Category: Roundup

Read, Eat, Drink–Weekend Roundup

by Maria

Read:

We have our Friendsgiving weekend in the hills of Virginia coming up, so here’s some light and fun reading looking. I so enjoyed this visual essay Medium published this week on How to Sell a Book–you can find it here. It’s by Sarah Lazavoric, who herself just released a book called A Bunch of Pretty Things I Did Not Buy. I absolutely love the premise of her book–here’s a snippet from the back cover copy: “Like most people, Sarah Lazarovic covets beautiful things. But rather than give in to her impulse to spend and acquire, Sarah spent a year painting the objects she wanted to buy instead.” 

I really admire this idea of enjoying beautiful objects without having to purchase them, maintain them, and store them. I just wish I could paint at all, so I’d be able to do what Sarah did!

And here’s my favorite graphic she drew for the Medium essay. I want to deny this and pretend that I’m more multifaceted, but…it sounds about right.

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Read, Eat, Drink–Weekend Roundup

by Maria

Read:
As much as agents do our best to try to help writers and offer insight into the wild, whacky world that is publishing, sometimes nothing resonates quite like hearing directly from other writers. So here’s my favorite author blog post of the week–Colleen Hoover’s incredible story of how writing changed her life. Three years ago, she was living in a trailer, working 12 hours a day, and barely making ends meet. She picked up writing in her spare time and self-published her first book. She sold about 30 copies in the first week, but she kept at it. Today, she’s the New York Times bestselling author of 6 books and has a lucrative book deal with Atria/Simon & Schuster. And the best part of it all? In her words:

Three years ago, my husband and I dreamed about the day we would be able to build a new house. Tomorrow, that’s going to happen. On the same land where we happily lived in our single-wide trailer, we will be breaking ground on the house we will spend the rest of our lives in, and I still can’t wrap my head around it.

I know this started with the fact that I wrote and finished a book, but that was as simple as putting a pen to paper. Nothing would have followed had it not been for the support of my readers. Thank you, thank you, thank you for the motivation. And remember-

Dreams are free, so make sure you have a shit-load of them.

And THAT right there is exactly why we’re all in this crazy, unpredictable, shaky business.

You can read Colleen’s full story here.

Eat:
Raise your hand if you like bacon. Looks like…everyone on the planet. And the only thing better than bacon is bacon + pasta, especially when it’s Mario Batali’s Spaghetti Carbonara. This is (I think) the same recipe he uses at his restaurant Otto in New York, but you can make it yourself at home for, oh, a 95% discount.

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Read, Eat, Drink–Weekend Roundup

by Maria

Read:
How will we read in 50 years? Nobody really knows, and that in itself is crazy exciting. The publishing world could be a very different place in 50 (or even 10) years, and we can either run shrieking into the woods to escape it, or read too many trend pieces about it. Guess what I choose.

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The Economist jumped on the prognostication bandwagon this week with its new essay:  The Future of the Book. Every time I see one of these “What will happen to the book?” essays, I sigh. I desperately want them to have answers, or new data, or something to cling to. But nobody has answers, and I should know that by now. But I always read these essays anyway, if only because I can usually find one or two insights that are interesting. Here’s what struck my fancy in this essay:

Unbundling and crowdfunding: The essay mentioned the idea of unbundling the services that publishers provide and offering, for instance, an a la carte menu for authors. It also mentions the recent rise in crowdfunding and the efficiencies of securing sales for a book before it is even created. (We’re already close to this anyway with preorder campaigns, which seek to secure sales before the book is officially available and which are becoming more and more important each year.) The potential of both unbundling and crowdfunding fascinate me.

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Read, Eat, Drink–Weekend Roundup

by Maria

Read:
I opened up my email this morning to see that Seth Godin is launching a new book, sans traditional publisher.

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And I really want a copy. Here’s why:

Seth is the ultimate new-wave marketing guru. I’m taking his marketing class on Skillshare, and it’s fascinating. But what got me really excited about the announcement of his new book is the approach he’s taking to marketing it. Instead of working within the traditional top-down framework of getting a book from author to publisher to retailer to reader, he’s selling direct to the readership he’s built through his blog.

And he’s doing a very smart thing—incentivizing people to buy a 3-pack of the book at a discount, so that they can share it with others. He’s calling this horizontal distribution (which is similar to word-of-mouth) and hoping that person-to-person sharing will be enough to make his ideas, and his book, go viral.

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