Writing, publishing and culture links...
Inflatable’s weekly round up - Naomi Alderman, Nnedi Okorafor, Sara Paretski, Denis Johnson. Short story tips. Querying, waiting. Sad news from LitReactor
Exercises
Round ups, industry stuff, links
Writing, publishing and culture links...
Weekly round up - Lessons from 150 writers and Hello Moon, NaNoWriMo prep, starting a story, the digital future of the book, imposter syndrome
A round up test
Round up: The Hobbit at 80. Penelope Lively at 84. Philip Pullman’s new trilogy. Free short stories. Writing prompts.Marilynne Robinson. And more!
Round up the second
Everything is going to be alright. Here. Have a kitten. Some useful beta feedback for Pressmonkey threw us into a little frenzy as we worked to make the to...
Rolling links 2
Another catch up. I have been mostly tweeting recently, and keeping my own notes -- but I found myself looking up this archive recently for a submission, and...
Rolling link list.
I'm letting links get lost because I don't have time to write up pieces on them. That's stupid. So here is a list of pieces to which I'd like to return John...
Medieval marginalia compiled at Lapha...
Lapham's Quarterly presented, in image form, a selection of marginal notes made by Medieval scribes as they laboured to reproduce texts. My favourite is this...
Interactive and collaborative fiction...
In the Guardian, Alex Hearn reported on an interactive Twitter game named Wanderer. This is a typical choose your own adventure -- but with a mutliplayer ele...
Daniel Menaker on threatened gatekeep...
In The Slate writer and literary editor Daniel Menaker considered the traditional gatekeepers of the literary world. He discussed two conflicts: Amazon v Hac...
Book stalker
I am a book stalker. If I see you reading a book in a public place I just have to know what it is. Not knowing drives me mad. I might miss a train or a bus j...
Alison Baverstock on self-publishing ...
In the Guardian, self-publishing academic Dr. Alison Baverstock addressed some misapprehensions about DIY publishing. Partly this meant addressing general pr...
Work on the history of the book did n...
In the Guardian, Rick Gekoskiannounced that he is abandoning his attempt to write a history (or biography) of the book. I spent the last two years toiling aw...
io9 comment thread on the durability ...
io9 hosted an interesting discussion about the dogged persistence of print. Arguments included: Many people just prefer the sensual experience of print (tac...
Annotation sharing e-reader launched
Techcrunch reports on Glose a new app for Web and IOS which enhances e-book annotations. I can see myself highlighting a lot more content in Glose than in ot...
The gatekeeper problem – acknowledged...
From a piece at goodereader.com: So as a reader, how do you insure that you do not fall into the trap of unwittenly purchasing indie eBooks and only buy from...
What will the Hemingwrite be for?
There has been much buzz online recently about the prototype Hemingwrite typewriter . This is an internet-enabled device deliberately hamstrung so as to deny...
Oldish TTBOOK show on the future of r...
Wisconsin Public Radio's To the Best of Our Knowledge is almost always compelling. I used to listen to it on Sundays in San Francisco. Here in exile, I have ...
BBC Radio 4 - Front Row on crowd-fund...
BBC Radio 4's Front Row tonight featured an interesting segment on crowd-funding (mp3), with Paul Kingsnorth (Unbound) and Julian Gough (Kickstarter).
Digital present and future in the TLS
The Times Literary Supplement reviewed three books of particular relevance to this blog last week. The Edge of the Precipice, edited by Paul Socken, is colle...
Is Amazon evil?
The current raft of issues: Is Amazon a monopoly? (Probably not). Is it fixing to become one using a loss leader strategy? Is it strong-arming its suppliers ...
Fiction in an age of full disclosure
In an already much-linked piece in the New York Review of Books blog Tim Parks wrote about literature in a brightly lit world. If fiction has often been a me...
Behaving badly: authors and reviewers...
In a suspenseful piece in the Guardian about her relationship with a toxic anonymous reviewer, author Kathleen Hale touched upon some of the ways that author...
