Archive for February, 2008
Tuesday, February 26th, 2008
Way back at the end of 2007, the Vancouver Sun published some predictions on talented unknowns set to blow up in Aught Eight. (Notice how I imply that Aught Eight is some kind of trendy new way of referring to 2008, therefore firming up my hipster-cred. It could be, for all I know.) Anyway, on the list of people we need to keep an eye on, is my fellow alumna (TWS ’06) Gurjinder Basran:
A regional manager with Bell Mobility and a mother of two, north Delta’s Gurjinder Basran squeezed a creative writing program at Simon Fraser University into her life. There she wrote a novel about a young Indo-Canadian woman trying to assert her independence in a strict Punjabi Sikh community. She’s calling it Everything Was Goodbye.
Apart from Ranj Dhaliwal’s Daaku, not many novels have been written about the Indo-Canadian experience. Few books speak to “the first generation that grew up here,” says 35-year-old Basran, who is seeking an agent and a publisher. “I’m hoping it will resonate with all kinds of people.”
Not only that, but the novel is a semi-finalist in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award competition, one of 100 entries out of 5,000 chosen by Penguin editors for the final read-through to narrow the field to ten books, which will then be chosen by Amazon readers… and presumably will be published by Penguin, although there’s no information about that on the Amazon site that I could find. Check out the excerpt of Everything Was Good-bye for as a free download from Amazon.
Tags: amazon, basran, contests, friends, friends of litfarm, litfriends, vancouver sun
Posted in ebooks, friends of litfarm, litfarm | 4 Comments »
Tuesday, February 26th, 2008
The CBC’s 2008 Canada Reads series started yesterday, with the following books and their celebrity champions, girded for battle in a no-holds-barred… you get the idea.
* Singer-songwriter Dave Bidini defending Paul Quarrington’s hockey novel, King Leary.
* Astronaut Steve MacLean defending Thomas Wharton’s Icefields.
* Newfoundland author Lisa Moore defending Mavis Gallant’s From the 15th District.
* Hip-hop poet and community worker Jemini defending Nalo Hopkinson’s Brown Girl in the Ring.
* Little Mosque on the Prairie star Zaib Shaikh defending Timothy Findley’s Not Wanted on the Voyage.
I love the Canada Reads series, because the books aren’t current hot titles (or even always in print–King Leary got a new run when it was announced), hot authors, or anything except what the panelists like. Plus, all the books get a bump in sales from the publicity, and even though there’s bragging rights, there’s no prize. It’s all fun.
Tags: awards, on publishing
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Friday, February 22nd, 2008
Alright, it doesn’t have a lot to do with getting published, but how can you not love the shortlist for Oddest Book Title of the Year? I won’t spoil the other five, but here’s a taste of those that barely missed the cut:
“Honourable mention should also go to two titles that were ruled out because they were published too long ago: an unlikely-sounding HR manual called Squid Recruitment Dynamics, and the fascinating anthropological tome Glory Remembered: Wooden Headgear of Alaska Sea Hunters.”
Baaa. It’s Friday. (From Quillblog.)
Tags: mutant word monster, quirky, shortlist, weirdo book titles
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Thursday, February 21st, 2008
In this age of desktop publishing, internets and other fast… things… um, why is there such a long wait between signing a publishing contract and seeing your book on the shelves? Turns out that in spite of, and in some ways because of, our fleeting relationship with news and current events, the number one way of publicizing a book remains word-of-mouth. And building that sort of buzz takes time.
The bad news is that marketing budgets are small, especially for authors who don’t have a best seller in their backlist. The good news?
Much to the anxiety of midlist writers clamoring for attention, chain stores determine how many copies of a title to buy based on the expected media attention and the author’s previous sales record. Which is why publishers say it’s easier to sell an untested but often hyped first-time author than a second or a third novel.
