C h a z z W r i t e s . c o m

Via Scoop.it – Writing and reading fiction

(My friend Eden Baylee is interviewed about her erotic fiction. Enjoy! ~ Chazz)   At the age of eleven, Eden Baylee, bestselling indie author of Fall into Winter, purchased a copy of Story of O by Pauline Réage. “It’s amazing what they sold to kids back then in Montreal,” she says.
Via indiereader.com

Filed under: publishing

Via Scoop.it – Writing and reading fiction
(Really? Is tech killing the novel? ~ Chazz)     In his polemic against the traditional novel, or rather against those who continue to write it when he believes it has lost its validity, David Shields frequently draws our attention to the fragmented character and accelerated speed of modern life, and the prominence of new media—particularly blogs, Facebook, and so on. He links this to a general eagerness to read what is both immediately contemporary and “true” or at least “documentary,” in preference to traditional fiction. “The key thing for an intellectually rigorous writer to come to grips with,” he tells us, “is the marginalization of literature by more technologically sophisticated and thus more visceral forms.”   I find it hard to understand why the technologically sophisticated is necessarily more visceral. The viscera are visceral, the old primitive gut: this pain, this pleasure, now. At the same time, I share Shields’s weariness with novels that, however elegant and intelligent, appear merely to be going through the motions, to be aimed above all at creating the package that will lead to prominence on the world stage, or at least commercial success (the two are almost the same thing).   If there is a problem with the novel, and I’m agreed with Shields that there is, it is not because it doesn’t participate in modern technology, can’t talk about it or isn’t involved with it; I can download in seconds on my Kindle a novel made up entirely of emails or text messages. Perhaps the problem is rather a slow weakening of our sense of being inside a society with related and competing visions of the world to which we make our own urgent narrative contributions; this being replaced by the author who takes courses to learn how to create a product with universal appeal, something that can float in the world mix, rather than feed into the immediate experience of people in his own culture. That package may work for some, as I believe my student’s account of dramatic upheavals in the Mongol empire will work for many readers; it has its intellectual ideas and universal issues: but it doesn’t engage us deeply, as I believe my other student’s work might if only he could get it right. And this is not simply an issue of setting the book at home or abroad, but of having it spring from matters that genuinely concern the writer and the culture he’s working in.
Via www.nybooks.com

Filed under: publishing

Via Scoop.it – Writing and reading fiction

Wow! Quite a flurry of articles somewhat along the same lines today! Another good one to consider! ~ Chazz
Via tribalauthor.com

Filed under: publishing

Via Scoop.it – Writing and reading fiction

A report on top self-published Kindle ebooks of 2011, prepared using data collected from Kindle Store’s archives. Prices, authors, trends, lists.
Via ebookfriendly.com

Filed under: publishing

Via Scoop.it – Writing and reading fiction

What Apple showed us today was nothing less than the future of education. The future we’d all been imagining for decades, no less. Harry Potter stuff.
Via gizmodo.com

Filed under: publishing

Via Scoop.it – Writing and reading fiction

When you see Snooki’s book on the New York Times Best Seller List, you know publishing is in trouble.

You can blame readers and say publishing is just giving the public what they want. But that’…
Via pandodaily.com

Filed under: publishing

Via Scoop.it – Writing and reading fiction

I tweeted this piece yesterday by agent Jenny Bent : ‘Why reader taste differs from publisher taste’. I urge you to read the whole article, but briefly, she’s talking about what’s wrong with the wa…
Via nailyournovel.wordpress.com

Filed under: publishing

Via Scoop.it – Writing and reading fiction

By Jenny Bent Electronic publishing is blowing apart the idea that we in publishing have better taste than the average reader.
Via talkingwriting.com

Filed under: publishing

Via Scoop.it – Writing and reading fiction

(I’m not a fan of this idea, but it is interesting ~Chazz)   Coliloquy, a Palo Alto-based startup launching today exclusively on Amazon Kindle E-Ink devices, has a new take on digital publishing.
Via www.publishersweekly.com

Filed under: publishing

Via Scoop.it – Writing and reading fiction

(A friend convinced me to make the leap to KDP Select. Working on it. ~Chazz )   For many authors, both traditionally published or self-published, the new KDP Select program launched by Amazon recently poses quite a few questions.
Via www.derekhaines.ch

Filed under: publishing