Writers and sheds in the Guardian
OK.. it's waay off topic. But I'm a writer of certain age so this little pictorial collection of writers' sheds in the Guardian really pushed my button. I me...
Two self-publishing stories
Publishers Weekly profiled Eileen Goudge this week. Goudge is an established traditionally-published author who, faced with falling sales and dissolving adva...
The Economist predicts e-book sales w...
Despite the recent reported slow down in e-book sales, in a nifty interactive infographic the Economist forecasts that sales will continue to rise nonetheles...
Write-Track - a wordcount-based write...
The Airship this week featured a profile of Write-Track, a wordcount app with an associated community. The piece is perhaps a little uncritical but the envir...
E-reader producer allegedly spies on ...
According to The Digital Reader, the producer in question is Adobe. Adobe is gathering data on the ebooks that have been opened, which pages were read, and i...
The decline of the physical book slows
Electric Literature reports a Nielsen survey, that suggests the rise of the e-book has slowed: The fact that print is still the dominant format with 67% comb...
Will Self on the future of reading
Hello, I'm back by the way (long story). Will Self's article in the Guardian on Saturday was a fascinating tour of some of the issues that face writers, publ...
Jeanette Winterson and the Zombies of...
On Monday 11 November 2013 Jeanette Winterson was interviewed by Andrew Marr on Radio 4’s Start the Week programme. She spoke about a kind of zombie-dom whic...
Fingerprinting e-books
At The Guardian James Bridle reports on a plan to automatically alter the text of digital books in order to foil piracy after the fact. This involves making ...
The Millions on Kindle Worlds
At The Millions Elizabeth Minkel has posted a new article on Kindle worlds. Like Scalzi, she is highly sceptical: The whole venture hints at broader question...
Amazon licenses fan fiction e-books
The Guardian reports that Amazon are launching a platform for fan fiction e-books. The deal provides revenue for both the original and the fan authors. Of co...
You own your device. Who owns your bo...
The thing about the ebook is that it empowers the reader, right? It may one day enable mash ups and guerilla edits, it already allows readers to reach out to...
Margaret Atwood’s Three Reason to Kee...
I got this embed (below) of Margaret Atwood talking about physical books versus ebooks from Biblioklept. Summary of Margaret's points The three reasons for k...
How book-shaped should books be?
I love the word skeuomorphic. Skew-O-Morphic. It sounds like a twisted kind of superpower. In fact, it means a design that resembles a material or technology...
Interactivity interupts immersion?
At the Observer, Anna Baddeley looked at an iPad version of The Thirty-Nine Steps. She concludes: I find interactivity exasperating. Prod, prod, prod to reve...
Hello
Hello. This is Book Shape. Anachronistic or not, I have to kick off with this book technology related sketch.
Links: fluffers, hobbits, and cowboys
Another week, another round up. We have the usual helpful craft links this week, as well as some inevitable sex, some famous British writers courting contro...
Links: Fire in Cairo
This week’s been like living through the 1980s all over again, except that this time around we don’t have Reagan/Thatcher/Gorbachev, or Lech Wałęsa, or CND, ...
Links: About characters, mostly
As you’ll be aware, it’s been a bad week for Australia, Brazil and Sri Lanka, with heavy floods displacing millions and causing the deaths of many. Two of th...
Links: Another year, another planet
First it was Christmas, and I got lots of Christmas and birthday presents. Then not much happened. Then it was New Year. (My diary for this week, 1972) I’ll...
Links–and a Google e-bookstore review
The biggest online news this week has to be Google’s e-bookstore launch. Admittedly, this is bigger news in the US than it is anywhere else, but there are hu...
Links: Better late than never
Hundreds of people posted Thanksgiving cards et cetera online this week, which means that large chunks of America are more or less missing from the blogosphe...
Links: Sex and criticism (so just lik...
OK, so I put “sex” in a post title again. Ease off, though. At least let’s get the NaNoWriMo posts out of the way first. The bits of the www I’m monitoring ...
Links: Just a quickie
As we’re approaching the midpoint of NaNoWriMo 2010, naturally the blogosphere is crowded with it. And for much the same reason, I’m pushed for time! Notewor...
