Gotham Ghostwriters

Guest Post: Malicious Obfuscation, by Alan Perlman, PhD

2012-02-09T13:00:00.002-05:00

I advertise myself (accurately) as a “linguistics expert,” so people often ask me questions about language usage. One recent correspondent was wondering whether—given all the usage “errors” people commit these days—the English language isn’t losing its nuance, becoming reduced to the lowest common denominator…generally being “dumbed down.” Maybe, the reasoning goes, if we lose too many important distinctions, we won’t be able to communicate at all.

To those people I say: chill out. (Unless you’re someone who likes to play gotcha games with other people’s speech “errors,” in which case I say: shut up.) Language is a complex system that won’t be severely impaired by a little variation and change. A much more urgent concern, because of its dire economic complications, is the spread of deliberately complex, opaque language.

Yes, paradoxically, although English prose has become simpler over the years (even sentence fragments regularly appear in print), the complexity of grammatically and mechanically perfect legal and financial jargon can create a dialect that’s unintelligible to most native speakers, even educated, literate ones.

Such writing (chief characteristics: specialized jargon, impersonal phraseology, extended sentences, useless repetition) can be merely tedious and opaque, but it can also become a vehicle for vagueness and evasion. Recently, legalese/bureaucratese has been exploited, by devious corporations, accountants, and lawyers, to supply a house-of-cards foundation to the financial machinations that caused the nation’s economy to implode.

In “The Analogy of Avarice” (a review of James Stewart’s new book Tangled Webs: How False StatementsAre Undermining America), Jennifer Szalai says that the financial industry, unlike Bernie Madoff, never had to lie, because it was so good at creating complex financial instruments and hiding its duplicities under a fog of words.

“Banks structured derivatives and other securities to enable their clients to take on a massive amount of risk that was nevertheless legal; accountants and law firms ensured that those risks would remain hidden from investors, who could be counted on to trust the triple-A rating or to avoid the eye-glazing chore of reading the fine print… [There were] rules about ‘disclosure,’ [but those]… disclosures in a financial report could be buried in the footnotes and, with some clever wording, made sufficiently dull to ensure that they would barely be seen as red flags."

Want an example? Here’s a short selection from page 30, note 3 of Enron’s 2000 annual report, written just one year before the firm imploded:

“Securitization. From time to time, Enron sells interests in certain of its financial assets. Some of the sales are completed in securitization, in which Enron concurrently enters into swaps associated with the underlying assets which limit the risks assumed by the purchaser. Such swaps are adjusted to fair value using quoted market prices, if available, or estimated fair value based on management's best estimate of the present value of future cash flow. The swaps are included in Price Risk Management activities above as equity investments.”

What does that even mean? Not much, according to Szalai:

“The text was undoubtedly fussed over by a platoon of lawyers in order to achieve just the right balance of disclosure and evasion [all emphasis mine]. The company might have sold some assets, or it might not have sold some assets; those sales, if any, might include securitizations, or they might not have included securitizations; the securitizations might have had a market price, or they might not have had a market price; if they didn't, then Enron's management gave them a price according to ‘management's best estimate’—which is to say, whatever management believed they were worth….

“All this would merit the word ‘monstrous,’ except the adjective implies an element of excitement and drama, whereas this is a system that thrives on obstruction and boredom. According to [its] conventions…the footnotes are more important than the main body of the text. Sentences are crafted so as not to be read. Language should confound rather than communicate.”

All too often, it does confound. And that obscurity—in an account of what companies are doing with the wealth of the people reading the account—is intentional. We don’t have the time or inclination to wade through it all, and it’s doubtful that clarity would emerge even if we did.

The principles of clear communication haven’t changed: shorter sentences, simpler words, less jargon, concrete examples, and clear explanation of technical terms. Disregarding them in order to confuse and deceive is unconscionable. Deliberate obscurity does irreparable damage to the thin bonds of trust that are supposedly encoded in words on a page. It buries—in a steaming pile of verbosity and BS—the premise that the writer is actually trying to tell the reader something.

________________________

Alan Perlman is an executive speechwriter and ghostwriter/editor. He has an AB from Brown University, an MA, and a PhD from the University of Chicago in linguistics. (His doctoral thesis examined variation in Hawaiian pidgin and creole.) He wrote executive speeches and other communications, mainly at GM and Kraft Foods, for twenty years, and he is the author of two books on speechwriting. As an expert witness and consultant, he advises attorneys on matters of language, including plagiarism, anonymous documents, trademark/copyright infringement, and document interpretation. Write to him at alanperlmanphd@gmail.com.

Around the Word

2012-02-02T13:23:00.000-05:00

Big, bad Amazon. Tech news site PandoDaily doesn't feel bad for publishing companies these days. They share a long email from an anonymous publisher that's well worth a read, as it lays out a very pessimistic, very paranoid, and very probably true view of Amazon's long-range plans for a publishing industry takeover. The publisher's verdict: "Publishing is a quaint little industry based on romance and low profit margins. But now we're in Amazon's sights, and they're going to kill us."

Pin that speech! Are you using cool new social sharing site Pinterest? The site allows users to "pin" items of interests (videos and images) to themed boards, which are then visible to anyone who follows you. While early adopters have mostly been interior designers and wedding planners, speechwriting blog The Eloquent Woman shows how versatile the site can be, by creating a Pinterest board full of speeches by famous ladies, as well as "Ideas, information and inspiration for women (and men) on public speaking and presenting."

Novel groupthink. In Australia, The Sydney Morning Herald has facilitated the creation of the first crowdsourced novel, GalleyCat reports. The newspaper published each chapter, giving readers two days to submit the next one, and an editor selected the best of the bunch to publish. You can read the entire novel, called The Necklace, here.

Kill "caps lock"? Over on Slate, there's a terrific article filled with suggested commonsense tweaks to the modern computer keyboard, along with clear, justified reasons for each. It's terribly nerdy, but also terribly smart. Why do we still need keys like "pause/break"? Why don't we have a dedicated key for an ellipses or em-dash? Why is the exclamation point so far away from the period and question mark? We'd love to see some or all of these changes implemented. Do you have other ideas for a better keyboard? Share them in the comments.

Guest Post: Why Every Entrepreneur Should Self-Publish a Book

2012-02-01T10:40:00.002-05:00

By James Altucher. This article originally appeared on TechCrunch.

I’ve published eight books in the past seven years, five with traditional publishers (Wiley, Penguin, HarperCollins), one comic book, and the last two I’ve self-published. In this post I give the specific details of all of my sales numbers and advances with traditional publishers. Although the jury is still out on my self-published books, How to be the Luckiest Person Alive and I Was Blind But Now I See, I can tell you these two have already sold more than my five books with traditional publishers combined.

If you, the entrepreneur, self-publish a book, you will stand out, you will make more money, you will kick your competitors right in the XX, and you will look amazingly cool at cocktail parties. I know this because I am seldom cool, but at cocktail parties, with my very own comic book, I can basically have sex with anyone in the room. But don’t believe me; it costs you nothing and almost no time to try it yourself.

The rest of this article is really three discussions: Why self-publish rather than using a traditional publisher; why entrepreneurs should self-publish; and finally, HOW does one go about self-publishing.

WHY:

A) Advances are going to zero. Book publishers are getting more and more squeezed by declining booksellers so they, in turn, have to squeeze the writers. Because of so much free content on the Internet, the value per unit of content is going to zero unless you are already an established name-brand author.

B) Lag time. When you self-publish, you can have your book up and running on Amazon, paperback and Kindle, within days. When you publish with a traditional publisher, it's a grueling process: book proposal, agents, lawyers, meetings, edits, packaging, catalogs, etc., which ensures that your book doesn’t actually get published until a year later. Literally, as I write this, a friend of mine just IMed me the details of a book deal he just got with a mainstream publisher. Publication date: 2014.

C) Marketing. Publishers claim they do a lot of marketing for you. That’s laughable. I’ll give you a very specific story. When I published with Penguin, they then met with a friend of mine whose book they wanted to publish. They didn’t realize she was my friend. She asked them, “What marketing did you do for James Altucher’s book?” They said, “Well, we got him a review in The Financial Times and we got a segment about his book on CNBC and an excerpt in thestreet.com”

Here’s what’s so funny. I had a weekly column in The Financial Times. I WROTE my own review. As a joke. For CNBC, I had a weekly segment, so naturally I spoke about my book during my regular segment. And for thestreet.com excerpt, I had just sold my last company to thestreet.com. So instead of doing my usual article for them, I did an excerpt. In other words, the publisher did NOTHING, but took credit for EVERYTHING. Ultimately, authors (unless you are Stephen King, etc.) have to do their own marketing for books. The first question publishers ask, even before they look at your proposal, is “How big is your platform?” They want to know how you can market the book and whether they can make money on just your own marketing efforts.

D) Better royalties. When I self-publish I make about a 70% royalty instead of the 15% royalty I get with a traditional publisher. I also own 100% of the foreign rights instead of 50%. I hired someone to sell the foreign rights and they got 20% (and no upfront fee).

E) More control over content and design. Look at this cover for SuperCa$h, designed by a traditional publisher for me (this was my third book). It’s hideous.

Now look at the cover for my last book (self-published), I Was Blind But Now I See. You may or may not like it, but it’s exactly what I wanted. Publishers even include in the contract that they have final say over the cover, and this is one detail they will not negotiate.

You also don’t have any teenage interns sending you editorial comments that you completely disagree with. YOU control your own content.

Now,

WHY SHOULD ENTREPRENEURS SELF-PUBLISH?

A) You have content. I have enough material in my blog right now (including my “drafts” folder, which has 75 unpublished posts in it) to publish five more books over the next year. And I’m sure that number will increase over the next year as I write more posts. You’re an entrepreneur because you feel you have a product or an idea or a vision that stands out among your competitors (if you don’t stand out, pack it in and come up with a new idea).

You know how to do something better than anyone else in the world. How do you let the world know that you are better? A business card won’t cut it. People will throw it away. And everyone’s got a website with an “About” page.

Give away part (or all) of your ideas in a book. You’re a brand new social media agency? How should social media work? Write it down. You’re a new CRM software package? How should CRM be better? Tell me. How should online dating services work? Tell some stories. Heck, make them as sexy as possible.

Don’t have time to write it? Then tell it to a ghostwriter you outsource to for almost no money. You don’t need 60,000 words. Do it in 20,000 words. Throw some pictures in. Just do it. Then, when you meet someone and they ask for your business card, how cool will it be when you can say, “Here, take my book instead.”

B) You have more to say. More and more companies have blogs. Many of the posts on the blog are “evergreen,” i.e. they last forever and are not time-specific. If you just take the posts (mentioned in the point above) and publish them, people will say, “He’s just publishing a collection of posts.” A couple of comments on that.

1. So what? It’s ok if you are curating what you feel your best posts are. And for a small price, people can get that curation and read it in a different format. There’s value there.

2. Don’t just take a collection of your posts. A blog post is typically 500 to 2,000 words. Usually closer to 500. Do a bit more research for each post. Do intros and outros for each post. Make the chapters 3,000 to 4,000 words. Make a bigger arc to the book by using original material to explain WHY this book, with these chapters, presented in this manner is a different read than the blog. Have a chapter specifically explaining how the book is different from the blog.

With my last book, I Was Blind But Now I See, I had original material in each chapter, and several chapters that were completely original. Instead of it being a collection of posts, the overall book was about how we have been brainwashed in society, and how uncovering the brainwashing and using the techniques I describe can bring happiness. This was covered in a much more detailed fashion than the blog ever could, even though the material was inspired by several of my posts.

C) Amazon is an extra platform for you to market your blog. Or vice versa. You won’t make a million dollars on your book (well, maybe you will—never say never), but just being able to say, “I’m a published author” extends your credibility as a writer/speaker/enterpreneur when you go out there to sell your book, syndicate your blog elsewhere, or get speaking engagements, etc. And when you do a speaking engagement, you can now hand something out—your book! So Amazon and publishing become a powerful marketing platform for your overall writing/speaking/consulting career.

D) Nobody cares. Some people want the credibility of saying “Penguin published me.” I can tell you from experience—nobody ever asked me who was my publisher when Penguin was my publisher. And, by the way, Penguin was the worst publisher I ever had.

E) How will I get in bookstores? I don’t know. How will you? Traditional publishers can’t get you there either. Often bookstores will look at what’s hot on Amazon and then order the books wholesale from the publishers. In many cases, tradtional publishers will take their most-known writers (so if you are in that category, congrats!) and pay to have them featured at a bookstore. As for my experience, my traditional publishers would get a few copies of my books in the bookstores of major cities (i.e., NYC and that’s it), but nothing more.

OK, I’M CONVINCED. HOW DO I SELF-PUBLISH?

There are lots of ways to do it, but I’ll tell you my experience.

A) First write the book. For my last two self-published books, as mentioned above, I took some blog posts, rewrote parts of them, added original material, added new chapters, and provided an overall arc as to what the BOOK was about, as opposed to it just being a random collection of posts. But, that said, you probably already have the basic material already.

B) CreateSpace. I used CreateSpace because they are owned by Amazon and have excellent customer service. They let you pick the size of your book and then have Microsoft Word templates that you download to format your book within. For my first book I did this by myself; for my second book, for a small fee, I hired Alexanderbecker.net to format the book, create the book design, and create the final PDF that I uploaded. He also checked grammar, made proactive suggestions on font (sans serif instead of serif), and was extremely helpful.

C) Upload the PDF. Createspace approves it, picks an ISBN, sends you a proof, and then you approve it.

D) Within days its available on Amazon. It’s print-on-demand as a paperback. And by the way, your total costs at this point: $0. Or whatever you spent to design your cover.

E) Kindle. All of the above (from Createspace) was free. If I didn’t hire Alex to make the cover I could’ve used over 1 million of Createspace’s possible covers (I did that for my first book) and the entire publishing in paperback would be free. But with Kindle, CreateSpace charges $70 and they take care of everything until it’s uploaded to the Kindle store. Now you are available in paperback and Kindle.

F) Marketing.

1. Readers of my blog who asked for it got the first 20 copies or so for free from me. Many of them then posted good reviews on Amazon to get the ball rolling.

2. I’ve been handing out the books at speaking engagements. Altogether, I’ll do around 10 speaking engagements handing my latest book out.

3. I write a blog post about how the book is different from the blog and why I chose to go this route.

4. Writing guests posts for blogs like Techcrunch helps, and I’m very grateful.

5. Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, and Google+ are also very helpful.

G) Promotions. You’re in charge of your own promotions (as opposed to a book publisher). For instance, in a recent blog post, I discussed the differences between my latest book and my blog, and I also offered a promotion on how to get my next self-published book (Bad Behavior, expected in Q1 2012) for free.

Entrepreneurs are always looking for ways to stand out, promote their service, and get validation for their offerings. Writing a book makes you an expert in the field. At the very least, when you hand someone a book you wrote, it’s more impressive than handing a business card. It shows that you have enough expertise to write the book. It also shows you value the relationship with the potential customer enough that you are willing to give him something of value. Something you created.

And you can’t use the excuse “I don’t have time, I’m running a business.” Entrepreneurs make time. And they have the ideas, so, again, at the very least you can use elance.com to hire a ghostwriter.

Over the next year, I have five different books planned, all on different topics. I’m super excited about them because I’m allowed to push the barrier in every area I’m interested in, and there’s nobody to stop me. There’s nobody I need validation from. I get to pick myself.

You can do this too. And you should. There’s no more excuses in this environment. Good luck, and feel free to write me with any questions.

–

Follow me on Twitter

Also see 33 Unusual Ways to Become a Great Writer.

The State of the State of the Union (Part II)

2012-01-27T10:05:00.000-05:00

By Dan Gerstein

After taking note on Tuesday of the near total absence of pre–State of the Union hype this year, we canvassed a number of our fellow speech pros to get a bead on what was behind this unusual lack of buzz. In particular, we wanted to know whether the ho-humness of the 2012 edition was an indication that our Super Bowl was losing its mojo—or whether it was just a matter of today's political moment.

The consensus take: it was the circumstances, not the pomp.

Most of the pros we consulted pointed first to the circus attraction/distraction of the Republican presidential campaign. Or, as Vital Speeches guru David Murray explained: "Because Newt Gingrich isn’t going to have the chance to stand next to the president smirking, and he doesn’t get to punch the president in the face. The politics-consuming public is addicted to the violence of these twice-weekly Republican brawls, and the prospect of watching the president shadowbox for an hour—meh. And then a thoughtful, articulate televised response by Mitch Daniels? Please."

Former Clinton speechwriter Heather Hurlburt said she wasn't surprised that this SOTU did not generate much heat, pointing to the all the political and policy news that was breaking in the run-up to speech night and sucking up most of the commentariat's attention. "Consider that this week you had the South Carolina primary Saturday, the GOP debate Monday, the SOTU Tuesday, a GOP debate Thursday, and the rollout of the first Pentagon budget cut in a decade Thursday. Oh, and a carrier sailing through the Straits of Hormuz," Hurlburt added. "It’s like holding the Super Bowl during the Olympics."

Another significant factor, our pros noted, was the White House's conscious strategy of downplaying this year's speech and not leaking out new policy tidbits to pump up the Beltway hype machine. Again, D.C.-based pro Michael Freeman said, this was predictable, given the current budgetary and political environment, which is not exactly hospitable to buzz-worthy ideas. "Obama cannot, no matter how determined he may be, get an initiative of any meaningful scope through this Congress," Freeman explained. "If he offers ideas of magnitude, the words are hollow because the proposals can't go anywhere. If he sticks to things he can get done, we're in Bill Clinton V-Chip territory. Yawn."

But our experts did see one troubling larger trend at work: the corrosive effect of the widespread anger at and frustration with Washington. "Cynicism is carrying the day," said Freeman, who served as chief speechwriter at the Social Security Administration. "Congress's approval ratings are nearing single digits. Obama's are mired below 50. There's no confidence that anything said in the SOTU is going to dramatically change the state of play in America." Added Hurlburt: "Not just the SOTU, but do all the performance rituals of Washington matter less to a country and media that sees them all as equally compromised, empty, and meaningless? Maybe."

Gerstein is President of Gotham Ghostwriters and a regular political analyst on Fox News.

10 Must-Have Books for Speechwriters

2012-01-25T12:04:00.000-05:00

By Michael Long.
This article first appeared on Ragan.

Those of us who write for a living know that most books on “how to write” are far more for the benefit of the author than the reader; that is, they are often make-a-buck hardbacks for resourceful authors, dangled before people who prefer to imagine the writer’s life than to indulge in its air-conditioned torment and capriciously timed paydays.

The few “writing” books I find worth my time offer unique supporting material not available on the Internet, and encourage me to think about my work from a new perspective. On that basis, here are ten or so titles that every speechwriter—every writer, actually—can learn from, and even enjoy.

The Elements of Style by William Strunk and E.B. White. This comes first because by comparison everything else is mere ornament. Strunk and White provide a lesson in clarity delivered with wit and brevity. You can’t read this and not become a better writer.

Lend Me Your Ears: Great Speeches in History by William Safire. This reference is a tour of styles in their eras, yet also a reminder that elements of persuasion and structure are as old as time. That points to the next title...

The Trivium: The Liberal Arts of Logic, Grammar, and Rhetoric by Sister Miriam Joseph. Speechwriting as a class or even a course of academic study is a recent phenomenon. Most of us who write speeches landed the job by insisting we could do it, not by studying technique. But speechwriting is in many ways nothing more than a sophisticated application of reasoning and expression. This dense and powerful book (which is enjoying a little renaissance just now) is a detailed tour of the function of language and communication, and the power of precision.

The Political Speechwriter’s Companion by Robert Lehrman. This 2010 textbook is by novelist and former Al Gore speechwriter (and Ragan presenter) Bob Lehrman, who will be giving a few talks at the March Speechwriter’s Conference in Washington, D.C. Forget the title. This is a clear, even joyful guide to the mechanics of all speechwriting, with some down-to-earth direction on wordsmithing on top of it all. Speaking of wordsmithing...

Tunesmith by Jimmy Webb. Essayist Jay Nordlinger quotes an old professor of his: “You want to write better? See a ballet, listen to a symphony—get some art in you. Get some artistry in your prose.” Just so. Webb is among the most talented and successful songwriters of the last 60 years, and in this book he explains where his memorable turns of phrase come from—and he doesn’t prescribes simply waiting for the muse. Webb talks about poetry and prose in structural terms, and he attaches method to what most of us imagine to be only born-with-it inspiration.

Save the Cat by Blake Snyder. Here’s a book on screenwriting that breaks down modern drama into points of a story, all of which build on the classic idea of tension and release. Snyder’s lesson for speechwriters is that prose gains color and, therefore, power when it exploits dramatic tension. Snyder shows step by step how to create drama in general and tension in particular, among many other lessons that the creative speechwriter will use over and over again.

Speech is performance—a form of acting. Speechwriters who understand this can better balance detail with emotion and will put into proper perspective (and practice!) what ought to be at the center of the craft, which is its often-ignored theatrical aspects. The best mainstream guide to this idea is also a delight to read: 2010’s Theatre by David Mamet, arguably the world’s greatest living playwright.

A few more to round out the list: Any joke book on the remainder table at Barnes & Noble is worth your money, because simple jokes are always in demand, and the Internet will lead you to the same few chestnuts over and over. This Day in Business History by Raymond Francis is a splendid collection of anecdotes that are perfect for introducing or illustrating any topic, while Condemned to Repeat It by Wick Allison, Jeremy Adams and Gavin Hambly explores, in essay form, several dozen historical incidents as demonstrations of lessons in business and life.

Finally, Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman explains how the nature of communication is inseparable from its content. Written before the rise of the Internet, its psychological and sociological points are still true (and still disturbing) and important for all speechwriters to know.

A frequent presenter at Ragan conferences, Michael Long is a freelance writer and speechwriter in Washington, D.C., and an adjunct professor teaching writing and public relations at Georgetown University. His website is mikelongonline.com.

Two Cheers for the State of the Union

2012-01-24T17:31:00.000-05:00

By Robert Lehrman

Even Richard M. Nixon rebelled.

This pragmatic president told his speechwriters in 1970 that he didn’t want the traditional “laundry list” State of the Union speech. No “pragmatism,” he insisted. “I want an idea speech.”

At one point, Nixon put his feet on the desk and said, “Good God. Agriculture in a State of the Union isn’t worth a damn.”

He wasn’t the only one who disliked the 222-year tradition that President Barack Obama carries on Tuesday night.

It’s common for a president’s enemies to skewer what we now call SOTU—“platitudes, platitudes, platitudes,” one described Obama’s last year.

But plenty of others hate it, too. And for the usual reasons—it’s:

Dishonest: No matter the real state of the union, presidents always assert it’s strong. Despite the economy, Obama said those very words (“our union is strong”) in 2010, saying he’d “never been more hopeful.”

Dumbed down: One academic has blasted the SOTU for abandoning the complex language of George Washington—about the reading level of a college graduate—for the language of grade-school kids. Last year, Obama’s was rated 8.7. (This op-ed? 8.0.)

