting. Each new creative experience should be an adventure. A journey. An exploration. This is what makes creating and telling a story so damned interesting!

I wasn’t surprised that Avery Oslo (@AveryOslo on Twitter) had been inspired by Kieron Connolly, and yet I’ve never met either one. Chalk it up to Twitter. Again.

I don’t recall how I stumbled upon Oslo, but I suspect it may have been a retweet shared by a mutual acquaintance. A familiar “digital introduction”, followed by a visit to Avery Oslo’s blog where I read this:

I was raised by nomads (proper nomads. The kind that pick up and move every year at least once) and that makes me a native of nowhere (but also of everywhere!). I am most comfortable in mobile groups of other travelers and transplants. Everything I write addresses some aspect of being transient, at a crossroads, or otherwise in a state of flux. My characters often deal in the currencies of movement and future dreams. If you can relate to that, you might like what I write. (Avery Oslo)

I can relate to that!

Update:

After posting this blog, I received the following tweet, adding another interesting Twitter twist:

According to Hugh McGuire the future of book publishing looks more like the internet than print books or even ebooks. Web-connected digital books are inevitable, and the line will vanishing between books and the Internet. Today’s savvy publishers will be tomorrow’s ebook API providers:

E-books to date have mostly been approached as digital versions of print books to be read on a variety of digital devices, with a few bells and whistles–like video… Thinking of e-books as just another way to consume a book lets the publishing business ignore the terror of a totally unknown business landscape… While you can list advantages and disadvantages of print books vs. e-books, these are all asides compared with the kind of advantages that we have come to expect of digital information properly hooked into the Internet…

Let books live properly within the Internet, along with websites, databases, blogs, Twitter, map systems, and applications… the foundation is there for the move. If you are looking at publishing with any kind of long-term business horizon, this is where you should be looking…

We are a long, long way from publishers thinking of themselves as API providers, or as the Application Programming Interface for the books they publish. But we’ve seen countless times that value grows when data is opened up (sometimes selectively) to the world. That’s really what the Internet is for and that is where book publishing is going, eventually…

The current world of e-books is a transition to a digitally connected book publishing ecosystem that won’t look anything like the book world we live in now. (Forbes.com)

I don’t need any convincing, but I found McGuire’s article straightforward and compelling. This isn’t rocket science, folks. It’s open source storytelling! And it’s one of the most exciting application of this global rhizome we call the World Wide Web. Like McGuire, I still can’t envision what the commercial underpinnings for this future of publishing looks like, I am confident that entrepreneurial minds all over the world are already scheming up efficient, reliable methods for monetizing web-enabled ebooks. Copyright issues will become increasingly complicated, but where there’s a will (and a market) there’s a way. And I’m thrilled to be able to participate!

Related articles

• We’re in the midst of a restructuring of the publishing universe (don’t panic) (radar.oreilly.com)

It’s no mystery that the folks at Just Beer at Buzzard’s Bay Brewing are a slightly quirky bunch, so it should be no surprise that their newest version of India Pale Ale is served up with a novel idea: A hard-boiled detective tale in twelve chapters, one on each of the 22-ounce bottles in a 12-bottle case.

The Case of the IPA, the name of the beer and the story, is a result of the melding of the minds of brewer Harry Smith, author Paul Goodchild and owner Bill Russell. The noir-style tale, reminiscent of “The Maltese Falcon” author Dashiell Hammett’s gritty detective novels and his serial magazine stories of the 1920s and ’30s starts off with the main character, “a two-bit shamus in a dirty, gritty, bluesy, and cool city of some renown” who is summoned to a wealthy businessman’s “swank starter mansion in the ‘burbs” and wraps up 264 ounces later. And Russell has one suggestion for readers: “Please don’t drink Chapter 12 first.”

Goodchild, who described himself as an artist who doesn’t count on royalties, said he came up with the idea of writing a story on Buzzard’s Bay beers about five years ago, but it didn’t fly until the Just Beer brand started making the 22-ouncer, just the right size for each chapter. “At first I thought about writing a science fiction serial because I love that genre, but I didn’t want people to think we were pandering to kids. This serial is decidedly adult — not XXX — but a hard-boiled detective, noiry serial; it’s perfectly oriented to the IPA. I’m a big fan of Dashiell Hammett,” said Goodchild. (Herald News)

Is it too late to pretend I invented this? This may be one of the most compelling reasons yet to focus on print publishing versus digital publishing. I mean, how often do folks offer up virtual cocktails on Twitter, etc? And how disapointing are they when you toss them down the hatch?!?! But this is the real deal. Analog literature for the mind and soul…

Related articles

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• Should You Serialize a Novel on Kindle? (janefriedman.com)
• Now available: “Breaking the Page” preview edition (radar.oreilly.com)

Looks like “old school” publishers and authors are continuing to struggle with the transition from print publishing to digital publishing.

At The National Book Awards last night, books were being celebrated, but eBooks not as much. The New Yorker’s Andy Borowitz called the eBooks, “The bastard cousin of the print book” and Patti Smith begged the audience not to give up physical books. In her winning speech she said, “There is nothing more beautiful in our material world than the book.” (eBookNewser)

The bastard cousin? Hmmm… I’m not quite sure how that works, but it’s a catchy epithet!

“Back when I first got on the Internet, I saw networking as the next great leap in human evolution, that we were moving towards a new networked organism. And I’m amazed at how few of us have actually decided to participate in this project. In a digital age, or in any age for that matter, whoever holds the keys to programming ends up building the reality in which the rest of us live… If we don’t seize the opportunity to remake our world, I promise you someone or something else will do it for us.”(from video trailer, above)

Boo! This book trailer for Program or Be Programmed by Douglas Rushkoff(@rushkoff) might startle you — should startle you! And if it doesn’t, you may already be programmed. Passive. Absorbing, consuming, yielding, surrendering…

“If you don’t know what the software you’re using is for, then you’re not using it but being used by it.” (from video trailer, above)

This promises to be a provocative read. And Rushkoff is presenting at Mediabistro’s eBook Summit on December 15th, explaining “why he left his traditional publisher for a new house — exploring the struggles of an author and journalist in the new publishing environment.” I’m looking forward to hearing what he has to say.