Friday, August 19, 2011

BookTour.com Closing


BookTour.com, a company that promoted authors is closing shop.

The owners wrote:
Dear friends of BookTour,

"We regret to inform you that BookTour will be shutting down on Thursday, September 1, 2011. On that date, all of our services will end and our data will be unavailable.

"Fewer author tours and changes in book marketing budgets have made our company financially unviable. And while we would like to continue providing the valuable service that is BookTour, everyone here has families to feed and bills to pay. As such, the founders are working on new and exciting ventures in publishing and software development.

"We'd like to thank all the authors, publishers, venues and readers that have supported BookTour since its inception. In our absence, we recommend tools from Amazon Author Central,
Google Calendar, Upcoming.org and (Eventful.com as worthy replacements.

"Any author's existing tour data on BookTour may be downloaded as an XML file off of their author page or via the tool on this page, and then imported to any of the above replacement services that support it."

The BookTour Team

P.S. Questions about our closure may be directed to Kevin Smokler at Smokler@gmail.com.

Read about the company here.

Wednesday, August 17, 2011

eBook Free - New York Writers Workshop's Portable MFA in Creative Writing


The eBook version of the New York Writers Workshop's Portable MFA in Creative Writing is currently free on Amazon right now. Take advantage of this offer here, http://tinyurl.com/3e6eyhm.




Sunday, August 14, 2011

Writing What Editors Want and What Book Editors Are Looking


Although these two articles published in The Chronicle of Higher Education deal with academic writing and submissions, the content is applicable to writing for the trade press as well:

Tuesday, August 2, 2011

Promotional Power of Good Deeds


An excellent example of how good deeds can be used to exponentiate good news on the Internet can be seen in the following article which appeared on The North Palouse Washington e-Newscast.

It's always a pleasure to hear that good deeds are appreciated. Sue Ellis, who allowed her memories of being a Palouse-area rural mail route carrier to be reprinted, sent a Yahoo to Internet Writers Workshop, a premire writers list. Not only is that certainly an accolade your editor truly treasures, a Yahoo online spreads the word around the world via the Internet, and IWW publishes member's successes (Yahoos).

It's always my pleasure to promote local area writers, as well as fine books. And since book reviews help buyers select good books readers appreciate The Internet Review of Books when searching them out.

Congratulations and thanks to all IWW members who post Yahoos, and members who write excellent reviews for IRB.

Monday, August 1, 2011

Writers Persevere! Everyone Else Gives Up!


Recently, Rick Bylina posted his "Yahooooooooooooooo" on Internet Writing Workshop.  After years of perseverance, One Promise Too Many is published and he wrote,
"My debut novel is now available on Smashwords  and soon to be available elsewhere."
Rick always notes, and is liberally quoted as saying,
"Writers write! Everything else is a guideline."
No Writer would quibble with that. However, there's a coda, as Gary Presely, another author who also persevered to publish his book, Seven Wheelchairs: A Life Beyond Polio , reminds us,
"Writers persevere! Everyone else gives up! Persevere in the face of aggressive critiques, personal attacks, rejections, and self-doubts."
Congratulations to these Writers!  Visit their websites: Rick Bylina, http://rickbylina.blogspot.com/, and Gary Presley, http://www.garypresley.com/.



Unbound - a new kid on the publishing block? Will Unbound turn the traditional publishing world upside down?