The Big Bad Book Blog

Publishers Weekly has announced the date of their first annual National Bookstore Day, which will take place on Saturday, November 7, 2009. This special day was designed to to celebrate bookselling and the vibrant culture of bookstores, but authors can also find ways to contribute. One suggestion is to offer free copies of your book to bookstores for use in promotional giveaways or raffles. If they stock your book, you could mention their bookstore event to your email list. You might also offer to contribute to free workshop or seminar series that your local bookstores might be planning for that day. Email PWEvents@reedbusiness.com for more information and to find other ways you can participate.

When I was in elementary school, I experienced the advent of a life-changing new media as it became widely used by the public for the first time. That phenomenon was the Internet, and at twelve years old I was at an ideal age to become absorbed in this novel method of connecting with the world around me. I was impressed, but believed that this was merely a doorway to the virtual reality full-body immersive video game technology that they swore was just around the corner.

Needless to say, on this front I remain disappointed.

As a fervent book-reader, much of my time spent browsing was on the website of publishers and booksellers, authors and fansites as they sprang up all around me. For the first time there were easily accessible forums to learn about books and authors and connect with other fans. And I loved it.

(A few short anecdotes in no particular order: (a) I was an enthusiastic member of an extremely active website/e-mail fan club for YA author Christopher Pike based on his book The Midnight Club; (b) I played the Animorphs video game on my old-school PC; (c) I browsed the PBS website in search of trivia on my childhood television/book series, like Arthur and The Magic School Bus.) continue reading

Fingers poised with painful precision above the keyboard. Eyes squinting, lines furrowing between arched eyebrows. Mouth pursed. Head cocked. The occasional twitch, fingers buried in hair and the frustrated sigh.

Writer’s block.

It’s not that I don’t have ideas, because Lord knows I have ideas. A plethora of squirming ideas wriggling about, waiting to be plucked and put to the hook, bait for a story to swallow it whole. (Gruesome but truthful.) The problem is their lack of substance. I might have a few scribbles in my notebook after an hour of brainstorming and they all mostly come down to a story about a so-and-so, who faces so-and-so challenge to reach so-and-so goal. It’s formulaic, stale, overdone, and about as gripping as watching a dying earthworm crawl along the sidewalk. I want to cultivate my ideas because they’re precious to me, but in truth, so few of them move beyond that first, stagnant concept.

A professor of mine once said that when you are writing, you should jot down the first four ideas that come into your head for your story. And then you should immediately cross out the first three, because they’re clichéd, hackneyed crap. What you want to create is beyond the surface. You don’t want a “concept,” you want a high concept. Something universal but fresh, an interesting twist, a compelling new confection. Which some might argue is difficult, given that many scholars, critics etc. have decided there are only seven story ideas in the whole world.

Except that there are fourteen. Depending on whose side you’re on… continue reading

Why aren’t they? Easy. Because there’s no reason to laugh. The comic book industry hasn’t yet begun to languish with the same furor of the publishing industry at large, in part because of its highly unique clientele: geeks like myself, willing to forgo the niceties of modern life (eating at restaurants, fashionable clothes, oil changes) for a great trade paperback. But will this trend continue? With industry followers like Publishers Weekly holding their breaths in anticipation of the success of the New York Comic Con as a benchmark for the comic industry’s success this year, it seems that time (and trade shows) will tell. continue reading

Very actionable advice on gathering author blurbs via PW’s “Ask a Publicist” feature.