I am now on LibraryThing as well:
http://www.librarything.com/catalog/neshaffer
Another book nerd site like Good Reads, FYI.
Category: writing and social media
Good Reads
So I’m setting myself up on Good Reads, which is proving more difficult than it should be. ‘Cause there are books
(1) I own, but read so long ago, I don’t remember if I liked them or not,
(2) I think I remember reading, but that was so long ago, I am not sure if I read them, or maybe it was my sister that read them, or my best friend in junior high….
(3) I read during that period of time when I was poor and living in San Francisco and got all my new reads from the library, so I didn’t keep a record of them,
(4) I own, but for the life of me, can’t remember if I read, or if I just bought them intending to read them but haven’t,
(5) I own them, read them, maybe even liked them, but don’t want to admit it,
(6) I’m pretty sure I only saw the movie. But maybe I read the book. Or maybe not. If it’s the former, it’s tough to judge a book by its movie.
(7) I read, I hated… do I dare list it to let everyone know of the hate, or risk giving it the attention it doesn’t deserve?
Write, write, write
Okay, so I am doing this:
2012 Clarion West Write-a-thon
to push myself through the final five chapters of the first draft of my novel. My participant page is here: http://clarionwest.org/writeathon/nancyeshaffer
From http://clarionwest.org/about:
Clarion West brings new writers to the field of speculative fiction by providing a venue for a transformative experience in the form of a lengthy and intensive workshop focusing on literary quality, diversity of viewpoints, range of material, and other essential qualities.
The write-a-thon is to raise money for scholarship support for the Clarion West writer’s workshop: http://clarionwest.org/support, which has an in-person six-week version in Seattle. Go here to sponsor me:
The first page: what not to do in an author website
After wading through over a thousand author websites, here’s some stuff I’ve learned:
Continue reading “The first page: what not to do in an author website”
POD and self publishing
Still working on pulling together my ideas on forthcoming plot events and wrapping my brain cells around who my characters are. However, I did spend a couple almost entire days on the new story this week, which put me ahead of the game on this part of process.
Last weekend, I went to one of those traveling lecturer seminars at Changing Hands bookstore. This one was a guy with a background in the publishing industry who was talking about alternatives to traditional publishing, specifically, self-publishing, which, as it turns out, is different than print-on-demand publishers. He was actually pretty down on POD, saying that bookstores in general see POD labels on books as a warning of sign of the book’s lack of quality and are therefore hesitant to stock them.
Changing Hands is one of those indies that’s willing to give self-published and POD books from local authors a go for a limited time, but of course, that all depends on your marketing strategy, getting people to seek out such a book, either before they get to the bookstore or while they’re standing there staring at a bunch of book spines on the shelf. If it sells, CH won’t yank it off their shelves in a month.
The lecturer also talked about self-publishing as a step to attracting the attention of agents and publishers (again, this only really works with good self-marketing strategies upfront). One of things he mentioned, though, was that publishers usually don’t want to deal with writers who don’t have a lot of future book ideas under their belt. They like to have writers under contract, producing. So I think I am on the right track with planning out my new story as a number of separate novels. I have yet to figure out exactly how, since at this point I am still getting to know my “story world”, but I know I am in the right ballpark with my plans.
That about sums it up….
Ganked from thewriteratwork
Author Nancy E. Shaffer 