Theatrical: “Policy demands packaged in pomp and circumstance,” writes one blogger. The ceremonial parade in, the scripted applause lines, the saccharine tributes to guests in the balcony. That’s a lot of pomp.

Endless: One White House speechwriter asked his mom for advice before writing one. “Keep it short,” she said. Washington’s was 1,087 words—a few hundred longer than this piece. In 2000, Clinton’s was 7,452. Last year? 6,800.

There are other complaints: partisanship, a disgracefully short opposition response and, yes, platitudes. So should we all ignore what Obama says on Tuesday? No.

The fact is, this imperfect tradition deserves two cheers, at least. It is—gasp!—useful. Anyone listening or reading on Tuesday can learn a lot. Because the speech is a:

Guide for what’s ahead: Like movie trailers, the State of the Union previews what will happen. Really. In the past 50 years, presidents averaged about 36 requests per SOTU. Even with divided governments, about 41 percent on average become law. Disregard the platitudes. Find the policy. Like Waldo—it’s there.

Statement of broad themes: The address lays out big themes that divide the country. Woodrow Wilson, who restored the SOTU to oratory rather than a written message, did it partly to show he was as vigorous as his Rough Rider predecessor, Theodore Roosevelt. He also did it because he believed in activist government—calling for things that left even Democrats aghast. Obama will also outline ways he favors activist government, setting the stage for next fall’s debate.

Blueprint Americans can understand: Is the reading level of today’s SOTU too low? Not if you think most of the 40 million or so Americans tuning in deserve to grasp it. Americans average a seventh-grade level. Four out of ten Americans would have trouble reading even last year’s speech. How many more should we cut out? Really, that most Americans will be able to watch, read—and understand—Tuesday night’s speech is a virtue.

Sometimes a really historic document: Most of the 220 SOTUs aren’t worth reading now. But some are, and for good reason. Take 1822, when President James Monroe announced what’s now called the Monroe Doctrine. Or 1941, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt unveiled the Four Freedoms.

Or 1961, when a speechwriter named Ralph Williams wrote a line that President Dwight Eisenhower liked. Now Ike’s most memorable line is that warning about the “military-industrial complex.”

And that laundry list?

“People like laundry lists,” says former chief Clinton speechwriter David Kusnet, who helped write several SOTUs.

Why? For the same reason Civil War soldiers, who originated the phrase, started making them: to keep track of clothes they needed back from the cleaners. Sometimes we need a list of the tasks ahead—even if the prose needs work.

Back in 1970, White House speechwriters were frantically trying to give their anti-laundry list boss what he wanted. Against drugs in theory, the administration let White House doctors give speechwriter Ray Price the drug many anti-war activists loved: speed. After two amphetamine-fueled all-nighters, Price saw the result. His desk appeared both in front of him—and against the far wall. Luckily, a young aid Richard Blumenthal, now a Democratic senator from Connecticut—saw him safely home.

“It was unsettling,” Price said.

When Blumenthal takes his seat in the House chamber Tuesday night, expect him to draw on decades of experience to examine Obama’s version of America’s laundry list. We should, too.

Because buried inside the sentences and paragraphs of chaff, we’ll find what, in 1970, Nixon wanted: ideas.

Maybe even about agriculture.

Robert Lehrman served as a White House chief speechwriter for Vice President Al Gore. He is author of The Political Speechwriter’s Companion and an adjunct professor at American University, where he teaches speechwriting, and co-runs the blog Punditwire. This article originally appeared in Politico.

The State of the State of the Union (Part I)

2012-01-24T12:02:00.000-05:00

By Dan Gerstein

Over the last few years we have had much fun partaking in the pre-game chatter around the State of the Union with our fellow speech junkies, and we had every expectation of doing the same with the 2012 edition. But a funny thing happened on the way to Statuary Hall this month—instead of pundits, we heard crickets.

Indeed, this has to be the least hyped or talked about SOTU I can remember since the dawn of the digital age. We have been tracking the commentariat pretty closely the last two weeks, and outside of a few scattered obligatory preview pieces in the political press in the last few days, there has been none of the usual build-up of buzz. No splashy front-page curtain-raisers on the President's big new proposals, no political Page 6 gossip about who will be sitting in the First Lady's box, no profiles of the speechwriters toiling in the shadows.

One telling barometer of this year's snooze-a-palooza is how Politico's Playbook, the political insider's bible, has played the speech Monday and today. Normally, in the last two days before the SOTU, it's the topic of conversation in Washington, but in Monday's Playbook there was not one item devoted to the event; today's edition led with an announcement from Bill Gates and several items related to the Republican debate in Florida last night and Mitt Romney's tax returns, before getting to a post-speech preview from a White House official and a couple small speech tidbits.

Even more notable, though, has been the lack of interest in and engagement by the speechwriting community. Unlike past years, when speech blogs were offering a steady stream of pre-SOTU analysis and viewing tips, those sites have been relatively silent on the subject over the past two years. Vital Speeches, Pundit Wire—not one post on either industry-leading blog about the SOTU in the last week (and we are just as guilty here). What was once seen as our Super Bowl has been greeted like a preseason scrimmage.

That's got us more than a little curious. Is this a temporary reflection of the moment and this particular contextual combination—Obama's tenuous political standing, the White House's low-key approach to the speech, the riveting circus of the Republican presidential campaign (can tax reform really compete with open marriage revelations)? Or, or as savvy Politico columnist Roger Simon recently suggested, is it part of a larger pattern/trend around the SOTU as an institution itself?

We invite our fellow speech pros to weigh in with their thoughts—in particular about the long-term implications for our profession. We'll share those insights and judgments in a post-mortem piece later this week.

Gerstein is President of Gotham Ghostwriters and a regular political analyst on Fox News.

#SOTU Tips Direct from Twitter

2012-01-24T08:56:00.000-05:00

For all of you tweeting about the SOTU tonight, we thought you might find this official prep memo from Twitter helpful.

This year's State of the Union is sure to be one of the most tweeted-about political events of the season. While we expect the #sotu hashtag to be especially prevalent (last year the #sotu hashtag appeared in more than 80 percent of Tweets about the speech), we also will see a deeper granularity in how hashtags will track the movement of the speech.

For the first time ever, the White House has identified hashtags outlining key sections of the speech:

#jobs
#manufacturing
#energy
#education
#fairness

Twitter will be analyzing themes in the conversation and distributing the results for you to use through this Newsletter and the Twitter Blog. With your help we can make this data as representative as possible. Consider adding these hashtags to your Tweets when appropriate, and encouraging your audience to do the same. The use of hashtags in persistent on-air graphics, in particular, is a proven driver of audience engagement and will help us provide you with the most editorially-relevant measurement of reaction volume following the speech.

SOTU Live Tweetchat

2012-01-23T10:48:00.000-05:00

We're gearing up for our third annual State of the Union Live Tweetchat tomorrow night, and we invite you to join the conversation.

We'll have a few of our political speechwriting pros offering running commentary during the speech, and we welcome our friends and followers to jump in and pop off if and when you want.

You can find and follow the discussion here.

Use the special hashtag #GGSOTU to have your comments appear in our stream.

If you want to get your words out to the wider Twitter-verse, also add the general hashtag #SOTU.

In the meantime, be sure to check out our Facebook page over the next couple days for the latest news and views on the speech.

We look forward to seeing you online Tuesday night!

Writer Profile: Mike Long

2012-01-20T10:00:00.000-05:00

Gotham Ghostwriters knows a lot of writers. In our Writer Profile series, we share some of them with you.

Mike Long is a D.C.-based writer, educator, and dramatist. When he's not writing speeches, he's teaching in the master's program at Georgetown University, where he lectures on speechwriting, PR, and other writing-related matters. He's also often on the road leading seminars on writing, and is working on a textbook on PR writing that will be published by Pearson in 2013. On top of all that, two of his one-act plays—"Hostages" and "Arithmetic for Art Majors"—have been produced by the Players Theatre in Greenwich Village, and his screenplay "How to Save Your Own Life" is currently a semi-finalist in the Vail Film Festival. For even more about Mike, check out his website or find him on Facebook.

What led you to become a writer?

I've loved writing since I was a kid, but I didn't think you could actually make a living doing it, so I pursued science, and followed that career for a decade. As I got out into the world, I discovered that there are all kinds of writers-for-hire out here, a realization that coincided with my growing dissatisfaction with being a systems analyst and programmer. Finding that many speechwriters had the same disparate interests and non-writing education backgrounds as my own, I made friends with some of them, and they opened the door to a career change. I've been ridiculously happy ever since.

What have been some of your favorite projects?

Can't tell ya. That's part of being a ghostwriter: pride in the work has to take the place of public credit. But I can say that I'm especially proud of a couple commencements I wrote for delivery at big-name universities, and I wrote an inaugural address for a governor, which was pretty exciting. Oh—I wrote the liner notes for the DVD release of Jerry Seinfeld's documentary Comedian. That was cool.

What do you do when you're not writing?

Ha—when I'm not writing for a client, I'm writing for my own amusement; I'm working on more stageplays just now. And I always have a lot of things going on: I like hacking around on the guitar, I'm a computer nerd from way back, I'm a stand-up comedy junkie (I did stand-up, long ago), and lately I enjoy grilling and smoking meats. I suppose the unifying idea behind all of it is that I like learning how to do new things.

What makes a client good to work for?

I appreciate clients who pay well and pay on time. Maybe that's crass, but for a freelancer, it matters. As for the kind of work experience I like, give me someone who trusts me. I want them to call on me because they see that they can give me an assignment, work with me to figure out what it should be, and then I'll go away and work, and bring them back just what they're expecting. A clean experience for all concerned.

What advice do you have for aspiring writers?

Get into this career only if you know for sure that you enjoy the act of writing; don't mistake that for the good feeling of "having written." Writing is work. It's not taxing like digging a ditch, sure, but it does take concentration, patience, and thick skin. Another thing: Be curious. Give yourself permission to investigate anything that interests you. What you furnish your mind with is what comes out on the page. You can't help it. That's how writing works. So if you want to be an interesting writer, be an interesting person. Most of all, be interesting to yourself.

Around the Word

2012-01-16T16:18:00.000-05:00

Ladies who speechify. Although today is a day to honor Martin Luther King, one of the country's best-known orators, he's not the only one who could deliver an incredible speech. In early 2011, the blog The Eloquent Woman started compiling a list of outstanding speeches by women in a weekly feature, "Famous Speech Friday." They've got quite an impressive list—from luminaries like Sojourner Truth, Phyllis Schlafly, Helen Keller, and even Lady Gaga.

Classes for all: Want to take a food-cart tour, learn to print a poster, or study the art of great conversation? No? Well, maybe "Intro to Memoir Writing" or "Nuts & Bolts of Writing Nonfiction Book Proposals" are more up your alley. Either way, Skillshare, a community marketplace that aims to democratize learning, has you covered. Anyone can teach a Skillshare class, so the topics are eclectic, and courses are offered all over the country. If you're looking for classes on writing, GalleyCat has a short list of those here.

User-generated magazine: In a bold move, Ladies' Home Journal plans to start letting their readers write much of the content for the magazine, AdAge reports. This is especially daring for a publication whose readership skews older, and points to the brand's desire to court younger readers and remain relevant. And lest you think this is simply a way to stop paying for content, Editor-in-Chief Sally Lee allays those fear, saying, "We're going to pay [the writers] professional rates."

Wordy meals? In the latest attempt to revitalize their image, McDonald's will begin distributing something new in their Happy Meals across the UK—books! They've signed an agreement with HarperCollins to give away six different books from the Mudpuddle Farms series over the next few weeks. According to The Telegraph, "In 2011, sales of children's books averaged 1.16 million per week...which means that McDonald's will be handing out considerably more books than are usually sold in the UK in the same period." Incredible!

Gotham's Gerstein Joins NYU Adjunct Faculty

2012-01-12T09:44:00.001-05:00

We're very pleased to announce that Gotham Ghostwriters' president Dan Gerstein has been appointed an adjunct instructor at New York University. He'll be joining the NYU School of Continuing and Professional Studies faculty in the Master's Degree Program in Public Relations and Corporate Communication.

This semester Dan will start off with a course on communications ethics. In the future he plans to teach a range of courses focused on professional writing, thought leadership, and public affairs.

From Ragan: Bad Writing Is Killing America

2012-01-04T17:13:00.000-05:00

If you work at a writing firm (or are given to perusing the blog of same), a headline like that is bound to catch your attention.

Over on Ragan, Mark Ragan has an interview with Peter Shankman, founder of Help a Reporter Out, who is just a little bit upset about the rampant bad writing in the media, especially in places like Twitter. He says: "Having an audience is a privilege, not a right. It's much like wearing spandex."

Check out the full interview below.

Best Language Moments of 2011, by Maslansky Luntz + Partners

2011-12-27T14:29:00.000-05:00

As another year draws to a close, everyone's scrambling to put together their best "best of" list. Time has the 50 Best Websites, Publishers Weekly has the Best Books by category, Ragan has the 10 Best and Worst Communicators, Flavorpill has the Best Debut Novels, Huffington Post has the Best Commencement Speeches.

We could go on, of course, but we know you have New Year's Eve to plan. So instead we'll give you one more great best of, this one from GG friends maslansky luntz + partners, a terrific communications strategy firm. Say they:

"From entertainers Charlie Sheen and Hank Williams to President Obama and the always-entertaining GOP presidential field, here are our choices for the most memorable language moments of the year."

Guest Post: The Literary Ghosts of New York City by David Alm

2011-12-22T11:45:00.000-05:00

Today we have another guest post about the Gotham Ghostwriters holiday gathering, this one by David Alm, writer, ghostwriter, reporter, editor, and professor of media studies and cultural criticism at Hunter and NYU, respectively. This article was originally published on Contrary Magazine, where David is one of the primary writers.

A gathering at George Plimpton's apartment in 1963.
We might not be famous like they were, but at least we're here

I had no idea what to expect. A holiday party forghostwriters sounds like scene in a Woody Allen movie from the late 80s. Abunch of disgruntled, hyper-cerebral guys in well-worn corduroy jackets sippingG&Ts and swapping stories about dropping acid with Cary Grant or HenryKissinger’s bathroom habits. So as I made my way to the Gotham Ghostwritersholiday party last night, I braced myself for the unexpected.

I also wondered what kind of literary life might still existin the shadows of New York City, which has rapidly become so transformed byhigh finance that it bears almost no resemblance to the grimy artistic meccathat provided the foundation for Woody Allen’s fictions. Had the shabby-chicliterati of yesteryear been expelled from Manhattan along with the independentbookstores and cafés?

From what I saw last night, no. They’re still here, stillwriting, still swapping stories, and still wearing corduroy jackets. (At leastsome of them are.) There are women, too, of course, and they don’t all looklike Susan Sontag—that is, severe, intense, poised to challenge your everyword.

And they’re still lively, cerebral, and full ofself-deprecating wit. I spoke with a man who’s ghosted 43 titles, including amemoir about the Rwandan genocide, and who began his literary career as asongwriter. I spoke with another who’d spent years reporting for Americannewspapers in Cambodia and Thailand. I spoke with a young guy from London whoused to write about foreign policy for the Wall Street Journal. Everyone, inhis or her own way, was fascinating.

Ghostwriting is solitary, often thankless work. You can toilaway for months to capture a client’s “voice.” In the end, you might get adecent paycheck, but more likely you’ll make a piddling sum compared to whatyour client earns for your efforts. And rarely do you ever meet other “ghosts.”I have ghostwritten only two books, for the same client, and in the 10 yearssince I wrote the first one I have never met another ghostwriter. You put a fewdozen of us in a room together, and it’s instant community.

Indeed, last night felt like a reunion, though everyonethere was a stranger.

So, as yet another corner coffee shop is replaced with aStarbucks, another East Village walk-up is gut-renovated and parceled out in$2-million pieces, and another glass-and-steel monstrosity rises along the WestSide Highway, it’s nice to know that people are still gathering in little barsto talk about writing. Even if no one will ever know our names.

Around the Word

2011-12-21T18:05:00.000-05:00

A Writer's Life. Over on Thought Catalogue, video-game journalist Leigh Alexander has a comprehensively sardonic explication of the joys and horrors of being a freelance writer. Covering things like how much to drink, how long to wear that pair of sweatpants before shudderingly tossing them in the hamper, and which things conspire against you to make you miss yet another deadline (hint: Facebook), "How to Be a Freelance Writer" lays out all the aspects of the writing life that most of us don't really want to admit to.

iNovel? According to MediaBistro (who heard it from Good E-Reader), next month Apple is probably going to unveil new self-publishing software, which will compete with Barnes & Noble's PubIt and Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing platform. No real details are known yet, but this could be a big deal for aspiring authors, offering yet another way to get your book out into the world.

Worst Line of the Year. Our friend David Murray has selected his contender for the "clunkiest, clankiest, junkiest, stankiest" line from a speech in all of 2011. Want to know what it is? Click over to Vital Speeches of the Day.

Out With the Old. One more end-of-year wrap-up: Kirkus presents their choices for best book covers of 2011. But lest we dwell too much in the past, here's Flavorwire's ten most anticipated books of 2012. The list includes yet another Bolaño, Adam Levin's first short story collection, and Chip Kidd's graphic novel about Batman (!). What books are you looking forward to this year? Tell us in the comments.

Guest Post: Two Ghosts, by Kerry Zukus

2011-12-20T14:36:00.000-05:00

Last night, Gotham Ghostwriters had our annual holidaygathering, where we invite our writer friends out to meet one another and sharestories and drinks. It was a lovely gathering of fascinating people, and fortwo writers, it was something even more amazing. Here's the story, byincredibly prolific ghostwriter Kerry Zukus.You can read the original post on his blog.

The Fourth House, my Book of the Month ClubFeature Selection debut novel, took place in the fictional town of MountainCity on the fictional street of Good. Like many novels, not all of it waspurely fiction, but was inspired by real events and places in the author’slife.

The protagonist's house was modeled after the house in whichI was born. Unlike the main character, I didn't live there for my entirechildhood, but moved—was forced to move—when I was three years old. Like themain character, my father abandoned my mother and me, forcing us to sell thehouse and downsize to a small apartment in the same town.

Change, like the loss of a father and the only home I’d everknown, is disconcerting for a three-year-old. One of my oldest memories is ofthe day of that upheaval. We’d finally moved into the apartment and were allrelaxing at the kitchen table. My grandfather was a quiet man of few words, butwhen he spoke he made it count. Sensing my mood, he turned to me and quietlysaid, “Everything’s gonna be all right.” Cliché, I know, but profound andbeautiful in its simplicity, for it covered any and all anxieties I wasfeeling. Everything’s gonna be all right. And it was.

We sold our house to the Davis family, who had a girl,Colleen, a year younger than I. Ironically, the Davises lived in the apartmentwe procured. Essentially, we traded houses; them moving up, and us moving down. For no logical reason, we became good friends with the Davisfamily, but after high school graduation, I never saw any of them again. I can say that about a lot of people from Mountain City. I left andhardly ever looked back, so the onus is on me.

Last night, I went to a party in New York hosted by DanGerstein and his company, Gotham Ghostwriters, with whom I occasionally work.It was a nice crowd, and a good time was had by all. I milled about theroom, talking to old colleagues and meeting new ones.

Toward the end of the night, a small blond with cupid lipsapproached me and said, “I hear you’ve written a lot of books,” which, as aghostwriter, I have. We began talking about writing, about education, about aplethora of subjects. It was nice. At the end, as with all previousconversations I’d had that evening, we exchanged business cards. She got minefirst.

Her jaw visibly dropped. “You’re Kerry Zukus?”

“Yes.”

“You’re Kerry Zukus.”

“Yes.”

“I’m Colleen Davis.”

Simultaneously, we wrapped each other in the biggest bearhug I’ve shared in a long, long time.

I’m a writer. Colleen Davis is a writer. We both work withGotham Ghostwriters and we both attended that one party on that one night, ofall the holiday parties in the world. And neither of us had any idea of any ofthis up until that very moment.

Speaking of ghosts, once I’d told her about my novel andher/our house, Colleen said, “Don’t call me crazy, but I always thought therewere ghosts in that house.”

Maybe there were and maybe there weren’t. But twoghostwriters did live there, one after the other.

Hey Dan, thanks for inviting us to your party. Can’t wait tosee what surprises next year’s will bring.

Around the Word

2011-12-19T17:48:00.000-05:00

The best gift for a writer. For those of you who prize creative gifts that don't necessarily cost a lot, and especially for those having a Buy Nothing Christmas, GalleyCat has an excellent suggestion for the writer in your life: give the gift of time. Among other ideas, you can "let them borrow your office on the weekend...promise to babysit on a weekday evening...volunteer to do their household chores for a day...in short, do anything it takes to help your writer friend find a few consecutive hours of peace and quiet to write." In the article's comments, writers suggested a second (free) gift idea: read their book and give them a positive review on Amazon or another book site. Any other ideas for non-traditional gifts for writers? Tell us in the comments.

Winning words. PR Newswire revealed earlier this month that for the first time, Oxford English Dictionaries in both the US and the UK chose the same phrase for Word of the Year: "squeezed middle." Here at GG, we didn't think that was such a great pick. In contrast, this list from Flavorwire of the Most Memorable Words of the Year seems a lot more comprehensive, and includes some terrific ones, like "Arab Spring," "occupy," and "planking." Are there any words you think they forgot?

Losing words. Speaking of words of the year, Marist announced the results of their poll for the years most annoying word. We'll skip the suspense and tell you that for the third year in a row, the winner is "whatever," with "like," "you know," and "just sayin'" close behind. Do you agree?

Memorable closers. For those speech-givers and -writers out there, there are a lot of things to take into consideration when planning out a winning speech. You should of course consult our friend Fletcher Dean's terrific book 10 Steps to Writing a Vital Speech, and to supplement that, Ragan has a list of 5 great ways to close.

Writer Profile: Alan Goldsher

2011-12-14T17:59:00.000-05:00

Our regular look at the amazing writers we know.

One of the most flexible, diverse writers on the publishing landscape, Alan Goldsher is at home in any genre, in any style. Whether it's a horror novel, a romantic comedy, a comedic memoir, or a poignant autobiography, Alan can bring any book project to life. He is the author of the acclaimed remix novel Paul Is Undead: The British Zombie Invasion, as well as several forthcoming titles (four lined up for 2012!), including Give Death a Chance: The British Zombie Invasion 2, My Favorite Fangs: The Story of the von Trapp Family Vampires, How I Slept My Way to the Middle: Stories and Secrets from the Stage, the Screen, and the Interwebs (in collaboration with comedian/actor Kevin Pollak), and Miles Davis FAQ. He has written nine other books, including Hard Bop Academy: The Sidemen of Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, Midnight Movie (with director Tobe Hooper), Modest Mouse: A Pretty Good Read, The True Naomi Story, and No Ordinary Girl. As a ghostwriter, Alan has collaborated on projects with dozens of notable celebrities and public figures. Prior to taking the writing world by storm, Alan spent 10+ years as a professional bassist, during which time he recorded with Janet Jackson, Cypress Hill, and Naughty by Nature; toured the world with Digable Planets; and performed at the 1994 Grammy Awards.

GG: What led you to become a ghostwriter?