This sort of news makes me optimistic for first-timers. Sure, you may not be hyped, but your competition is also starved for marketing attention, so viral marketing makes more and more sense, even before you’ve signed with an agent or a publisher.
Tags: get published, marketing, on publishing, publishing
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Sunday, February 10th, 2008
So says Paulo Coehlo, who when his publisher was none too keen about distributing digital versions of his work, set up a blog, Pirate Coelho, to help fans find P2P downloads. What was the effect? Sales. In a speech at the Digital, Life, Design conference in Munich he talked about how uploading the Russian translation of The Alchemist made his sales in Russia go from around 1,000 per year to 100,000, then a million and more. Here’s a link to a blog post with video of the speech on torrentfreak.com.
Why does it work? From the Guardian book blog:
… giving away free digital copies of books makes a lot more sense that giving away free digital copies of music. Downloading a couple of chapters allows you to see how much you might like an author unknown to you. The point being that most of us who like what we read are then likely to go on and purchase the physical copy of the book, because so few of us have the stamina to read an entire book from a screen.
Coelho is one of the biggest names I’ve heard of adopting the strategy espoused by Cory Doctorow, et al. My guess is that we’ll see free sample chapters as a mainstream marketing strategy in a year or two, if not complete works. Good news for writers just starting out: setting up a torrent of your novel could emerge as a viable (and cheap) way of bootstrapping yourself into a publishing contract.
Tags: coelho, doctorow, ebooks, fiction, free, get published, p2p, pdf, self publishing, torrent
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Sunday, February 10th, 2008
Geist is having a short fiction contest! Snail mail a short story, maximum 500 words, fiction or non-fiction, where the action takes place in at least two time zones within Canada, along with a cover letter and $20 dollars (includes a one-year subscription) by June 1st, 2008.
Prizes are $250, $150, $100 and swell Geist gifts. Winners will be published in Geist, geist.com and selected stories will be published the thetyee.ca.
Gory details at the link above.
Tags: contests, fiction, geist, get published, non-fiction, short fiction, short non-fiction, the tyee
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Sunday, February 10th, 2008
To celebrate the seventh anniversary of his blog, Neil Gaiman and HarperCollins have decided to release one of his books as a free download. Which one is up to you. Gaiman is conducting a vote on his blog. The winning book will be posted online for free by the publisher, who will also track sales following the download. If the experiment sparks sales, presumably HC will do the same with other titles.
Exciting!
Tags: download, ebooks, fantasy, gaiman, harpercollins, pdf, sf
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Friday, February 8th, 2008
Mary Schendlinger, the Senior editor of Geist Magazine, cartoonist, instructor at UBC, The Writer’s Studio and editor, talks with Kootenay Co-operative Radio (scroll down to show #35) about types of editing, the sort of writing Geist buys, how to find an editor, and the term “creative non-fiction.”
Mary teaches Getting Published at TWS, which is a fantastic class that really can’t recommend highly enough as an introduction to editing, literary agents, Canadian and American publishing and a lot more.
While you’re at it, check out The Writer’s Toolbox on the Geist site.
Tags: copyediting, editing, geist, nonfiction, on writing, podcast
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Monday, February 4th, 2008
I suppose you feverishly clicked the link, hoping for a titillating account of my friday night. Well, you were tricked! This post isn’t about my bad sex, it’s about yours. Or it’s about you writing about yours. Not that I think you’re the kind of person who has a lot of bad sex, I don’t. But I assume you’ve been around the block a few times. What? I’m not implying anything. You’re the one who… hey look, a contest!
Poor Mojo’s Almanac(k), a “weekly online literary journal featuring poetry, fiction, rants and advice from the Giant Squid” is looking for Rants on Monstrously Bad Sex.
The prize is online publication, $33 1/3 dollars (US, I believe), and your name listed as a “$33 1/3 Meritorious Boon Winner”.
Deadline is March 31st, 2008. No entry fee.
Tags: essay, funny haha, get published, nonfiction, rant
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