A Place for Multimedia Long-Form Stories

Add to your reading list a piece about the Atavist. Here's the opening blurb at Nieman Storyboard: 

Multimedia storytelling at The Atavist: One year in, how’s it going, Evan Ratliff?
It’s been a little over a year since The Atavist debuted as a groundbreaking digital platform for long-form multimedia storytelling. Narrative journalists had been bemoaning the shrinking storytelling acreage, so this app-based venue was met with substantial interest. “E-books are more than a publishing platform,” as New York magazine referred to the genre, “they’re a whole new literary form.”
So, is it working?

Read the whole interview. I plan to.

Happily Ever After?

You're thinking you'll be happy when you finally get that book contract? A post on a literary agent's blog will make you think again.

The Sigma Delta Chi Foundation is accepting applications for the Eugene C. Pulliam Fellowship for Editorial Writing.

The Pulliam Editorial Fellowship awards $75,000 to an editorial writer to help broaden his or her journalistic horizons and knowledge of the world. The cash award can be used to cover the cost of study, research and/or travel in any field.

For more information, including application requirements and information about the 2011 Pulliam Fellow, click here.

Applications are due June 22.

For questions, please contact Awards Coordinator Lauren Rochester at lrochester@spj.org.

eBook Issues

The Internet is so tempting for a writer, isn't it: Unlimited space online! Inexpensive! Accessible!

And a whole 'nuther batch of issues to contemplate.

Here's an excerpt from Media Morning Newsfeed (put out free by Media Bistro):

Navigating A Tightrope With Amazon (NYT)
Last Tuesday, Buzz Bissinger hopped the Amtrak train to Philadelphia from New York, where he had done a bit of publicity for After Friday Night Lights, a 12,000-word eBook that had been performing nicely since its release. But when he opened his laptop to check his ranking on Amazon, he found the book was no longer for sale there. GalleyCat Through an Apple and Starbucks promotion, customers could redeem the book for free. To compete with the lowest price available, Amazon dropped its price to zero. Unhappy with this move, Bissinger's publisher Byliner.com pulled the title. Philadelphia Inquirer Bissinger wrote the eBook for Byliner, a publisher specializing in electronic "long-form" books (say, 5,000 to 30,000 words). Byliner published it through Amazon and other venues -- including iTunes, the Apple shop -- and priced it at $2.99. It's also for sale at Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and other digital stores. And it was doing pretty well. paidContent This means authors will have to make the decision: Will they gain more new readers and sales by having their book promoted in Starbucks, or will the sales lost through Amazon that week outweigh any Starbucks benefit?

Another venue, another factors to balance.

Lord knows, I don't have any answers. I just like to bring up the questions.

Has anyone used Byliner, as an author or a read4er? Just curious.

Oh, That Pesky Platform Thing

Yesterday I received an advance copy of THE YEAR OF LEARNING DANGEROUSLY: Adventures in Homeschooling (Perigee Hardcover; $23.95; August 7, 2012).

I toyed with the idea of homeschooling one of my kids--believe me, there were weird circumstances involved because I am genuinely not the type to do this. So, my first question when I saw this book was, How did this person manage to get a memoir on this subject published?

Checking the bio in the press material, I found that "popular blogger, author, and former child actor Quinn Cummings explores her family’s decision to wade into the unfamiliar waters of homeschooling."

Bingo. This writer has a platform--a way to reach people to tell them about the book. (I am petty enough to think that former child actors [FCA] get undeserved bonus points in publishers' brains, but it can't be argued that FCAs must be media savvy.)

All writers improve their chances of being published if they have a platform. So, when Ericka Dreifus's blog Practicing Writing mentioned a platform-building challenge on a blog named My Name Is Not Bob, I thought I'd pass it along.

I hope to take Not Bob up on the challenge. But I also hope to the do the Etsy store-building boot camp, too, so we'll see how these work out.

Reading List

This blogster, "Twenty-Five Books in Thirty Days," is going through creative nonfiction writers dealing with place. List of classics.

Books as Works of Art

I got a link today to show off really charming sculptures made of books. When you want to do something besides read a book, I guess.

Quote

"To a clear eye the smallest fact is a window through which the infinite may be seen."