AG: I'm a storyteller, and if I can help a non-writer tell their story—be it a memoir, a novel, some narrative non-fiction, whatever—that's a beautiful thing. Also, there's something to be said for writing as part of a team. Writing is a solitary profession (fiction, especially), so being part of a group-think is a nice change of pace.

What's the most unusual writing project you've done?

I can only pick one? Hmm. I helped a Haitian doctor write his memoir, but he wouldn't tell his full story because he was afraid that Papa Doc's family might track him down and murder him. He was a lovely man, but a little nervous. And then there was the angry, angry stand-up comic who... Well, we'll go over that one another time.

What's the most difficult part of being a full-time writer?

I like to juggle multiple projects, and sometimes folks don't get that. Often, a publishing industry type will ask me, "Are you really taking on another book?" I like to have several thing on my plate, and convincing the world at large that I can handle it, and handle it well (I think) can be frustrating. But it generally works out in the end, so it's all good. (Oh, and getting paid on a timely basis can be a pain in the pooper.)

What kinds of books do you like to read?

I'm all over the map, but if you had to pick a common thread, I guess you'd have to say I'm a pop-culture dude. Hip memoirs, sports books, film books, cool fiction, horror, that sort of thing.

Where can I find out more about you?

On my website, Facebook, or Twitter.

Around the Word

2011-12-14T12:31:00.000-05:00

Curb your e-thusiasm: While there has been a lot of doom and gloom about the fate of brick-and-mortar bookstores, the New York Times found that independent bookstores are actually having a booming holiday season this year. While everyone was sure that the economic recession, aggressive Amazon tactics, and the popularity of e-books were destined to put a dent in sales, people seem to be walking into actual bookstores to purchase physical books at a pretty good clip. Are print books on your holiday shopping list?

Indiefficient: Though many book lovers will rejoice at the cheerful holiday outlook for independent bookstores, Slate columnist Farhad Manjoo doesn't think indie bookstores are necessarily worth saving. In a criticism of Richard Russo's NYT op-ed slamming Amazon for killing the bookshop around the corner, Manjoo argues that local bookstores are not all that "local" and are also massively inefficient. Buy two books on Amazon, he suggests, instead of one at a indie bookshop for the same price. Do you agree?

LinkedIn lexicon: You may consider yourself a motivated and efficient professional with dynamic communication skills, but unfortunately so does everyone else on the business networking site LinkedIn. The site recently released its list of the most overused professional buzzwords of 2011, with "creative" and "organizational" topping the list. What's on your personal list of annoying professional jargon?

Talk the talk: "Write like you talk" is a classic piece of writing advice, but would you really want to read something that sounds the way most people talk? Men With Pens blogger Taylor Lindstrom always took issue with this advice, until he reconsidered that maybe the problem wasn't with writing like you talk, but with not talking well enough. His advice: always think about your words, even in casual communication, and get in the habit of expressing yourself well all the time. "Write the way you talk," he writes, as long as "you can speak persuasively, eloquently, and clearly."

Around the Word

2011-12-13T10:57:00.003-05:00

Publishing house of ill repute: What do you think of Amazon's reputation as a publisher? GalleyCat took a look at the retail giant's rep at their Publishing App Expo last week after an audience member asked if the publishing community looked down on Kindle authors. Though some consider collaborating with Amazon to be selling out, others see a great opportunity for exposure, since Amazon has the largest share of the e-book market.

The perfect platform: Finding the right angle or hook to sell your book can be tricky, but agent and blogger Rachelle Gardner has some tips on building the right platform for your work. Check out her post on ways to leverage your expertise into a strong selling stance for your nonfiction writing.

Bro books: A new online site selling books geared toward guys seems like the perfect solution for those who are stumped about what to get their brothers and boyfriends for the holidays. But the Man Cave pop-up bookstore has let some word nerds down by focusing on titles like How Do You Light a Fart? and Sweet 'Stache: 50 Badass Mustaches and the Faces Who Sport Them. For slightly more sophisticated titles for the manly man in your life, check out this article by the Utne Reader.

Viral visuals: Getting your content to "go viral" can be an elusive challenge, but ProBlogger has broken down the task with this fun infographic. Check out this visual guide to writing killer content, connecting across platforms, and encouraging sharing.

Book Spotlight: 10 Steps to Writing a Vital Speech by Fletcher Dean

2011-12-12T16:03:00.000-05:00

We're doing another new feature here on the BloGG: book spotlights! Our inaugural title is 10 Steps to Writing a Vital Speech by Fletcher Dean, one of the most seasoned and successful speechwriters in the world. This detailed, comprehensive, definitive guide was published by Vital Speeches of the Day, the most respected brand in the field. It's a fantastically thorough resource, and of course would make a terrific gift for any public speaker or communications pro on your holiday shopping list.

Gotham Ghostwriters asked Fletcher Dean a few questions about his speechwriting life and his writing process.
How did you get your start as a speechwriter?

It was entirely unplanned. I was an English major who turned to journalism to make a living, then I traded that for a better-paying job in corporate America doing mostly internal communications work. They thought I was a good writer and offered me a chance to do speechwriting, a position I hadn't even known existed in the company. Obviously, that was a career-changer for me, and I’ve never really looked back. I've been speechwriting for almost twenty years.

Do you have a favorite speech you've written?

One of my favorites was written for Earnie Deavenport, the former CEO of Eastman Chemical Company and true Southern gentleman. He was scheduled to give a speech in New York almost exactly a year after 9/11, just blocks away from Ground Zero. For many attendees, this was their first time in New York since 9/11, so terrorism was front and center in their thoughts. We used that mind-set to our advantage, crafting a speech titled “Terrorism Is Not Our Greatest Threat.” It captured attention from the very beginning because it begged the question: if not terrorism, what is our greatest threat? This was a rare case where the first words I wrote of the speech were the title.

Putting the mechanics of the speech aside, what makes up your routine when you sit down to write?

I divide my process into several steps. Sometimes they overlap, but I make sure to hit all of these at some point and in this order:

Learn as much as possible about the audience and its concerns.
Learn as much as possible about the topic.
Discover the common problem or concern.
Determine what we want the audience to do or believe about that problem.

Once I've accomplished all of that, I begin to craft some key messages and put that into a format that engages the audience. Then I write. Then I edit. And re-edit and re-edit and re-edit some more. I edit more than I write. Sometimes I think the job should be called “speech editor” instead of “speechwriter.”

Your book is very comprehensive, but can you suggest any other resources for speechwriters or aspiring speechwriters?

The Internet has not only revolutionized the way speechwriters do their jobs but also the way they interact with and learn from one another. There are several good blogs out there—from Jeff Porro, Nick Morgan, and Vital Speeches, just to name a few—that showcase real writers doing real work. There are many, many more, and the Internet is facilitating the development of a real community of speechwriters. That’s the easy way to learn about the profession. Then think seriously about some training. I started going to the Ragan Speechwriters Conference years ago and highly recommended it. (Full disclosure: I’m speaking there again in 2012.) There are also some good speechwriting coaches out there, like Joan Detz in Philadelphia and Wendy Cherwinski in Ottawa. Finally, though it may seem cliché, you learn by doing. There is no better way to learn to write than by sitting down and writing.

Around the Word

2011-12-09T10:24:00.001-05:00

Self-pub superlatives: Highlighting the recent trend of self-published authors striking it big, the Wall Street Journal ran a story on best-selling author Darcie Chan today. Like other self-pub standouts, Chan had a great novel but no publisher. She turned to e-books to find and outlet for her work and has sold 400,000 copies, putting her on par with other successes like Amanda Hocking and John Locke.

A showroom of one's own: We wrote earlier this week about a recent poll finding that 24 percent of online book buyers purchase a book after seeing it in a brick-and-mortar store first, a practice referred to as "showrooming." In Time magazine this week, Emma Straub, a bookseller at Brooklyn's BookCourt, gives her two cents about this alarming trend. Though Amazon offers access to books for many people who aren't lucky enough to have a local bookstore, Straub takes issue with people who use BookCourt as a showroom. "We’re talking about the people who do live close enough to independent bookstores to stroll their aisles," Straub writes. "Because this story is about those people selling the bookstores out for a better deal." What do you think? Are showroomers soulless or just savvy shoppers?

Vital visibility: Online writers often struggle with a difficult challenge: how do you make your writing audible over the noise of the rest of the Internet? Author and content marketing expert Rebecca Lieb gave an illuminating interview to GalleyCat with tips on how to make your work stand out. For example, she says that writers have a leg up, given that search engines traffic in the written word. What tips do you have for writing attention-grabbing content?

Greatest gobbledygook: The Plain English Campaign is on a mission to end pretentious jargon and confusing public communication in the UK. This year, the organization has awarded the UK's Meteorological Office their Golden Bull "booby prize" for the worst offense in public discourse: The Met Office began predicting "probabilities of precipitation" instead of the chance of rain last November. The Plain English Campaign describes their motivations to the BBC: "Even though most people agree that plain English is plain common sense, our government needs to make it a legal duty that public communications are crystal-clear." Do you agree?

Guest Post: Behind the Table by Brooke Stoddard

2011-12-07T10:09:00.001-05:00

Today's guest post is from author, editor, and speechwriter Brooke Stoddard. His latest book is World in the Balance: The Perilous Months of June–October 1940. Find him online at Archon Editorial.

Oneof the premier events in the Washington, D.C., literary year is the annual NationalPress Club Book Fair and Authors' Night. In addition to being an enjoyable social event, the Book Fair raises money for the Club’s Eric Friedheim National Journalism Library and the SEED Foundation, which educates at-risk youth. Eighty or ninety authors sit behind a tablestacked with their books and make themselves available to chat with Club membersand the public strolling by. The books on display are selected by a committee of the Club, and all have all been published within the calendar year. There are books from a broad range of genres, including business, history, politics, food, children’s, lifestyle, literature, memoir, and sports.

I’ve been a member of the Club for years, and I attend the Book Fair whenever I can, but thiswas my first time “behind the table.” It was a delightful time. I gotto rub elbows with fellow authors Ron Suskind, Ann Coulter, Jim Lehrer, John Farrell, Joe Lieberman, and dozens of others. Mypublisher, Potomac Books, sent a stand-up foam board of the cover of my newest book, World in the Balance, and Barnes & Noble supplied stacks of books for me to sell and sign. I was in good company, surrounded by Laurence Bergreen (Columbus: The FourVoyages), Stanley Weintraub (Pearl Harbor Christmas), and MarvinKalb (Haunting Legacy).

Nothaving had the publicity or the renown of some of the other authors, I expectedthe space in front of my table to be relatively calm, but I was mistaken.Shoppers, many looking for holiday presents, stopped by in a fairly continuous stream, sharing stories, asking questions, and happy tobuy. Some bought multiple copies; four was my record. I signed books eagerlyand wished good reading to all.

C-Spansent a crew to tramp the floor between tables, and they interviewed anumber of authors, TV camera lights flashing when an author was ready. I was interviewed for a few minutes, although I have yet to see any results.

Nextyear will be a whole new crew because not many authors publish a book within twelve months of the last. Not having planned a tome for 2012, I will still be at theBook Fair next November -- but on the consumer side ofthe tables.

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2011-12-06T10:30:00.001-05:00

Rate your rhetoric: Have you written a spectacular speech this year? Find out how it stacks up against its industry competition by submitting to the 2012 Cicero Speechwriting Awards. The Cicero Awards recognize the best work in the speechwriting word, and Cicero winners receive publicity at major speechwriting events, including readings by GG friend and Vital Speeches of the Day editor David Murray. As the Cicero website puts it, "Not Twitter feeds, podcasts or blogs -- for politicians and CEOs, for military brass and church leaders, for activists and fundraisers, nothing substitutes for the power of a good speech to move audiences to action." Show off your skills by entering today.

Window shoppers: Brick-and-mortar bookstores have had a tough time in this recession, and now they have further proof that they're being undersold by their arch-enemy, Amazon. A new survey reported on the New York Times Media Decoder confirms that many book buyers see a book in a bookstore first, then go online to purchase it. Are these Amazonians shameless, or just saving money in a tough economy?

Platform building: Aspiring authors always hear about the importance of having an audience before their book is published, but how do you start to build that platform? Author Meghan Ward has a list of suggestions on her blog this week, from the helpful (Tumblr, podcasts, teaching, website) to the cheeky (become famous!). Is there anything you would add to her list?

Zombie-telling: In an brilliant confluence of pop-culture obsessions -- smartphones + digital storytelling + zombies -- a new app puts you in the middle of the zombie apocalypse while you're jogging. Zombies, Run! from Six to Start includes audio that sends you on missions, warns you of incoming zombies, and rewards you for your hard work staying alive. Set to release early next year, this app is one step toward the new frontier of interactive mobile storytelling. Will you be running from zombies?

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2011-12-05T11:42:00.001-05:00

Stick-to-it-iveness: What lengths would you go to to keep writing? The L.A. Times has the story of Peter Winkler, author of the biography of Dennis Hopper that came out this fall. Winkler is so debilitated by rheumatoid arthritis that he had to type the entire manuscript one letter at a time, using a long red plastic chopstick. Now that's dedication to one's craft.

Make every month NaNoWriMo. Now that National Novel Writing Month has drawn to a close, GalleyCat gives us their final tip: Write every day. In addition, the post has some resources to track your progress and keep your spirits up. Did you participate in NaNoWriMo? Have any tips to add? Tell us in the comments.

Writer's life. Huffington Post has a lovely piece by memoirist Holly Robinson on the joy's of being a writer for hire. Says Robinson, "I love telling other people's stories. What other job would allow me to walk in another person's shoes so completely that I'd feel their blisters?"

Reader's life: Flavorwire has compiled a terrific list of quotes about reading by writers. Often these quotes reveal more about their authors than about readers in general, but it's still a wonderful collection. A few of our favorites:

“Never trust anyone who has not brought a book with them.” — Lemony Snicket (aka Daniel Handler)

“I cannot remember the books I’ve read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Knowing you have something good to read before bed is among the most pleasurable of sensations.” — Vladimir Nabokov

“We read to know that we are not alone.” — C.S. Lewis

And the Weiner is...

2011-12-02T11:18:00.001-05:00

Photo by photostock

Radar Online recently reported that one of disgraced congressman Anthony Weiner's online mistresses was shopping a tell-all book. Finding the opportunity too good to ignore, we challenged our writer network to come up with puntastic titles for this titillating tome-to-be. Here are our favorites:

Cialis in Weinerland, Michael Spoodis

Tweet my Shorts, Henry Ehrlich

Premature Demasculation: A Weiner's Tale, Michael Thomsett

Weiners and Losers, Sue Treiman

Have your own idea to add? Leave it in the comments.

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2011-12-02T10:11:00.001-05:00

In defense of adverbs: Though Stephen King said, "The road to hell is paved in adverbs," one writer is coming to the much-maligned part of speech's defense. Atlantic writer Lily Rothaman argues that many famously, fantastically memorable phrases would be duds without adverbs -- would we "give a damn" about Rhett and Scarlett without "frankly"? Where do you weigh in on the adverb debate?

NYPL woes: The New York Public Library has been a vital resource for scholars, writers, and readers in NYC for over 100 years. But with budgets tightening and a large renovation planned, the library is in an unprecedented state of upheaval. Check out the Nation's in-depth article on the changes at America's largest library.

So-so sentences: Is "so" the new "um"? That's the question the Chronicle of Higher Education's Lingua Franca blog is asking, after the New York Times pointed out a pattern of starting sentences with "so" earlier this year. Microsoft employees take credit for starting the "so" phenomenon, but its been picked up by everyone from politicians to NPR (a chronic offender). What do you think about this connector-turned-sentence starter? Is "so" so over?

For the policy wonk who has everything: The gift-giving season is upon us, and you might be debating which books to put on your shopping list. The Guardian has compiled several different lists of the best books to give in 2011, but our favorite is the list of political books. From manifestos to biographies to political thrillers, you're sure to find something on this list for the current events connoisseur in your life.

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2011-11-30T11:46:00.001-05:00

Self-pub skeptic: While there is a lot of enthusiasm for self-publishing as a "bright spot" in our changing media industry, not everyone is so convinced of its merits. Novelist and writer for The Millions Edan Lupecki gave her "Reasons Not to Self-Publish in 2011–2012: A List," highlighting several problems with self-pub enthusiasm, such as overlooking small presses, finding an audience, and signing yourself over to the all-mighty Amazon. Does Lupecki have a point? Or is she just a luddite?

Non-required readings: Author readings used to be the bread and butter of a book tour, but with shortening attentions spans and higher expectations for author engagement, many audiences aren't happy to sit through several chapters read aloud. The Wall Street Journal takes a look at the changing nature of the book tour, which now often includes extras like a lecture, presentation, interview, or panel discussion. Is this change for the best, or do you miss the old-fashioned readings?

WordPress to printing press: Social media guru Chris Brogan turned his attention to digital publishing this week, highlighting a new company called PressBooks. PressBooks lets authors create books using WordPress and format them for print, e-books, and tablets. Check out an interview on his site with the founder of PressBooks where they discuss the publishing e-volution.

Collapse of the E-uro? The European debt crisis and fragility of the Euro have been grabbing headlines for weeks, but Publishing Perspectives has taken a narrower view of Europe's economic woes: Would a collapse of the Euro slow European e-book adoption? The Euro is attractive for e-book distributors because it facilitates easier transactions and eliminates foreign exchange fees. Do you think the end of the Euro would also end the e-book?

Guest Post: 5 Book Proposal Musts by Ally Peltier

2011-11-29T09:32:00.001-05:00

Today we bring you a guest post by writer, editor, and publishing consultant Ally Peltier. She's here to help you write your book proposal—the right way!

Most publishers don’t expect or want nonfiction authors tocomplete their manuscripts before submitting. Instead, such books are oftensold to publishers based on the strength of their proposals. With so muchriding on this one document, you have to be prepared to make the bestpitch possible to agents and/or publishers. Make sure to do these five critical things, and you’ll be well on your way to landing that book deal.

Must #1: Research the submission requirements. Submissionguidelines are usually found on a publishing company or agent’s website. These will explain how youshould prepare and submit your proposal materials, including specifications for format types, snail mail vs. electronicdelivery, reading dates, and more. Some agents/publishers will want a queryletter first; some will ask for sample chapters right off the bat. Some wantone chapter, some want three. Guidelines can be very specific, so you will likely need to create multiple versions of your proposal to suit different agents/publishers. Always defer to your target audience’sexpressed preferences.

Must #2: Answer the question, “Why am I the right person towrite this book?” Your “about the author” section is more thanjust a bio. It should highlight the specific experiences and professionalcredentials that have uniquely prepared you (or your client) to author thisbook. If you've been published before, provide information about the book's publisher, publication date, and sales figures.

Must #3: Address why this book needs to be published now. Yourproposal needs to make a strong case for urgency. Perhaps your book touches ona growing trend or satisfies a burgeoning need. Maybe there’s a newsworthy aspect, or you might be presenting new research or updatedinformation. Even evergreen subjects must be justified with regard totimeliness: Has it been a decade since the category bestseller was published,or do new technologies or philosophies provide a fresh approach to an oldproblem? You have to convince publishers that readers will shell out cashfor your project today.

Must #4: Include plenty of market research. Your proposal must highlight a thoroughlydeveloped book concept, show that you’ve researched your intended audience, anddemonstrate that you have a platform appropriate for your book. Effectivelyillustrating these things proves that you understand book promotion, which isincreasingly an author’s responsibility. Marketing and publicity departmentswill look to your proposal as a resource for developing a promotion plan, so itneeds to indicate where they can expect sales and valuable attention. Use yourimagination and make your agent/publisher see dollar signs.

Must #5: Distinguish your project from the competition. The claim thata book has no competition is very rarely true; more often, this reveals a lackof understanding and effort, and can even hint that the author might be a “problemchild.” Agents/publishers will expect you to list two to five competing orcomparative titles and to positively distinguish your book from them. If there are no direct competitors,list books on topics that come closest or address a similar audience. Thisgives publishers an idea of how robust the market is for your book,and how to position it among existing titles in the category. Get sales figuresif you can, and note which books are bestsellers, have gone through multipleeditions, have been translated into other languages, etc. If the publisher or agency you’re approaching has similar bookson its list, be sure to include those so you can point out differences andexplain why they should still publish your book.

A well-developed book proposal takes a lot of the guesswork out ofa seemingly risky process. It needs to be well-written, organized, andcomplete. You may have the greatest idea for a book ever, but if your proposalis poorly conceptualized or lacking critical information, no agent or publisher will feelconfident betting on you. So put the same effort into your proposal that youwill ultimately put into your book, cover these five "musts," and increase yourchances of getting that publishing contract!

Ally E. Peltier is aneditor, writer, and publishing consultant who loves using her insider knowledgeof the publishing industry and more than a decade of experience to help othersreach their publishing goals, whether it’s showing a writer how to improve hismanuscript, get an agent, or self-publish, or ghostwriting a book to help anentrepreneur skyrocket her business platform to new levels. Grab Ally’s freewhite papers and learn more about her services at www.ambitiousenterprises.com and www.allypeltier.com.

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2011-11-28T14:28:00.001-05:00

Cure for your shopping hangover. How was your Black Friday? We hope you didn't get trampled, looted, or pepper-sprayed. For those who stayed home—or those who wish they had—Huffington Post has a list of dystopian novels that seem rather apropos. As Madeline Crum says in the article, "What would Aldous Huxley or Ray Bradbury have to say about a society willing to fight for 40% off a dress or a complementary tote? Or did they already say it in their books?"

The tweeting gene? The Guardian has started a new series where science writer Anna Perman deconstructs a complicated genetic theory for us lay-readers. The inaugural post is about the gene FOXP2, which is responsible for communication. It affects many different animals; a mutation on the gene in a human leaves the person with dysphoria, and "knock out this gene in birds and they have problems with – well – tweeting."

Famous rejects. Rejection letters are a fact of life for any writer, no matter how famous. Don't believe us? Check out Flavorpill's compilation of some of the harshest rejections in history, send to luminaries like Gertrude Stein, Vladimir Nabokov, Kurt Vonnegut, and more.

Delicious mashups. Did you hear about #LiteraryTurducken? Doubleday started a new Thanksgiving tradition with this tweet: "The #LiteraryTurducken combines not one, not two, but three classic works into one, in the spirit of the turkey+duck+chicken creole classic." We got pretty excited about the game here at GG; here's what we came up with:

From GG's president @DanGerstein, continuing the bird theme: "The Maltese Falcon Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest to Kill a Mockingbird."
From our associate Oriana, "The Devil Wears Prada in the White City of Glass," and, via her Brooklyn blog @brooklynspaces: "A Tree Grows in the Last Exit to Motherless Brooklyn."
From our writer friend @kerryzukus: "Rich Dad's Chicken Soup For Dummies."

Got any to add? Or maybe you want to save 'em for next Thanksgiving...

Around the Word

2011-11-23T12:30:00.000-05:00

Copycats: Inspired by the recent plagiarism scandal involving Brooklyn thriller novelist Q.R. Markham, Stuart Kelly at the Guardian takes a look at the history of plagiarism. In our constantly shifting new-media landscape, sometimes it can be hard to tell what is a mash-up and what is a copy. As Kelly points out, at least it was fans who detected Markham's misdeed and not a computer program -- showing that "real reading still exists."

