BANNING BOOKS

THROUGH THE BACK DOOR 

It’s happening still, but no longer just through public protest and pressure on libraries and bookstores. Today’s news reveals the even more upsetting fact that publishers are actually participating in the shameful effort to impose their moral dicta on the general public and withdraw books from the marketplace. 

Zondervan, a Michigan-based publisher, released a book that focused on leadership qualities and the importance of integrity. Unfortunately, these highly moral issues were presented in a book entitled Deadly Viper Character Assassins: A Kung Fu Survival Guide for Life and Leadership.  

An associate professor at a theological seminary in Chicago read the book and complained to the publisher that it was “Inappropriate to use an ancient culture to simply market the book when it’s not really about martial arts.” The open letter appeared on the Internet and launched a barrage of criticism from right-wing Christian officials who consider the imagery offensive. Zondervan withdrew the book. 

At the same time, Regnery, a publisher that specializes in right wing dogma has forced author Carrie Prejean, the former Miss California USA, to cut way back on events promoting her book Still Standing, and has banned her from responding to any questions about her alleged sex tape, produced when she was only 17 years old. 

Cow-towing to pressure from the evangelical wing of Regnery’s primary market, the publisher took these steps, but continued to release the book. After all, even a high moralistic commitment can’t overcome the lure of a book that is number 556 on Amazon.  

It’s amazing how money can sabotage conviction.

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AN IRRESISTIBLE QUOTE OF THE DAY 

I just could not resist passing along this show of brilliance found in the book Going Rogue by our fellow “author” Sarah Palin:  

“If God had not intended us to eat animals, how come he made them out of meat?” 

Answer that one, if you can.

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BOOKSELLER TURNED AUTHOR TELLS OF ORGANIZING

VOLUNTEER NETWORK IN OBAMA CAMPAIGN 

This interesting piece appeared in the newsletter distributed by the American Booksellers Association (ABA). John and Michelle Presta, owners of the Chicago bookstore Reading on Walden, have written a book describing their efforts to build a grassroots volunteer organization to support Barack Obama’s presidential bid.  

The book is titled, Mr. and Mrs. Grassroots: How Barack Obama, Two Bookstore Owners and 300 Volunteers Did It. It will be released next month by Elevator Group Publishing.  

The Prestas first began helping Obama in his failed Congressional race, then continued to work for him in his Senate bid and the presidential campaign. Prtesta explains, “The words ‘independent bookseller’ connotes involvement in the community…and that is what indie booksellers have done for many years.”  

Regardless of your political affiliation, you have to cheer the Prestas for participating in the keystone of a successful democracy—a free election. 

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Charlie’s Choice

Weekly Tips to Help You Write,

Publish & Promote Your Work 

END OF THE YEAR EDITION

LOOKING BACK & BRAINSTORMING THE FUTURE 

      The year has been a rather hectic one. So jammed with writing, coaching, teaching, blogging and speaking, it left altogether too little time for thinking. And thinking, just simple contemplation is so vital to writing well, indeed to accomplishing almost anything worthwhile.

      The need for down time has become particularly important because lots of new things are set to happen next year. My latest book will be off the press in February. We are forming a new corporation that will encompass the book, this blog, a new web site and a very different coaching program. It will all function under the umbrella of Wisewriter.com.

      Don’t look for it yet. The launch will be simultaneous with the book. Work has already begun on the brand new web site. The existing retirement-writing.com will continue to serve retirees and senior citizens, while the new Wise Writer site will be targeted to writers of all ages, from 16 to 96. All of this demands a great deal of planning, as you can imagine.

      As the weeks passed from summer to fall to winter, I tried to find time to plan the myriad details for next year’s improvements, but deadlines for fulfilling my current responsibilities continued to sidetrack those concerns.

      One of my initial reactions was to close down my blog and the Charlie’s Choice column it contains. Researching and cherry picking industry news that I felt would be of interest and of value to all of you took a hefty number of hours, as did planning out and producing the Charlie’s Choice column.

      But any thought of announcing its demise at the end of the year ended last week when I once again read the praises contained in the posts from a number of readers. As most bloggers know, you send your words off into the atmosphere, unsure of where they might land and be useful. It is the response from our readers that makes the effort worthwhile. E-mails and posts, as well as postal mail and phone calls that come from readers who have taken the time to locate my address or telephone number have a profound meaning for me.

      Instead of making a hasty decision that I will undoubtedly regret next year, I have decided to take a brief “sabbatical” of several weeks, but hope you won’t forget us during the two weeks when your blog does not arrive on Wednesday morning. It will return on January 13, very probably with a new name and new artwork.