-Thomas Henry Huxley, biologist and writer (1825-1895)

Online Writer Markets

Below is a list of websites for online writer markets, passed on by a friend who got it from the memoir writing class she's taking at a local bookstore. I didn't check the links.

(Hopefully) helpful links:
Online market search (mostly literary journals):
http://duotrope.com/
http://www.newpages.com/
http://portal.webdelsol.com/
http://www.clmp.org/ (Council of Literary Magazines and Presses)

Magazines with calls for submissions and great lists of publications:
http://www.pw.org/ (includes agent database)
http://www.writersdigest.com/
http://www.awpwriter.org/magazine/

Great resources for freelancers (including job listings)
http://www.mediabistro.com/
http://www.woodenhorsepub.com/
http://www.erikadreifus.com/resources/where-to-publish/

Writing for radio
http://newscript.com/

Writers Market (includes Poets Market. Pay for online services and/or
buy print edition. Lists agents.)
http://www.writersmarket.com/

Start with a Bang

Standard advice: Start your story in the middle of action. Readers want to be grabbed and pulled in. Those books that start with lengthy descriptions of weather, for example, are so 18th century.

Today's tidbit is from Booklist, which reviews umpteen million books for "librarians, book groups, and book lovers--from the trusted experts at the American Library Association," as they put it. Two middle school librarians (nobody goes to junior high anymore?) put together a list of great first lines, but regardless of your specialty, it's a fun list. Here's a sample:

“That nice Mrs. Kramer lied to me about third grade.”
–from Marty McGuire by Kate Messner (Scholastic 2011)

I'd love to hear what your favorite first lines from CNF books are!

Tweet Stories

Interesting: http://stories.twitter.com/.

How we looooove stories!

Finding a Focus

Awash in detail? Have a notion for a story?

See what others have to say about zeroing in on what your piece is about in this rerun of a Poynter chat about finding your focus.

http://www.poynter.org/how-tos/newsgathering-storytelling/writing-tools/141685/live-chat-today-practical-tips-for-finding-a-focus-when-writing/

Advice for Unfolding Your Story

niemanstory Nieman Storyboard

How do you unfold a story that keeps the reader going?http://bit.ly/id0nzu

New "Funds for Writers"

New issue of this helpful newsletter is up at http://www.fundsforwriters.com.

Some tidbits:

From EDITOR'S THOUGHTS:

"I'm often asked in conferences or online chats, 'If you could give one piece of advice to writers, what would it be?' Without a doubt, it would be to write more and publish slowly. I've seen too many people hurt by doing the opposite."

WORDS OF SUCCESS

"Without promotion something terrible happens. . . Nothing!"

~P.T. Barnum

Free!

The Practicing Writing blogger is making a couple of resources about markets for book reviews and essays available free. She says:

One provides a directory of paying markets for book reviewers, and the other one lists dozens of paying markets for essayists. The most recent updates for both guides were completed last December.

The time is coming to say good-bye to updating--and selling--these two guides, too. But before they disappear from view (which will happen on August 1, 2010), I want to give you all the opportunity to access them (free of charge). They're still available on the site that has handled the sales from the start:

categories: resources, markets

More People to Twitter-Stalk

By way of Jevon Bolden, we have a list of book folks she has enjoyed following on Twitter. Learn why--and where you can get more tips on finding good editors at her site, Embrace the Impossible.

Read and Write

Go read essays on craft from the Nieman Storyboard site. It'll be good for you!

And then go write something.

My life has been full of way to much grist for the mill lately (i.e., chaos and family disasters), but I'm trying to take notes so I can write about it later. Probably muuuuch later, when I can bear to think about it.

Chautauqua Writers' Festival

The Chautauqua Writers' Festival convenes this year from June 17-20 on the grounds of Chautauqua Institution and the shores of Lake Chautauqua in western New York state. It's a four-day festival where participants can choose to work in any genre. There are daily workshops with a faculty member, open mics, genre and publishing panels, readings, writing time, and great music. The past couple of years, participants often stay at the Athenaeum, a historic 19th-century inn with endless porches and wicker. In creative nonfiction this year, the faculty are Tom French and Jacob Levenson. Diana Hume George is a co-director, and if you have questions after visiting the website, contact her at diana@coaxPA.com.

Here's the link:
http://writers.ciweb.org/writers-festival