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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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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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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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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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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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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).

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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.