A quick link to a post by my friend Angelo Benuzzi, and his personal considerations when planning the launch of his author-published work.
Enjoy!
A link to an excellent short piece by author Steven Brust, summing up his views on post-modernism.
And I must say I undersign them completely.
Enjoy!
Here’s a link to an article which packs some wisdom both for those living the writing life and those living just ordinary, plain vanilla life. It’s
Bruce Lee’s 7 Fundamentals for Getting your Life in Shape.
Food for thought.
Today a “cat blog” sort of post.
Today is my brother Alessandro’s 40th birthday.
Alex – aka the thin, better-looking of the Mana Bros – is a musician, musical promoter, and online radio DJ, with a sideline in Orientalism, and he’s an amateur Ripperologist.
He’s been my partner in crime in a number of projects for ages, and usually acts as a sounding board for my ideas ond ventures.
I act as his personal reality check.
Happy birthday, bro!
This is an impromptu post.
Chuck Wendig just posted another fine piece about… authors that publish their own stuff.
About the name you slap on such individuals.
Something I’m interested in, as I’m one of those that get slapped.
Let’s see.
The most common labels are:
. self-published author
. independent author
. self-produced author
Let’s admit it – they do suck.
At best, they aremisleading.
In my language, the label is usually (autore) Autopubblicato – and it reads as a mark of infamy.
It means, more or less, “you sucker, a real publisher would not touch your rubbish with a ten foot pole”.
And in my case might as well be correct – I’ve this thing which seems to ruffle the feathers of most publishers.
Incidentally – I do prefer author to writer, because it describes more precisely who I am.
A writer could be writing under dictation.
He could be a graffiti artist.
I’m an author.
Or, here’s another definition which is quite fun, content crafter.
Which is fine when I’m authoring stuff that’s not orthodox book- stuff – online articles, blog posts, slide text, infographics, etcetera.
Beats any day of the week the horrid web-writer so many people seem to enjoy (so much so there’s people out there actually selling “professional web-writer” certifications, these days!)
When it comes to publishing my stuff, anyway, the standard labels suck, but there are two other definitions I like much better.
The first is artisanal publisher, coined by Guy Kawasaki and Shawn Welsh in his excellent APE: Author, Publisher, Entrepreneur-How to Publish a Book.
I’ve been using that a lot – it removes the stigma of the guy working in his basement with an old HP printer and adds a touch of highly marketable mistique.
The second, which was recently proposed by Chuck Wendig, is author-publisher.
Which, and I have to agree with the man, sounds just like a multi-class character in a role playing game – like wizard-rogue, which I have played once in a while in my long gaming career.
And is mighty fine.
Sounds great.
It’s classy.
So here we go – from this moment on, I am Davide Mana, author-publisher.
I’m into artisanal publishing, actually.
A friend of mine posted this on Facebook, and I liked it so much I decided to post it here as a reminder.
It’s from the 1920s, a time in which criticism was not a form of aggression through the web.
Yesterday I was asking about helping my fans lose their shyness.
Now I’d also like to point out that criticism – public or private, in the form of a review posted somewhere or a direct message to the author – is what keeps writers going, and what helps them improving.
Give it and take it cheerfully.
You may have noticed a Goodreads Widget appeared in the sidebar here on the right, last week.
I’m not a great Goodreads user – after the initial “feeding frenzy”, the two days solid spent recording all the books I read and listing all the books I’d like to read, I sort of drifted away, and in the last few months I checked my account maybe once every three weeks.
What caused me a certain surprise was finding out, last Thursday, that not only all of my free ebooks are listed in Goodreads, and have quite good ratings, but even my recent short story, Tyrannosaurus Tex, which went on sale through Amazon ten days ago, is there on Goodreads already, and has a great rating!
And I even have four (count’em, four!) self-proclaimed fans of mine.
I have got fans on Goodreads!
And they’ve been there – reviews, ratings and fans – since goodness knows when.
And I did not know about’em!
It certainly never came to me the idea of doing a vanity search, and on Goodreads of all places.
And my fans, and my highly positive reviewers… well they did not even drop me a line!
And it’s weird, because the web is such, right now, that I’m painfully aware of my negative reviews – because having given you a good thrashing, they’re quite happy to let you know about it.
And at the same time, my fans and those that like my work are too shy to get in touch with me.
So I’m taking a moment to send out a belated Thank You, Guys!!
I do not have many readers – but this is fine, as I’m just starting out in the ebook arena, and hopefully more will come.
But as I have a small numbers of readers, it seems to me like a good opportunity for getting to know them.
Because without them, of course, my stories and essays are meaningless, lifeless, useless.
I’ll have to find a way to cure my fans of their shyness.
Any suggestions?
The comments section is always open…
Karavansara 