Links: Laughter, the Best Nanomedicine
Guess what? There were lots and lots and lots of posts about NaNoWriMo again. No, really. (Whimper. Please God make them all go away in November. Please? I p...
Links By the Light of the Silvery Moon
Give or take the economic crisis and the newest data about the chemical composition of the Moon, NaNoWriMo seems to have been the hottest topic in the blogos...
Links: Roll on December
What a lot of NaNo advice there is to be had this week! Would anyone–anyone other than the advice-givers that is–mind so very much if I ignore most of it and...
Links: Prep and pep-talks
Is modern technology a boon to all, or is it the spawn of the Devil himself? The publishing industry really can’t seem to make up its collective mind either ...
Links: Banned in Republic – Shot in D...
It seems that anybody who is anybody–not to mention a few people who aren’t anybody at all–honoured the ALA Banned Books Week, one way or another. Even UK li...
Oh-so-late links
My secret is out. A slip of the little finger posted my title-free rough notes to this blog in the wee sma’ hours, meaning that–despite my super-fast middle ...
Links
I’m back from my travels, and it’s my turn to trawl the net for writing links. I’ve thrown in a couple of silly videos as well, in case your attention wander...
Links: Booker shortlist week
Matt’s on a plane somewhere over the Atlantic as I write, which is a bit unfortunate as everything in front of me appears to be UK-centric… well, maybe not e...
Links: Hotch-potch
As an unknown (to me) stand-up comedian at the Edinburgh Fringe said, “Life is more complicated than Dan Brown would have us believe.” Real life, transferred...
Links across the Pond
Matt’s on his way over to the States yet again, but mailed me a full round-up to post tonight. Naturally I’d already collected a few links I’d like to share ...
Links: Writerly Stuff. (Mostly.)
In the news this week: James Patterson named highest earning author; Jonathan Franzen on the cover of Time magazine; old-school critic Frank Kermode has died...
Linking a book together
Steph is in recovery after two punishing weeks of link trawling. So it’s my turn. Actually, I notice we’ve done nothing but links in recent weeks. I won’t bo...
Links: Sex, Lies and Photography
Another week flies by, and once again I’m wading through a torrential downpour of blog posts and articles in search of a recognisable trend. It̵...
Links we can fight about
Matt has been sending me links. We don’t always agree about… well, anything much, really, despite the fact that he’s allowed me to ...
Links from the other side
You may have noticed it has gone a little quiet around here in the last week or two. I’ve been in the States for my day job. That and various writin...
Links from the Z-list
Welcome to the Z-list! It’s a bit of a secret round here now, but soon I’ll be launching the Z-list bloggers seminar. Z-list bloggers sometimes ramble...
Some links from the road
I’m on the road in Wales, and on a very dodgy mobile internet connection, so here are the links that grabbed me up until Thursday or so this week. The...
A few links from a busy week
Jonathan Bate is the author of Shakespeare: The Man from Stratford — a one man play to be performed by Simon Callow. In the Guardian this week he wrote...
This week’s links
Another week, another round up. In the Observer Aleks Krotoski interviewed Cory Doctorow, and discussed his practice of publishing under the Creative ...
A return to weekly writing links
A return to the round up this week. Though I’m going to try to editorialise a little less, and link a little more. Otherwise compilation will once agai...
A Moving Roundup
I’m still in the throes of my move, spreading my time between Cumbria and Liverpool. We’ve just moved into a temporary house with a suitcase each. I’m ...
Link Clear Out: All Merchandise As New
When I’m keeping up with roundups, I tend to hoard links, and even jot some notes as I go. Recently things got stupidly busy (moving continents, being ...
An indolent roundup
Off to a slow start for 2010, unlike the rest of the writing community who seem to have leaped from the starting gate as if their tails are on fire. So...
Last round up of 2009. Happy New Year!
So after skipping one for Christmas, I thought I’d sneak one last round up in for 2009. As well as gleaning more tips and advice from the writing blogs...