Category: Reading

Read, Eat, Drink: How ClickHole Became the Best Thing on the Internet & a Rhubarb Gin Cocktail Recipe

by Maria

Read:

How to get published

60+ Fantastic Email Newsletters to Read and Share (Courtney Seiter for Buffer): I love email newsletters because they’re such an effortless and fun way to learn new things. And this list is especially awesome, since it spans so many topics: general news, tech, marketing, design, photography, sports, food and beverage, general interesting-ness, and self-improvement (i.e. a lot of the topics I represent as an agent)! I really do not want to confess how many of these I signed up for. Let’s just say it was more than 2 and less than 20.

How ClickHole Became the Best Thing on the Internet (Dan Kois for Slate): “But the Atlantic reports that [The Onion] plans more independent site launches in the ClickHole mode, and according to Quantcast, the online traffic-measuring tool, ClickHole’s traffic has mostly held steady between 10 million and 15 million page views per month. Like many websites, ClickHole’s had game-changing mammoth viral hits; in November about 7 million people read what I believe to be ClickHole’s masterpiece, “’90s Kids Rejoice! The Spider Eggs They Used to Fill Beanie Babies Are Finally Hatching,” in part because at least a few social-Web visitors worried the threat was real. And as ClickHole has grown,  the site’s moved away from being a simple BuzzFeed parody; instead it’s become richer, weirder, a darker reflection of our own dark times.” Did any one else burst out laughing at the thought of spider eggs hatching in Beanie Babies? Way, way too good.

The Quick-and-Simple Guide to Getting Started with Video Content (Matt Aunger for Buffer): Video is a fabulous tool for connecting more deeply with your readers, because it creates an intimate, face-to-face, three-dimensional experience. (Why do you think Food Network stars, John Green, and other TV, YouTube, and movie stars manage to sell so many books?) Here’s the delightfully short guide to layering video into your existing platform without driving yourself nuts.

How to Repurpose Your Book or Blog Content for Profit and Promotion (Nina Amir on JaneFriedman.com): “As an author who has just produced or may be in the process of producing amazing amounts of content, you have a great advantage: You can turn all that content into money-making products. These ‘information products’ can provide you additional income and a business that revolves around your book. This strategy also works for long-time bloggers who are often sitting on as much information as a book would contain.”

Eat & Drink:

Over to Jarrett, for this gloriously delicious drink:

Rhubarb and gin cocktail recipe

Read More

Read, Eat, Drink: William Zinsser on Nonfiction and a Wild Feast

by Maria

Literary Agent Advice

Read:

How to Secure a Traditional Book Deal by Self-Publishing (Jane Friedman at Writer Unboxed): “It’s not any easier to interest an agent or publisher when you’re self-published, and since new authors are more likely to put out a low-quality effort (they rush, they don’t sufficiently invest, they don’t know their audience), chances are even lower their book will get picked up.” As Jane puts it, “we have a serious epidemic of impatience.” The truth is that publishing a book is easy, but finding readers for a book is hard. More here on how to decide if self-publishing is right for you.

What’s Your Book Marketing Plan? 6 Crucial Steps to Include (Maggie Langrick on The Write Life): “I now counsel all of our authors to build a relationship directly with their readers.” The wonderful thing about this Internet age is that no one can keep you from your readers but you. That’s a lot of responsibility, but it’s also a lot of opportunity.

The Biggest Business Mistake I Ever Made (Joel Friedlander, The Book Designer): “My big mistake was ignoring my email list. I just didn’t understand why it was crucially important until a friend showed me the light.” From my data, there are tons of bloggers and aspiring authors who are making this same mistake. In fact, of the last 10 calls I had with aspiring authors over the past few weeks, exactly ONE understood the importance of building an email list. Guess which one I offered to represent.

The Art of Science Communication: William Zinsser on How to Write Well About Science (Maria Popova, Brain Pickings): The day William Zinsser passed away, I picked up my old yellowed copy of On Writing Well, and it pulled me back to my journalism days in college. I didn’t realize it then, but Zinsser, McPhee, Mitchell, and the whole crowd from my Literary Journalism class are the ones who dragged me, happily, into making a career in nonfiction. I remember picking up The New Yorker sometime in high school, spotting an article about UPS, and being so riveted I couldn’t stop reading. Good nonfiction makes even the most dense and mundane subject fascinating. As Zinsser says: “Writing is not a special language owned by the English teacher. Writing is thinking on paper. Anyone who thinks clearly can write clearly, about anything at all. Science, demystified, is just another nonfiction subject. Writing, demystified, is just another way for scientists to transmit what they know.”

