Neil Gaiman

She’s in the last seven hours of her Kickstarter. She’s got a warchest to make and promote her CD, to film videos, to go on tour, to print her art book. And just importantly, she’s changed things: her phone is ringing off the hook with calls from The Economist, Spin, The Wall Street Journal, Music Week, The New York Times and so on, all asking her what this means for the future of music distribution.

I’ve watched how hard she’s worked to put this together over the last four years, experimenting, doing trial runs on things, putting a team together that would be able to deliver everything she wanted. 

About six months ago we wound up at dinner with Amanda’s touring people in Melbourne, and at the dinner was an old school music manager — he’s been managing supergroups for forty years. And he asked Amanda what label she was on. When she said she’d left her label and wasn’t ever planning to go back, I expected him to say something dismissive, and instead he said “Good!” and started telling us about how he was working to get his various acts off their record labels and out selling their music directly to the public.

I (obviously, but it needs saying) don’t think it’s going to be like this for everyone. You need a fanbase to make it happen, and you have to build the fans before they will support you. But I do think it changes things. Because it’s much more than she would ever have received from a record label to record or promote her music, and everyone who is supporting her is getting something in return, down to a $1 download of the finished album.

I don’t believe that in five years time every album will be Kickstartered (the signal to noise level on Kickstarter alone would be impossible to manage). But we’re entering a time in which everything changes. And I think that’s a good thing.

And like she says: We did it. Not her. We are the media.

mariadahvanaheadley:

He saw her across a crowded shelf.

Her deckle-edge was seductively deep, her endpapers velvety. She was a first edition, probably autographed. Any man would want to write his name in a book like her.

She noticed him perusing her pages, and blushed. He had a hard spine, and a crisp dust jacket. His eyes were capitalized, and in an obscure font designed in Amsterdam in 1768. She caught herself glancing at his flyleaf, and looked away, mortified.

They were in the YA section, and she was acting like a common galley.

“Can I have your ISBN?” he whispered. He could nearly see her addendum.

“Yes,” she cooed, helpless. “Yes.”

——

A couple of years ago, for the 110th Anniversary of the terrific indie University Bookstore in Seattle, 110 writers wrote pieces of 110 words. This was mine, a miniature romance novel, the only thing in that genre I’ve written. (So far.) Books are sexy. I became a writer in order to get closer to them.  

What’s your opinion on authors singling out negative reviews (explaining in comments why the review is wrong, defending their book, etc) of their work on sites like Goodreads?

I think authors are allowed to point out errors of fact in a negative review, if they really have to and it’s important to them (errors of the “I understand that the reviewer feels this is the worst account she’s ever read of the Thirty Years’ War of 1618–1648. I would like to point out that one reason for this is that my novel is actually set during the Hundred Years’ War, which occurred from 1337 to 1453…” variety.) And otherwise we should swear loudly to ourselves, probably startling our cats, then we should keep our mouths shut, and go and write other things.

Because I think it’s a good thing that people don’t like everything we do.

I mean that. 

I do not write books that everyone will like. Human beings like different things. If human beings did not like different things — if there was unanimity of opinion on what was good and what was bad, what books were enjoyable and what weren’t, then the odds are that I would starve. My books and stories are not to everyone’s taste, which is why I am so pleased that all people do not share the same taste. 

Some people like what I do. Some people don’t. The ones who like what I do are the ones who keep me fed, and to them I am grateful; and the ones who do not, well, fair enough. There is no letter that I could write to a website, nothing I can ever say that would make someone like a book that they do not like.

(Occasionally time can do that, and experience, and life, and people will come to me and tell me how much better American Gods got during the ten years between them reading it at sixteen and at twenty-six. But that’s a different thing entirely.)

Opinions are true. But they are only opinions. Once you’ve written a book, it belongs to everyone, and they are all allowed to have opinions, and the spectrum of opinions is the spectrum of humanity.

Sometimes I write things I am not satisfied with, and every now and then I run into people who think that thing I did that I didn’t like was the best thing in the world. I feel more uncomfortable around them than I ever do reading a scathing review.

Big plug for Pocket Con, in Chicago.  July 7th, 12-6pm. It’s free for teens, and the adults who accompany them.

What is Pocket Con?

Pocket Con is a single day convention for Chicago Teens. It focuses on work by artists of color, particularly African American authors and artists, as well as comics with a primary character who is Black.

Pocket Con also features work in the comic genre by other underrepresented groups, such as women and LGBT authors/characters, as well as topics of related interest, such as small-budget film-making, radio drama, and zines.

Our mission for this event is primarily to promote literacy using the graphic novel format, reflect on the history of race and gender portrayal in comics and film, and introduce characters, writers and authors who have a different voice than the primarily white, primarily male, primarily straight characters written by generations of comic authors (themselves primarily white, straight, and male). We would also like to empower young writers and artists by introducing them to the collaborative process that is comic creation, and encourage them to produce and submit work of their own for contests at the con.

The Litreactor site is worth its weight in rare metals…

In every industry there are amazing people who are full of passion, dedication and honesty.

And then there are scumbags looking to prey on your hopes and dreams so that they can separate you from your wallet.

For our purposes, I want to talk about the Nigerian 419 scammers of the publishing industry—the vanity presses, the fake literary agents, and the scam contests—all designed to inflate your ego just enough so you don’t notice their hand in your pocket.

With just a little caution, research and common sense, you can protect yourself. Here are the three most common types of scams, and how to avoid them.

GO AND READ THE REST OF IT AT http://litreactor.com/columns/the-dark-side-of-the-publishing-industry-how-to-avoid-scams