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Writers and Editors

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Social networking for book readers

September 4, 2011
Tags: social networking, LibraryThing
Media space for book reviews is shrinking but online communities for swapping books and sharing opinions about them are flourishing. Here are more than a dozen such sites;
• BookMooch (Give books away. Get books you want.)
• LibraryThing (enter what you're reading, or your whole library--and connect with people who read what you read)
• GoodReads  Read More 
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Personal historians love their work

July 26, 2011
Note: The Association of Personal Historians closed shop in May 2017, so some of this is no longer applicable.
Want to help others tell their life (or family) stories? Pick up a copy of Start & Run a Personal History Business: Get Paid to Research Family Ancestry and Write Memoirs by Jennifer Campbell. Jennifer.

Listen to personal historian Stephanie Kadel Taras explain What personal historians do and why (audiofile of an interview on the Ann Arbor program "Everything Elderly." Read More 
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Memoirs of coping with chronic, rare, or invisible diseases, including mental health problems

July 15, 2011
Tags: memoirs, illness, mental illness, chronic diseases, disabilities, genetic disorders

Because I have a website providing resources about illness, recovery, dying, and grief, I am often asked to recommend books that will help people cope with a medical or mental health problem. I find that memoirs are often most helpful because they provide the narrative account of an illness that someone coping with a crisis is most likely to be able to concentrate on and get something out of (including understanding of their own emotional turmoil. These are some of the titles

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Consent the best defense against invasion of privacy lawsuits

July 14, 2011
Tags: invasion of privacy, Right of Publicity, false light, disclosure, intrusion

by Pat McNees   (updated 6-5-21)

 

Consent is the best defense against invasion of privacy lawsuits.

Truth is the best defense against a suit for defamation.
Biographers should be concerned not only with matters of copyright, fair use, and permissions, but also with the privacy and publicity rights of those they are quoting or writing about, said entertainment lawyer Kirk Schroder on the “Can I Quote That?” panel I moderated at the Compleat Biographer conference

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Guides to scanning, digitizing, and editing for video and multimedia

June 21, 2011
Tags: scanning, digitizing, editing, multimedia, Adobe Acrobat, Audacity, Final Cut Pro
Need to scan photos for a book, slide show, or multimedia presentation, and don't know a dpi from a pixel? Luckily you can find plenty of good tutorials online about everything from scanning old photos and recording telephone interviews to mastering various pieces of software and editing tools. Learn about Adobe Acrobat, Audacity, camcorders, Final Cut Pro, Photoshop, digitizing analog recordings, time coding video, editing for the Web, and other mysteries  Read More 
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Mike Shatzkin on bookselling's past, present, and future

June 7, 2011
Tags: Shatzkin, bookselling, book publishing, e-books, bookstores, libraries
Mike Shatzkin's predictions about what's going on in book publishing and bookselling, and his histories of the trade (from mass market paperbacks through eBooks), are both compelling and unnerving. Technology, curation, and why the era of big bookstores is coming to an end (Shatzkin Files, 6-7-11) Read More 
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The frontier world of self-published e-books

June 6, 2011
Tags: ebooks


"In the winter of 2010, the cheerfully effervescent romance novelist Nyree Belleville suffered the same fate as many a scribe — she was dropped by her publisher," writes Neely Tucker in Novel rejected? There’s an e-book gold rush! (Washington Post, 5-6-11). The most any of her 12 spicy romances, penned under the name Bella Andre, had earned was $21,000." Read More 
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Agents as publishers--a new conflict of interest

May 17, 2011
Tags: agents, Rights, POD publishing, e-books
In the UK, literary agent Ed Victor set up Bedford Square Books to publish e-book and print-on-demand versions of books that were out of print or for which rights had reverted to the author. Within days, this news (Ed Victor set up publishing imprint by Charlotte Williams, The Bookseller 5-10-11) became a trend and people in the industry began itemizing the ways in which a) it represents a major conflict of interest and b) publishing is changing radically. Read More 
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EBook basics for authors (part 2: DRM, or copy protection)

May 13, 2011
Tags: ebooks, DRM, digital rights management, copy protection

Can authors self-publish eBooks from their own website?
Technically yes. In real life, says Josh Tallent, no. ePub is a great open-source format that several firms use. The problem is DRM (copy protection), for which the bookseller pays a sizable fee. So you can sell your own eBook from your website, but you can’t sell a locked-down copy-controlled version of your eBook.
This is part 1 of a 3-part report on a talk eBook experts Josh Tallent and David Rothman made to the Washington Biography Group, May 2, 2011. Some of the details may now be out of date, but the broad explanation may still be helpful.  <a href="https://www.smashwords.com/about"target="_blank">Smashwords</a>, for example, boasts of "producing DRM-less ebooks" on its About page.

Should you copy-protect your eBook? That depends.

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eBooks basics for authors (part 3, trends and questions)

May 13, 2011
Tags: ebooks, trends, profits, revisions

Among the trends David Rothman predicted in his talk to the Washington Biography Group was a subscription series for eBooks that would work something like NetFlix. Those who will benefit most from such a development, says David, will be "small presses and more obscure writers, who will enjoy more exposure for their works — the same as indie film makers do on Netflix. Readers will be more inclined to try what they’re already paying for."

Other trends Read More 
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