From the Publetariat: The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight: How Apple and 5 Big Publishers Almost Got Away with a Massive Price-Fixing Conspiracy to Try to Turn Back the Kindle Revolution, and What It Will Mean for Readers, Authors, and Publishers Going Forward
With most of the books that I have published about the Kindle, I am well aware that readers want to charge up their Kindle, turn it on, download some books, and start reading. The purpose of my books is usually to make the experience richer by sharing information about how to get most out of the Kindle and how to find the best books at the best prices.

From Nathan Bransford: The Top 5 Social Media Blunders You Shouldn’t Make
Social media is as much art as science, but there are some mistakes you just shouldn’t make. Here are five.

From Jane Friedman: 3 Horrible Mistruths About Social Media That Drive Me Insane
This post really needs no introduction. Let’s just get to the rant, in my favored numbered list format. “Who cares what you had for lunch?” Seriously? Your excuse for hating social media is that people talk about what they’re eating?

From The Wall Street Journal: Keeping the ‘Noraholics’ Happy
Romance writer Nora Roberts didn’t bother to celebrate when she finished her 200th book, “The Witness.” “I don’t really count,” says Ms. Roberts, a 61-year-old grandmother with red hair and a gravelly smoker’s voice.

From Jackie Collins: On my decision to self-publish…
If you pay attention to book publishing news and blogs, then you probably already know I’ve decided to try my hand at self-publishing by re-writing and releasing a NEW version of my book The Bitch.

From The New York Times: Cut in E-Book Pricing by Amazon Is Set to Shake Rivals
The government’s decision to pursue major publishers on antitrust charges has put the Internet retailer Amazon in a powerful position: the nation’s largest bookseller may now get to decide how much an e-book will cost, and the book world is quaking over the potential consequences.

From Rachelle Gardner: Being Authentic While Protecting Privacy
As a non-fiction author, I tend to air my dirty laundry. After all, it’s my choice whether or not to share personal information with the public, isn’t it? Enter my husband. Does the spouse of an extrovert writer have a say in what gets published? I happen to be married to a very private person. When I told him I was going to write a book about my journey as a working mother, he looked me straight in the eye and said, “Please leave me out!”

From GalleyCat: Most Frequently Challenged Library Books of 2011
The American Library Association (ALA) has released its annual list of the most frequently challenged library books of the year. We’ve linked to free samples of all the books on the list–follow the links below to read these controversial books yourself.

From Judy Cullins: How to Write a Great Book Introduction in 5 Steps
Why write an introduction? Nobody reads it anyhow. And do you know why? Authors get windy and “I” centered in their long introductions. They think their readers will love their journey. Maybe, but maybe boring.

From HuffPost Books: Are eBooks Too Cheap?: Indie Authors Question 99 Cent Price
There’s a lot of controversy circulating throughout the publishing industry about the pricing of ebooks, and it’s a significant topic that warrants discussion. Independent authors are rallying around the controversial 99-cent price point. Some authors feel the 99-cent price point devalues their hard work, while others feel that readers will not take a chance on new authors at a higher price point. To further complicate the matter, it’s not just new authors that are using the 99-cent strategy, and the issue doesn’t only affect independent authors, but publishing houses and agents as well.

From Writer Beware Blogs: Guest Blog Post: Why Small Publishers Fail
I’ve used up a lot of column space on this blog warning about the risks of submitting to small presses, especially brand new small presses. In my opinion, this is currently the most dangerous area for writers–not so much because there are a lot of scams (though there are quite a few) but because so many small presses are undercapitalized, run by inexperienced people, have deluded goals and aspirations, or all three.

From Publishers Weekly: Kindle Owners’ Lending Library Title Count Tops 100,000
Amazon said there are now over 100,000 titles available through its Kindle Owners’ Lending Library and that, during the month of March, each time a title was borrowed from the program, the author received $2.18. Citing the example of author Martin Crosbie, Amazon said that, for his novel My Temporary Life, “he earned over $45,000 in one month from paid sales and loans combined–a huge increase from the $100 he earned the prior two months when his book was not enrolled in the program.”

From PRWeb: Introducing iWriteReadRate.com – A New Open Community for Writers and Readers of Fiction
iWriteReadRate.com is an open community for writers and readers of fiction. Harnessing the power of ebooks, the objective is to support writers – making what becomes a successful story or novel more democratic, more personal and more social. iWriteReadRate is also here to help readers discover great new writers and stories.