Just the right recommendation: One inventive bookseller is combining the popularity of online shopping with the personal touches of a brick-and-mortar store. Roxanne Coady founded the website Just The Right Book, where subscribers can take quizzes, get personalized book recommendations from Coady's staff, and often earn coupons toward purchasing the books. Is this digital-analog combo the way of the future?

To link or not to link? One topic of hot debate in the e-book world is the pros and cons of including links. We've written about the anti-link position before, but now another author has weighed in on the side of links. David Meerman Scott tells GalleyCat, "It means you can check out the Twitter feed of the expert cited in the text. You can see the cool picture that was once worth 1,000 words." How do you feel about e-book links?

Literary locales: Looking for a vacation with some literary inspiration? National Geographic has picked the ten most literary places in the world. Although New York doesn't make the list, Portland, Oregon and Washington, D.C. are the two most literary cities in the U.S. Which city do you think has the most word nerds?

Writer Profile: Erin Martin

2011-11-21T12:41:00.001-05:00

We're starting a new regular feature here on the BloGG: Writer Profiles! As you can imagine, Gotham Ghostwriters knows a lot of writers, all of whom are working on exciting projects. If you're wondering what goes on in a writer's head on a typical writer's day, this series will give you some insight.

Our inaugural profilee is longtime GG friend and writer Erin Martin, a former reporter for the Hartford Courant and deputy press secretary to U.S. Senator Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut. A graduate of Stanford University, Erin has managed political development programs in post-apartheid South Africa and Namibia. She also worked for The September 11th Fund, a World Trade Center relief organization, and for a Madison Avenue communications consultancy. She lives in New York City.

GG: What's a typical "writer'sday" for you?

EM: The only certainty in my day is thatfirst cup of coffee. After that,it all depends. Thankfully, no two days are the same!

GG: What's the most rewarding writingproject you've done?

EM: As someone whose livelihood dependson versatility in writing, I try to find something rewarding in every project. I don’t everwant to feel that I’m writing something for the paycheck, or that the finalproduct doesn’t matter to me. Not caring about the project = poor product andbored writer.

That said, the mostrewarding projects have been ones in which I felt that my writing captured theessence of a person, place, or situation. Two leaders in that category are the newly released Fit to Serve, the book I did with Jim Hormel, America’s first openly gayambassador, and another memoir I did through Gotham, a rags-to-riches storyabout a Bombay woman who came to the U.S. and made a fortune in radiology.

What do you do when you're notwriting?

I support my writing habit with short-termcommunications consulting. Interestingrecent gigs included a project in Bosnia to promote intellectual propertyrights, and another in Kosovo to explain and drum up support for the country’snew tax system.

What's the toughest thing aboutbeing a writer?

Discipline. Thetiniest of writing roadblocks can prompt my socks to yell from their drawer,demanding re-organization, or cause cookbooks to throw themselves off theshelves and open to a must-make-this-tonight recipe.

What are some great writerresources you depend on?

I used to find inspiration inhearing authors discuss their work, until one afternoon at Lincoln Center I heard a Peruvianshort-story writer counseling artists to cancel their magazine andnewspaper subscriptions, cut off their cable television, and shut themselves off to alloutside voices. His suggestion wasextreme, but the ideas of eliminating extraneous chatterand looking internally for guidance appealed to me. What that means, I guess, is that I strive to let my ownvoice be my number one resource.

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2011-11-21T09:50:00.001-05:00

Libyan unbanning day: To great fanfare, Libya had a ceremonial book-unbanning last week, reports The Star. Accompanied by bagpipes, intellectual and political heavies gathered for the celebration. The ground floor of the palace-turned-library was lined with books, and tables were piled high with more. "This is a major moment for us because this is where we reclaim our intellectual freedom," said one attendee, human-rights activist Hassan al-Amin. "We say goodbye to an era where free thinking was forbidden, where ideas were dangerous."

Freelance tweeting: Everyone's trying to find the best, most effective ways to use social networking. For a freelancer, Twitter can be an invaluable tool. MediaBistro's AllTwitter blog has a great primer on the benefits Twitter offers to freelancers, from networking to marketing to finding work, as well as gaining some insight into the daily lives and schedules of other freelancers. How have you used Twitter in your freelance career?

Speech stunner: GalleyCat calls our attention to the standout speech at last week's National Book Awards. Nikky Finney, whose book Head Off & Split won the poetry award, spoke beautifully of history, slavery, and the people who have inspired her throughout her writing career. The whole of the awards are watchable on the site, and you can find Finney's speech around minute 17.

Navigating self-publishing: If you're a new writer, or a writer unfamiliar with the weird and wonderful world of book publishing, it can be quite overwhelming to decide how to proceed. If you're thinking about going the self-publishing route, check out Wicked Tricksy's roundup of great resources for newbies. In addition to the blogs of several self-publishing stars, they offer a reasoned argument against getting your data from writer forums. Do you know of any great self-publishing sites not included in this list?

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2011-11-18T10:37:00.001-05:00

Novel dysfunction: If the prospect of spending Thanksgiving with your family makes you feel less than grateful, consider turning to some literary inspiration for dealing with dysfunctional families. In honor of the holiday, Ploughshares Literary Magazine put together a list of the books about the darkest, craziest and unhappiest families. What's your favorite book about family feuds?

Fired up: Amazon's newest e-reader -- the tablet-style Kindle Fire -- has finally arrived, and the reviews are lukewarm. Slate technology writer Farhad Manjoo gives his take on the Fire, characterizing it as "underachieving" but priced low enough that it could successfully compete with the iPad. Manjoo also predicts that the Fire will lead to even more book sales than previous Kindles. Will you be buying a Fire this holiday season?

Unreasonable lending? In other Amazon news, the Authors Guild is pretty unhappy with Amazon's other new feature: the Kindle Owner's Lending Library. The AG issued a statement arguing that the lending library falls outside the realm of most publishing licensing contracts. They also have some tips for getting your book taken out of the library if it's there without your permission, GalleyCat reports. Is the Lending Library a good thing for authors, or a backhanded move by Amazon?

Best of the web: As any web-surfing word nerd knows, there's tons of writing advice on the Internet -- some of it good, and some if it not so good. Over at the Writing Resource, Erin Brenner compiled a list of her favorite advice on the writing process, from getting started to keeping your readers' attention. Do you have an article on writing that you refer to again and again?

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2011-11-16T11:19:00.001-05:00

Book rebellion: Bibliophiles were shocked and appalled when the police officers dismantling the Occupy Wall Street camp at Zucotti Park confiscated the "People's Library" of over 5,000 books. But Jeremiah Moss, a blogger and author who writes about New York, believes that this kind of high-profile destruction could be just the publicity that books need to combat their old-fashioned image. Despite what ebook retailers and gadget-o-philes will have us believe, he argues, print books aren't fusty, they're revolutionary. "Seeing large numbers of books together in one place has the power to stir emotions," he writes. "And the People's Library was this kind of powerful place -- not virtual, but real. E-readers like the Kindle do not have this power. They don't burn and therefore do not, by the spectacle of their burning, shock us into action."

Publishing faces the music: The music and publishing industries have gone through similar changes due to the digital e-volution. Both music and books have seen an increase in digital sales, a drop in digital prices and a slew of piracy problems. To investigate what each industry can learn from the other, FutureBook has created a four-part series on the digitization of books and music, written by experts who have worked in both industries. Do you think the comparison is apt?

Ye olde sociale networke: Though we often feel like we're in a time of unprecedented change for communication and technology, Stanford professor and language blogger Cynthia Haven points out that the 17th century was also a time of expanding social networks. The postal system allowed people to communicate like never before, and there was even a Twitter-like trend of scattering bits of paper with revolutionary poems written on them throughout the streets of Paris. Check out her article if you need some inspiration to stay on top of your social media strategy. If Voltaire wrote 10 to 15 letters per day, you can surely send out a few 140-character Tweets.

Give the gift of literacy: Even though it's not even Thanksgiving yet, the holidays are looming. And since that means beginning to think about gifts, GalleyCat has compiled a list of ten charities that promote literacy and reading. These organizations provide books to those in need throughout the United States and around the world. Do you have a favorite language-loving charity that should be added to the list? Tell us in the comments.

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2011-11-14T16:08:00.001-05:00

Ghosts in high places. You never know who's writing what. In a strange ghostwriting story, Mike Winder, the mayor of West Valley City, Utah, has admitted to penning articles for local media outlets under a pseudonym. The Salt Lake Tribune reports that Winder felt local newspapers had cut their coverage of city government after layoffs, and he wanted to "try to restore balance." The mayor "defended using a pen name, citing famous authors who wrote under pseudonyms, including Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, and James Madison." What do you think -- dishonest or smart?

Why you? Why now? Are you struggling to perfect your nonfiction book proposal? Over at her blog, Gotham Ghostwriting friend Ally Peltier has a got plenty of advice for you. Her article "Beat Intimidation: Start Writing Your Nonfiction Book Proposal" gives a meta view of the proposal-writing process, with prompts to get you thinking about what the different aspects of your proposal need to do to be successful.

How does a book become a book? Unless you work in the media industry, you may find the book-publishing process a bit mystifying. But fear not: Publishing Trends has a great piece that clearly illustrates the whole thing. "Life Cycle of a Book" details everything a manuscript goes through on its long trip toward publication. Watch video clips of industry professionals in all the different roles to gain a clearer understanding of what to expect once you get that book deal.

Bully for you. All writers get edited; of course, some appreciate the process more than others. At The Chronicle of Higher Education's Lingua Franca blog, Carol Saller asks, "Are copyeditors bullies?" Fortunately she concludes that they're not, saying, "Although I can't deny that bad editing happens, there is almost always recourse. Starting with the assumption that you can work things out is the best way to get results." Do you agree? Have you ever felt bullied by your copyeditor? Tell us in the comments.

Poll results: "Awesome" is awesomely irritating

2011-11-14T11:36:00.000-05:00

When Ragan wrote about the top ten intensifiers you should absolutely, positively avoid, we were inspired to ask our writers for their opinion. As the results from an informal poll of our Facebook network show, "awesome" is by far the most annoying adjective.

Alan Perlman, a writer in our network with a PhD in linguistics, had this to say about intensifiers: "Adjectives and intensifying adverbs both tend to weaken in meaning and are progressively replaced by stronger terms. Some people over-rely on 'really' or 'literally,' as if everything else is imaginary."

Other finalists for most annoying intensifier included "excellent," "incredible" and "cool." Writer James Buchanan made a convincing case for "interesting" and "interestingly" as well: "As I have learned, merely saying something is interesting does not make it so or do anything to denote why."

But author Kerry Zukus warns us about dismissing intensifiers out of hand, reminding us that "they are all fine for dialogue. Flesh-and-blood people use them in speech all the time, and I hate it when writers have Average Joes speaking as if they've just completed Finishing School."

Didn't get to vote in the poll, but want to add your two cents? Leave your nominations for worst intensifier in the comments.

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2011-11-11T10:11:00.001-05:00

Empire state of publishing: Would the rest of America buy more books if the publishing industry wasn't so concentrated in New York? Publishing Perspectives has posed that question, holding that the Manhattan- and Brooklyn-based publishing world can be too insular and self-referential. As they put it, "How many novels can someone in, say, Chicago or Atlanta read about a twenty-something Manhattan editorial assistant, junior Wall Street trader, or cupcake shop owner in Cobble Hill looking for love?"

Going up! Every professional word nerd knows the importance of the "elevator pitch." But in our increasingly digital work world, what if you only get to pitch over email or on your website, rather than in person? Don't worry: Men With Pens has some tips for making your pitches shine in the virtual elevator.

Tweet police: Twitter has become a minefield of potential ethical problems that writers have to navigate daily, especially journalists, for whom a misfired tweet can ruin your reputation, or even cost you your job. The AP recently released their social media guidelines and have turned their attention to retweeting -- as reported on 10,000 Words, journalists are advised to avoid retweeting anything with an opinion to avoid the appearance of endorsement. When it comes to social media, how objective should we expect journalists to be?

Getting your content fix: Need to spice up your blog? Digital marketing expert Jeff Bullas has ten "addictive" types of blog content that have been proven to boost traffic again and again. Reviews, how-tos, case studies and infographics all have readers coming back for more. What types of content would you add to the list? (h/t Ragan)

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2011-11-09T12:35:00.000-05:00

Writing the Occupation: Occupy Writers -- an offshoot of the Occupy Wall Street movement -- has collected over 2,000 signatures and stories from writers who support the protest. Mediabistro interviewed Occupy Writers co-founder Kiera Feldman, who says they eventually hope to publish the responses they have collected. Will you be adding your voice?

Democra-tweets: Did you ever think your tweet could be read on the floor of the House of Representatives? Rep. Maxine Waters of California combined crowdsourcing and speechwriting to achieve a public-speaking first: she crafted a speech entirely from tweets and Facebook posts from her constituents. Head over to the Eloquent Woman to hear Walters deliver the speech.

Kick the habit, pick up a book: A couple of quirky publishers and designers are hoping books can be just as addictive as nicotine. According to Publishing Perspectives, German publisher Automatenverlag has repurposed cigarette automats to distribute books instead of cigarettes in the neighborhood around the University of Hamburg. And a UK design magazine has created miniature books that fit into cigarette packs. What's next? Cigars that turn out to be rolled-up newspapers?

Ay, there be pirates! With the rise of e-books, authors -- like musicians and filmmakers -- have become vulnerable to pirates roaming the high seas of the Internet. Fortunately, agent and blogger Rachelle Gardner has thrown you a life preserver in the form of a primer on Internet piracy. Have you ever found an illegal copy of your book floating around? What do you do to prevent piracy?

Around the Word

2011-11-07T12:00:00.049-05:00

Virtually speaking: Speechwriting has been around since the days of ancient oratory, so how has it changed in the digital age? Gotham friend Hal Gordon explores this question in a recent post on Pundit Wire. Since a talk can be streamed virtually or posted to YouTube, speeches have been able to reach bigger audiences than ever before. And writers no longer have to focus so strongly on sound bites, since whole speeches can be put online instead of relying on brief clips in television coverage. Gordon's takeaway: "While speechwriters must adapt, we are hardly obsolete." For speech pros, how have you seen your job description change?

Eastern e-volution: Though digital self-publishing has been rapidly gaining speed in the West, our digital numbers are nothing like they are in China. According to a recent column on the Guardian's book blog, self-publishing websites are attracting more than 40 percent of all China's Internet users every month. The popular self-published titles are almost entirely genre fiction serials, which are free to download until they have reached a certain level of popularity, after which readers have to pay a few yuan for the new installments. What do you think? Is this "freemium" model something that could work in the West?

Linked out: There has been considerable angst in recent years about the Internet's detrimental effect on our reading attention spans. Shorter articles, flashing ads and a world wide web's worth of distractions just a click away make it harder to focus on reading a longer text online. But Rick Poyner on the Design Observer Group blog has identified another culprit for our inability to pay attention: hyperlinks. In an entirely link-free article, Poyner speculates that embedding hyperlinks into e-books may only degrade the reading experience by distracting our already-scattered attention. Are hyperlinks to blame for our inability to focus? Or is it all just a bunch of hype?

Good books: Though Andrew Carnegie is famous for having built more than 2,500 libraries around the world, an American philanthropost you've probably never heard of has built nearly five times that many. In yesterday's Sunday Times, columnist Nicholas Kristoff spotlighted Room to Read, a charity founded by former Microsoft executive John Wood that provides books to children in remote and poor places around the world. In addition to opening an average of six libraries per day, Room to Read also sponsors girls who wouldn't normally be able to attend school. We're thrilled to see a charity promoting literacy get such prominent coverage and to see so many libraries -- 12,000 and counting -- being created in communities that need them.

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2011-11-04T12:53:00.000-04:00

Ghost busting: MSNBC's Chris Matthews is not known for pulling his punditary punches, and this week he threw a couple haymakers that got a few ghostwriters' hackles up. In an interview with Forbes this week about his latest book on JFK, Matthews took umbrage at a question about whether he had any outside writing help -- with a more strongly-worded version of "Forget you." Matthews treated the insinuation as an attack on his character; "It’s amazing to me that you think I’m some lightweight, glib bulls**t artist that has somebody do his work for him," he said. Though we can appreciate that Matthews takes pride in his writing, attitudes like this perpetuate the stigma against ghostwriters and keep other experts from admitting when they've needed some professional help. What did you think?

Keeping up with the Kindles: Amazon announced its new Kindle Owners' Lending Library this morning, a service available to Kindle-owning Amazon Prime members. Members can download and "borrow" one e-book per month, keep it for as long as they want and then replace it with a new borrowed book when they're finished. The impact of this move is being hotly debated in the publishing world, and some speculate failure since none of the six largest publishers have signed on, according to the Wall Street Journal. But others see it as an opportunity to hook readers with a free book and then sell them other works by the same author or publisher. Is this what libraries will look like in the digital age?

Show your books some love: While spring may be the traditional time to clean house, fall is a great time to care for your books. New York Public Library conservationist Shelly Smith recently shared some easy tips for keeping your home library in top shape. Stable temperatures, regular dusting and avoidance of too much moisture and light are all necessary to make sure your books last a lifetime.

Publishing's manifest destiny? The Books in Browsers conference in San Francisco last week provided a valuable window into where technology and publishing are headed, according to a review by Publishing Perspectives. BIB11 was more focused on the high-tech UX (that's "user experience") than the traditional publishing elements -- "the words author, editor, agent, story and narrative were sparsely used." But the overall outlook for the future of books (or rather, e-books) was sunny, and perhaps showing the conference's geographic tilt, moving westward. Check out the postmortem and let us know what you think. Is the balance of publishing power shifting to Silicon Valley?

E-wards: Have you written an e-book that you think is award-worthy? The Global Ebook Awards -- the brainchild of e-book advocate Dan Poynter -- are now accepting entries in fiction and non-fiction. All entries get a sticker for the cover of their book, and winners get a free listing in Publishers Marketplace as well as other exposure for their e-book. Will you be entering?

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2011-11-02T13:08:00.000-04:00

The celebrification of speechwriting: Speechwriters have traditionally toiled in the ghostly shadows, hiding their identities so that their speakers could shine. But as our friend David Meadvin at Inkwell Strategies points out this week, more and more speechwriters are experiencing a little bit of the limelight -- like President Obama's speechwriter Jon Favreau, a subject of continued media interest. Meadvin, who wrote for Senator Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), attributes the change to to the 24-hour news cycle and the revealing power of the Internet, as well as the fact that most people now expect that speakers work with a writing team. We are curious to hear from our speech pros -- how do you feel about this celebrification trend?

Finding the fun in corporatespeak: When you liase with your clients, can you get them to drink the Kool-Aid? After a failed elevator pitch, did you reverbiagize your proposal? Are you opening the kimono on the lack of deliverables? Corporate-speak can be rife with ridiculous terms, and sitting through a meeting where they're used in earnest would make anyone search for an exit strategy. To help make those conversations a bit more bearable, Laura Hale Brockway over at Impertinent Remarks has created a clever game called Word Quest. The way its played: you and an accomplice compete for who can best incorporate corporate jargon into a sentence during the meeting. Bonus points for getting someone else to use it. So drill down, grab that low-hanging fruit and incentivize some fun! And please share your winning sentences with us.

All about Odyl: A new Facebook app is aiming to engage readers with their favorite authors and publishers like never before. Officially launched in September, Odyl already has some prominent acolytes like Jane Fonda, Katie Couric and Bret Easton Ellis, reports Publishing Perspectives. The app streamlines the Facebook page, allowing authors to easily engage with readers by providing book excerpts, polls, quizzes and virtual gifts. Will you be trying out Odyl?

Twitterese: The influence of Twitter on language has been getting more and more attention lately, as movies scholars and movie stars alike are theorizing about how writing in 140 characters affects the way we think and engage. One side of the spectrum, researchers at Carnegie Mellon are using tweets to build maps of regional language use. On the other side, British actor Ralph Fiennes postulated recently that Twitter has degraded the English language to the point that people no longer use words longer than two syllables or sentences with more than one clause. Curious as this all is, though, the Economist's language blog suggests that Fiennes may be overreacting a twit, noting that tweets aren't very representative of the way we actually speak and write, given the character limits. Do you agree?

'Tis the season. . . . of tired cliches: Though we haven't even hit Thanksgiving yet, Baltimore Sun language guru John E. McIntyre hasn't wasted any time in heading off any possible holiday-themed linguistic tragedies. He provides a list of cheery cliches that should be avoided at all costs, including any "'tising," "'twasing," "white stuff," and Dickens references. Though he might come off as a grammar grinch, he definitely has a point -- it is hard to make a Twelve Days of Christmas parody read as fresh.

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2011-10-31T12:00:00.042-04:00

Googling monkeys, publishing edition: Ready for the next phase of the e-volution? The new publishing company Hyperink, deciding that query letters are a passe way for finding promising books to sell, is going Googling for how-to subjects. They're analyzing search results and commissioning books on topics that are most in demand on the most searched engine. To get the book from idea stage to market, Hyperink pairs an expert with a freelance writer and then publishes an e-book for a fraction of a cost of the traditional publishing process (Gotham-ites, start your laptops). As GalleyCat notes, "the how-to book market is getting turned on its head" because of Hyperink's innovative strategy. And Silicon Valley is taking notice: according to TechCrunch, Hyperink won funding from one of the country's top venture capitalist firms, Andreesen Horowitz. How do you like them Apples?

Novel celebration: We thought November's National Novel Writing Month challenge could be a fun diversion for ghosts with novelistic aspirations. But e-book expert Kelly Kingman took NaNoWriMo and applied it to her life as a working writer, challenging herself to use the month of intense writing to create a year's worth (50,000 words) of blog content. She's calling her parallel task Contentpalooza, and gives tips on how to best tackle this novel challenge on ProBlogger. Do you have an equally novel way to celebrate?

Happy E-lloween! Still looking for a spooky read to celebrate All Hallow's Eve tonight? EBookNewser has a list of ten free scary e-books available today, enough reading to give you goosebumps for weeks. With classics like Dracula, Frankenstein and Fall of the House of Usher, these books will definitely get you in the holiday spirit.

Say hello to the "smart book": Atria, a Simon and Schuster imprint, is releasing its first "smart book" tomorrow. Hardcover copies of The Impulse Economy: Understanding Mobile Shoppers and What Makes Them Buy are equipped with a smart chip inside that can be read by a smartphone. Readers looking to purchase the book just tap their Blackberry or Android (iPhones don't work) to the sticker on the cover and are shown a website with further information about the book, reports Jacket Copy. Though the smart chip doesn't have much value once the book is purchased, it's kind of a nifty idea. Is this a step toward the digital future, or just a marketing ploy? Will you be buying a smart book?

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2011-10-28T11:55:00.004-04:00

Profane book titles are the #*&%: Book titles are getting a little bit raunchier these days. As USA Today pointed out, there's been an increasing trend of profanity gracing book jackets. From Go the F*** to Sleep to S*** My Dad Says, book titles with foul language are eliciting giggles and gasps of horror from readers around the country. So what do you think -- are we headed to hell in a bookcase?

