Thursday, March 31, 2011

Around the Word

Does America have the write priorities? Over at Slate, the celebrated baseball stat guru Bill James explores why the U.S. is so good at developing world-class athletes yet so lousy at producing comparably accomplished writers. Could the talent that was present in say, Shakespeare's London, be a random cluster? Or, James muses, are we at fault for our inability to hone the type of creative genius that precedes great authors?

The art of Kickstart: One of the most buzzed about DIY services on the Web these days is Kickstarter, a fundraising site that helps creative types quickly leverage small donations from around the globe to finance their projects. Nathan Bransford explains why this is a particularly useful tool for self-publishing authors and offers a series of tips for getting the most bang out of Kickstarter for your book.

In the "No": In her latest public service to struggling authors, literary agent Rachelle Gardner explains why it is so easy for agents to know when to reject a project -- and so much harder to say "yes."

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