Helen Dewitt comparing Goodreads review distributions w/ editor opinions <3

Miller is like most people in discounting what he doesn't see. Assigning disproportionate value to what he can see. Which is actually the single worst problem for writers dealing with Rest of World. Because you better believe we believe in what we can't see.  We believe in what does not yet exist. We believe in it the way a parent believes in the miracle of birth. How can we possibly not? Time t, a room contains the following: man, table, paper, pen, ink. The man is Coleridge. Time t+n, the room contains the following: man, table, paper, pen, ink, Kubla Khan.

There were hundreds of changes. “O.K.” was spelled out “okay,” “15” was “fifteen” and so on. “I am Helen DeWitt,” she said. “I wrote this book. You want to write OK as o-k-a-y go write your own novel.”

But the book did not happen because anyone was looking, it happened because you were shut up crazy in a room all day thinking really hard about what if ... Popeye ... HAD INK FOR BLOOD???

There is a lot of stuff here.

After all, writing about unhappiness in the suburbs places you in the tradition of Great American Novelists from Updike to Cheever to Roth. Creating dystopian fiction locates you in the land of Orwell and Huxley. But there’s not much in the canon about the day-to-day details of the lives of mothers and young children.

So You Want to Start Your Own Micro-press?

Conventional Wisdom: The format should be long chapters.
REWORK: Filled with short essays, most just a page or two.

What is the deal with this, anyone? Deans?

Noz gave me a brief shout in the KG interview

Please find below the entirety of Machine of Death as a free, downloadable PDF.

more stuff I don't understand

Yay

Did you know that before the web, you needed a publisher and permission? That probably shocks the hell out of Walt Whitman, or would if he were still around to be shocked. Self-publication has been around a long time. All that’s changed is the cost of entry and ease of distribution.

A person should be able to read a book even if they don't have the money to buy it. I'm not ever gonna get rich writing books anyway, and I'd rather a book reach everyone who would appreciate it.

Don't super understand what these dudes are about but OK

let me observe that I think the best possible reaction an editor or publisher can have to a manuscript is to say, “I don’t know what to do with this.”

Kevin: You know, I got so tired of the lame and ubiquitous “‘iPad’ sounds like a feminine product!” jokes that I started referring to my wife’s pads as “kindles.” Not that I have occasion to refer to them all that much.

:|

Paul: YOU KILLED MY MOTHER CHOIRE.
Paul: JUST LIKE THE INTERNET KILLED PUBLISHING.

We have a worldwide communications and distribution network where you can publish anything you want and -- if you can manage to get anybody's attention -- get near-instant feedback. Writers just 20 years ago would have killed for that kind of feedback loop. Killed! And you're asking me what word processor I use? Just fucking write, then publish, then write some more. One day your writing will get featured on a site like Reddit and you'll go from 5 readers to 5000 in a matter of hours, and they'll all tell you how much your writing sucks. And most of them will be right! Learn how to respond to constructive criticism and filter out the trolls, and you can write the next great American novel in edlin.

Hey, Amazon. When cutting off publishers, don’t start with the one that has the most science fiction writers. We will blog you dead!

Joshua Allen, what a great opportunity for you to network

I kind of want to record a dramatic reading of this.

$35 book of photos that are on Flickr. I would love for this to be successful.

"I enjoy working with publishers because it makes me a better writer. But I don’t write for money; I write for love (or passion, or whatever you want to call it)." -->BAD ASS

Just linking so that Pierce sees it and adjusts his expectations accordingly.

Anyone who is following the tournament and is now intrigued by the book will not run across it in most stores. I’m sure Tom Piazza appreciates all the attention, but it isn’t going to do his sales any good if there’s nothing to buy. Many people have gone on and on about how stupid this strategy is, but it doesn’t really hit home until one of the (apparently) best books of the year can’t be purchased in a bookstore outside of an initial three-month window. Is there any other industry that treats their product this way?

"We want consumers of online fiction, and we must admit that ideally, we want an audience who are not participants - who do not produce works of fiction themselves."

"TMN published the best of its '08 content in a hard-bound Annual."

He and Russell have published a tabloid newsprint publication featuring some of their favourite posts from 23 friends’ blogs last year. The project came about when they found out how cheap and easy it is to print 1000 copies of a newsprint tabloid. They also wanted to draw attention to some longer written pieces that are more easily assimilated in print than online.

On the internet, quantity has totally made quality its bitch

The guy knows his stuff.

Muse’s Success’ mission is to create a catalogue of each and every web based novel (or serial) available on the World Wide Web. In addition, we allow our visitors to review stories within our catalogue, and also provide a community in which authors and readers of web based novels can interact and communicate.

How many of these people have you read.

The humor sections of most bookstores are clogged with books that are really more like extended greeting cards. If you’ve ever opened a Shoebox Greeting and thought, “Man, I wish that dismal punch line pertaining to how decrepit I am at age 40 could go on for a hundred more pages,” I have some fantastic news for you, my friend.