Southeast Chapter of the National Cartoonists Society usually meets on the first Tuesday of every month. On Saturday, September 11, 2010 the Southeast Chapter of the National Cartoonists Society present a “Shop Talk” at the Skyland/South Buncombe Library (260 Overlook Road, Asheville, NC). The program will run from 10 am until 4 pm.
More details to be provided later.
Ever since I heard Arvo Pärt’s ‘Cantique,’ I can’t escape it’s sublime power to transport me to another place outside this present time. The music moves at pace that contrasts with these modern times of mobile devices, social media sites, and emails. At the same time, ‘Cantique’ provides space for the listener to stretch and explore the expanse of the music. The music, like a pendulum, crashes into me, changes my perspective and then leaves me with a desire to walk differently. Does that make sense?
A couple of years ago, I read David Allen’s Getting Things Done. One of the results of reading the book and applying the GTD system is zero inbox. For I long time I thought zero inbox was a myth. But now, when I leave from the office every night, there are no emails, zero, in my business email account. Before applying the GTD system, I hated looking at my inbox because there were thousands of emails that all seemed to be screaming, read me! Now, I read, reply, archive (for referencing later) or delete emails efficiently. What’s your GTD story?
More than one in five people listen to commercial radio each week according to a study conducted by ADM and Edison Research. Nearly four in five listen to audio podcasts each week. And that’s why I enjoy producing audio podcasts! Audio podcasts provide targeted content listeners enjoy. Commercial radio is designed to hit the largest demographic listenership with the lowest common denominator of content.
One of the questions in the study goes like this, each week, do you listen/watch:
How do you rank as a listener/viewer?
That vacation I had been planning to take in May, I finally took in August. So, 2300 miles later, here’s ten things I learned or observed on the road.
10. Sirius satellite radio. Channels of interested included Outlaw Country and The Coffeehouse. But other than that, I think I’d prefer my own music collection… if only the CD player worked.
9. Upper Peninsula Michigan is a gorgeous, moderate climate to visit in mid to late August. Highs in the 70s. Leave the window open and enjoy the evening lows in the 50s.
8. Indiana, I can’t leave you fast enough. Your rest stop areas are deplorable, unsanitary and unsafe. Your fueling stations are even worse. I don’t think there’s a gear in the automobile that gets me out of Indiana fast enough.
7. Miscalculated the miles per gallon ratio. Next fuel stop in 250 miles.
6. Every bite of Danish Kringle pastry is worth the 813 miles of travel. Now if I can lose the 20 pounds I gained.
5. Illy coffee really is that good. Especially brewed from a stovetop espresso maker.
4. Starbucks has free wi-fi. So does McDonald’s, truck stops and occasionally Perkins.
3. Those four books I placed in my bag and planned to read… didn’t get read. I guess it has something to do with don’t read and drive at the same time.
2. Sometimes visiting a hometown is simply finding that spot on the radio that is as much home as the house you grew up in. So when did my hometown radio station start running strip club radio ads? It’s like coming home to a brothel.
1. Oh, yeah, and that old house I used to call home… it’s now a parking lot.
There was a brief, shiny moment sometime in the early 90s when Barnes & Nobles and Borders were opening on every corner, and at the same time the bubbling dot-coms were luring editorial talent away from print and into digital publishing. Those two factors converged to make life as a Publisher or Acquisitions editor pretty lush for a few years — salaries in the industry went up by over 30% and the enormous competition to sign talent to fill the shelves of all those miles of shelves in those new stores (and that mysterious new thing called Amazon.com too) made way for expense accounts and advance budgets that were unprecedented. That crazy growth, however, was totally unsustainable. Once the dot-com bubble burst, and new stores were no longer coming online, we were left with no new growth, a significant erosion of independent bookstores, consumer trained to expect cheap prices on books, and a overabundance of new “B-level” titles.
High times in publishing! « ConfessionsOfAnITGirl.com (via fluffynotes)
There’s a place where the railroad splits a village in two and still tries to remain whole.
She says to me, even Kerouac said that road trips have unexpected turns. He also wrote, “My witness is the empty sky.”
The “Recommended” section at the Boulder Book Store, an independent bookseller in Colorado, features a mix of titles and genres. And also: a mix of distribution models. Among the traditionally published works on display stand a smattering of print-on-demand titles — many of them being sold on consignment by authors from the Boulder area.