From Maureen Johnson: SO I READ A PIECE IN THE NEW YORK TIMES
… .so I read this piece in the New York Times about parents who publish their kids’ books. As an author and a person who likes the internet and new media things, this sort of thing interests me a lot. But I did get a strange, queasy feeling about it that I wanted to parse a bit. Let me say a few things off the top.

From CNN: E-books spur reading among Americans, survey shows
E-books aren’t just becoming increasingly popular. They also appear to be promoting reading habits among American adults. So says new research from the Pew Internet and American Life Project, which states that about one-fifth of U.S. adults have read an e-book in the past year.

From GalleyCat: Pinterest Is Third Most Popular Social Network in America
Pinterest is now the third most popular social network in the United States, competing with Facebook and Twitter after some amazing growth. Writers and publishers should pay attention to this new network. Check out our Pinterest Tips for Writers post for guidance. To give you some inspiration, we’ve collected some inspiring literary Pinterest boards below–ranging from book-related nonprofits to scenery inspiration to book club ideas.

From Jane Friedman: Your Homepage Is Not As Important As You Think
Author platform is about more than your homepage. Perhaps you hope your homepage embodies the essence of your writing, that it is the gateway into the world you are creating.  But oftentimes, it isn’t.

From eBookNewser: 28% Of U.S. Adults Read On eReader Or Tablet
Twenty-eight percent of adults in the United States use an eReader or a tablet to read books, according to a new poll by Harris Interactive. The poll, which was conducted in February, showed an increase from Harris’ previous poll done in July in which only 15% of U.S. adults reporting reading on eReaders and tablets.

From The Savvy Book Marketer: 5 Strategies for Marketing Children’s Books on Facebook
In today’s guest post, Jo Ann Kairys shares some terrific tips for using Facebook to promote children’s books. This post is part of the virtual book tour for her book, Sunbelievable.  I resisted Facebook (FB) for too long. But, the sudden shift from children’s book author to entrepreneur/marketer forced me to pay attention. Now, FB is my favorite marketing tool! I love the opportunity to share my commitment to children’s reading and literacy, connect with other authors, and maximize exposure to my book’s target audience.

From GalleyCat: Encyclopaedia Britannica Ends Print Edition
After printing the hardback reference guide for 244 years, Encyclopaedia Britannica will stop publishing its 32-volume print edition. The digital edition will continue, and the publisher is offering free access to the subscription service for the next week.

From bookbaby: How to Set Up Facebook Timeline for Authors
As we mentioned in a recent post called “UHow to Promote Your Book Using the New Facebook Timeline Features,” Facebook did it again—they’ve switched it all around on us practically overnight (well, maybe it was more like a fortnight). And, just like that, whether we like it or not, all Facebook Pages (including brand, author, and company Pages) will be updated to Facebook Timeline on March 30^th.

From Book Making: “Free” publishing usually costs money
In Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There by Lewis Carroll, Humpty Dumpty said to Alice, “When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean.” Some publishing companies tout free publishing programs that are not really free.

From Smart Money: 10 Things E-Books Won’t Tell You
When her Sony Reader’s battery stopped holding a charge, Kelly (last name withheld for privacy) decided to replace it with a Kindle Touch. But she says she had to use illegal cracking software to transfer her e-books, which had been formatted so that they could only be accessed on Sony products. “They’re my books,” Kelly says. “I bought them. I don’t see why I shouldn’t keep them.”

From Publishers Weekly: Home Depot To Stop Selling Books
In a letter sent to publishers on Friday, nationwide retailer The Home Depot announced it will no longer be selling books. The letter, signed by associate merchant Sarah Moffat, states that, after considering “over a year of intense analytical information both internally and with our book suppliers,” as well as “customer insight surveys,” the home improvement superstore is going to discontinue the “book subclass” in order to “better optimize the space in the front end of the store.”

From Jonathan Fields: How to Pick Up a Stranger (or Produce Brilliant Work)
Today’s guest contributor is writer, coach, violinist, filmmaker, law school graduate, and web designer, Emilie Wapnick, who works with multipotentialites to help them build lives and businesses around ALL their interests. She’s the author of Renaissance Business and the troublemaker behind Puttylike.com.

From Librarian by Day: Should Libraries Get Out of the eBook Business?
Or get out at least until there is a better system? I know what you are going to say, I can hear it already – “We can’t! Our patrons demand ebooks!” Except the truth is our patrons want a lot of things we can’t give them – to always be first on the waiting list for the new James Patterson, to not pay fines when their books are late, for the library to be open earlier or later, or to have a system besides Dewey because despite using it their entire lives they still cannot figure it out.

