Writing Fiction

Publishing digitally

Via today's Globe and Mail, an article worth reading and pondering—even if you haven't published yet: Who gets the biggest piece of the digital pie? Excerpt:

There has not been a wholesale overthrow of the traditional book in favour of portable handheld devices such as the Apple iPhone and Sony Reader, or even the home computer. 

It's estimated that no more than 3 per cent of total annual retail book sales in North America can be attributed to digital consumption, and most of that is occurring in the United States. 

But in the last year or so there have been harbingers of what veteran publishing guru Jason Epstein calls “a historic paradigm shift.” And the “ongoing and accelerating interest,” as Illingworth describes it, has anxious authors and jittery publishers bobbing and weaving around the issue of what's a fair split of the revenues in this Brave New World.

When Updike and Cheever Came to Visit

One of the great pleasures of the new century is that Dick Cavett writes a blog on the New York Times. In his latest post, he writes about When Updike and Cheever Came to Visit. Excerpt:

What if we could get John Cheever and John Updike?” someone said.

“Together. On the same show!” The fantasy came true.

But the greatest pleasure of the post is Cavett's own lovely, funny prose. If you're tragically too young to remember when he owned late-night TV, his posts will both make you realize the depth of your loss, and almost make up for it. Dick Cavett should be designated a National Treasure.

Publish and perish

A gloomy but relevant article in today's Globe and Mail: Publish, and your book will probably perish. While the examples are mostly Canadian, the situation is the same everywhere. Excerpt:

A book's promotion was also, remembers Toronto-based fiction writer Andrew Pyper, about "sharing rides in Hondas to readings in church basements in small towns" - a phenomenon, after having published four books in the last 12 years, he still deems "the core of the thing." 

Indeed, [Margaret] Atwood - who once, early in her career, did a book signing in the men's socks and underwear section of an Edmonton department store ("I think it was because it was near the escalator") - continues to call publishing "an art and craft with a business component." 

"But now," adds Pyper, "there's this additional virtual [promotion] apparatus of sites and blogs and whatever. ... Do these things actually work? Nobody seems to know."

I sympathize with Atwood: For my first nonfiction book, I was stationed in a Vancouver department store, where someone asked me where the men's shirts were. (The department store, a major national chain, is now defunct.)

Top 100 Creative Writing Blogs

I'm happy to see that this site is included (#81) in a list of the Top 100 Creative Writing Blogs. By all means explore the other sites—you're likely to find some good advice.