Wordmountain’s Lisa Abbate brings us a terrific interview with book-marketing guru, publicist Penny Sansevieri. You can listen to the interview:
If you’d rather read the transcript, you can find that here.
Interviews
Recent posts
Interview at Writer Unboxed
If you’ve ever wondered about the behind-the-scenes workings at Absolute Write and the Absolute Write forums, Jan O’Hara over at Writer Unboxed has just posted a two-part interview with me about AW, the community, the mods, and writing. Jan does a heckuva fun interview, and I’m not just saying that because she interviewed me—she’s got some terrific interviews on her own blog, Tartitude. And as a Web destination for writers, Writer Unboxed offers a lot of terrific information, insight, and conversation.
You can also find Jan O’Hara on Twitter @Jan_OHara.
Friday Linkage
Just a couple of things I wanted to point to, before I go play hooky in the sunshine for the rest of the day.
It’s day two of the auction to raise flood relief funds for Nashville, over at Do The Write Thing. Agents, editors, and top professional writers have donated manuscript critiques, tee shirts, consulting phone calls, signed books, and other swag to help raise funds for Nashville.
If you’ve been wanting to help, not sure how or where to participate, or even if you just want to throw your support behind this amazing community of writers, stop in over there and take a look at all the stuff up for auction. This is a great opportunity to make some friends, meet some other writerly types, and Do the Write Thing for Nashville.
Meanwhile, YA writer Corrine Jackson posted an interview with yours truly over on her blog, where we explore some of the obscure and funny details of what it’s like to run Absolute Write and AW’s Writers Forum. It was great fun to get to visit with Cory, so you should stop over and tell her hello!
Finally, if you’re in the Pacific Northwest, you might consider the Write to Publish open house event in Portland, Oregon, where Chuck Palahniuk and Ursula K. Le Guin will be talking about writing and publishing on May 23rd.
Navigating Self-Publishing, Interview with Victoria Strauss
Lisa Abbate of Wordmountain.com has done a terrific interview about self-publishing with author-advocate and co-founder of Writer Beware, novelist Victoria Strauss. Ms. Strauss outlines some of the hows, whys, and best-practices writers should be aware of when they’re investigating self-publishing options, for Absolute Write’s readers.
Self-publishing is a perfectly viable model for a number of writers and a number of niches, but the various business models out there introduce a whole set of complications and dangers for any savvy writer to be aware of. In addition, it’s important that anyone planning to self-publish understands what they’re looking at, in terms of distribution and sales numbers:
Writer Beware often hears from authors who believe they’ve been scammed by self-publishing companies, when in reality it was their expectations that were the problem—they didn’t realize that the average self-pubbed book sells fewer than 200 copies, or that the wholesale distribution offered by most self-pub companies is only half the distribution picture.
Read the whole interview here!
Victoria Strauss is the author of seven fantasy novels for adults and young adults, including the Stone duology (The Arm of the Stone and The Garden of the Stone) and the Way of Arata duology (The Burning Land and The Awakened City). She has written hundreds of book reviews for magazines and ezines, including SF Site, and her articles on writing have appeared in Writer’s Digest and elsewhere. In 2006, she served as a judge for the World Fantasy Awards. She maintains the popular Writer Beware website (www.writerbeware.com) and blog (www.accrispin.blogspot.com). She received the Service to SFWA Award in 2009. Her personal website is http://www.victoriastrauss.com/
Lisa Abbate is a nonfiction author’s coach, writer, and editor for many innovative technology companies. She’s been a longtime contributing writer at Absolute Write and editor at Coyote Wild. Her website is www.wordmountain.com. She is also the founder and executive director of an environmental organization, visionforsalem.org.
You can find more interviews with Victoria Strauss on these websites:
Interview with Laura Kinsale
Lessons in French
I get to read a lot of interviews with writers, editors, publishers, and other assorted interesting people. This interview posted on Tartitude is very fun. Not just because award-winning NYT best-selling author Laura Kinsale has a new book out, but Hope101′s interview questions aren’t just the same old standards, either, and Ms. Kinsale’s answers have humor, heart, and a sense of fun that’s a joy to read.
Ms. Kinsale has more advice for writers in a Q&A posted today on Apprentice Writer, as well.
You can follow Hope101 on Twitter: @tartitude
You can follow Laura Kinsale on Twitter: @LauraKinsale
You can find Lessons in French