From Sylviane Nuccio: What Is Quora And Why Bloggers And Marketers Should Use It?
I have been introduced to Quora a few months ago as a way to find clients for my freelance writing business.  However, I never took the time to fully investigate Quora to learn more about all its potentials.  This is why I wanted to finally hop over there and not only check it out for myself, but tell my readers about it as well, so you could decide if you wanted to use this tool for your online business or not.

From the Authors Guild: Letter from Scott Turow: Grim News
Dear member, Yesterday’s report that the Justice Department may be near filing an antitrust lawsuit against five large trade book publishers and Apple is grim news for everyone who cherishes a rich literary culture.

Editing is a special skill most authors don’t perform all that well, particularly on their own material. A poorly edited book is harder to read, harder to believe, and less likely to be reviewed—or reviewed negatively. It is shameful to see a good book cut to ribbons by a reviewer because of poor grammar or spelling.

Because authors know their subjects so well, they are usually too close to their material to edit it; all objectivity is lost. A professional editor can help detect passages that are unclear, poorly organized, or overwritten. This is called content or creative editing. During a second reading your editor will copyedit, whisking out grammar, spelling, usage, and punctuation errors. And for those authors who are concerned their “voice” will be taken out of their writing, a good editor will hone and polish your work, not impose his or her own style on it.

Debbi Mack, blogger at My Life on the Mid-List, put it perfectly. She wrote:

Here’s the thing. Writers can get so close to their writing that they fail to see the problems with it. A true professional writer, much like a scientist seeking a peer review of a study, will want an editor to take a look with fresh and unbiased eyes at his or her work in progress before publishing it.

Allow me to demonstrate my point with an analogy.

I was talking to my acupuncturist. He asked me about the pain I was experiencing lately due to my dystonia. I told him it was about the same as usual, but then I’d adjusted to having a certain amount of pain over the years.

He said (essentially), “Pain is like odor. When you walk into a stinky room, you notice it right away. But after you’re there for a few hours, you don’t smell anything.”

Now, that’s why writers need editors.

And if you don’t get that analogy, you have no business being a writer.

‘Nuf said.

From Book Making: Believe it or not, Bookpal is even sleazier and stupider than Outskirts Press
Pay-to-publish company Outskirts Press is a frequent target for my wrath because of its dishonesty, incompetence and overall sleaziness. I’ve just found that a competitor has descended to an even lower level of hell.

From Shelf Awareness: Rereading Books Good for Mental Health
Reading a book more than once can offer , according to a study published in the Journal of Consumer Research under a title that we had to read several times, and not for mental health benefits: “The Temporal and Focal Dynamics of Volitional Reconsumption: A Phenomenological Investigation of Repeated Hedonic Experiences.”

From Publishers Weekly: How To Cure Reading Forgetfulness
“To read a novel requires a certain amount of concentration, focus, devotion to the reading. If you read a novel in more than two weeks you don’t read the novel really. So I think that kind of concentration and focus and attentiveness is hard to come by – it’s hard to find huge numbers of people, large numbers of people, significant numbers of people, who have those qualities.” – Philip Roth

From eBook Newser: 10 Pinterest Boards For eBook Fans
The new social networking site Pinterest may still be closed to the general public, but that’s not stopping you from using the site as a resource for free eBooks.

From Rachel Gardner: How to Make Your Own Book Trailer
Guest Blogger: Julie Cantrell, author of the bestselling Into the Free You’ve all seen book trailers – the brief videos used to market books. Like a trailer for a motion picture, book trailers can make your title stand out among the masses. Many professionals will produce trailers for a hefty fee, but why not do it yourself?

From TeleRead: B&N launches cheaper Nook tablet and lowers price on Nook color
Barnes & Noble, Inc. (NYSE: BKS), the leading retailer of content, digital media and educational products, today expanded its portfolio of bestselling NOOK^® devices with the introduction of NOOK Tablet with 8GB of memory, a tremendous value for the company’s fastest and lightest tablet at just $199. NOOK Tablet 8GB version offers reading and mobile entertainment enthusiasts another great option in the NOOK family of devices. In addition, the company’s highly popular NOOK Color just became an even greater value at $169.

From Media Life Magazine: Behind the surge in holiday tablet sales
For tablets and e-readers, the future is now. After months of buzz in the print industry over the messiah-like potential of these gadgets to revive a flagging industry, consumers went gaga over the devices during the holidays, sparking unprecedented growth in the budding sector. Tablet and e-reader ownership went from 18 percent in mid December to 29 percent in January, meaning nearly a third of the U.S. adult population now owns a digital reading device.

