Huffington Post Article on e-Publishing/e-Books

Excellent article in the Huffington Post entitled, "How Will Ebooks Change the Author Experience."

The author of this post, Jason Pinter, makes some excellent points about how e-Publishing (how do you spell that? We need and industry standard!) means certain mileposts and events that are special to an author will disappear: book signings, seeing others read your books or those of your friends (hard to do with a kindle), and so on.

I think he makes a great point about a few of these, especially the feeling you might get seeing your books on shelves, in people's hands, etc.

But I also fear what is happening with publishers in general. There's the obvious statement: I'd much rather have people reading my ebooks than not reading my books at all because I can't get a publisher to pick me up. And frankly, book signings are only partially intriguing to me. Tons of work with a small return.

Then there are the horror stories I've been reading about increasingly dishonest practices in the industry. Those are hard to verify, but they cause greater anxiety to an aspiring author who already knows that more and more of the marketing depends on me, I'm getting a smaller and smaller amount of cash from the publisher anyway, and I may get raked over the coals.

So, what do you think, folks, about what Jason has to say?

Welcome New Followers, and Another Konrath Must Read

I thought I'd say welcome to some of my new followers. Thanks for joining me on my blog! I'm still learning the cool tech features, but I've seen some people do some pretty cool welcomes with links and such. Let's see if I can do that for a few of you. Here are links to your blogs that I can easily link to. Sorry if I've missed some of you. I promise it was inadvertent! Check them out and make some new friends.

Julie Coulter Bellon
Stacy Coles
Shallee McArthur
Jennifer
Aimee Beatrice Jodoin (official coolest name award!)
Melissa Ann Goodwin
Kathryn Packer Roberts
Cindy M Hogan
Donna K. Weaver

Thanks again!

Ok, on to something more important. Again, I happened across another post today that's really got me thinking about the e-publishing model. Now that I have it from the horse's mouth, so to speak, that the main reason the midlist publisher passed on my middle grade fantasy, alternatively titled Lizzie Peterson and the Places of Naming or Legends of Kyreo: The Places of Naming, because their quota was full, I'm more confident putting it out there.

But first, I'm pitching nationally to see what happens.

In the meantime, you've got to read this post, Tech Talk and the Active EBook, by Joe Konrath. It's very much a fantasy come true in terms of daydreaming, but we're not far away at all from these possibilities. Read it, and let me know what you think.

Excellent Post on Current Trends

Well, I was all set to write a new, original post. But then I came along this post by agent Mandy Hubbard (note this links to her personal website, this link is for Mandy Hubbard's blog) and though some of you have already seen this, it's just too good not to pass along. So I'll follow up with something on Thursday--probably a little survey about MG titles.

Back to Mandy: she just spent a week meeting with many, many publishers in New York. In fact, she had 37 meetings in all. In her post entitled, "Epic Post on Trends (YA and MG)" she lists great content about what editors are actively seeking, doing, and thinking about. Read it. It's worth every second of the five minutes you'll spend.

My First Fan Mail

Once in a while something happens that brings such joy to us that we can't help being overly excited and want to share it with the world. Then, we step back and analyze what happened, feeling anxious we've overstated the situation and should calm down.

But it turns out we were, in fact, right, and that it was, in fact, as awesome as we thought.

That happened to me this week. I unexpectedly received my first ever true fan mail.

One of my readers, a twelve-year-old young man, decided he wanted to send me a note about my book. So he hand wrote a note. I'm still in awe and humbled that he would go out of his way to do that. I'm going to quote it below because, well, I hope you all have the opportunity to get something like this one day. I may even frame it. Keep in mind he read it well over a month ago, so this was truly unexpected.

This is for my middle grade fantasy, Lizzie Peterson and the Places of Naming.

"Dear Josh Perkey,

"I read your book and I loved it! I am a big fantasy fan myself and I absolutely loved your book! I have drawn pictures of Pyrwing and Genivere because I liked your book so much.

"I would like to make some suggestions. First, the title. I, for one, don't think of "Lizzie" as a very "epic" name. The title would be much more appealing (to me at least) if you dropepd the "Lizzie Peterson" part and just did "The Places of Naming."

"Other than that there's nothing else I would change. Love your book!"

"Your fan, _[his name]_"

And he included the hand drawn pictures, which were way, way cool. A black stallion pegasus and a white unicorn, drawn to show they really do kick some major booty in the adventure. I can't even draw stick figures, and he sent me these incredible images.

Wow.  Thanks again, my young friend. You're one awesome fan.

So, with that note, my next post will be about a new title for the book. I take this seriously. I want to see what you think. And here's to hoping that, in whatever endeavors you engage in, you get lucky enough to have this kind of feedback. It makes all the rejections, the waiting, the intense effort, the writing, the rewriting, the editing, the marketing, the incorporating feedback, and sweat and tears worth it. And that's why I write.