A Midwest downtown on a Sunday afternoon.
~ Paul Tillich, The Writer’s Almanac
If you’re traveling on the road and need some wifi connectivity, a couple websites help locate hotposts. Obviously, any Starbucks in America will have free wifi, as well as Barnes and Noble, but for other places I use jiwire and openwifispots to find wifi hotpots.
In the September issue of Writer’s Digest, Sherman Alexie says:
Every word on your blog is a word not in your book.
As someone who has been blogging for a few years, that’s conflicting advice. I was encouraged by a friend to start a blog as a way to work on my writing skills. So, I started blogging as a way to discipline myself to write every day. Six years later I have several working or completed manuscripts and no books. Mr. Alexie may have a point. He also offers this:
Don’t Google search yourself.
Last night for a few minutes it felt like August 1988. Driving west on Highway 11, a half moon rising to the southwest, a line of red radio tower lights on the horizon to the northwest, the evening star the Greeks named Hesperus straight on to the west and Def Leppard’s hit song “Pour Some Sugar on Me” explodes from the auto’s stereo speakers. For a moment, I’m planning to leave this place and pursue an art degree. And I’m thinking about auditioning for the high school musical. And I’m wondering if… Then the song ends. And it’s not August 1988. And yet here I am again driving west on Highway 11.
From today’s The Writer’s Almanac, an excerpt from “Midwest” by Stephen Dunn:
The church
always was smaller
than the grain elevator,
though we pretended otherwise.
As a child, the largest structures I ever saw included farm silos and grain elevators. They were the closest thing to a cathedral the Heartland has to offer a child.
If you’re a writer who has lost a manuscript due to your computer crashing, here are two online options to protect your work.
For a few years, I’ve been using Google docs to organize manuscript drafts and as an online storage, back-up option. The nice thing about Google Docs is that is works almost seamlessly with Word Docs. Google Docs offers the following online apps: text, spreadsheet, form and presentation. Truth be told, I haven’t used a Microsoft product since I began using Google docs.
Recently I began using Dropbox to store audio files, images and other documents and really enjoy it.
The Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance (SIBA) offers advice to authors seeking to work with indie books stores:
This is good advice for authors when working with indie booksellers. The operative words are “with indie booksellers.” Truth be told, the majority of the sales for books I’ve helped publish come from Amazon.com. The reason for this, I suspect, is that Amazon.com is where the masses go to buy books.
Know that I am a big supporter of indie bookstores. But I’m also practical and know that indie bookstores attract a niche audience of readers. Some book titles do better at indie bookstores than others. For example, if you’re a local writer with a book on regional hiking trails or you’re a local poet with a book, you may do better at an indie store than on Amazon.com. That being said, Amazon offers a 45/55 terms of sale (a smidge better than indie stores offering a 40/60 terms of sales). That may not seem like much, but if you’re a small publisher, that 5% difference may cover cost of shipping products to bookstores which directly impacts breakeven numbers for book titles.
As an author (or small press publisher), know that you have sales options. And avoid mentioning Amazon.com when working with indie booksellers — it gives them ulcers.
A couple of years ago the main street was ripped up and busy with construction trucks and earth movers. Now it’s quite lovely on a quiet August morning.
Rework is a really smart business book written by the crew from 37signals. If you haven’t checked it out, you must. In the meantime, Gnat Gnat has done a nice job of summarizing the highlights in this downloadable cheat sheet (pdf).
The 30 poems in 30 days challenge is complete. Since the last update the poems have veered all over the place in regards to theme, subject and tone. The main reason for the challenge was to:
A lot of new material was produced but I cannot say my mind is more or less cluttered than before the challenge. I’m still trying to make heads or tails of what I wrote.
The new MacBook Pro arrived this afternoon. It’s wicked sweet! Also included is a 24″ display screen for Tweetdeck (jus’ kiddin’). The additional display screen helps with the running various tools while editing multitrack audio files.
Now I’m patiently waiting to load all the audio/video software so I can work on some more podcasts.
Often I hear people use the term “marketing” when they mean “sales” and vice versa. A Melbourne advertising professional succinctly defines the terms this way:
Marketing tells a story that spreads.
Sales overcomes the natural resistance to say yes.
Link: The difference between marketing and sales
So, If your “marketing” campaign isn’t yielding the “sales” you projected, it’s probably because you need to rewrite your campaign story and retool your pitch.
Coffeehouse Junkie 