BEA Day 1

I had so much fun walking around--in many ways, BEA feels like a big party for publishing people, particularly agents. Agents sort of get a pass to sit in panels, network, and, of course, swag.

This has been my experience in the past, but it certainly wasn't yesterday. As foreign rights director, I had to have, like "meetings." With some delightful publishers from Japan. Of particular interest were innovations that the publisher NHK (the BBC of Japan) is working on to bring ebooks to the Japanese market.

There's currently no hardware for reading ebooks in Japan. Consensus seems to be that this is because Japanese people are not interested in a dedicated reader device--something that only reads ebooks. It's a complaint that Western readers had, too but got over, and that is now being solved by WiFi and 3G readers. And the stupid iPad.

Instead of trying to get readers to adopt new hardware, NHK is working on a platform in mobile app form (it's only in Japanese so far, drat) that will allow people to tweet or post to facebook (and other social media sites, I'm sure) right from their reading environment--from their Kindle for iPhone app, for instance. So they can have their reader+ on their phone. The challenge will be getting people to read on a phone, but I'm seeing more of that even over here.

May be reiventing a couple wheels there, but it's an interesting approach. Our discussion centered on whether people even want that capability. These days, escape from social media and social _______ seem to be the main draws to reading for most.

Interesting...

...relationship between book, short fiction, and TV series. Of course, it doesn't hurt if you're Elmore Leonard, either. Read about it here.

I think we're going to see a lot more of this type of reverse- or laterally engineered content. Where a book idea may come from an idea for a screen or teleplay, spawning app or enhanced ebook ideas, etc. I also think it's going to change how we think about packaging a book for sale, whether to an editor behind the scenes or in public on the B&N table or web.

Hmm...

Newz

The past few weeks have been filled with much excitement, sadness, thoughts of world domination, anxiety, hair tearing, flung projectiles, and some flowers. And birthdays, but that's neither here nor there.

What I'm trying to tell you is there have been, as Kafka would say, "developments."

I'm not working--ahem. Excuse me. *clears throat* I'm...*pause*, *squeezes* bridge of nose*

Janet torments me from afar now, and let's just leave it at that.

I'm sad to announce the above, but also very excited to announce that I started this week at Lowenstein Associates, where I will be Digital Strategist and Foreign Rights Manager. I'm also building my own list (details to come--I'm not open to submissions just yet).

More to come!

Spring Contest Winners!

Thanks to everyone who entered the blog contest last week!! There were so many good ones--apparently a lot of you suffer from seasonal allergies! My non-sniffly heart goes out to you.

Without further ado, the Shortlist (no particular order):

Honorable Mentions go to:

• Julia @ 2:57




• Blue @ 3:05




• Beck @ 4:04




• Tracey @ 5:42

A specific HM goes to:

• Alwyn @ 4:04 for best written...but not *exactly* a story.




• Jeff @ 5:56 for the best MerBear speculation.




• TPoelle @2:24 for the best flashback inducer.




• Kaleen @8:28 for the best non-allergy-related use of pollen.
  

And the winners (also in no particular order)!!

• Rachel Searles @ 1:13

I splash my face with cold water from the tap and sink to the green tiles. The audition was brutal.

Outside, the sky is darkening with a spring storm. Jeté, pirouette, again, plié, jump!

Tucked in my legwarmer is my secret ingredient, my snowy dynamite. It clings to my fingers like pollen. I lick it off, savoring the bitter taste, electric jolt, and get up to do the dance again.

• Sprunty @ 9:08

“The pollen is carried to the flower…”

“God Mom, this is embarrassing. No one still uses the birds and the bees.” Her daughter rolled her green eyes to the sky and huffed.

The wide-eyed awe and admiration were long gone. She knew she’d jumped the shark at the Justin Bieber concert when she pretended to like it. It was all downhill from there.

A glass of water pressed against her lips while thinking of a better way. A deep inhale filled her lungs with years of wisdom ready to be released.

“Just don’t do it.”

• Christina @ 5:42

Dan drew the dingy up. The rain made it hard to tell where the sky started and the water began. It had been that way with him and Jane. Hard to tell where one stopped and the other started.

He coughed as he jumped onto the dock and tied up. Pollen had made Jane cough. Dust and cold weather had too. Mostly two packs a day had made her cough, but at the time it seemed churlish to say so.

He should have been churlish, Dan thought, as he lifted the empty green jar out of the dingy.

Winners, please email me at proseblog[at]gmail[dot]com for prize claiming!!

Like?

There's been a lot of talk recently about the New Yorker's "shockingly successful" Facebook "Like" experiment in the last week or so.

The experiment was meant to test audience engagement: how much will your audience go through to get to your content? Because let's face it everything online is low-investment. In an environment where your audience is just casually browsing for perhaps a few minutes at a time, even expecting them to stop long enough to click a link or a Like is asking a lot. It's why people are so skeptical of paywalls like those put up by the Times (which has an awesome ad campaign, by the way).


So the New Yorker put a story written by Jonathan Franzen about David Foster Wallace up on their Facebook fan page (which has about 220,000 fans). It gained about 17,000 "likes" while it was up. Impressive! Very!

Until you consider that's (and I'm rounding up here) 8% of their fans. And these were the big guns. The names are huge, appeal to their audience, and DFW's new novel just came out. This was the perfect storm for "likes."

We say that 10% engagement of one's audience indicates a successful online presence (measured by action taken--"like" clicked, retweets, comments left). And one of the most famous brands in the world got 8%. What does this mean?

I think it means, first and foremost, that 10% is not as attainable a figure as it might at first appear. It also means that any audience engagement is impressive.

Most importantly, it means that you have to be really specific in your goals. What do you want your audience to do? You have literally one shot: the vast majority of The New Yorker's fans would click "like" once (to become a fan) but not twice, no matter the prize.

So get specific about your goals. If it's just to make friends, that's totally OK! That's the building stage. Later, you can mobilize those fans who've grown to trust you for more specific goals.

Happy Spring!

My lovely blog followers, 'tis Spring. I lived in the South my whole life before coming to NYC. We never really got all that excited about Spring, because it was...not that different from any other season.

But here, Spring is a huge deal. HUGE. Let's celebrate. Writing contest.

Write a story using 100 words or fewer. Include the following words in the story:

Water
Sky
Green
Jump
Pollen

Winners are eligible for one of the following:

• A reduced-price ebook conversion ($250)



• A query critique (umm...free)



• First 5 pages "when would I stop reading evaluation" (also...free)

Contest closes in 24 hours. Please note, at the end of your entry, which prize you're interested in.

I'm not sure how many winners there'll be. :) It's Spring, after all.

You Got Tha Power

I met tonight with an incredibly bubbly, bright, talented, idea-filled young woman to discuss a couple of projects, both book-related and non (hope to be able to tell you all about her very, very soon!!). At the end of our conversation, she asked "So, hypothetically, what happens if no one (as in publishers) wants this?"

*blink*

"Well, we do it ourselves," I answered.

The way that content is being produced and consumed is at such an exciting crossroads. This of course doesn't apply only to books--at all. But I actually think that's one of the most exciting parts. Written words, video, still images, drawings...the list goes on. It can all be integrated. The ways you can tell your story are literally limitless.

Don't be scared. Find professionals to collaborate with; blazing a new trail is always about finding the right people to do the right jobs. But don't be scared.