That said, for the most part, Valentine seems to work best with disciplined, selfless talent, most of whom are primed to buy in to his style of play. For instance, I think David Wright would do well with Valentine, but I think Jose Reyes would struggle. So, if the Mets intend to rely on the Gary Sheffields of the world, the Carlos Delgado, Valentine should never return. However, if the Mets plan to build a team around hit-and-runs, less power and more doubles in the gap, timely stolen bases, bunting, a versatile bullpen, and basically play chess on a baseball field, Valentine is the best…
"It is the glory and the burden of public schools that they cater to all of our children, whether delinquent or obedient, drug-damaged or clean, brilliant or handicapped, privileged or scarred." - Benjamin R. Barber Three years ago, my wife (Salomé) was accepted into NYC's Teaching Fellows Program, and left the corporate world to become a special education teacher in Hunts Point, one of the worst neighborhoods in the Bronx. Unlike many who enter the program as an escape from corporate life, with fantasies of early dismissal and summer vacations, she was primarily inspired by the ups and downs we…
After a couple of weeks on Storytlr, I don't love it. It's much too inconvenient to use (posting via web is the only method that works well) and it doesn't appear to have any active development going on. Also, its primary gimmick of combining sources to tell a "story" is rather limited, and isn't terribly appealing or relevant to me, so I'm not putting any more energy into it. Posterous is intriguing, though, offering simple posting via email and SMS, plus integration with Flickr; exactly what I'm looking for in advance of our Route 66 trip. Plus, it has a…
A book’s success is too important to entrust to somebody who doesn’t have a stake in it. Editors are already fierce enough advocates to have persuaded their bosses to let them acquire the books in the first place; why not let them keep on advocating?
Hogan, GalleyCat’s Senior Editor, makes a valid point — that an editor’s name should theoretically have some pull with readers — but it’s undermined by the tiresome meme that social media will be publishing’s savior, and a misguided sense of entitlement, implying that publishers are preventing editors from establishing an influential public voice of their own.
Social media are excellent tools for building personal brands — the jury’s still out on where they fit within the corporate picture — and their primary appeal is that they’re free for anyone to use. Just like authors are expected to build themselves a platform before seeking out a publishing deal, editors should be doing the exact same thing for themselves.
It’s not rocket science, it’s free, and no one’s permission is required.
No matter who your editor is, or what their influence (or lack thereof) with readers might be, though, when it comes down to it, the best, most passionate promoter of a book is going to be its author.
There’s a hand-painted sign that hangs over my desk at work, that my wife picked out years ago at a crafts fair in Virginia, that says:
“I’m not bossy, I just have better ideas.”
Anyone that’s worked with me, reads this blog, or follows me on Twitter, probably isn’t the least bit surprised by that. Publishing and marketing have been twin passions of mine forever — in high school, I published a newsletter for my fantasy football league, using my Commodore 64 and The Newsroom software — and I’ve been fortunate to have a day job related to them, in one form or another, for over 15 years now. I’m generally a laid-back guy, but when it comes to certain topics, I can be quite outspoken; that’s partly where the “loudpoet” moniker came from, a riff on the influential Aloud: Voices From the Nuyorican Poets Café.
At the beginning of this year, I shifted the focus of this blog firmly in the direction of those particular passions, with the goal of establishing loudpoet.com as an outlet to voice my opinions on things in the industry that had previously been limited to backchannel emails and happy hour debates with friends and colleagues. Poking back through the archives, the combination of Twitter and the Tools of Change Conference really got me going, with the discussion on the former about the latter’s “Building Communities Around Content” session leading to the first notable wave of connections being made there and traffic being driven here.
Since then, I’ve written several posts that I consider to be must-reads, including the four noted as “Features” over in the right-hand column, but the word cloud above, generated via the blog’s RSS feed at Wordle.net, highlights two prominent words that best represent what this blog is really all about: community and people.
“Digital publishing”, “ePublishing” and “social publishing” are the buzzwords du jour; Web 2.0 business models based on the idea that eBooks are the next big thing and social media platforms and tools are the best way to sell them.
There’s seemingly a new “publisher” putting up a digital shingle every day, and while the description and details vary somewhat among them, the usual common denominators are a savvy marketer’s dream combination of truth, opinion, hype, and a dash of old-fashioned “snake oil” opportunism:
Print is dead.
The distribution system is broken.
eBooks are teh future.
Social media has made us all publishers and journalists.
Writers will do anything to get published.
That last point typically represents the digital start-ups’ primary source of income, monetizing a community of aspiring writers by selling their work back into the community, or by offering them fee-based services that allow them to do it themselves. In their ideal scenario, they double-dip.
While generally offering legitimate contracts and something resembling a distribution and marketing program — the latter of which will still fall primarily in the author’s lap — there’s a vague whiff of old-school vanity underlying the whole thing that’s bothered me from the beginning.
“I would be the most content if my children grew up to be the kind of people who think decorating consists mostly of building enough bookshelves.” —Anna Quindlen
GalleyCat had a provocative post last week, “Is This the Bookstore of Tomorrow?“, spotlighting novelist Moriah Jovan’s anti-septic floorplan anchored by two Espresso machines (POD, not coffee) surrounded by workstations for searching and ordering books, with a corner kiosk for demoing eReaders, and a cash register.
Most notably, there’s not a single printed book in sight.
In her original post, “The Perfect Bookstore“, Jovan cheekily notes that her concept is going to “help [publishers and booksellers] solve all [their] problems”, derisively adding that the 2nd floor of this revolutionary bookstore “could house a coffee shop or used books or books that you wanted to order to keep in stock…”
Never mind the technophiliac focus on the Espresso (a large and expensive piece of machinery), or that eBooks currently represent only 1-2% of total annual book sales; Jovan’s approach completely misses the underlying appeal, and most sustainable premise, of a bookstore: it’s a real-life gathering place for a community. (more…)
