New Blogger has a new look!

It looks ugly and hard to use like WordPress!

Honestly ... who's great idea was this?

I'm at Libboo at TechStars Boston!

If you're looking for me, I'm working at Libboo over at TechStars Boston!

Libboo -- Home of the Next Digital Bestseller -- come see us here.

Demo Day is May 3.  It should be a great day.

The Most Important Thing An Author Can Do

Seth Godin points us to this interview on Media Bistro and wonders about the logic of the statement:

The publisher of one of the leading book imprints says, “The most important thing an author can do is have his or her book in on time.”

Really?

That’s the most important thing an author can do?

Seth disagrees and writes:  "... the most important thing an author can do is write a breakthrough book, one that makes readers gasp and talk and share. And the second most important thing an author can do is build a tribe, a significant connection with a growing number of people."

Amazon per BusinessWeek

[Sorry about the ads -- believe me I didn't put them there and I don't actually earn any money from them.  Thank BusinessWeek for the ads.]

Seth Godin on the "Downside Up" of Publishing

As usual, Seth Godin gets it.  Here's his latest post.  The red highlights are MINE. 

"The single biggest change in book publishing is this:

The industry was built around finding readers for its writers.

And new technologies and business models now mean that the most successful publishers and authors find writers for their readers instead.

Traditionally, a book is signed, written, edited, designed, printed and distributed and THEN the publisher runs around like crazy trying to alert people about the book, get shelf space and media attention and reviews… all a way of finding readers for the writing that was published.

In the era of permission marketing, the writer already knows her readers, the writer already has the ability to contact those readers. If not the writer, then the publisher or the bookstore.

And that connection is an asset, a valuable one. It means that the attention is already there but must be re-earned regularly. So someone like John Scalzi or Cory Doctorow wakes up in the morning thinking about what he can write for his readers, not how to get more readers for what he’s already written.

[Think about a successful conference. They can invite high profile speakers because they already have an audience. Or think about being asked about appearing on a talk show. You go for free because the talk show already has an audience. This isn't new, it's merely new to publishing.]

And thus, everything changes. The risk. The timing. The deals. The personalities. The books themselves.

The losers at the end of this round are obvious: entities that haven’t bothered to build a direct connection with readers. Everything else is commentary."

Barnes & Noble will carry Amazon titles

Laura Owen Hazard at PaidContent.org describes the new unhappy "marriage" of Amazon and B&N -- not even sure if you can call it a marriage.

Booksellers should not expect to be visited by a friendly Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN) Publishing sales rep anytime soon. Rather, in an agreement announced today, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt will publish the print versions of all of the adult titles from Amazon Publishing’s New York-based division (run by publishing industry vet Larry Kirshbaum), and will distribute them everywhere in North America outside of Amazon.com.

Best of all from Amazon’s point of view: Barnes & Noble (NYSE: BKS) will not get a penny from the e-book sales of Amazon Publishing titles.

Check out the piece "Well, Here’s How Amazon Publishing Will Get Its Books Into Barnes & Noble" here.

My Romance Novel, or My Novel Romance

I'm in a odd position of feeling so happy and proud and satisfied and gaga about my husband in a world of couples who are not doing so well, I am torn.  Show me your rooftop, I'll shout from it, I LOVE MY HUSBAND!  But wait, I better do my SHOUTING ... quietly, so as not to upset the other guys and gals we know who aren't so happy.

He made me the most wonderful dinner last night -- pasta, wine, candles, the works -- and we whispered to one another in candlelight, just us two, co-conspirators, "If they don't like the person they are with, why don't they try to fix it or leave?!"  Shhhhh!   We can't share our dirty little secret -- that we're happy as can be.

Do we anger the gods by being so happy?  Will the plot of our story twist and turn and our tale will end badly?  Maybe, but not for now.  Are most people unhappy?  There are days when it seems that way.