Punctuation perfectionists need not apply: While any editor worth her red pen knows the basic rules of punctuation, correcting every mis-used comma or apostrophe may not be worth the effort. Dennis Barron, "grammar doctor" and English professor at the University of Illinois, explains that punctuation has always been fluid, so an errant emoticon or greengrocer's apostrophe ("Apple's 99 cents") is nothing to worry about, and shouldn't be a factor in judging writing expertise. Barron argues that many writers and editors might fixate on punctuation because it's easier to point out a punctuation error "than to identify why an argument is faulty or explain why a text is just not very interesting." What do you think? Should punctuation be given a break?

Word wide web: We love writing, and we love the Internet. Fortunately, the good people over at Ragan have married our two loves by compiling a list of the seven best websites for word nerds. From a site that determines the "grade level" of your writing, to a service that catches any repeated words in your text, to a motivation tool that forces you to get typing, these sites offer lots of high-tech ways to improve your writing. Do you have any favorites that you would add to the list?

Reads for a dark and stormy night: Halloween may be the holiday of costumes, candy and haunted houses, but if the predicted East Coast snow (!) drives you indoors, All Hallow's Eve is the perfect opportunity for curling up with a scary book. The Guardian has put together a list of this year's required Halloween reading. Scary sociopaths, dark dystopias and chilling crimes all fill the pages of these twisted tales. What's your favorite horror read for Halloween?

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2011-10-26T12:00:00.013-04:00

Author e-notations: A new social reader, SubText, is joining the ranks of the many fledgling social software for e-readers. Though social reading has yet to really take off among e-ficionados, SubText has one snazzy feature that sets it apart from the crowd -- author annotations and other enhancements included in the first 18 books to be released. Publishers Lunch reports that extras include character updates by Frances Mayes to Under the Tuscan Sun, comments by book critic David Ulin in Nathaniel West's Miss Lonelyhearts and commentary by George R.R. Martin's editor and research in Game of Thrones. Will you be testing out SubText?

Phobophobics, beware: In honor of Halloween, Merriam-Webster Online has compiled a list of the frighteningly best phobias. From kakorrhaphiophobia (fear of failure) to phobophobia (fear of developing a phobia), these creepy Greek tongue-twisters will get you in the holiday spirit. Check out the list, especially if you're feeling a case of ergophobia (fear of work) and need a break.

Literate lovers: Reading has always been a romantic pastime, and lovers have been giving each other meaningfully symbolic tomes since Gutenberg. A new Tumblr site, The Books They Gave Me, pays homage to literature's role in romance. Readers submit the stories of books they received from beaus and their tales are compiled on the site. Though the list skews toward poetry (Yeates, Blake), there are some unromantic books (Allen and Greenough's New Latin Grammar, Another Bullshit Night in Suck City) with surprisingly romantic stories attached. What books do you associate with love?

Top tips: Two items from publishing expert Rick Frishman caught our attention this week: how to be as disciplined as novelist Nicholas Sparks and how to use Amazon to figure out what your readers want. An interview with bestseller Sparks emphasized the importance of writing every day. "You have to be disciplined to be successful," writes interviewer Jeff Rivera. "You have to sit your butt down in that chair and write, no matter what." When it comes to figuring out what to type once you get your butt in the chair, Amazon can be a valuable resource. Search for books that are similar to your idea and "ask yourself, if someone bought this other book would they be a good candidate to purchase mine?" Then read reviews to see what readers loved, and what they could have done without.

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2011-10-24T12:00:00.095-04:00

Twicks of the trade: Between the pressure to maintain a social media presence and the need to finish your next writing project, finding a digital-analog balance can be challenging for many writing pros. In the latest issue of the Columbia Journalism Review, a group of science writers -- and twitterholics -- explore this "twicky" topic and share a number of helpful insights. One writer found that shutting down his online correspondence for a few hours allowed him the time he needed to write his book. Other writers relied on time diaries to monitor their hours spent online. How do you get everything done, on and offline?

Provocative print: Good news word nerds -- smart is officially the new sexy. At least according to the tagline of a new ad campaign by the Newspaper Association of America, which is trying to counter the notion that print is dead. The Times' Media Decoder Blog reports that the ads, featuring a cartoon of an attractive woman reading a newspaper, aim to promote the idea that people who read newspapers are cultured, intelligent, informed. . . . and thus desireable. Think this campaign will be effective? Or is too late for print to revamp its image?

Success story: Two recent posts from social media guru Chris Brogan caught our eye, especially since they address the writerly task of storytelling. Brogan expounds on the importance of storytelling for businesses, and gives tips on how to craft stories that your customers can identify with. And to help tell that story, Brogan shows how Google+ can be a fantastic storytelling tool. He argues that regular, searchable posts will help "save your seat around the table" in between sales activity and engage with your customers. How do you use social media to tell and sell your story?

The 411 on SEO: To stand out amid the digital din, we are often encouraged to harness the power of Search Engine Optimization -- using algorithms to get your blog to show up on page one of Google results. But Erin MacPherson, an author and SEO expert, argues in a provocative post that it's a waste of time for most writers, unless you know how to do it right. Check out her tips for figuring out the best SEO strategy (or lack thereof) for getting your blog or book noticed. Has SEO worked for you?

The latest Word in local book stores: Bibliophiles in New York take note/heart -- there's something good growing in Greenpoint. The New York Times reported over the weekend about the opening of a delightful sounding bookshop-around-the-corner in this up-and-coming section of Brooklyn called Word. The store "not only stocks books but also strives to create a community of people who love them," reports the Times. Word features an eclectic mix of books as well as a well-read staff and a variety of quirky events like magic shows, read-athons and a basketball league. We look forward to getting some reviews from our NYC friends.

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2011-10-21T11:54:00.001-04:00

Why I Write: Thursday was the third annual National Day on Writing and to celebrate, the National Writing Project asked writers of all stripes to submit essays on why they've chosen to be professional word nerds. The responses they got provide a illuminating cross-section of writerly motivation and affection. If you have some free time, we encourage you to check them out here. You can also search #whyiwrite on Twitter to read some additional commentary. And if you are feeling particularly inspired, tell us what moves you to write.

Hard Times in New York town: Monday's front-page New York Times story on Amazon's (relatively) new publishing venture continues to provoke strong reactions in book world. As we noted, the response from those who have followed this story from the beginning ranged from "Duh!" to dumbfounded. Publishers Marketplace dissected the kerfuffle yesterday and concluded that, instead of taking a balanced look at the digital e-volution, the New York Times is now basing all their publishing coverage on the idea that "everything is a response to Amazon." What do you think about the criticism of the Times coverage?

Perils of publishing, part two: One overlooked nugget in the Times Amazon article is the story of how novelist Kiana Davenport got dropped by her publisher after she self-published some old short stories on Amazon. If you didn't catch it, Penguin imprint Riverhead Books cancelled Davenport's novel and asked her to return the advance after discovering she had published the stories on Amazon to make some extra cash, ostensibly violating her contract. Davenport's story is a cautionary tale to those trying to make ends meet by bridging the digital-analog divide and possibly a sign that publishing contracts desperately need an update. Check out the Times' follow-up blog post sharing more details of the complicated story.What do you think of the controversy?

Avoid dreadoric, write redonkulously: Say what you will about the Internet's effect on the English language, but one result of writing on the web has been a new crop of very fun made-up words. Ragan polled its readers to find out their favorite neologisms, and compiled a list of the top ten responses. Two of our favorites: "amazulous" (amazing and fabulous) and "drismal" (weather that is cold, gloomy and drizzling). If you have your coinage you'd like to add to the realm, let us know.

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2011-10-19T14:08:00.000-04:00

Crowd out: Here's a novel twist on the old new media practice of crowd sourcing. New York Times book critic Dwight Garner turned to Twitter for some public speaking advice yesterday, asking for his followers' top tips. The responses ranged from the practical ("Wear a watch") to the kooky ("Accupressure"). What advice would you give the Timesman?

Mult-e-tasking: Though the e-book market is rapidly growing, many authors wonder if penning an e-book is worth the extra effort when they're working in print as well. Alexis Grant, a journalist and social media maven, strongly advises digital double dipping. She suggests using e-books to supplement your traditional writing -- for example, writing an online-only how-to guide that complements your other work and shows off your expertise. This engages your audience, creates extra revenue and drives traffic to your blog. Has this strategy worked for any of you?

Perennial hope: With the publishing industry in an unprecedented state of flux, there are a few publishers that seem to be making lemonade out of e-volution lemons. Salon has singled out the HarperCollins imprint Harper Perennial as a particular success. Harper Perennial focuses on young, unknown authors who write quirky or avant garde fiction. With small advances to keep costs down and a particular focus on design, Harper Perennial works like a small press inside the publishing giant. Check out the article and let us know what you think -- are imprints like Harper Perennial the way to keep fiction publishing alive?

Book blasphemy or blessing? Though e-readers may have their flaws, they certainly have print books beat when it comes to conserving space. As any bibliophile with limited shelf space knows, books are heavy, bulky and fill up bookshelves quickly. One Japanese company has proposed a suitably high-tech solution: you ship them your books, they scan them to PDF, your books get recycled. This seems like a win-win for tech-savvy book lovers, who get to keep the text of their books for their e-readers while freeing up shelf space. But others see the pulping of books in exchange for electronic text as practically sacrilege, reports the New Yorker. Would you ever trade in your paperbacks for PDFs?

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2011-10-17T11:00:00.224-04:00

Amazon eats New York. . . . There's no clearer indication of how deeply the e-volution has shaken up the book world than today's front-page New York Times story on Amazon's aggressive move into the publishing space. As the Times reports to the larger world, Amazon's new publishing imprint, headed by literary magnate Larry Kirshbaum, will put out more than 122 titles this fall -- putting it in direct competition with publishers of all sizes. This new-found ability to develop, promote, and deliver their own product is a game changer that many equate to the arrival of Gutenberg's printing press. Amazon remains tight-lipped about the details specific to their new venture (no one knows how many editors they've employed or exactly how many books they have under contract) and these uncertainties have only helped intensify the traditional industry's already profound fear factor. As a top Amazon exec so aptly puts it, "The only really necessary people in the publishing process are the writer and reader. Everyone who stands between those two has both risk and opportunity."

. . . . And New York snickers in response: The Times story may have been eye-opening to many of its readers, but it was old news to industry followers -- and thus the subject of much snark on the interwebs. The New York Observer headlined its cheeky response, "Times Discovers Amazon Publishing." Publishers Marketplace went a step further, referring to the Times story as “Things You Know About Amazon’s Publishing, Rounded Up Into an Article.” This was definitely a classic case of the Times coming late to a trend-y party. But we wonder if the all the mocking was masking something deeper. Thoughts?

Words of self-pub wisdom: For those of you about to embark on the adventure of self-publishing, we wanted to turn you on to an illuminating tale of trials and successes that we stumbled upon over the weekend. The non-profit Echoing Green recently went through the experience of self-publishing a book and EG's leaders shared their story of DIY advantages and pitfalls on the Book Doctors blog. Though they sometimes struggled without the support of a publisher, Echoing Green used their industry connections, ingenuity and flexibility to create the self-pub project they always wanted. Has their story inspired you to test the self-publishing waters?

Happy Dictionary Day! Yesterday was the 253rd birthday of Noah Webster, making it national Dictionary Day. The MacMillan Dictionary Blog describes Webster -- who was born in Gotham founder Dan Gerstein's hometown of West Hartford -- as "the father of American lexicography." He strove to create a dictionary that was uniquely American, celebrating the immigrant influence and simplifying spellings (he's the reason we don't spell it "colour"). If you didn't get the chance to celebrate yesterday, dust off your Merriam-Webster today and remember the man who started it all.

Super Size your career: Journalist and documentary filmmaker Morgan Spurlock -- best known for the mega-hit "Super Size Me" -- is looking for the next great (failed) attempt at the American novel. GalleyCat reports that Spurlock has put out a casting call on their job board and is looking for a few lucky literary failures from the New York area to feature in an upcoming documentary series. Here's more about the project: "This brand new series 'failure club,' is about embracing the fear of failure in order to change your life. Meeting each week over the course of a year, 7 different people will come together to form this unique club where they will help each other achieve things they have only dreamed of." If you can swallow your pride, follow this link to apply for the series.

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2011-10-14T11:54:00.000-04:00

Prae tell: This year's Republican presidential debates have not exactly provided many teachable rhetorical moments. But the language blog Logophilius managed to find an enlightening one buried in Tuesday's GOP confab at Dartmouth -- a textbook example of praetoritio. That's the term for the "rhetorical device in which a speaker invokes a subject by saying that it shouldn't or wouldn't be invoked," writes Logophilius blogger Andy Hollandbeck. When Jon Huntsman teased fellow Mormon Mitt Romney by prefacing his question, "Since this discussion is all about economics, Governor Romney, I promise this won't be about religion," he used a praetoritio. Now we'll be on the lookout for the praetoritio -- and the apophasis and paralipsis -- throughout the campaign season.

Book Award blues: The shortlist for the National Book Award was announced on Wednesday, and the fiction list has some literary commentators scratching their heads. The titles are mostly low-profile works, and two acclaimed novels from this year -- The Art of Fielding and The Marriage Plot -- were overlooked entirely. After several years of surprising short lists, Salon writer Laura Miller is fed up with the "esoteric" nature of NBA. Readers don't want to be recommended a book by a "writer's writer" that they won't enjoy, and Miller argues that "the NBA has come to indicate a book that somebody else thinks you ought to read, whether you like it or not." Will you be reading this year's NBA shortlist, or are the recommended titles too much like the "literary equivalent of spinach?"

Publisaur: One of the favorite parlor games in the book world is guessing when the publishing house as we know it goes extinct. This week digital publishing guru Mike Shatzkin raised some e-stablishment eyebrows by predicting the end may well be in sight. Writing on his influential Idea Logical blog, Shatzkin argues that e-books will make up the majority of the market sooner than we think, and that more and more websites, media outlets and brands will choose to just publish their own e-books rather than share revenue with a publisher. If no one buys print books, who needs a publisher? Take a look at his provocative argument and let us know what you think: are traditional publishers done for in the digital age?

Speechmaker Matchmaker: Vital Speeches kingpin David Murray pointed us to a snazzy new service that connects speakers looking for exposure with event organizers and media outlets. SpeakerFile bills itself as "the global source for thought leaders," and believes "there's a better way to publish the expert talent that lies undiscovered in many organizations." The company strives to connect these "key opinion leaders" with speakers bureaus and event organizers, and to help companies and events find qualified speakers and experts. SpeakerFile is currently pre-registering qualified speakers and you can sign up on their website here.

Boys (and girls) club: Book clubs have customarily been single-sex events; very rarely do the genders ever mix over novels, pastries and red wine. But in a marketing push for two new novels that appeal to both sexes, HarperPerennial and Plume are trying out a few new meeting moves to bridge the gender gap. The Ultra Violet Reading Challenge promotes the new novels Domestic Violets and The Violets of March and encourages violet-themed co-ed book parties, with the publishers offering prizes and a chance to talk to the authors online. Will you be joining in on the co-ed book club fun? (h/t GalleyCat)

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2011-10-12T11:23:00.000-04:00

Book burnout: When you work as a professional wordsmith, nothing is so terrifying as feeling stuck in a project you can't write your way out of. Though sometimes all it takes is a long walk or a strong cup of coffee to get you back on track, how do you know when a book is hopeless and it's time to abandon script? In an instructive interview with GalleyCat, novelist Tony D'Souza recently recounted his experience with this dilemma -- how he threw in the towel on his novel, started from scratch and wrote a better book for it. Have you ever had to retire a manuscript you knew wasn't working?

Novel ideas: What do Wuthering Heights and your most recent white paper have in common? More than you might think, according to a recent report from Ragan. Our friend Russell Working surveyed writers who are corporate communicators by day, novelists by night, and nailed down eight fiction-writing tips that can help jazz up your corporate copy. From storytelling to pacing to skillful use of dialogue, creative writing techniques can help make your communication more engaging. What literary techniques do you use in your day job?

Reading cold turk-e: The advent of the e-reader has been met with mixed feelings from bibliophiles; the cost of losing the physical book can sometimes be outweighed by the opportunity to buy more books without overburdening already crammed bookshelves. Edward Stourton, a journalist and book-buying addict, swore off new book purchases for an entire year and limited himself to his personal library and a Kindle. In a humorous essay about his experience for the Financial Times, he claims he wasn't completely converted by the e-readers charms, but is no longer a total book-loving luddite either. Would you ever try a year of reading differently?

NaNoWriMo: Ladies and gentlemen, dust off your keyboards -- November is National Novel Writing Month. Agent and blogger Rachelle Gardner gave us the heads-up about this exciting novel-writing challenge. Writers from all over the world will commit to writing 50,000 words of their novel in the month of November. Just sign up on the website for access to events, forums and an online word count to track your progress. Will you be participating in NaNoWriMo?

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2011-10-10T13:41:00.000-04:00

Writer, heal thyself's copy: As we all know, it's much easier to catch and correct mistakes in others' writing than in our own. But what if you don't have the luxury of tapping an outside set of eyes to copyedit your material before submitting it for publication? In that case, you might want to check out this handy self-editing cheat sheet that Subversive Copy Editor blogger Carol Saller recently posted over the weekend on the Chronicle of Higher Education's Lingua Franca page. Her list of things to look out for (like "throat clearing" and pet phrases) and things you can probably ignore (the passive voice, split infinitives) are sure to help you through your next round of solo proofing. What tricks do you use when editing your own prose?

Consider the footnote: Of all the casualties in the publishing e-volution -- brick-and-mortar bookstores, that distinctive book smell -- it should come as no surprise that the footnote has been an afterthought. Footnotes in most e-books have been relegated to the back of the text, making them endnotes, and therefore even less likely to be read. This frustrates footnote-happy authors like Alexandra Horowitz, who addressed the issue in a New York Times essay last week. "The e-book isn't killing the book," she wrote. "Instead, it's killing the 'page' " -- and the footnote along with it. Would you be sad to see the footnote go?

The future of English? Over the last few decades, linguists have watched English spread globally to become the dominant tongue in international business, politics and technology. But now that China, India, and other non-Western nations are rising on the world stage, can we safely assume English will remain the dominant lexical currency -- or could it go the way of Latin after the fall of Rome? Linguistic scholar Dennis Barron takes this foundational question for a spin on the Oxford University Press blog, exploring the possibility that English my evolve in localized spin-off languages, like Latin and the Romance languages, or that a different tongue may find supremacy altogether. Where do you see the future of English headed?

Please Publish Me: Another humor blog has found publishing success in an increasingly familiar Cinderella story. PleaseFireMe.com -- a site chronicling the struggles of the mal-employed -- just sold the book rights to Citadel Press, reports GalleyCat. Blogs are becoming a popular source for publishers scouting for new humor books, and many bloggers are jumping at the chance to go from the minimal revenue of blog life to a publishing deal and an advance. What's your bet on the next cult blog to score a book deal?

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2011-10-07T11:42:00.000-04:00

iLanguage: Of all the transformative contributions Steve Jobs made to the way we create and communicate, one of the least appreciated is his influence on modern language. To that point, word nerd extraordinaire Ben Zimmer is out with an enlightening column looking at Jobs' gift of gab.
From "Think Different" to the incredible "i" prefix, Jobs's talent for exciting language was closely linked with Apple's success as a brand and cultural force. How will your remember Jobs's lexical legacy?

Amazon for the underdog? Thriller author Barry Eisler made waves in the publishing world earlier this year when he turned down a half-million dollar deal with St. Martin's Press in favor of self-publishing his newest book. But when he accepted a hybrid deal from Amazon instead of going completely solo, e-volution advocates cried foul. Eisler spoke out about his e-publishing experience in an illuminating interview with NPR this morning, saying that he was finished with "legacy" publishers, but he didn't see a problem working with Amazon. As he put it, "If I can find a way to get readers books that cost less, and are delivered better and faster, I want that."

Self-published cinema: Self-publishing service Author Solutions is going Hollywood -- literally. The company has started a $1 million fund to acquire film rights from its self-published authors. Author Solutions has also started to finance in-house screenplay development, a strategy usually employed by traditional publishers, not self-publishing platforms. Though the project is still in its early stages, we're interested to see where it leads. Could a self-published title turn into a box office hit?

SpeechTube: Political speech junkies, rejoice! Now all the campaign speeches, debates and ads you could ever want to watch are just a convenient click away with a new U.S. politics channel from YouTube. Since YouTube has become increasingly present in the American political process -- Obama's YouTube town hall, for example -- the site has launched a dedicated political channel just in time for the 2012 presidential campaign. In addition to videos, the channel will also feature interactive statistics and analytics. Could YouTube be the new source for all things presidential? (via Mashable).

Around the Word

2011-10-05T12:48:00.002-04:00

France's (other) oldest profession: Our ghostwriter brethren on the other side of the Atlantic made headlines last weekend when the Wall Street Journal published a feature on the écrivain public, the public writer. Public writers -- who have been around in France since the 1200s -- help mostly working class people with resumes, job applications and bureaucratic paperwork, though they are also known to write speeches, eulogies, family histories and the occasional love letter. Public writing, both freelance and government-sponsored, "is enjoying a resurgence lately," according to the Journal. We're happy to see global ghosts finding work; we just wish they were known by the cool-sounding French translation of "ghostwriter" -- écrivain fantôme.

Isn't it ironic? Irony is one of those tricky rhetorical devices that (ironically?) people often misuse. From eye-rolling teenagers to Alanis Morissette, irony has been appropriated, mangled and redefined by popular culture. If you need a refresher on the correct way to use irony, Ragan recently offered a helpful primer on the subject. Check out their do's and don'ts and let us know if you've seen jarring examples in need of ironing out.

Creative destruction: We all know the Great Recession has hit writers and other creative freelancers especially hard, but how do we measure the collective toll its taken on our community and the culture we help create? Salon has set out to answer this question with a series on erosion of America's "creative class. In the first of the series, out this week, writer Scott Timber focuses in on the economic impact the Great Recession has had on the arts -- from shuttering independent record stores to folding newspapers. This doesn't bode well for what had been a vibrant sector of the U.S. economy. "What the United States produces now is culture and ideas," Timber argues. "Trouble is, making a living doing this has never been harder." As a member of the creative class, what has your Great Recession experience been?

Perseus the self-publisher: Though self-publishing has been mostly an avenue for writers trying to avoid the big names in the publishing world, industry stalwart Perseus Books Group made a splash this week by throwing its traditional hat into the DIY ring. Its new service will be available only to authors represented by an agency that has signed an agreement with Perseus. And according to the New York Times, it will also offer "a favorable revenue split that is unusual in the industry: 70 percent to the author and 30 percent to the distributor." What do you think about a mega-publisher like Perseus trying to go solo?

Book borrowing for dummies: Lending a cherished book to a friend, only to have it returned dog-eared and stained, can be a traumatic experience for a bibliophile. To avoid book borrowing missteps, check out this post from Modern Manners Guy on the etiquette of lending out your personal library. Though if you have to remind your friends that "books are not plates," you might want to get new friends.