From World Book Night: Sign up by February 1 to be a giver for World Book Night 2012
We need book-loving volunteers to fan out across America on April 23, 2012! Just take 20 free copies of a book to a location in your community, and you just might change someone’s life. Please sign up by Feb. 1.

From PaidContent.org: As Goodreads Ends Sourcing From Amazon, Users Fear Lost Books
Book-centered social networking site Goodreads, which allows users to keep records of the books they read and share the information with others, has long sourced most of its basic book data from Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN). Now, saying Amazon’s API terms have become “more and more restrictive,” Goodreads is switching data providers and entering an agreement with book wholesaler Ingram—alarming some users who fear their reading records will be lost.

From Publishers Weekly: Red Wheel/Weiser Enters Self Publishing with Turning Stone Press
Red Wheel/Weiser Conari Press, in collaboration with Hampton Roads and Hierophant Publishing, are entering the self-publishing market for spiritual and self-help authors. The companies have formed Turning Stone Press which will be under the director of Red Wheel /Weiser Conari publisher Jan Johnson.

From Fast Company: Unmasking A Digital Pirate On Amazon
A Kuwaiti national using fake names and selling others’ copyrighted stories in the Kindle Store sheds light on black hat hacker forums–and the theft, taboo sex, and swindles festering in the recesses of Amazon.

From GalleyCat: Should Authors Listen To Readers?
At a panel this morning at the Digital Book World conference in New York, publishing CEOs discussed the future of publishing. Across the panel, the executives agreed that the digital world offers publishers better insights into the customer point of view.

From Exciting Writing: Further on Kindle Select and the Amazon Lending Library
The other day, Inside the Outside author Martin Lastrapes asked me about Kindle Select (or Kindle Direct Publishing Select, or KDP Select, depending on the day and who’s typing, it seems). I’m now several weeks committed to being a Kindle-exclusive author, and I thought I’d share some of my experiences.

From GalleyCat: Facebook Timeline to Be Mandatory Soon
Facebook announced this week that the Facebook Timeline feature will be mandatory for all accounts soon, inspiring excitement, concern and a Jeffrey Koterba cartoon.

From PaidContent.org: Did Self-Publishing Hype Hit Its Peak In 2011?
The average price of a self-published Kindle top-100 bestseller continues to drop, but a new look at these titles’ performance in 2011 suggests these books are facing increased competition from traditional publishers.

From MediaShift: Self-Published Authors Still Rarely Make the Jump to Publishing Houses
For many self-published authors, a traditional publisher is an elusive dream. It means a team of professionals taking over marketing, advertising, publicity and the mechanics of publishing one’s own book on paper and electronically. It means already forged relationships with booksellers, critics and other writers — and it means more time to write, rather than haggling over the costs of a book cover design or editing.

From Publishing Perspectives: The Value Rubric: Do Book Bloggers Really Matter?
News travels fast in the Land of Book Blogs. That’s by design and according to passion. But what is the value of book blogger news? Who does it ultimately influence? And are the publishers that are still courting book bloggers — hosting them at the BEA, sending them ARCs by the crateful — calling it right? Or was William Morrow on to something when it sent book bloggers its now notorious “your job” e-mail, signaling a possible era of fences?

From Publishers Weekly: Naggar Agency to Offer Reprint Rights Representation
While a number of literary agencies have announced plans to self-publish books by clients, others have taken the tack of offering ancillary publishing (and agenting) services. The Jean V. Naggar Literary Agency is taking the latter approach, and has launched a program to represent other agencies looking to republish their clients’ backlist titles.

From Writer Beware Blogs: The Fine Print of iBooks Author
Yesterday, with great fanfare, Apple rolled out two new applications:  iBooks 2, with new features aimed at students; and iBooks Author, which allows individuals to create iPad-optimized ebooks. Both applications are targeted to the textbook market, and Apple is billing iBooks Author as a textbook-creation utility–but essentially it’s a free self-publishing platform that can be used by anyone (as long as they have a Mac).

From Publishers Weekly: Hungry for More About the Hunger Games? A Q&A with Amandla Stenberg (aka Rue)
Unfortunately for fans of Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games, the trilogy ended in 2010. But fortunately, the franchise gets a new lease on life with the release of the big-screen version of the first novel on March 23. So far nearly six million fans have watched the trailer for the Hunger Games movie on YouTube. Eighth-grader Amandla Stenberg, 13, who portrays Rue in the film, talked with PW reporter Karen Springen (a longtime friend of Amandla’s mother) about reading the books, shooting the post-apocalyptic story, and getting everyone on the set to sign her copy of The Hunger Games.

