• There are still dry counties in Mississippi.
• Remember to do the research.
• It's mostly hard work, but sometimes 10,000 butterflies come in through the window, then they leave. And you work to make that happen again.

• Thursday lunch speaker: "The World of Sales" (where I explain how books are sold to chain bookstores, online stores, distributors, wholesalers, and specialty accounts). Followed by informal coffee talk that afternoon.
  
• Friday workshop: “Crafting a High Powered and Saleable Nonfiction Book Concept." This is the same one I delivered for the first time in Athens. (See previous post.)
• Saturday workshop: “The Times, They Are A-Changin'." I discuss how major book and magazine publishers are beginning to recreate themselves into media companies. I help writers make sense of (and navigate) the ongoing transformation of writing and publishing in the digital age.

Whoa, there Nelly!

I've been on the horse for a very long time and you're galloping a bit to far ... ahead.

Don't like this kind of talk. Don't like my work being called "content."

I can't imagine any writer I know who would thrill at the sound of that word.

Easy does it, there. S-l-o-w. D-o-w-n. You know I'm forward-minded ... but this is a bit too forward for me.

As a Company, our mission is to strive to offer the highest quality content in a wide variety of formats – from print to digital to video – to highly passionate enthusiast communities. We provide compelling content engaging communities and most importantly consumer satisfaction. We are a media company with enormous potential for future growth through excellence and innovation.

• Method of delivery (or format) is irrelevant. Book, DVD, Web site, podcast? It doesn't really matter. What will do the best job of delivering useful, engaging content or community?
• While some people (or some audiences/consumers) may be enthusiasts specifically of the book format, first and foremost (at least when we're talking about the majority of the nonfiction audience), people are looking for an interaction, experience, or information. 
• I love this Seth Godin quote from an article in The Futurist, "The 21st Century Writer": "The book is a souvenir." What does that mean? It means that the book is becoming the ancillary product in a much larger experience, that people want more than information. Read "The 21st Century Writer" to fully explore this idea.
  

When you approach publishers with an idea, your main job - practically your only job - is to explain very clearly why the book is going to sell. (Here it really helps if your last name is Clinton.) If you're not a known author or celebrity who can guarantee some sales, then it's best to come in with a clearly defined, market-tested book idea... not to say a knockoff of a bestselling concept or a me-too book on a hot trend, heavens no, we'd never do that, just maybe something "inspired by" a successful book.

I've queried as the date grew near
(I'm so much an impatient creature)
but, at last, Poet's Market is now here.
 
The list is printed; that's the trick.
And with the wisp of smoke's transient nature
they'll soon be gone, so grab one quick.

• Make a Scene: Open Your Action Scene With Gusto
• Fiction Writer's Workshop: Dialogue as Conversation
• WGF: Revision & Self Editing: Tips for Revising Your Manuscript
• Mind of Your Story: Creating Stand-Out Characters Using a Specific Distinctive Trait
• The Power of Point of View: What Your POV Choice Communicates About Your Story
• From First Draft to Finished Novel: Principles of Building a Story
• Bullies, Bastards, and Bitches: Defining and Developing Your Anti-Hero
• Alone With All That Could Happen: Autobiographobia

• Pocket Muse II: From the Introduction, addressing artistic despair
• Writer's Book of Matches: How to use the prompts in the book

• You Don't Have to Be Famous: The Right Attitude for Writing Your Life Story
• Writing Life Stories (2nd edition): Challenging the Limits of Memory

• Book in a Month: 4 Tips for Making Time to Write
• Write Is a Verb: The Four Energies of Writing (What's Your Fuel?)
• How I Got Published: The Secret to Getting Published
• Writer Mama: The Write-at-Home Mom
• The Craft & Business of Writing: The Writer-Editor Relationship

• 101 Songwriting Wrongs: Capturing Ideas Before They Get Away
• The Rhythm Method, Razzmattazz, and Memory: The Action Verb and Beautiful Accidents
• Writing the Christian Romance: From the Introduction
• Writing & Selling the YA Novel: Finding Strong Ideas for Teen Fiction

• Howdunit: Police Procedure & Investigation: What a Detective Does
• Howdunit Forensics: Time of Death (A Critical Part of the Timeline)

The Pirate Primer (a lexicon of pirate language)
Chapter 8: Insults

Noble's Book of Writing Blunders
Table of Contents, Introduction, and "Don't Add Adverbs and Adjectives to Prettify Your Prose"

By Cunning & Craft
A section on crafting your characters, because fiction is all about people

Howdunit: Police Procedure & Investigation
Table of Contents, and tips to sharpen your CSI skills

Between the Lines
A section on creating effective backstory

Novelist's Boot Camp
Mission III: Enlist Your New Recruits

Chapter After Chapter
Find your writing wings

Hooked
Opening scenes: an overview

What Would Your Character Do?
Scenario: Family Picnic

At F+W, you went from managing a magazine to managing books. Was that a difficult transition?

Not at all, though I suspect my experience is unique. F+W is more like a media company that parcels out its content in different formats and packages, across a variety of niche audiences (in my case, writers). So I worked for Writer’s Digest magazine for a while, then moved to Writer’s Digest Books, which is really the same kind of game, with a lot of the same players. It also helped that I had previous experience in the book division before moving to Writer’s Digest magazine. But F+W editors often move between the magazine and book division successfully.

1. Books are consistently lovable (unlike CDs).

2. With e-book readers, you do not already own e-books to load on it. (Contrast with iPod where you already own the music.)

3. People don't buy that many books to begin with.

4. Book lovers are late adaptors of new tech.

5. People will waste time on their iPods rather than reading on some other device.
   
   

This is the single best zombie read I have laid my eyes on this year and sure to show up in my picks for best original graphic novel of the year. The book does a phenomenal job of going into the mind of a zombie and does so in a creative and wholly new and imaginative way. If you have a taste for horror, this quirky little book is for you. But if you're a zombie fiend like myself, you should make it your single minded goal to seek out this book and digest then savor it. It's a true gem of a book for those with a taste for the macabre.

I'm the guy who has been reading Aint It Cool every day for about 10 years now, and I saw this review this morning by just going to their site.  CRAZY!!!!!  I bawled like a baby and called my wife.  It's like I'm in a dream.