Could E-books Breed Apathy?

2011-10-04T10:47:00.000-04:00

By Katherine Don

Last month, I read a book on a Kindle for the first time. But it wasn’t the first time I had read this particular book; I first read Haruki Murakami's Norwegian Wood about six years ago, when I was a few years older than the book’s adolescent protagonist, Toru Watanabe. Years later, I couldn’t remember the book’s plot as well as I could remember the feeling it left behind – something of mournful nostalgia, muted emotions, angst and heartbreak. I also remembered the book itself. It was a light paperback, fluttery and vulnerable, like the book’s female characters. The cover image was a close-up likeness of a woman’s face. Her expression is woeful and distant but otherwise impossible to interpret. The colors are bright pink and bright purple and bright yellow: the contrast between this chromatic cheerfulness and the sadness of the face and the tragedy of the novel itself left an indelible impression: my memory of the book is bound with this cover image. I read the first chapters in the living room of my mom’s house during the summer between my sophomore and junior year of college; I remember that bright cover in the summer sun of the glass-walled room. I read the latter part of the book upstairs, in a dark bedroom, and as the novel’s morbid plot revealed itself fully, that wraithly face on the cover changed expression in the shadows.

When I re-read this book on a Kindle last month, I disliked it. I found the writing to be simplistic, the characters flat, the plot insipid. I attribute most of this to my changing tastes as a reader. But I was surprised by the depths of my apathy toward a book I had once liked so much. I wondered if my reaction would have been different had I read from the old paperback copy. I would have disliked the writing itself, surely, but perhaps something of what I felt before would have stirred within me. The synesthetic clashing of words and smells and tastes and sounds and images that coupled the book and its cover with the story inside the book is singular; it is tied to me, my memories, the physical book, and the story. When reading Norwegian Wood on a Kindle, I was overwhelmed by a surprisingly urgent impulse to go home and find that paperback.

In a post entitled “In which, Emphatically and Forever, I Decline to Care How Books Smell,” NPR blogger Linda Holmes lampoons the army of luddites who lament the smell-less-ness of e-books. In response, Holmes lists the various perks of e-books: changeable font size; affordability; convenience. She also mistakes the obsession with olfaction as being a simple matter of olfactory preference: “I’m not offended by people who like how books smell,” she writes. “Everything can and should have fans…the problem comes when you imply that if you do not have that instinct, then there is something missing from your life as a reader.”

For me, a book’s smell falls under two categories: Smells that lead to sneezing; smells that don’t lead to sneezing. (I’m allergic to must.) I suspect that many have latched onto “smell” as the easiest way to express something more complex that they find lacking in e-books. As Holmes points out in her blog, those who complain about smell begin with the smell hypothesis, but then discuss seemingly unrelated factors, such as where they read the book or where they bought the book.

Immanent in a physical book is not just a particular smell, texture, size, color, design and weight, but also the exchange of the book, which takes place at a store, through the mail, or elsewhere as a hand-to-hand exchange. These transactions become memories, and for me, these memories become inextricable from the meaning of the story within the book. When I later recall a book’s content, I find this recollection colored by memories of where I found it, who gave it to me, its weight, its size, its look. An e-book, in contrast, is always bought onscreen, absent a conversation with a bookseller or a drive to a friend’s apartment to pick the book up. Font and format notwithstanding, its physical presence is always identical to other books viewed on the e-reader.

This is all rather self-evident, and one could easily argue that a book’s actual meaning is better off unadulterated by the sandwiching context of the book’s purchase or the oppressive influence of the book’s smell. What I’m concerned about here is the actual formation and retention of memory, which is influenced by the five senses, and retention of narrative, which is influenced by the context in which a narrative is told.

Smell, for example, indeed prompts access to stored memories -- but only when a person is confronted again with the same smell. Similarly, recollection of a particular narrative is dislodged from stored memory in the brain when an individual enters the place in which the narrative was told, or is confronted with an object that provokes recollection of the narrative. For a book, this could mean picking the book up or entering the location in which the book was sold. Could the sensory void of an e-book actually diminish our ability to remember the content and meaning of the book within? And if so, might books with political or polemic ambitions be less influential if read on an e-reader?

To explore context and physicality as it relates to the influence of a particular book, let’s analyze the original editions of Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, a pamphlet that is often cited as inciting the Revolutionary War.

Historians contend that Common Sense was widely disseminated throughout the U.S. within months of first publication in 1776. Its power is recalled as magical, as though every American read Common Sense and then instantly hated the British. In truth, it’s possible that the pamphlet’s success was propelled by a highly publicized conflict between Paine and his publisher, Robert Bell, who released the second edition of Common Sense one week after the first edition sold out before first consulting Paine – who, irate, went to a second publisher, William and Thomas Bradford, to print a new third edition. This set off an escalating war between Bell (as the first publisher) and the Bradfords (as the second publishers) which resulted in sixteen separate editions of Common Sense that were published in Philadelphia alone.

As scholar Trish Loughran writes in Disseminating Common Sense: Thomas Paine and the Problem of the Early National Bestseller,

“Paine’s commercial dispute with Bell was, in many ways, as crucial to the book’s celebrity as were its arguments for independence. Not only did this debate ensure, quite apart from the issue of demand, that twice the number of copies would be printed in Philadelphia (one set by Bell and one set by the Bradfords), but it also made the book a kind of local scandal whose fifteen minutes of fame lasted several months as Bell (at his own expense) and Bradford (at Paine’s expense) repeatedly displayed dueling full-page advertisements in opposite columns of the Pennsylvania Evening Post, each making claims not for or against independence but for or against the characters of the locally identifiable disputants.”

Loughran imagines that during this time, the politically conscious and higher class consumers of Common Sense might have bought the different editions as a type of prized commodity. She also points out that while Common Sense probably sold around 100,000-150,000 copies -- astronomical for that time -- many of these were purchased by the same individuals, and copies sold outside of Philadelphia would have been delivered in small and highly anticipated bundles along the King’s Highway, which ran all the way to New York City. As a physical commodity, the early editions of Common Sense were highly prized objects that would have been excitedly purchased and discussed at local bookstores all over the east coast.

The driving forces behind an e-book’s success are very different. They consist of a similarly mysterious tipping point in popular excitement -- an author’s blog explodes overnight; clicks on Amazon increase exponentially; a review is written; clicks explode again -- yet this all occurs onscreen, as does the reading of the book. Since our memories are influenced by context and physicality, will a reader feel the same visceral allegiance to a popular e-book as to a highly anticipated paper book? And when the book is polemical and requests action born of passion on the part of the reader, does the author’s task become more difficult when the finished product is not something that can be traded and held, but words in electronic typeface that with the pressing of a button will be replaced with different words from a different book? When the commodity is the e-reader itself, does the content of one particular book, held fleetingly onscreen, somehow get filed away as ‘less important’ during the context-sensitive process of memory storage and retrieval?

Loughran wrote of the influence of Common Sense:

“To the degree that printed texts—like Paine’s pamphlet, or later, the Constitution—are able to solve key problems in modern political economy (and ideologically there can be no doubt that they do just this), it is not solely because they emanate from no place, or no one, in particular, but because they have the peculiar ability to be both particular and non-particular at once. We might say that every book has, like the King before it, two bodies—one that is present in the form of a reliably fixed, real, and always self-identical material text and the other that is promised by its endlessly reproducible, presumably identical, counterparts.”

With an e-book, the body of the “endlessly reproducible, presumably identical, counterparts” becomes the sole body of the text. Books read on an e-reader are peculiarly non-particular. As for the possibility that this renders them peculiarly ineffective in evoking certain stripes of passion, or conversely deepening particular shades of apathy, I don’t know, but it’s something I’ve been thinking about.

Katherine Don is a writer and book doctor based in New York. This essay originally appeared on her blog, The Book Don.

Around the Word

2011-10-03T11:42:00.000-04:00

Better off banned? Last week was banned books week, and lit lovers around the country celebrated the freedom to read their favorite controversial tomes. But the contrarians over at Salon.com opted to turn the celebration on its head and asked their readers which time-dishonored books you wish were banned. The cringe de la cringe, so to speak, of the classics that teens have been force-fed for years. Answers ranged from Lord of the Flies to A Tale of Two Cities to a particularly sadistic assignment of Ivanhoe. What required reading did you wish was verboten?

That's one way to knock 'em dead: For all you speechwriters looking up to freshen up your repertoire, check out Vital Speeches guru David Murray's profile of "celebrant" Neil Dorward. Celebrants are professional speakers who specialize in writing and delivering eulogies at secular funerals. Murray met Dorward, author of The Guide to a Dead Brilliant Funeral Speech, at the recent U.K. speechwriters conference and became intrigued by the broader applications of Dorward's unusual niche -- and its personal rewards. "I am offering comfort, closure, healing, dignity, and meaningful words. I am invited to be part of their precious lives for a few days and I know, I truly know, that what I say and how I say it, makes a real difference to people’s lives," Dorward reports.

Talk verby to me: Remember the days when "Google" was just a noun? Verbing, "the denominalization of nouns into verbs," has become a regular ritual in modern English, and the results can range from useful to grating. While it seems natural to us to "host" a party, asking a colleague to "dialogue" sounds obnoxious. As Mark Nichols over at Daily Writing Tips puts it, "It's a democratic process: If a neologism appeals to you, promote it by using it. If it appalls you, demote it by eschewing it." What are your favorite, and least favorite, verbified words?

Social reading: With all the hype about the rumored changes to Facebook, one thing has word nerds particularly excited. Facebook is reportedly expanding the "like" function to allow users to share what they "listened," "watched" and, wait for it, "read." If the all-powerful Facebook is endorsing reading with the click of a button, that must be good news for the written word, right? Will you be using Facebook to share your recent reads?

Around the Word

2011-09-30T13:03:00.001-04:00

More than just, like, a tic? Ever since the Valley Girl emerged onto the American cultural scene, language lovers have been fighting against a particularly exasperating enemy: "like." Young people are the most likely to use this sometimes grating linguistic placeholder, nervously interjecting "like" every few words and driving their elders berserk. But Trinity College professor and Lingua Franca blogger Lucy Ferris isn't so quick to judge those who use "like," arguing that it can serve a more complicated linguistic function than just an annoyance. "Like"has been analyzed in all sorts of roles, including "as an aspect of 'sluicing' or elided speech; as a presentation of dramatized dialogue; as a useful point of departure for the study of the interactions of components of grammar." What do you think? Is there more to like about "like?"

How to become well noun: Forget writing the great American novel. If you really want to make your mark on the English language, work on becoming a noun. NPR science reporters Adam Cole and Robert Krulwich took a look at the people and history behind some common nouns, from Jules Leotard to Samuel Maverick to Charles Boycott. But be careful what you wish for -- sometimes being objectified isn't all it's cracked up to be. Joseph-Ignace Guillotin's family changed their name after the guillotine was named after him.

The Times, they are a-changin': The New York Times made history today by printing its first ever emoticon headline. The headline -- "Study of Twitter messages tracks when we are :)" -- was originally only intended for the web, but received so much buzz that it made it into the print edition as well. The Washington Post also embraced Twitter-speak when covering the same story. Their headline read, "Twitter study: We <3 wknds & a.m." Okay, grammar guardians: Is this a breach of professionalism? Or just all in good fun? (via The New York Observer)

Investigative crowdfunding: We've been keenly following/weighing the pros and cons of crowdfunding, so we're always interested/encouraged to learn about inventive new writing projects finding success on Kickstarter. 10,000 Words pointed us to three especially enterprising investigative journalism projects -- on Libya, the Great Recession and the world of crystal meth -- that are being funded through Kickstarter. Check out these campaigns if you need some crowdfunding inspiration of your own, or to donate to some worthy projects.

Engaging grammar guides: These aren't your grandmother's grammar books. Over at the Writing Resource, Erin Brenner knows that not all language books are boring, and she picked out some of the most entertaining and unique books about words she knows. Check out her reviews of Alphabetter Juice, On the Dot and How to Read a Word. What's your favorite book on writing and language?

Around the Word

2011-09-28T12:40:00.000-04:00

To blog or not to blog? The conventional wisdom among many book marketing advice-givers is that blogging and social media are the key to your publishing success. But with an online market so saturated with author and writer blogs, is it really worth the effort? Editor and blogger Meghan Ward tackled this topic after a literary agent told her that a blogger would need to get 100,000 unique views a month and have 10,000 Twitter followers before a publisher would take notice. Does that mean everyone without astronomical numbers should step away from the keyboard and give up on blogging? Ward says no, as long as you don't let blogging get in the way of what's really important -- your book. How do you find the book-blog balance?

Speechwriter, check thyself: When you're a professional speaker or speechwriter, objective feedback can be hard to come by. Once the speech is over, there's often no way to evaluate how successful it was -- until now. Vital Speeches guru David Murray pointed us to a new software, Speakcheck, that runs diagnostics of speeches using "quantitative and qualitative data to measure the impact of a speech." With an algorithm based on research and years of communications experience, Speakcheck's diagnostic power might just change the way that we craft speeches.

Ahead of the digital curve: We were impressed to learn this week that novelist Paulo Coelho, who is known for his throwback fables, was publishing his work online before you even bought your first Kindle. The 64-year-old author of The Alchemist has made a habit of pirating his own work and making it available on the Web for people in countries who wouldn't otherwise have access to his books. In an interview with the New York Times, Coelho, who has been named the second-most-influential Twitter celebrity (after Justin Bieber), explained his desire to connect with his fans. "The ivory tower does not exist anymore," he said. "If the reader doesn't like something they'll tell you. He's not or she's not someone that is isolated." Coelho's web presence -- he has more Facebook fans than Madonna -- is inspiring to any writer looking to connect with their readers online.

News from the Great Write North: Two Canadian publishing stories caught our eye this week. BookNet Canada, an agency focused on the publishing supply chain, will begin tracking e-book sales as well as print. E-book sales data tracking is relatively new in North America, and BookNet will be the first agency to attempt this in Canada. Also up north, the the Writer's Union of Canada has come out with a "Writer's Bill of Rights for the Digital Age," meant to address the writer's role in these e-volving times. The document is focused mostly on copyright and contract issues to protect authors as the publishing business model changes. What do you think? Do writers in the U.S. need a digital bill of rights?

Around the Word

2011-09-26T12:08:00.000-04:00

E-book boom: New numbers are in on the digital e-volution, and the e-book trend isn't slowing down any time soon. Especially notable were trade publishers, where e-book production jumped from 50 percent to 76 percent in the last two years. The study, from digital publisher Aptara, also found that one in five e-book publishers makes more than 10 percent of their revenue from e-books.

Happy Punctuation Day! We hope you used some celebratory semicolons this weekend, because Saturday was National Punctuation Day. The day is "a celebration of the lowly comma, correctly used quotation marks, and other proper uses of periods, semi-colons, and the ever-mysterious ellipsis," according to the website of Jeff Rubin, the inventor of the holiday. Check out the site to see how other grammar-philes celebrated a day of punctuation, or head over to the Writing Resource for some punctuation-inspired videos. And if the semicolon really isn't your style, you can try to give it another chance after reading John E. McIntyre's recent column on the most pretentious type of punctuation. How will you celebrate punctuation?

Errorist threat: Looking at a slightly darker side of grammar enthusiasm, the blog Logophilius recently examined the term "Grammar Nazi." A Grammar Nazi "is someone who constantly corrects (sometimes erroneously) other people's grammar and usage." These sticklers for correctness can be irksome in conversation and online, but Logophilius blogger Andy Hollandbeck argues that "Grammar Nazi" might not be the best term. They seem to hone in on any error, not just grammatical, and Nazis just aren't as scary as they once were. That's why he suggests the term "errorist," a combination of "error" and "terrorist." We do think that the label has a nice ring to it. Will you be calling out the next errorist who criticizes your work?

Wiz kid: One sales savvy nineteen year-old already knows the importance of building a platform: he just signed a book deal with a Penguin imprint for a personal finance book based off of his website, helpsavemydollars.com. The NYU student has a budding career as a personal finance advisor for high school and college students. After building a website and promoting it by blogging for the Huffington Post and appearing on just about every news and finance network, he's landed a book deal. Check out his story for some inspiration on the art of self-promotion.

Around the Word

2011-09-23T13:14:00.000-04:00

E-readers and e-writers: Can you be a writer without being a reader? The answer may seem obvious to most of us, but many young, aspiring writers are showing an odd disinterest in consuming the words of others. Writer and editor Buzz Poole tackles this question about the future of prose in a post on the design blog Imprint. Poole worries that the popularity of constant social interaction (via social networking) among young people is creating a generation of would-be writers who are never solitary enough to actually read. He cites Boston University writing teacher William Giraldi, who was moved to understand the looming predicament he observed in his students by addressing it as an open ended analogy, which we invite you to finish: Wanting to write without wanting to read is like wanting to _____ without wanting to _____. Email us your responses, or leave them in the comments below.

The king's speechwriters: If any of you speechwriting pros wonder what life/work is like for our peers across the pond, we'd encourage you to check out this write-up of the recent U.K. Speechwriter's Guild conference by our friend Charles Crawford. He overviews the highs and lows of the public-speaking contests and conference presentations, with one notably universal takeaway. Though many of the presenters were professional speechwriters, that didn't guarantee that they were all particularly polished speakers. As he puts it, "It's one thing to be a good speechwriter. Quite another to be a good public speaker." How do you transition from writer to speaker when delivering a speech?

Editing e-books: In our rapidly changing information age, sometimes a book becomes outdated shortly after it's published. So what do you do if you've written a thriller using Osama bin Laden as a character, only to find out that he's been killed? If you're Richard North Patterson, you jump on the computer and revise the e-book, then make the new version available to consumers. Though second editions and revised versions are nothing new to publishing, e-books have made post-production editing all the easier and speedier, writes Laura Bennett in the New Republic. Authors can go back and change their book with the click of a button, and e-book buyers can have the new version downloaded in seconds. Bennett asks the same question we would: "Is this a sign that our expectation for a book is shifting from finished product to perpetual work-in-progress -- or just the logical conclusion of a long tradition of multiple, unstable texts?"

The all-powerful "awesome": A word that has gone from reverent to surfer slang to ubiquitous to slightly retro, "awesome" is often the default adjective of praise for just about anything. How did Americans develop such a love-hate, slightly obsessive relationship with this not-so-super superlative? Check out this story in Intelligent Life magazine about the evolution of the term. It's pretty (ahem) awesome.

Hyphen hype: The hyphen is a particularly slippery grammatical tool. For example, why are "follow" and "up" sometimes hyphenated and other times not? Why is "de-emphasize" hyphenated while "debrief" is not? To avoid any future hyphen missteps, check out this refresher from Ragan on the rules for using this tricky little dash.

Around the Word

2011-09-21T12:14:00.002-04:00

Jersey scorn: Professional jealousy is a significant hazard of the writing trade -- watching your friends and cohorts win awards and climb best-seller lists while you type away in obscurity can be hugely frustrating. Novelist Valerie Frankel tackles the topic of the green-eyed monster in a recent essay for the Daily Beast. She admits to hating every friend, acquaintance and stranger who ever made the New York Times best-seller list -- until a foray into ghostwriting, and a petite "Jersey Shore" heroine, helped her get there herself. Frankel collaborated with "Shore" star Snooki on her best-selling memoir, A Shore Thing. Though high-grossing celebrity memoirs, like the Kardashian sisters' new book, sometimes make us rage with jealousy, we find that the cure is to think about the anonymous ghost behind the glamour.

Real genius: Speaking of professional jealousy, several well-known writers and storytellers were awarded MacArthur foundation "genius grants" this week. RadioLab host Jad Abumrad, poet Kay Ryan and New Yorker writer Peter Hessler were among the literary types to each win a $500,000 grant. We're happy to see so many writers get an award that often goes to more scientifically-minded creators. For a list of all the word nerd winners, check out this post on GalleyCat.

The EP of e-books? We wrote on Monday about traditional news publishers venturing into the e-book market as a medium for long-form content. Now, the Columbia Journalism Review has delved deeper into the subject, looking at e-books as an opportunity for journalists to quickly release pieces that are too long for a magazine, but too short for a book. E-"booklet" publishers, like Byliner and the Atavist, have seen success with these in-between pieces, and they've taken advantage of new technology to give writers more flexibility in their word counts. "Thousand-word pieces are not in human DNA and neither are 400-page reported books," writes Alissa Quart for the CJR. "They were in the pre-digital marketplace's DNA, though." Do you think these digital booklets will find an audience?

Back to school: Thanks to the power of the Internet, you can now hear Ivy League-level lectures without paying a dime in college tuition. YouTube's educational channel, YouTube EDU, offers recordings of lectures from schools like Harvard, Yale and MIT, and GalleyCat has combed the site for the best writing and lit lectures at top universities. Check out the talks from luminaries like Ray Bradbury, Clive Cussler and Penelope Lively and let us know what you think.

Fill-in-the-blank: The Eloquent Woman is taking a poll on public speaking, and the results are a good cross-section of the trials and tribulations of being a professional speaker. So, we thought we would ask our gracious ghosts to give their opinion on the topic. The prompt asks you to finish this sentence: "I'd enjoy public speaking more if..." Leave your answer in the comments or send it to us on Twitter (@GothamGhosts) to let your voice be heard.

Around the Word

2011-09-19T12:08:00.000-04:00

All the e-books fit to print? As print media accelerates its acculturation to digial, the line between long articles on the web and e-books has been getting increasingly blurry. To wit: the New York Times reported yesterday on the growing number of traditional news outlets -- including the Times, the Huffington Post, Politico and the New Yorker -- that are morphing into e-book publishers. The topical tomes that these outlets are selling, mostly written by their staffers, are being touted as a low-cost way to create a new revenue stream. Do you think these news organizations can handle this double duty?

The electronic campfire: With all the overhyped hand-wringing over the death of books going on today, we love to hear (and share) contrarian perspectives from smart publishing types who see the upside of the e-volution for writers and writing. A great example is this fresh take on an old metaphor from Molly Barton, president of the online writers' community Book Country. While storytelling originated as an oral form, where the speaker would stand up at the campfire and see how his audience reacted to the story, modern prose is a more solitary process. In the age of social media, "what if we could create lots of little fires around which writers could tell their stories and gauge the reaction of a keen audience?" Barton asks. Can crowdsourcing make for more inventive fiction and more compelling journalism? What do you think about writing for the crowd?

Kick-start your crowdfunding: Speaking of harnessing the power of the crowd, a new Kickstarter-like service specifically for book projects, called Pubslush, has hit the Interwebs and caught our attention. According to eBookNewser, "Readers can get a sample chapter of the book, and if they want to purcahse it, they can 'fund' the project." Though other "Kickstarter for books" sites, like Unbound, have encountered problems, it seems like Pubslush has a model that might work. Check it out and let us know if you agree.