Eat & Drink:

Before I jump into this week’s Eat & Drink, an important question: Does your diet consist almost entirely of chicken tenders, mac and cheese, grilled cheese sandwiches, and other delicacies from the kids’ menu? If so, please avert your eyes. Things are going to get what you would consider “gross.”

Read More

Read, Eat, Drink: The Best Publishing, Writing, and Platform Links plus a Memorial Day Menu

by Maria

Read:

neil degrasse tyson quote

5 Smart Content Strategies from a Stellar Marketer of Ideas (Sonia Simone on Copyblogger): If you haven’t heard of Neil deGrasse Tyson, he will be your new favorite nerd. “He talks about the value in having a passion for all kinds of things, not just your specific area of study. (Tyson has pursued serious interests in wrestling, rowing, wine collecting, and ballroom dancing, so he practices what he preaches.)” In a world where we’re all honed in on acquiring ultimate knowledge in our fields, it’s such a relief to be encouraged to intellectually roam .

Cartographer of Meaning in a Digital Age (Maria Popova/On Being with Krista Tippett): I listened to this podcast on Tuesday, and it absolutely changed the trajectory of my whole week. I’ve always been an obsessive fan of Popova, but it’s particularly inspiring to hear her talk about the things few people talk about–meaning, fulfillment, intellectual curiosity–in a fresh, accessible way. Dream dinner party: Me, Maria Popova, Krista Tippett, Neil deGrasse Tyson, and an XL pot of soup.

Osama Bin Laden’s Bookshelf Reflects His Fixation with the West (Michiko Kakutani for The New York Times): “His bookshelf is a weird hodgepodge. It’s hard to know how complete a list it is, and whether he requested certain books from aides, or if aides sent him works they thought he might like or that might influence his thinking.” A fascinating look at how the books we read shape our world view.

The 5 Simple Strategies That Grew Our Social Traffic by 350% (Madhav Bhandari on BufferSocial): Spoiler alert! The 5 strategies are: schedule the reposting of evergreen content, figure out your optimal timing, have great content to begin with, write headlines that draw people in, and include others in the conversation. But this is still worth a read, because each of those strategies needs to be unpacked before it can be implemented.

The Best Typography, Colors, and Templates Used in the Highest-Converting Social Media Images (James Johnson on BufferSocial): “Turns out, there’s tons of actionable, research-backed advice on how to create social media images that get shared—the ideal colors, fonts, text, and more, all leveraging what we know about design, psychology and the Internet to get more shares and engagement.”

10 Steps to Overcome Writer’s Block (Carly Watters): Step #2 is to “Forgive yourself a perfect draft: No one writes a clean first draft. It’s called a ‘Shitty First Draft‘ for a reason. Read some Anne Lamott (Bird by Bird is a must!) and learn that perfect doesn’t exist. Especially in art.” Writers, agents, and editors are always saying this because it’s one of the truest truths out there. But it’s so, so easy to forget. My favorite visual reminder: this free Anne Lamott art print to hang in your office and look at every time you’re battling perfectionism.

Read More

Read, Eat, Drink: Why We Can’t Read Anymore and a Mother’s Day Menu

by Maria

Read:

Hugh McGuire on reading

Do you read books anymore? I mean real, whole, chapter-by-chapter books? When was the last time you sat down with a book and read for an hour straight, without stopping to check your phone for a text or email, or taking a break to look up something on your tablet?

It turns out that online reading–emails, social media updates, articles, even this blog post–is stunting our ability to maintain our focus long enough to read whole chapters at a time in a book. As Hugh McGuire writes in this Medium article on Why We Can’t Read Anymore, which I love so much I want to quote it for days and weeks until people ask me to please shut up:

It turns out that digital devices and software are finely tuned to train us to pay attention to them, no matter what else we should be doing. The mechanism, borne out by recent neuroscience studies, is something like this:

New information creates a rush of dopamine to the brain, a neurotransmitter that makes you feel good.
The promise of new information compels your brain to seek out that dopamine rush.
With fMRIs, you can see the brain’s pleasure centres light up with activity when new emails arrive.

So, every new email you get gives you a little flood of dopamine. Every little flood of dopamine reinforces your brain’s memory that checking email gives a flood of dopamine. And our brains are programmed to seek out things that will give us little floods of dopamine. Further, these patterns of behaviour start creating neural pathways, so that they become unconscious habits: Work on something important, brain itch, check email, dopamine, refresh, dopamine, check Twitter, dopamine, back to work. Over and over, and each time the habit becomes more ingrained in the actual structures of our brains.

How can books compete?

Read More