      My newest book, completed in late November, is scheduled to come off the press in February. We’re keeping our fingers crossed that no glitches occur to delay that date. It has a rather long title, but it expresses exactly what the book is all about. I call it Buzz Your Book, Brand Yourself, Build Your Sales. It’s kind of a “TripleB” approach to your success as an author.

      But the book is very special and very different. Almost every step it proposes is no cost. Free. Requiring not even a penny from you. Yet these are tried and true, carefully vetted promotional techniques. They work!

      When writing the book, I had in mind authors who have never before had to develop publicity and promotion on their own. That includes experienced authors who are now required by their publishers to handle most of the book promotion themselves. I also realized that most  authors of the several hundred thousand new POD books arriving on the market every year were completely new to our industry and its unique promotional requirements. They were in need of some professional guidance that didn’t cost a small fortune as most PR programs do.

      Far too many new books arrive on the market only to die unread on the bookstore shelves, if they are even lucky enough to be displayed. BookScan’s report that the average book sells only 500 copies is frightening when you realize that average includes celebrity books that move more than a million copies. Results for POD–published books are even more drastic.

      My new book is essentially a how-to, self-help reference book. It does work, as I said above. But only if you expend some effort as well. Each chapter outlines exactly what you should be doing in the category of promotion it talks about. At the end of every chapter is a list of resources to help you do it.

      I become angry when I read a how-to book that tells you what you should be doing, but never gives you the tools to accomplish what it says. In the appendix of my last book The Writer Within You, there are long lists of resources to guide you. This time, because each chapter was a project within itself, I decided it would be easier for my readers to have the resources listed at the chapter’s end. I will notify you in the blog when the book is available.

      The new web site will contain a large number of articles that I have published, sorted under Writing, Publishing, Promoting and Digital. These have appeared in both print publications and online. They’ll be there for you at no cost to reference easily on each specific subject.

      Frankly, I am still struggling with the best format for the blog. For the past two years, I have begun the year with columns on writing in various genres, then moved into the alternative methods of publishing your book. I followed that with articles on promoting your book and branding yourself.

      Although you have been kind enough to praise the series as highly helpful, I feel that to follow that schedule once again seems foolhardy. Many of you have already read what I have to say on those subjects. So I am—or will be during the short break I take—working on developing a schedule of interesting articles that will help you in all phases of your experience as an author.    

      If any of you have suggestions that might help, I am open to any and all ideas. Drop me an e-mail at jac391@aol.com. Use “blog” as your subject line. I will read and carefully consider every suggestion and respond to you and thank you for your help.

      Meanwhile, until we are together again on January 13^th, please accept my very best wishes for a delightful holiday season and a fulfilling and enriching New Year with lots of published articles and a new book.

Keep Writing!   

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ALL EYES ARE FOCUSED ON TIM ARMSTRONG

AND HIS NEWEST CHALLENGE, RESTRUCTURING AOL 

With AOL’s widely anticipated split from Time Warner, newly appointed CEO Tim Armstrong must use the expertise he exhibited while at Google to develop a platform of content that will intrigue both consumers and advertisers and convince them that the newest incarnation of this much-beleaguered company has finally discovered the path to success. 

That’s a mighty big job when faced with competition from powerhouses like Yahoo and MSN.  

Once a thriving organization that made the slogan “Welcome, you’ve got mail” an iconic phrase worldwide, AOL began its fabled downhill slide with its improbable merger with Time Warner. Now that it’s on its own, Armstrong has to find ways to eradicate the stigma that misjudgment created and convince all that he can turn the company around. 

Despite AOL’s sad history of management changes that consistently failed, Armstrong sees opportunity in the base of 100 million unique visitors every month.  

Not a bad place to begin the process of convincing the world that this incarnation will be the best and hopefully the last for the ailing organization. I have maintained my loyalty through all these lean years, and found the company very supportive and relatively efficient.  

While I have no financial interests in AOL, I urge my readers to support it. The larger the variety of Internet access providers, the better the chance for greater choice and speedier access. 

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SOME SURPRISES IN BETHANNE PATRICK’S SELECTION

OF THE TEN WORST BOOKS PUBLISHED IN 2009 

Bethanne Patrick, popular managing editor and host of The Book Studio, recently announced her choices for the ten top books of 2009. Now she has dug down to the bottom of the pile, and selected the bottom ten. Several of them were rather surprising to me, and therefore worth mentioning. Here’s a sample along with the rationale that she used in her selections. 

THE LACUNA – Barbara Kingsolver -- Harrison Shepherd was born into an exciting era and has an enviable fly-on-the-wall view of 1930s luminaries like artists Frida Kahle, Diego Rivera – so why is he such a boring narrator?