Impressive imprint: As traditional publishers downsize and disappear, it's always heartening to see an independent publisher with a long history still thriving. Douglas & McIntyre, one of the largest indie publishers left in Canada, has just turned 40 and is going as strong as ever, reports the Vancouver Sun. Co-founder Scott McIntyre has seen a rapidly changing industry since he started the house in 1972. "I've never seen a rate of change like this," he told the Sun. "I've never seen conflicting signals of this kind." What's his secret to survival in this new landscape? Embracing e-books, venturing into digital start-ups, and maintaining a varied catalogue of books. "We're enormously proud of our survival skills," said McIntyre.

Gotham in the News

2011-09-16T12:55:00.001-04:00

Our ghosts have weighed in on a heated topic: is it necessary to know grammar terminology to be a good writer? In a poll by Ragan's Russell Working, he received explosive and polarizing responses from our writers on both sides of the debate. With a mind favoring instinct over formal instruction, Charles Graeber replied, "Would you ever ask a painter if he needs to understand the physics of perspective? Does a speaker need to understand the Latin root of a word in order to employ that correctly? Sure, it might help -- but is it necessary?" Ron Finlay eloquently seconds with, "Knowing the terminology might add to your confidence, but you don't need to depend on it. It helps to know grammatical rules if you are to write clearly, but knowing the nomenclature is otiose."

Equally passionate on the other side of the discussion is Gretchen Anderson, author of The Backyard Chicken, who starkly states, "If you make your living with words, you better damn well know how to use them." Todd Miller tends to agree and explains that fluency in terminology can be a powerful tool when communicating with clients and editors. Todd uses it when dissecting sentences much like how "...a doctor would use medical terminology to describe an ailment he or she diagnoses in a patient."

So there you have it, whether you're a grammar snob or you just let your words go with the flow, you surely have your reasons. So tell us, which side of the debate do you agree with, and why?

Around the Word

2011-09-16T12:48:00.001-04:00

Surveying the e-book scene: With an toward separating the wheat from the hype around self-published e-books, Publishers Marketplace recently put out a statistical analysis of sales trends that will be quite illuminating to those of you thinking of going solo. By analyzing consumer data, they found that up to 21 percent of e-book buyers have bought a self-published e-book. Consumers are attracted to the lower prices of self-published books, PM reported, and they're willing to try a new author at a low cost. Even more telling: e-book buyers weren't particularly discriminating when it comes to publishers -- big name or self-published. A surprising 80 percent responded that "the publisher is irrelevant to my decision to buy a particular e-book." So does this make you more interested in self-publishing your work?

Rate your reads: Speaking of the e-volution, we learned this week of an interesting collision of newfangled social media and oldfashioned book swapping. Goodreads, a social media site for book lovers, announced they are surveying their army of word nerds to create what they hope will be the best book recommendation engine on the web. The site is asking their six million members to rate more than 190 million books to collect data on literary tastes. To try it out, the site will ask you to review 20 books to get a sense of your favorite lit, then generate recommendations based on your ratings. Let us know, did Goodreads read you like a book?

Polly wants a new publisher: Our favorite publishing scandal of the moment, and another sign of the shifting times, is the curious case of Polly Courtney. After enjoying success self-publishing her first work, the British novelist signed a nice deal with Harper Collins to put out her next book. But in a rather unconventional move, Courtney announced at the launch party for her HC debut that she was firing the publisher and going solo again. Turns out that the author, who made her name writing about sexism in the London finance industry, was outraged by the "fluffy" and "patronising" nature of the jacket design. The Daily Mail has the full scoop.

Best business books: The Financial Times and Goldman Sachs have teamed up once again to release the shortlist for this year's Business Book of the Year Award. The books have a wide range of subjects, from global poverty to the importance of cities to the dangers of ignoring the obvious. GalleyCat has provided links to free samples of each of the top books. Check them out and tell us what you think. Which business book tops your list?

Picking the right publicist: Also on GalleyCat this week, reporter Jason Boog delved into publicity for DIY authors in an informative interview with independent publicist Lauren Cerand (you can find the full recording here).With self-publishing, self-promoting and social media all just a click away, many authors don't need a publicist to perform the full range of services they once did, but rather to open doors and teach them the skills they need to make their work visible. As Cerand says, "In the age of the Internet, we've largely democratized the process. For authors, I always say: It's really about learning as many of these skills as you can." Where does a publicist fit into your book promotion plan?

The speeches behind The King's Speech: If the Oscar-winning film The King's Speech warmed your speechwriting heart, you might want to check out a follow-up documentary, The King Speaks, that gives more insight to the real story of King George VI. Gotham friend Hal Gordon turned us onto this gem with a review of the documentary on his blog, and points out that "speechwriters in particular will be intrigued to learn how [speech coach Lionel] Logue went beyond his role of therapist to actually editing the drafts of the king's speeches." Did the royal story inspire your writing?

Around the Word

2011-09-14T13:22:00.000-04:00

iJournalist: Writing robots made news this week when the New York Times reported that 20 different companies and publications are letting computers do some of their writing. Narrative Science is a software developed at Northwestern University that analyzes data and uses it to create convincingly human prose. Currently used primarily for sports and finance stories, the creators of Narrative Science hope it has the potential to revolutionize data-driven journalism. "In five years, a computer program will win the Pulitzer Prize," company founder Kris Hammond told the Times. "And I'll be damned if it's not our technology." What do you think about this new form of cyber journalism? (h/t GalleyCat)

Time is on our side: The sheer number of traditional books in print, coupled with the thousands-upon-thousands of self-published titles available on demand, has made the business of deciphering the mediocre from the must-reads increasingly difficult. Luckily, Time magazine is here to help -- in one genre, at least -- by compiling a list of the All-Time 100 Best Non-fiction Books to help guide our wandering eyes. The list encompasses the 100 best and most influential books written in English since 1923 -- the beginning of Time -- and breaks them down by category (autobiography, memoir, biography, politics, etc.). Literary icons such as Ernest Hemingway, Virginia Woolf and George Orwell all claim a spot, while some surprising contemporaries, including Barack Obama, Ralph Nader and Stephen King, round things out. Anything on the list you're surprised by, or wish you'd seen?

A book by any other name: Coming up with a title for your book can be mighty challenging -- a nonfiction title has to stand out from the crowd, capture your message and be SEO-friendly. For some helpful tips on navigating the pitfalls of naming your nonfiction work, check out this post at BookBuzzr. Strategies like mimicking your market's tone, engaging your readers' curiosity and staying searchable will help your nonfiction title find its perfect audience. What are your tips for finding a fantastic title?

Not your grandma's dictionary: When the boring old OED just won't do, we found a list of the best "Alterna-Dictionaries" the web has to offer. From the necessary-whenever-talking-to-a-fifteen-year-old Urban Dictionary, to the pop-culturally savvy Dictionary of TV Tropes, to the hopelessly nerdy Literary Terms Dictionary, these dictionaries run the gamut from occasionally useful to purely entertaining.

Around the Word

2011-09-12T11:14:00.000-04:00

Bookflix? The mighty Amazon has struck again in the battle for control over the rapidly growing e-book market. The Wall Street Journal reported this morning that the online bookstore is preparing to launch a digital library service -- described as "Netflix for books" -- that would allow subscribers to access e-books for a monthly fee. Amazon is in talks with publishers about the service, "but some publishers are not too happy about the idea," according to Mashable. Will a digital Amazon library be good for publishing? Or will we just see bookstores go the way of Blockbuster?

Looking back, linguistically: We wrote last week about changes in the publishing industry in the ten years since the attacks on September 11. In the Boston Globe yesterday, language columnist Ben Zimmer remembered the attacks from a linguistic perspective, examining the evolution of the term "ground zero." Soon after the attacks, the generic ground zero, meaning the site of a bomb or explosion, became Ground Zero, the site of the fallen World Trade Center. In a testament to the power of language, Mayor Bloomberg has now asked New Yorkers to retire the phrase. Will "ground zero" always be associated with 9/11?

Happy Hobbit Day: We have never had so many reasons to celebrate since Doubleday posted this story about little-known literary holidays. From Bloomsday, which celebrates the work of James Joyce and is named after the main character in Ulysses, to a week-long celebration in Key West in honor of Ernest Hemingway, to Dictionary Day on October 16, book lovers can celebrate their love for lit throughout the year. Which holiday should you be preparing for next? Hobbit Day, of course, on September 22 -- part of Tolkein Week -- to celebrate everyone's favorite furry-footed protagonists.

How to be a solo virtuoso: Just as you will find with the self-publishing industry itself, there's a lot of dreck advice online about how to master the indie literary track. One of the better how-to guides we have come across recently is book editor and blogger Meghan Ward's latest post, "10 Steps to Becoming a Self-Publishing Superstar." With the write advice on marketing, formatting and finding a good cover designer, she also provides links to lots of self-publishing resources. Check it out and let us know what you think.

Travel writing: If you have too many books crowding your shelves (or haven't gone completely digital yet), a new book sharing service can send your paperbacks on a trip around the world. BookCrossing connects you with other bibliophiles who want to borrow your books and then lets you track your book as you send it on its way. GalleyCat has compiled a list of BookCrossing's most-travelled books, which includes travel tomes like A Passage to India and Bill Bryson's Africa. Have you ever shared with BookCrossing?

Around the Word

2011-09-10T12:46:00.000-04:00

Remembering 9/11 by the book: With the ten year anniversary of the September 11th attacks this weekend, many literary types are contributing to the mass look-back at how the world has changed over the last decade. One that caught our eye was this piece by Edward Nawotka, the editor-in-chief of Publishing Perspectives, which examines his industry's response to 9/11. He argues with pride that the publishing community has been at its best in helping Americans understand 9/11 and its causes. "Today, people are much better informed about the world around them," Nawotka writes. "There are a myriad of titles available to Westerners addressing Islam, Middle Eastern history and politics, Afghanistan and Arab-American life." We can only hope that the last ten years have increased tolerance and understanding around the world.

The e-volution meets the E-conomist: You know the e-volution of the book industry has reached critical mass when the Economist devotes major ink to exploring the digital explosion. The piece in the mag's most recent edition is a nice summary of the major issues facing the publishers today: the popularity of e-books, the difficulty of pricing them fairly and the dominance of Amazon in the e-book marketplace. Take a look and let us know what you think. Has the Economist provided a fair snapshot of what's happening in the book world?

Did Obama's speech to Congress do its job? There's no shortage of pundicating from communication pros whenever President Obama delivers a big speech, and his address Thursday to Congress outlining his new jobs agenda drew a wide spectrum of reactions. Typical was this piece from NYU PR professor Fraser P. Seitel, who gave the president mixed marks on technique but was generally positive overall. "He didn't exactly hit it out of the park—there were still too many platitudes, not enough detail, and the hectoring "Pass this jobs bill" refrain became annoying. But despite the odds against him and contrary to the universal "same old, same old" criticism from the right, the president did smack a clear double, which successfully put the pressure on conservative Republicans to "put up or shut up." What did you think of the president's address?

Release your creativity: Is it time to say goodbye to the traditional press release? Hip companies like Google, Zynga and Groupon are increasingly trading in stuffy paragraphs for zippy tweets and gimmicks when they have news to share. As the New York Times reports, Google announced its acquisition of restaurant ratings guide Zagat with a tweeted haiku poem. Groupon, a company with a notoriously wacky writing style, joked in a recent press release that it had raised, "like, a billion dollars" in its latest financing round. Is this informal style here to stay? How do you add punch to your press releases?

Around the Word

2011-09-07T12:30:00.000-04:00

The BloGG is back from our summer respite (yes, you can all exhale in relief). Here's what we're reading as we trade swimsuits for sweaters.

Re@ding in the digital age: A new feature for Amazon's Kindle e-reader, @Author, is attempting to change the way we read and interact with books. The program enables a reader to highlight a passage in an e-book and ask the author a question about it. Though still in beta testing, several high-profile authors have signed up for the service, including Susan Orlean and Timothy Ferris. Today on the New Yorker's Book Bench blog, Mark O'Connell weighs whether this will revolutionize the reading experience or threaten the author's status as an artist and creator. Try it out and let us know what you think.

Special agents: As the publishing world continues to e-volve, literary agents are continually wrestling with their place in this new word order. Some big name reps have tried to survive by reinventing themselves as Agent-Publisher hybrids, publishing their clients' work under their own digital imprint. While this mash-up may seem like an appealing survival strategy in a shrinking market, our friend Jason Allen Ashlock from the Moveable Type Literary Group argues that agenting and publishing at the same time creates a unnavigable conflict of interest that will jeopardize the interests of writers. Check out his provocative editorial in Publishing Perspectives and let us know what you think. When an agent becomes a publisher, does the writer lose?

The Art of E-publishing: For those who just can't get enough of a good meta publishing story, Vanity Fair is offering a look behind the scenes of the six-figure deal for unknown author Chad Harbach's baseball book, The Art of Fielding. The deal, which made headlines earlier this year after Harbach, a previously unemployed copyeditor, sold his book to Hatchette Book Group for $665,000 -- a sum previously reserved only for blockbuster titles (usually involving a vampire). Not content to do a standard magazine piece on the subject, Vanity Fair this week released a 19,000-word e-book chronicling the whole out-of-leftfield story, titled How a Book is Born: The Making of the Art of Fielding, for $1.99. Will you be purchasing a copy?

I am the Walrus: As professional word nerds, we were intrigued last month by the release of James Pennebaker's new book, The Secret Life of Pronouns: What our Words Say About Us. Now the New York Times has combined our love for grammar and our love for pop culture with a story about Pennebaker's analysis of pronoun use in Beatles lyrics. The Fab Four were pretty pronoun-happy, though as they matured they moved from fewer self-centered "I" phrases to "more socially involved perspectives." The high point, of course, was the first line of "I Am the Walrus": "I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together."

Stori-telling: There's been a lot of hype about the social-publishing-real-time-news platform Storify, and we were curious to know how writers and publishing pros could get the most out of this hot new site. GalleyCat did us the favor recently of breaking down the advantages for literary types, from collecting everything on the web about a publishing trend to creating a tribute to your favorite author. Have you tried out Storify yet? Live up to the hype?

Gone Fishing

2011-08-29T12:36:00.000-04:00

The BloGG will be on hiatus this week, as we recover from the hurricane and get our last blast of summer in. We will be back wordier than ever after Labor Day. Until then, enjoy the sunshine.

Around the Word

2011-08-26T12:32:00.002-04:00

Literary survival kit: As New Yorkers, we are more used to asking what to wear than how to prepare for hurricanes and earthquakes. So to help you in your disaster planning, and get you in the right mindset for Irene's arrival, the New Yorker has profiled six shorts to read during a hurricane -- a mix of essays, poems, short stories, and novels, by writers including Sylvia Plath, Joseph Conrad, and Jack Kerouac.

Now that's a moving speech: Of all the funny tweets and stories we have seen in the wake of this week's East Coast quake, our favorite was this one relayed by our friend David Murray at Vital Speeches from freelance scribe Emerson Moran. "At 1:49 p.m. client texted me from DC that her speech received a standing ovation," Moran posted on Facebook. "Earthquake hit at 1:51. You do the math... my rates are going up.'"

Winning one-liners: The Edinburgh Fringe Festival, the largest arts festival in the world, is in full swing, and one of our favorite events is the quick-fire joke competition. This year's winner was comedian Nick Helm, who came up with this enchanting nugget on the spot: "I needed a password eight characters long so I picked Snow White and the Seven Dwarves." The runner-up was previous champion, Tim Vine, for this rib-tickler: "Crime in multi-storey car parks. That is wrong on so many levels." Veteran entertainer Paul Daniels took home the honor for the worst joke of the competition with this doozy: "I said to a fella 'Is there a B&Q in Henley?' He said 'No there's an H an E an L and N and a Y.'" For a list of the Top 10 jokes, check out this write-up of the funny festivities in the Daily Mail.

Speaking of funny contests. . . . We're always eager to clue you in on upcoming literary events and competitions, but we especially like to plug one of our own. In memory of his late mother, Brad Schreiber has created the Mona Schreiber Prize for Humorous Fiction and Non-Fiction. Mona Schreiber taught creative writing for San Mateo County and published numerous humorous articles and essays in newspapers and magazines. The contest, currently in its 11th year, challenges participants to submit humorous, double-spaced works up to 750 characters in length. "Writers of comedic essays, articles, short stories, poetry, shopping lists, ransom notes, and other forms are invited to submit." There is a $500 prize for 1st place, $250 for 2nd, and $100 for 3rd. We encourage anyone with an unorthodox sense of humor to participate and help Brad keep his mother's memory alive. For more info, go to Brad's website.

A new take on old PowerPoint rules: Gotham friend Brad Phillips has a smart new post on Ragan challenging a number of shibboleths about PowerPoint use including the Holy Grail of rules: "One slide per minute." The problem with that standard, Phillips argues, is that it "says nothing about how much information should appear on a slide. . . Since [speakers] present only one slide per minute, they deceive themselves into thinking they've produced a good presentation when, in fact, they've only created a cluttered mess." Additionally, looking at 60 slides a hour can be quite tiring for audiences -- "If I wanted to be put to sleep I'd take an Ambien or watch a PBS documentary," Phillips says. So what's a presenter to do? Phillips suggests reinforcing your point with images instead of a laundry list of bullet points, checking to see whether each new slide reinforces the concept, and determining whether there's a more compelling -- less electronically dependent way -- for you to deliver your message.

Worth tweeting: The Huffington Post reports that Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, the most popular in the United States, has added dozens of entries for the first time since 2009. "Social media" and "tweet," terms whose addition is reflective of the continuous evolution in our era's communications, are just two of 150 new words gracing the pages. Additions also include "bromance," "helicopter parent," and "robocall." The standard-settings at M-W are said to pick new entries after monitoring their use for several years and tallying their prevalence in mainstream and media outlets. Peter Sokolowski, Merriam's editor at large, explains: "Even if people had no interest or possible chance of getting a twitter themselves, they now have to know what 'tweet' means, and that's why it's in the dictionary."

Sexist summer reading? President Obama recently released his summer reading list, and his gender-imbalanced selections have some critics asking why he doesn't read more women. His latest list is about 70% male and an analysis of all books he's mentioned since becoming President in 2008 is a 23-to-1 blowout in favor of men. "It is a well know fact among those of us to whom this matters that while women read books written by men, men do not tend to reciprocate," writes Salon columnist Robin Black. While Black acknowledges that Obama probably isn't trying to endorse or perpetuate this trend, she does suggest he pay a bit more attention to his behavior -- ". . . . especially as a father of daughters who might enjoy and even be inspired by seeing their father cart around a book with a woman's name writ large." What do you think? Fair game? Or overblown carping?

iContact: If you've ever wondered just how important making eye contact is while public speaking, then you might want to check out the latest post from the Eloquent Woman for the rationale behind the axiom. Turns out eye contact is all it's cracked up to be, and research shows that looking away from your audience signals avoidance while looking at them signals approach, the latter which audiences rate highly. Eye contact, though, must be used wisely and well, EW advises. For example, be sure to look at all sections of the room as well as directly at individuals. Plan ahead for cultural concerns, as certain non-western cultures in particular, can find prolonged contact provocative, and remember, video practice makes perfect. "Like any form of gesturing--and that's what moving eyes are-- you need to have intentional, rather than unintentional moves. Even the simplest video camera can help you see what others see -- before your speech."

The Obama Speech Wars, Continued

2011-08-25T09:19:00.000-04:00

In case you missed it, last week Vital Speeches guru David Murray took to the Huffington Post to issue a fairly stern finger-wagging to the all the PR and speech pros who are second-guessing President Obama's communication skills these days -- "Knock It Off" read the headline. Murray was quick to acknowledge that Obama has made some serious mistakes. But he warned against the limits and dangers of a common corrective many critics are prescribing, a major address to re-set the story of his presidency, along the lines of Jimmy Carter's infamous "Malaise Speech."

We can argue over the drinking table about how Obama should have framed his presidency at the outset. But I'm afraid that the only way he can play once-upon-a-time at this late stage is if there's a shocking disaster -- financial, natural or ballistic -- that's profound and terrifying enough to make Americans really willing to sit like children and hear a simple story of true heroes, real villains and the proverbial but elusive "story we can all believe in."

Well, it didn't take long for the piling on to resume -- most notably with a piece by former Clinton speechwriter and current West Wing Writers principal Jeff Shesol that ran earlier this week on the Daily Beast, under the headline Obama Needs a New Tune. Shesol's main argument is that Obama's post-partisan message, which resonated so well during the 2008 campaign and still ostensibly polls well in a vacuum, is ill-suited to this hyper-partisan moment.

. . . . Obama’s renewed campaign against partisanship serves mainly to remind us of one of our, and no doubt his, greatest disappointments: the ugly immutability of Washington, and the Republicans’ stubborn refusal to listen to reason. As an opening argument for his reelection, the president can do better than “put country ahead of party.” Not only is it a weak, vain hope, it is a fundamental misreading of what’s wrong with Washington. To paraphrase, this time, Michael Dukakis (something I do against my better judgment), this election is not about partisanship. It’s about ideology.

With that in mind, Shesol said, it's high time for Obama to choose sides -- not with a Malaise redux, but a more consistent differentiation. "[He] does not need to become a fire-breathing, populist parody of Franklin Roosevelt, as some left-leaning critics suggest. But to win a second term he has to sharpen the contrast, if not his rhetoric. He has to make it unmistakably clear that the Republican Party’s 'game' -- its endgame -- is not just to win the next election, but to undo much of the progress of the past century, and to rewrite some of our most cherished, basic assumptions about what it means to be an American. Then he needs to tell us what he plans to do about it."

Okay, speech pros: Which side do you come down on? Is there too much carping about the President's messaging? Or not enough edge/clarity/consistency to it?

Around the Word (Catch-up Edition)

2011-08-24T13:01:00.000-04:00

Now that we are out of our earthquake crouch, we can resume our regular word-nerd programming. Here's a quick catch-up of the stories we've been following on the Word Wide Web the last few days.

You are what you read: How many times have you heard someone you know say a favorite book changed their life? Well, a new study out of Canada suggests that old chestnut may be more true than we know. According to Quill and Quire, Canada's premiere literary news magazine, a group of researchers at the University of Toronto found that reading fiction can alter people's personalities -- and arm them with better social skills than non-readers. The study randomly assigned participants 1 of 2 versions of a short story; one full and the other merely containing abbreviated plot points. "We found the people who read the [whole] story changed a bit in their personality," said lead researcher Keith Oatley. "What we found interesting was that they all changed in different ways." Does this ring true with you?

Pronunciation for Dummies: If you are like most wordsmiths, and spending more time writing than reciting, your pronunciation skills can get a little rusty. The New Yorker's Book Bench turned us onto a great way to flex those atrophied verbal muscles -- the Pronunciation Book on You Tube. This channel features a male speaker with a clear, easy-listening voice breaking down and sounding out a range of tricky words. For example: "When a conversation about poetry moves from Romanticism to Modernism, you'd hate to be the one who draws a distinction between Keats and Yeats, but mistakes them for a rhyming pair." Do you have any pro pronunciation tips to help avoid spoken faux pas?

