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"Your manuscript is both good and original; but the part that is good is not original, and the part that is original is not good."
~ Samuel Johnson
"My idea of pure heaven is to spend a day in the kitchen, peeling, chopping, and stirring while the words of a good book fill the air around me."
~Ruth Reichl
"I would rather be attacked than unnoticed."
~ Samuel Johnson
"Everyone should be on Facebook. Facebook isn’t competing with Twitter. Facebook is competing with the Internet. If you’re a journalist, you want to be part of the conversation."
~ Sree Srinivasan, in a lecture to the National Book Critics Circle, in which he also said Facebooks is "one of the greatest time sinks in human history" "Education’s purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one."
~ Malcolm Forbes
"Some reviews give pain. This is regrettable, but no author has any right to whine. He is not obliged to be an author. he invited publicity, and he must take the publicity as it comes along."
~ E.M. Forster
"Anyone can be accurate and even profound, but it is damned hard work to make criticism charming."
~ H.L. Mencken
"Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a lamppost what it feels about dogs."
~ John Osborne |
E-mail Pat (pat at patmcnees dot com)
Writers on Writing(complete archive of the NY Times series, writers exploring literary themes. Requires free membership.)
Letters of Note (fascinating letters, postcards, telegrams, faxes, and memos--that you were never expected to see)
Aha Moments (from the brilliant Mutual of Omaha campaign to record people's stories about moments of clarity, defining moments when they gained the wisdom to change their life)
TED: Ideas worth sharing Riveting talks by remarkable people, free to the world
Freelance National Anthem (Bill Dyszel, 4 minutes)
KeepMeOut (addicted to a website? bookmark this page and it will remind you to get back to work!)
Today's Front Pages (check out Newseum's U.S. map -- move your cursor across the map and see the front pages change)
Online Education Database150 resources to help you write better, faster, or more persuasively
Help a reporter out (HARO)(useful for reporters and for sources)
Paris Review "Writers at Work" Interviews (selections from 1953 on, a gift to the world, and with a single click you can view a manuscript page with the writer's edits)
The Onion (if the news is making you sick, try this approach)
Truth-o-meter (St. Petersburg Times, www.politifact.com)(St. Pete Times on whether, and how much, various notable people are telling the truth)
Fact Check (Annenberg sorts political truths from half-truths)
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Plus blogs, links to author interviews, resources for critics and book reviewers
With some periodicals, you may have to register to view the publication online (usually for free, especially for book reviews). They want the demographic information so they know where (and how old) their readers are and thus to whom their (dreamed-of) online advertisers will be able to market their wares.
The Book of my Enemy Has Been Remaindered. Clive James' classic poem about about literary schadenfreude, as posted by Dwight Garner on the NY Times Paper Cuts blog about books.
Book reviewing panel. C-Span video of 2010 Virginia Festival of the Book panel discussion of the business of book reviews, with panelists Ron Charles, deputy editor of Washington Post Book World, David Montgomery, thriller and mystery Critic for the Daily Beast and Chicago Sun-Times, and authors Rebecca Skloot and Katharine Weber.
Book Review Podcasts. Sam Tanenhaus, editor of the New York Times Book Review, talks each week to authors, editors, and critics about new books, the literary scene, and current best sellers. The downloadable audio files are in mp3 format.
Curled Up With a Good Book. (LL writes: "highly entrepreneurial e-zine; reviewers work for free and do a good job (on the six reviews I've read so far")
Fresh Fiction (news, reviews, blogs, etc., on genre fiction: genre fiction: romance, mystery, suspense, thrillers, horror, science fiction, fantasy, contemporary, graphic and action novels
Historian Orlando Figes agrees to pay damages for fake reviews on Amazon (Alexandra Topping, Guardian, 7-16-10). Historian to pay damages and costs to two rivals who launched a libel case after he posted reviews "praising his own work and rubbishing that of his rivals."
Kirkus Reviews lives on. Motoko Rich reports that Kirkus Gets A New Owner — From The NBA (NY Times 2-10-10). In December he'd reported that End of Kirkus Reviews Brings Anguish and Relief (NYTimes, 12-11-09). Starred reviews were rare; negative reviews were not. Here's the link to the old Kirkus Reviews
100 Great American Novels You've (Probably) Never Read (the book) by Karl Bridges. This pricey hardcover book is "a resource for readers of American fiction who’ve read their way through the standard canon of classics. 'One goal of this book,' Bridges writes in his Introduction, 'is to represent a wide time span–one equaling the length of American history.'' The novels listed cover a full 200 years: from Charles Brockden Brown’s Edgar Huntly, or, Memoirs of a Sleep-Walker(1797) to Charles T. Power’s In the Memory of the Forest (1997). You can find a list of the 100 novels on Neglected Books.
[Go Top]
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A GREAT READ
Books for book clubs
Best reads and most "discussable"
Great search links
Fact-finding, fact-checking, and news and info resources
BOOK AND MAGAZINE PUBLISHING
Acquiring, swapping, or selling books
New and used books, Amazon.com and elsewhere
Communicating and marketing online (Web 2.0)
Blogs, social media, podcasts, ezines, survey tools and online games
Marketing, publicity, promotion
Blogs, video promotion, intelligent radio programs
Self-publishing and print on demand (POD)
Indie publishing, digital publishing, POD, how-to articles
So, You Want to Write a Book!
Includes original text by Sarah Wernick
WRITERS AND CREATORS
Awards, grants, fellowships
Plus contests and other sources of funding
Corporate and technical communications
Copywriting, speechwriting, marketing, training, and the like
Fiction writing
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Media pros and other allied professionals
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Specialty and niche writing
Groups for writers who specialize in animals, children's books, food, gardens, family history, resumes, sports, travel, Webwriting, and wine (etc.)
ETHICS, RIGHTS, AND OTHER ISSUES
EDITORS AND EDITING
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