HER FEARFUL SYMMETRY – Audrey Niffenegger -- The subplot involving a severely OCD Englishman, Martin, and his long suffering Dutch wife Marijke, should have been the entire book. No modern women, no matter how young, are as clueless as the protagonist twins.

THE LOST SYMBOL – Dan Brown – Perhaps it’s due to the self-reverential nature of Washington, D.C. as main locale, but Brown’s long-awaited book felt downright claustrophobic to me, as if Robert Langdon were shutting me inside of a Masonic tomb.

CLEAVING --  Julie Powell –We all know from the movie Julie and Julia that Julie Powell wanted nothing more than to be a writer. “I have thoughts!” This book shares none of them. An exercise in stretching a metaphor. 

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NY TIMES, WAPO AND GOOGLE JOIN HANDS

TO CREATE A NEW EXPERIMENT IN ONLINE NEWS 

While lots and lots of chatter filled the air and moguls like Rupert Murdoch continue to damn Google and threaten to place pay walls on all of his online holdings, high level representatives of the New York Times, Washington Post and Google held lengthy discussions that resulted in a new experimental approach to presenting news online.  

Called “Living Story Page,” it has been designed to make it easier for the average reader to digest all the news about a single incident. The concept is to group stories on a specific topic as they develop over a period of time through continuous updates.  

Calling Living Stories an innovative approach that takes advantage of the uniqueness of online coverage, this is the way Google describes the new program, “They unify coverage on a single, dynamic page with a consistent URL. They organize information by developments in the story. They call your attention to changes in the story since you last viewed it so you can easily find the new material. Through a succinct summary of the whole story and regular updates, they offer a different online approach to balancing the overview with depth and context. 

To launch the program, the Post has chosen the Washington school system, heath reform and the Redskins as its subjects. The Times is starting with global warming, health care, Afghanistan, swine flu and executive compensation. Users can then investigate specific aspects of the category by clicking onto a variety of subsets. 

As one of the additional benefits to the newspapers, the relationship with Google will boost their search engine rankings, making the pages one of the first place surfers head to when looking for information on a subject covered on the Living Story Page. 

Google states that it plans to extend the program to other newspapers, magazines and even web sites if this initial experiment proves successful. You can learn more about the program and see the actual pages at http://livingstories.googlelabs.com.

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                                              70% OF AMERICAN BLOGGERS DISCUSS

                                                 PRODUCTS & BRANDS ON THEIR BLOGS         

Of the nearly 28 million American Internet users that Emarketer estimates published blogs during the year (2009), 70% stated that they discussed products and/or brands on their sites, according to a study conducted by Technorati. That information becomes particularly important right now with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) evaluating whether samples and other perks represent reportable income, to say nothing of the ethical implications of accepting those gratuities. 

Technorati lists four categories of bloggers in its report: Hobbyists, Part timers, Self-employed and Corporate. When each group was asked whether they blogged about brands they loved or hated, 44% of hobbyists said “yes, with a high  of 55% of part timers agreeing along with 52% of self-employed bloggers. Surprisingly, a low of just 37% of corporate bloggers agreed. 

The study produced some additional information that should prove of interest to those of you who either blog now or are considering it for the future. According to 60% of those bloggers surveyed, blogging has improved  their recognition in their respective fields, Of the bloggers who post for a business 71% claim to have increased their company’s visibility, while 63% state they have converted prospects into buyers and 56% believe their work has enhanced the reputation of their company. 

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                            BOOKSTORES CALL FOR EXTENSION OF

                                  PRIVACY PROTECTION FOR THEIR CUSTOMERS 

With privacy protections in the proposed U.S. Senate reauthorization bill for the Patriot Act now extended for library patrons, the American Booksellers Association and others involved in the Campaign for Reader Privacy are petitioning to have bookstores records protected against invasion by government investigators unless the records pertain directly to a customer suspected or terrorism or espionage. 

The Act expires at the end of this year, and the Senate is working on an extension of three key provisions. Industry groups are asking people to contact their Senators to add the protections for both libraries and bookstores.  

It is a disgrace that it is even necessary to establish these reduced controls. In an allegedly open democracy such as ours professes to be, it should be axiomatic that Big Brother has no right to probe the habits of the populace when reading legitimately published works. 

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                                     ONLINE REPORTING NOW ELIGIBLE

                                             FOR PULITZER PRIZE AWARDS 

The Publishing World  

The Pulitzer Prize Committee has announced a revision of the submission requirements in its annual awards program. Its decision to allow online reporters to qualify is a recognition of the growing presence of professional news sites on the Web, and a move that certainly makes sense. 

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