Please, watch your pronouns: We're all taught to mind our manners, but according to psychologist James Pennebaker, we should be focusing on our pronouns too -- for they reveal the most about us. Our friend the Eloquent Woman recently posted a summary of Pennebaker's most interesting findings on the most personal of usages, some of which challenged conventional assumptions. "Most people assume that men use I-words and cognitive words more than women, and that women use we-words, emotions and social words more then men," EW wrote. "Bad news. You were right if you guessed that women use social words more. However, women use I-words and cognitive words at far higher rates than men." We're also offered some insight on how pronouns are used by those in power. Turns out that leaders tend to use them less, but underlings can't get enough of "I," "me," and "mine." If you want to learn more about the hidden messages your pronouns are sending, you can pick up Pennebaker's book, The Secret Life of Pronouns: What Our Words Say About Us.

How to turn PDFs into PDQs: Are you having trouble tracking and reading all the varied PDFs -- manuscripts, articles, editorial letters -- littering your desktop? We came across a neat tool, courtesy of eBookNewser, that can offer you some iRelief. This simple tutorial will show you how to cleanly convert your abundance of documents from different platforms into streamlined Kindle or epub files. "Our tutorial also includes a simple introduction to coding so you can scrub out frustrating headers, page numbers, or other stray bits of code that make your converted PDF hard to read." Try it out and let us know how it works.

Financials of the trade: If you are curious about what different literary jobs pay, you may want to consult Glassdoor, the anonymous job site, to get a sense of the landscape. Our friends at GalleyCat did a quick survey this week, and found that New York area book designers make about $58,924 on average, editors around $53,500 and publicists trail below at $37,093 a year. Do these numbers track with your experience?

One small step for authorkind: Also from GalleyCat, we learned of a rather novel partnership between NASA and Tor/Forge publishers. Now that the space program has gone on hiatus, NASA's scientists have agreed to assist Tor/Forge authors at a two day workshop at GFSC in November, where they will provide access to the agency's data and design elements. The program's immediate goal is to aid in the development of more "scientifically accurate and entertaining novels," though ultimately NASA hopes the program will encourage more students to follow science, math, and technology tracks in school.

Trim the fat off your kids' reading: The Los Angeles Times this week keyed us into a raging debate about a soon-to-be-released diet book targeted at girls between the ages of 6 and 12. The picture book, Maggie Goes on a Diet, by author and self-publisher Paul M. Kramer, is written in rhyme and chronicles Maggie's decision to lose weight after kids at school called her "fatty" and "chubby." Though Maggie loses weight the healthy way, cutting back on junk food and allowing herself one "normal-sized treat a week," critics contend that the book sends the disturbing message that being thin will make you happy. One blogger commented, "Little girls shouldn't even know what a diet is, much less be encouraged to lose weight." In an interview Kramer commented that he wasn't advocating any little girl go on a diet, though he quickly rescinded the statement, acknowledging just seconds later that ..." Maggie did indeed go on a diet, as the title of the book clearly indicates." Despite the controversy Amazon still plans to offer the book, which should be available in October.

Around the Word

2011-08-19T12:39:00.000-04:00

Decoding hipster speak: Like the Beatniks and punks before them, the hipsters who haunt urban culture these days have developed their very own exclusive lingo. If you'd like to get keyed into what those indie kids in Williamsburg and West Hollywood are saying, or harness some of that hipster cool for your own use, check out Hipster Ipsum, a cheeky new translation website. Particularly useful for those who'd like to write about hipster culture but don't speak the language, Hipster Ipsum will automatically generate content -- or as HI says, "artisinal filler text for your site or project." Take, for example, a small excerpt from the jargon it created for GalleyCat: "Beard lo-fi cred, yr scenester art party vinyl put a bird on it. Farm-to-table 3 wolf moon locavore, wayfarers portland carles high life leggings tumblr." Feel younger yet?

Freelancer legal loss: If times weren't tough enough for freelance writers. . . . A federal appeals court in New York this week overturned a major judgment that a group of freelancers won against The New York Times, Reed Elsevier, and others for copyright infringement. The writers -- who claimed that publishers violated their copyright by electronically reproducing and posting their work -- were originally awarded a settlement of up to $18 million. But according to Bloomberg News, the Second Circuit rejected that ruling on similar standing grounds as the recent discrimination case brought against Walmart. "We conclude that the district court abused its discretion in certifying the class and approving the settlement, because the named plaintiffs failed to adequately represent the interests of all class members,” the opinion said.

All the snooze that's fit to print: For all you speech junkies who just can't get enough of Bernie Sanders' infamous 8-1/2 hour stemwinder on the Senate floor last year, we have good news. The Independent from Vermont is publishing a book with the full text of the speech -- a fillibuster decrying Obama's deal with Republicans to preserve the Bush-era tax cuts -- along with an original introduction. If the book (economically entitled The Speech) seems a little too daunting, you can watch Sanders talk about his protest rant and respond to questions in a segment from C-SPAN Book TV -- a cool one hour in itself.

Give your prose a voice-over: You can't swing a live speech coach these days without getting some tips for gearing your writing for the spoken word. But ever wonder what benefits flow in the other direction? In a meaty piece this week, Ragan's Russell Working illustrates a number of ways that stepping up to the podium can held improve the wordsmithing of even the most seasoned writers. Toastmaster International members graciously shared some of their takeaways from public speaking group events -- such as, read your work aloud, solicit criticism, be concise, and count your "uhs" and "ums." You'd be surprised how many awkward sentences and typos you can find by running your writing through your vocal chords and reading aloud is also a cost-effective way to beta test new material. Be sure to check out the full list of tips and let us know if there's anything you think they missed.

Around the Word

2011-08-17T12:06:00.000-04:00

Pandora's books: Surfing the web for a good book recommendation? A new site is attempting to do for books what Pandora did for music, giving specific recommendations based on books you already like. BookLamp uses your favorite book's "DNA" to make suggestions for other reads. It measures characteristics and themes (for example: history, travel, secrets) as well as writing style (like pacing, dialogue and density). There are only about 20,000 books on the site, according to Mashable, but BookLamp is looking to expand. Check it out and let us know what you think. Is BookLamp lighting your literary fire?

The Comedy of Borders: When Borders shuttered last month there was much hand-wringing in the publishing world about how to save brick-and-mortar bookstores. Apparently, those looking for a solution should have just asked Jon Stewart and Daily Show resident expert John Hodgman, who mocked the state of modern book selling in a segment last night. Hodgman suggested that bookstores can beat out Amazon by catering to lazy shoppers who don't even like to read. He advised nixing bookshelves and instead installing "downloading pods" to mimic the at-home shopping experience, "with the inconvenience of a twenty minute car ride." The other option: preserve a Borders as a historical relic, like colonial Williamsburg, called "Ye Olde Borders-Towne." Why didn't we think of that?

Compound controversy: When the subject of your sentence is two words joined by "and," sometimes things can get a little dicey in the singular-plural department. This week Grammar Girl comes to rescue, offering a quick refresher on whether "milk and cookies are delicious" or "peanut butter and jelly is the best sandwich." Check it out and let us know if you are in full agreement with GG's latest quick and dirty tips.

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2011-08-15T12:22:00.001-04:00

Special agents: Literary agents are often cited as a likely casualty of the publishing e-volution. After all, if you can print, publish and market your book with just a laptop and an Internet connection, why would you need to hire someone to rep you? But Mark Coker, founder of the indie e-book publishing service Smashwords, says don't write off the agent just yet. In an eye-catching, man-bites-dog piece he recently posted on his company blog, Coker argues that these literary sherpas will actually be instrumental in shaping the digital future. The rise of indie e-books and self-publishing gives agents the opportunity to take a chance on a work they feel strongly about, Coker says, instead of only picking up authors guaranteed to score with traditional publisher. So, fellow writers, do you see an agent as part of your digital future? (h/t GalleyCat)

The first rule of Write Club is. . . .: From the first time we were asked to put pen to paper in elementary school, we've been learning the rules of writing: no passive voice, skip the adverbs, show-don't-tell. But sometimes too much focus on writing rules can stifle creativity and distract from your writing process. If you're feeling bogged down by do's and don'ts, check out our friend Rachelle Gardner's recent post on rethinking the typical typist's conventions. Her advice: "Whenever you get frustrated by the rules, or can't figure out why or if you should follow a rule or break it, go back to the reasons behind the rules and ask yourself: Does following this rule strengthen my work?"

Character-in-Chief: Though most real-life newspaper editors are no longer the chain-smoking, suspender-wearing, verbally abusive characters of yesteryear, the occasional hard-boiled editor archetype still makes an appearance in a modern play or movie. In fact, there seems to be a rash of bombastic editors in recent theater productions, including J. Jonah Jameson in "Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark." For a history of the on-stage editor, and a peek into whether any Times editors resemble their fictional counterparts, take a look at this Sunday New York Times survey of the tough editor character through the years.

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2011-08-12T12:52:00.002-04:00

The best of TED: We love that TEDTalks have brought high-quality public speaking and thought leadership to anyone with an Internet connection. There have been some great speeches to come out of TED, but with so many talks available online, it can be hard to choose which ones to watch. Fortunately, our friend David Murray at Vital Speeches of the Day pointed us to a list of the top twenty most-viewed TEDTalks. TED tracked the over 500 million views for TEDTalks and to see which are the most popular. At the top is Sir Ken Robinson's speech on how schools kill creativity. But, as Murray pointed out, a speech about what you don't know about orgasms was surprisingly only seventeenth.

Keep your bookmarks handy: Who says that the Internet and books have to be mortal enemies? Over at Flavorpill, they see tech-loving bibliophiles reading and Internet-ing in perfect harmony, so they've put together a list of the best new websites for bookworms. From aggregators that search the web for the best journalism and creative nonfiction (Byliner.com, Longform.org) to sites that highlight indie publishers and lesser-known authors (Very Short List, Full Stop), these websites are guaranteed to fill up your reading list. And when you don't have your nose in a book, you can always check out the slightly wacky Better Book Titles, which gives famous works more descriptive names.

Tweet Club: For more literary Internet goodness, the Huffington Post has provided a list of famous authors who are on Twitter. Though you might never have expected to follow Chuck Palahniuk's 140-character thoughts when you first picked up Fight Club, he and his fellow writing Twilebrities -- like Judy Blume, Kevin Smokler and Augusten Burroughs -- offer witty commentary, thoughts on life and tips and inspiration for fellow writers. Which of your favorite authors would you like to see on Twitter?

The biblio Tower of Babel: Finding your house or apartment overcrowded with books is enough to drive anyone to buy an e-reader, but a visual artist in Buenos Aires has taken towering stacks and book-hoarding to a new level. Marta Minujin built a seven-story sculpture out of books, reaching over 80 feet high. The sculpture was built to celebrate Buenos Aires's status as the 2011 book capital of the world, and when it was dismantled some of the books were given away to visitors. Check out a photo of the towering book tower at the Utne Reader.

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2011-08-11T08:41:00.000-04:00

Today we zero in on how to stay focused, motivated, and positive when you write.

Book project boot camp: The lazy days of summer are filled with excuses to not start a project. The weather is nice, the kids are at home and sometimes it is just too hot to think, let alone write. If you're lacking the giddy-up to get your book going, writing pro and no-nonsense blogger Chris Brogan might have the inspiration you need. In the first two posts of a four part series on book writing, Brogan shuts down the excuses we all use not to write. He encourages writers to find the time and the discipline to make their book project happen with tips for maintaining focus and reaching word-count goals. How do you stay motivated during the dog days?

Digital quiet car: Sometimes, all the discipline in the world isn't enough to stay focused when the Internet readily available for distraction. Fortunately, there are a host of tools for keeping you on-task while writing. One new online service, Quietwrite, offers a distraction-free site to write. Free of spell-check, buttons, icons and links, Quietwrite auto-saves while you work so all you have to do is type. What do you do to keep out digital distractions? (h/t GalleyCat)

Don't fear the tangent: When your efforts to focus fall short, Darren Rowse, founder of Problogger, suggests embracing the mental tangents your mind takes. Sometimes, your writing follows a winding road that ends in a place you never expected to be. When you find yourself off-course, you can leave in the tangent, delete it or use it as a springboard for a new piece. Rowse advises, "Look for parts of the post where you could have said more, where ideas weren't complete finished, or where you think the reader might have been left asking questions." Those are the places, he says, where you can find your next big idea.

Fast and furious: For those of you who struggle with the slows year round, you might want to check out this piece from Slate writer Michael Agger. Frustrated with his pokey progress next to his speedier colleagues, Agger decided to delve into the psychology of writing at lightning speed and understand why some writers are much quicker than others. The literature finds that writing is a very cognitively challenging activity, and that the fastest writers have, unsurprisingly, practiced. . . . a lot. Writing in regular bursts, at a set time every day, in a non-stimulating environment helps you stay focused, Agger says, and lets the words fly onto the page. Reading and listening to feedback from your audience helps, too.

In praise of the copy editor: Once all the mental hurdles have been cleared and the words have somehow made their way to the page, your pysche will still have to go through the wringer of the editing process. Seeing those red marks all over your work can be a humbling experience for even the most seasoned writer. Just ask author Elizabeth Fama. On the Subversive Copy Editor this week, she penned a cheeky first-person account about getting her manuscript back from an editor that many pros will identify with. Too many em dashes, mistakenly compound words and flagrant comma abuse were all problems she never knew she had until a talented copy editor took a look at her prose. "Hoo boy am I ever grateful for your edits," she writes to her editor. "I feel honored to have someone out there watching my back so carefully." Have you thanked your copy editor today?

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2011-08-10T12:02:00.001-04:00

From gloom to boom?: A brand new statistical analysis of U.S. book sales released this week suggests the sky may not be falling on the publishing industry. BookStats, which claims in a press release to be "the deepest, most comprehensive statistical survey ever conducted of the modern, U.S. publishing industry," found that net revenues and units sold are both up over the last three years -- and that's not counting the e-book surge this year. To get a fuller breakdown of the numbers, check out the analysis at Publishers Marketplace. Do these macro stats comport with what you're seeing on the ground day-to-day?

Movies for book lovers: It's National Book Lovers Day today, and Flavorpill is helping us celebrate with a list of the best movies about books and writers. Though watching a movie to celebrate a love of books is admittedly a little illogical, these movies have so many neurotic writers that you will feel gleefully sane by comparison. So sit back, relax and celebrate your inner bibliophile with films like Wonder Boys, Capote and Adaptation.

Style guidance, Part II: Earlier this week we examined the question of style guides for social media, and the expert we advice we relayed was that each host should have their own clear, consistent set of rules. The next day Ragan honed in on the particular style challenge facing businesses, and the experts they consulted came to the same conclusion -- your best bet is a customized, in-house style guide for your specific company. What system do you use for keeping your shop's writing in style?

Authors who make house calls: With publishing budgets shrinking, authors are often left to to market their books on their own. Since organizing and scheduling a book tour can seem hopelessly daunting, GalleyCat is offering to help by connecting authors with book clubs who want to meet them. The online database -- Authors Who Visit Book Clubs -- enables clubs to contact their favorite authors and ask them to visit. If you want to be added to the list of authors who are willing to chat about your book, fill out the form on GalleyCat's Facebook page.

The price is wrong? As we've noted before, e-books have created some tricky pricing conundrums. Though the digital product may cost less to produce than a hard copy, the time and money that goes in to writing the book stays the same. So why does the cost vary so widely? In his soon-to-be released book, Free Ride: How Digital Parasites are Destroying the Culture Business, and How the Culture Business Can Fight Back, author Robert Levine spends a whole chapter on the publishing industry, investigating what determines the price of books. For a look at his argument, check out the review in the Guardian's book blog. Spoiler alert: Amazon may be the bad guy. (h/t GalleyCat)

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2011-08-08T15:09:00.000-04:00

Social style: Social media is a lot like the Wild West -- it's fast-paced, messy and people often shoot before they think. Nowhere is that more true than in the space-crunched Twittersphere, where even writers and journalistic sticklers break old-line grammar and spelling rules with the best of them. Is there room then in this new universe for a style guide? Blogger and writing pro Whitney Jones recently posted a great meditation on the subject that offers several helpful tips on how to socialize with grace and clarity. Though the AP did come out with its own list of rules for tweeting and status-updating, Jones recommends creating a clean, consistent style that matches the tone of your business or publication. How do you keep your social style consistent? (h/t Ragan)

Ghosts of heroes past: Jason Bourne and James Bond are protagonists that launched a thousand franchises -- books, movies, video games and now, more books. Though the authors who originally dreamed up these characters are deceased, a particular breed of ghostwriter, the "continuator," has taken up the literary torch to keep these characters alive. As Salon.com found, these ghosts use the characters and story of the previous author, but often write under their own name. To see some continuators at work, and to find out where these beloved action heroes are headed, look for new novels in the months ahead starring Bourne, Bond, Mike Hammer and Sherlock Holmes.

The latest word purge: As our readers know, we here at the BloGG always welcome a good kvetch session about bad writing. We've targeted vampire words and writing pet peeves, and now this week we're giving corporate copy some extra red pen attention, courtesy of corporate communications cop
Lindsey McCaffrey. Fed up with all the goofy buzzwords and clunky cliches that have infested business writing these days, she compiled a list of the ten most obnoxious terms that should be purged from corporate speak -- starting with grating jargon like "incentivize" and "impactful." What are your least favorite corporate cliches? (h/t Ragan)

iPaperback: Feeling guilty about cheating on your book collection with your mobile device? Thanks to a new line of iPhone cases from Speck, you can now read an e-book on a phone that at least looks like a real book. These cool vintage-looking covers feature titles that would warm any literate hipster's heart, like The Catcher in the Rye, A Clockwork Orange and The Great Gatsby. These covers seem like a fun way to pay homage to your favorite novel, though we probably wouldn't want to be the guy with a phone that looks like Lolita. (via the Wall Street Journal)

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2011-08-05T11:34:00.000-04:00

Hashtag heaven: One of the features we love about Twitter is the hashtag, a conversational marker that organizes a discussion and lets you follow it throughout the network. The writing community, being the creative folk that we are, has come up with a slew of helpful hashtags to facilitate discussion about writing, offer encouragement to fellow wordsmiths, and connect with like-minded people. To get a sense of what's trending, this week Publishing Talk Daily assembled a list of the Top 10 tags for writers, from the popular #amwriting to the helpful #askagent. Which hashtags do you use when tweeting about writing?

All the words that's fit to define: The New York Times may be the standard-bearer for American journalism, but sometimes the writers over at the Gray Lady throw in a word that is more comfortable in an SAT-prep class than a newspaper article. For those occasions, the New York Times has a handy "look up" feature that allows a reader to immediately find the definition of a word they don't know. The Times has been tracking which words are looked up the most, and the Nieman Journalism Lab has analyzed this year's results. The most popular are mostly negative, with words like "omerta," "duplicity" and "dyspeptic" making the list. For our word nerd friends out there, the number one looked-up word this year was "panegyric."

Another self-publishing star: Another day, another sweet deal for a self-publishing Cinderalla. The latest e-volutionary sucess story is Louise Voss, whose novel Catch Your Death sold big in the Kindle UK store after being rejected by many traditional publishing houses. All the reader love resulted in a six-figure, four book contract from HarperFiction, reports the London Evening Standard (h/t GalleyCat). Is this trend ready to hit critical mass market?

Vital video links: We wanted to pass along two video gems from our friend David Murray at Vital Speeches of the Day. In the first, Murray gives us an inside look at the latest iteration of the famous Bughouse Square debates in Chicago, an annual event that "pays homage to the early-to-mid 20th century tradition of quirky (and often cranky) public soap-box opining." For a more traditional view of speechifying history, Murray suggests a trip to the American Rhetoric's Top 100 Speeches of the 20th Century page, which gives mp3 files and transcripts of some of history's greatest oratory. Take a look at the list and let us know which speeches inspire you.

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2011-08-03T11:51:00.001-04:00

Top books on books: According to Stephen King, "If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot." It won't hurt to read a lot about the lessons others have learned from writing a lot, either. With that in mind, editor and writing guru Jon Winokur surveyed the writing canon and compiled a handy list of the ten best books for writers for the Huffington Post. From Strunk and White to Anne Lamott, these books have all the advice you need to brush up on your grammar, tweak your narrative and find your inspiration.

I, Chatbot: For us solitary writer types, the Internet has become both a lifeline of connection and an infinite source of ways to waste time. Maybe the perfect embodiment of both of those facets is the rise of the chatbot -- artificial intelligence programs that simulate human conversation. The website Slackstory, which bills itself as the premier time-wasting place online, thought it would be fun to test how life-like these chatter bots are by giving the three most popular programs the famous Proust questionnaire (popularized by Vanity Fair) as a test of their worldview. Humorous, egotistical and sometimes very cryptic, these artificially intelligent chatters are certainly entertaining, if a little creepy (h/t GalleyCat).

Tax-free reading: Being an e-book buyer in the Empire State just got a little bit sweeter. Forbes took a look at the newest round of New York tax codes and found that e-books are exempt from sales tax. The logic behind the law is that e-books don't constitute "tangible personal property" and therefore can't be taxed. So when you buy your digital copy of "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo," you can take that extra 4 percent you saved all the way to the bank.

Ear and Loathing in Las Vegas: #bookswithalettermissing is the newest Twitter trend for literary types, and we know our writers have the creativity to come up with some fantastic titles. Check out the trending stream and send us your ideas (@GothamGhosts) with the hashtag. We'll retweet our favorites.

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2011-08-02T12:46:00.001-04:00

Author, writer, Twitterer: We've all heard how important it is for writers to utilize social media in order to build a platform for their work. But can a writer really go from Kickstarter to bestseller at the speed of broadband? Well, you might be pleasantly surprised. Yesterday Mashable featured several encouraging success stories from authors who have leveraged social media networks into tangible reader results. From a young adult novel that has topped Amazon's charts before it's even published, to a self-published writer who utilized her blog following to pump up interest in her book, these social media auteurs will inspire you to get out there and tweet your heart out.

More media marketing insights: One of the best features of social media we have found is what might be called crowd learning -- where writers use online forums to share their experiences and inform their peers. Our friend Rachelle Gardner this week tapped into this potential by asking her clients to write blog posts on what lessons they have learned from marketing their own books. From first time writers to seasoned novelists, she's assembled over thirty posts from authors full of marketing wisdom. How do these match up with your experiences? We welcome you to share your tips too.

Club kids: With the end of Oprah's book club and the shuttering of Borders, it may seem that popular fiction, and the book clubs that discuss it, could be in danger. But, as a recent article in Slate argues, the American book club is still going strong. The book club has a long history in the United States, starting as an intellectual outlet for women and transforming into an escape from the strains of modern life for Americans from every demographic. Check out the article for a fascinating history of the book club, and to understand our society's enduring love affair communal reading.

Breaking News. . . Some people still like to read: When formatting their magazines for the iPad, Conde Nast expected a high-tech, youth-friendly magazine like Wired to sell the most apps. But, as the New York Times reported over the weekend, it is the decidedly low-tech New Yorker that has taken the iPad by storm. With few interactive features and lots of text, it appears that a surprising number of people with iPads are buying the New Yorker and actually using their tablets to read. "I think there is a really large dynamic of people who are interested in reading, actually reading, on an iPad," said industry analyst Andrew Lipsman in the article. Who would have thought?