Earlier this month, the UK publisher Bloomsbury (best known for having struck gold with the Harry Potter books, though also a real leader on the use of Creative Commons in publishing) invited me to give a talk to its staff over the lunch hour at its London office. I gave a talk about the theory and practice of book pricing in the age of the Internet, talking about the way that strategies that are focused on maximizing revenue from existing customers can cost you access to new markets. I got into the economics of distribution channels, DRM, lock-in, and talked about what I see as the top priorities for publishers looking to continue with their success in the Internet age.
Interesting article over at the New York Times, a bit outside of the box but a snippet and link are provided below :
"The brain may be it. Getting to the root of people’s fascination with fiction and fantasy, Mr. Gottschall said, is like “mapping wonderland.”
Literature, like other fields including history and political science, has looked to the technology of brain imaging and the principles of evolution to provide empirical evidence for unprovable theories.
Interest has bloomed during the last decade. Elaine Scarry, a professor of English at Harvard, has since 2000 hosted a seminar on cognitive theory and the arts. Over the years participants have explored, for example, how the visual cortex works in order to explain why Impressionist paintings give the appearance of shimmering. In a few weeks Stephen Kosslyn, a psychologist at Harvard, will give a talk about mental imagery and memory, both of which are invoked while reading."
Following on from the previous post on Graham Joyce's blow-by-blow blogging of his writing, 'friend of Scribes' Conrad Williams is doing the same with his latest novel 'Loss of Separation'.
His blog 'Black Notes from a Dark Building' can be found HERE.
Does anyone know of any other published authors bloggin their novel writing?
I try hard for this blog to be somewhat interesting for all you lovely Scribes and non-Scribes people but in this case I'm going to point you onwards to the wonderful Graham Joyces site where he is blogging each day about writing his new novel.
Definitely something I'm going to be reading each day. :)
Over my years of writing primarily directly onto the computer I have chanced across a number of useful programs which I will list here in the hope they may be of help to you guys out there. Please note that I have used all of these programs but cannot guarantee compatibility with your systems so try them at your own risk.
TEXT EDITORS
Celtx - FREE yet VERY capable Script Writing software, decent alternative to the expensive Final Draft.
Temptation Blocker - Temptation Blocker is a program that allows you to cut all internet connectivity whilst your write. You will not be able to Facebook, IM etc. You set the program for an amount of time and if you wish to access the internet in an emergency within that time you have to type in a very long randomly generated password.
Open Office - Open Office is a FREE and Opensourced alternative to the Office Suite from Microsoft. I have to admit that I still use the Microsoft Version but for those who can't justify buying Microsoft Office or those on Linux based systems it is very good.
yWriter - yWriter is an interesting piece of software. You write your Novel in chapters and the design of the software makes it easy to swap them around into different orders before outputting a final file.
BACKUP
Microsoft SyncToy - SyncToy is a free piece of software from Microsoft that allows you to easily syncronise folders. Very useful for syncronising your writing folder to a USB stick and vice-versa.
DropBox - DropBox is an online storage solution that gives you 2gig of free storage space. It has a piece of software that you can run on your computers and allows you to copy files to that storage easily. Once the files are there they can be accessed on other machines either with the doropbox software or through a web-browser.