From The Next Web: Apple facing new accusations in lawsuit over publisher e-book price fixing
A law firm representing e-book purchasers has amended its class-action lawsuit to include fresh allegations of price-fixing and offers evidence from Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs biography to backup claims that Apple and five book publishers conspired to break Amazon’s dominance of the market.

Your name: Daree Allen, M.S.

Your website/blog: Website is http://DareeAllen.com and Blog is http://DareesInsights.wordpress.com

Your bibliography: What’s Wrong With Me? (book), Articles for Hope for Women, Shuga, and Clutch magazines

1. What is your background? I’ve been a technical writer for 13 years, a personal development blogger for 5 years, and been doing speaking here and there for about 8 years. I’ve done some (mostly free) freelance work for exposure, but decided to buckle down from freelancing and finished my book’s first draft in 2009.




2. What led you to self-publishing? I got tired of a strange catch-22: people everywhere told me how much of a need there is for my book (a teen self-help book), but agents said that publishers couldn’t sell such a book, even from someone with a bigger platform than mine. Yet I saw countless celebrities launch several of these types of books while I was writing mine.




3. What have you found to be the biggest challenge in self-publishing? Funding and hiring. The salability and marketing of your book hinges on being able to recruit and afford contractors and consultants who produce professional, quality work on time, and without too much back-and-forth.




4. What has been the biggest surprise about self-publishing? I didn’t know how much “hate” existed in the publishing world. Some people do not respect it. They underestimate the amount of time that goes into it. A big misconception is that writers self-publish their work because it’s not good enough for anyone else (traditional publishers) to publish it. Many prestigious/scholarly journals and book bloggers will not review SP books.




5. Describe your writing process. For this book, I had most of the content before I started, because the book is based on my personal journals that I’ve kept since childhood. But selecting and organizing the stories into chapters was the hardest part for me. So my process was mostly about revising over and over again. Handing it over to an editor for the first time was terrifying because I didn’t know what she would say, or how well all that revising would work for me.




6. How do you stay disciplined? I don’t. But the way I inadvertently kept myself accountable was to tell anyone and everyone I knew that I was writing a book. So the next time I would see any of my friends, whether it was a week later or a month later, they asked, “So how’s the book coming along?” And that simple, benign question kept the project at the forefront of my mind, even in those months that I felt “stuck.” Another motivator was seeing all the self-help books get released every quarter that were similar to mine (see #2).




7. How are you financing your publishing project? I have been paying-as-I-go, which is something I don’t recommend! (See #9.) I set up pre-orders in September of last year, and am offering the book in ebook and audiobook form. I also started lining up speaking engagements, although most of them are not paid, it gives me another avenue to build my list and sell in the back of the room.




8. What is your favorite self-marketing idea? Network online and offline. Use the same etiquette (if not better) for people you approach online “cold.” I turned a lovely person who was a “friend-in-my-head” and NYT best-selling author into a mentor. She is very helpful and sweet, and over a year after our first contact, we met in person, which was awesome enough (she interviews celebrities but to me SHE is the celebrity), and later she gave me an endorsement on my book. She’s awesome! (My second and third favorite ways to self-market are to speak often and publish guest blog posts/articles frequently.)




9. What advice do you have for burgeoning self-publishers? Get a mentor to help you make sense of things during your first go-round. People will offer to “help” you do different things (for a fee- marketing, publicist, etc.) that you may or may not be able to do on your own. Make sure you have adequate savings and a good team in place, whether you’re hiring a project manager, editors, photographers, indexers, proofreaders, or graphic designers. TEST your referrals—I had disappointing experiences with many of the people I hired, and almost all of them were referred to me by people I trusted.




10. When you’re not writing what do you do for fun? I like to eat, bowl, read, sleep, and dance (but not in that order)




11. What project are you currently working on? I am writing another nonfiction book that focuses on the perspective of single Black fathers in America. There is so much emphasis on single mothers in the Black community (which is fine—I am one and I identify), but I want to bring Black families together for those who want that. The Black community is struggling so much because of broken homes. I want to tell the single dads’ side of the story, through the many voices of the real Black America. If you are interested in contributing via an interview, you can contact me at info@dareeallen.net for more details.