Midge Raymond's Blog, page 58
October 27, 2009
Q&A with Brenda Miller
I met Brenda Miller at the Get Lit! festival this past April, almost two years after I first read her wonderful essay "Blessing of the Animals" in The Sun. I was reminded of the exquisite beauty of her writing when I heard her read and promptly devoured her new book (titled after that essay) as well as her first collection, Season of the Body. Brenda's essays have been described as "affecting and thought-provoking" (Publishers Weekly), "glistening, sensuous" (Kirkus Reviews), and "memorable f...
October 26, 2009
Writing Every Day
As many of you know, I send out a monthly e-newsletter for writers, and for me, the best part about it is hearing back — I love learning what's new with former students, when to look for clients' new stories or essays in print or online, and whether a particular writing exercise has worked (or not).
And the second best thing about the newsletter is that it gives me a chance to practice what I preach. Writers often feel too time-strapped and/or goal-driven to do writing exercises that are not d...
October 23, 2009
Up Close and Personal with the Espresso
As I reported in this blog a while back, Bellingham, Washington's Village Books became the first bookstore on the West Coast to acquire an Espresso machine — not the caffeine-producing kind, however: the book-producing kind.
Many of you may already be familiar with the Espresso Book Machine, which allows bookstores to offer customers out-of-print books or self-published books on demand. While I've written about it before, last night I got the chance to see the Espresso — and its products —...
October 21, 2009
E-books to the rescue?
Well, despite all the bad news we're getting about publishing these days, the NY Times reported a bit of better news: Electronic reading devices are attracting more readers.
Of course, this good news comes from the makers (and marketers) of e-reading devices. Publishers are not nearly as optimistic. According to Amazon, "a reader who had previously bought eight books from Amazon would now purchase, on average, 24.8 books" on his or her Kindle. Those who use Sony Readers purchase an average of ...
October 19, 2009
When Will There Be Good News?
As I sifted through the stacks of newspapers that piled up over the week, it all added up to some pretty depressing publishing news (as for what's going on in the rest of the world, let's not even go there). First I read this NY Times story about price wars, which notes that Wal-Mart and Amazon will be offering new hardcover releases at $8.99 this holiday season. This is, in so many ways, a new low.
"Publishing as we know it is over," John Grisham's literary agent, David Gernert, told the...
October 15, 2009
"The Center of the Universe"
Whatever your view of e-books, they seem to be gaining more traction with each passing day. Among the latest: according to former HarperCollins president and chief executive Jane Friedman, electronic books are "going to be the center of the universe," as she told the NY Times. She has recently formed a new company, with Jeffrey Sharp, that will "republish old titles by big-name authors including William Styron, Iris Murdoch and Pat Conroy in electronic form."
The Times notes that the company, ...
October 12, 2009
Keeping the Day Jobs
I recently read this interesting essay (by way of Erika Dreifus's awesome blog, Practicing Writing) about writing as a second career, by necessity. As a writer who, until recently, has always had a day job, I loved reading this — and even got a little nostalgic for my former day jobs.
The essay, by Emily St. John Mandel (a writer who's held myriad day jobs herself) features two novelists who balance work with writing: "I wanted to know if they experienced their day jobs as an impediment, as I ...
October 5, 2009
Writing Exercise: Listen to a Story
How often do you actually listen to stories anymore? Probably not as much as you did before you could read on your own. If you're like me, you go to bookstore readings as often as you can, though except for poetry and very short stories, often the author reads a portion of a longer work, which isn't quite the same as hearing a whole piece from beginning to end.
This afternoon I went to the Seattle Public Library's Thrilling Tales (it's a year-round thing, but it's especially fun in October...
October 1, 2009
Enter the "Vook"
There's always something new in e-publishing these days … and now it's the "vook." As the NY Times reports, Simon & Schuster is working "with a multimedia partner to release four 'vooks,' which intersperse videos throughout electronic text that can be read — and viewed — online or on an iPhone or iPod Touch." And the article poses the Big Question of whether the attraction of vooks to "modern readers" will lead to material that "ultimately degrades the act of reading."
What a great question...
September 29, 2009
Today, it's all about publishing
I very much enjoyed seeing in today's NY Times that the Daily Beast is forming a new imprint (in a joint venture with Perseus Books Group), Beast Books, that will publish books (first in e form, then in paperback) by Daily Beast writers (who are mostly freelancers). The idea is to condense the period of time it takes to get a book from the author into the world (with traditional publisher, the process can be up to two years; Beast Books is going for a few months). Best of all is that...
