DailyLit Launches Book Samplers

DailyLit (http://www.dailylit.com/), an innovative digital publisher, launched its newest feature, Book Samplers, which combine short excerpts from different books. The Book Samplers are sent to readers in DailyLit's customized, scheduled installments that arrive by email or RSS, allowing readers to receive a short sample of a new book each day.

The Book Samplers are designed to make discovering and selecting new books on DailyLit easy for readers. Any book featured in a Sampler contains a link that lets readers instantly access the book on DailyLit or add it to their To-Read list on the site. The Book Samplers are entirely free, and the books that are sampled are available in full in prices ranging from free to $9.95.

Each Book Sampler has a unique topic, which will allow readers to discover new books in genres they like. Romance novels, science fiction, and motherhood are three of the eleven topics currently available, with more to come in the following months. Also available is a special Gift Ideas sampler, which features books on DailyLit that are ideal for giving as gifts. Readers can easily send the books as gifts to friends using DailyLit's gift feature, which allows readers to include personalized messages with their gifts.

"Having a free daily tasting of books delivered right into your email inbox is a great way to find new books to read," said Susan Danziger, CEO of DailyLit. "And if you like a book, you can continue reading it almost immediately."

The samplers can be viewed at: http://dailylit.com/tags/book-samplers

Internet Novel Writing Project That Everyone Can Join

Make Literature Online, the fastest growing collaborative writing community, today announced the launch of its first fiction book writing project: The novel "People";

"A tale of people that collide into each other. That fight with each other. That seek for acceptance, friendship and love."

Since its launch in April 2008, Make Literature Online website was quickly became the favorable collaborative writing environment for writers, readers, pros and enthusiasts, and has quickly gained a substantial following.

Armed with little more than a desire for a fresh literature experience, users of all backgrounds and skill levels have unique opportunity to take equal part in shaping the storylines of new novels, by submitting inspiring ideas for new stories, new chapters for ongoing fiction writing projects, or by selecting the best writings from an online catalogue and discussing the submitted stories in forums.

"People" – the novel, is the first result of this collaborative community effort. One which storyline was selected among numerous of other submissions as most interesting and inspiring to launch new novel creation process that everyone can and should contribute.

The proof of this open concept is the storyline author itself: Raluca Enescu - young student of sociology and philosophy from Romania, in her words "a bit of a hippie, a bit of a thinker and somewhat feminist":

"I've seen the movie »Crash« a while ago-and I guess that's where I got the idea of people of different backgrounds, views and mentalities colliding into each other. Let's just say it's a »critical thinking« experiment. It's an exercise of »how to see trough the eyes of the other« - which, I believe, is much needed for living in the real life, among real people."

Asked to comment on how does she anticipates her storyline developing on the course of this project, Raluca said:

"Well, I wouldn't want to make any predictions. I think this is up to the ones who will write the story, not to me. The thing is- everyone who will contribute will have a very different view on the storyline and the characters. There can be very conflicting views. That's the beauty about collaborative writing."

At the dawn of the 21st Century and Social Media revolution, new media is forcing the rapid evolution of communications and is reinventing the conventional fiction writing into the art of "personalized" storytelling. This is the practice of matching our stories with the preferences of those we wish to reach, through the active communication and interaction with the audience.

The destiny of "People" novel is now entirely in hands of the online community and its vast creative potential demonstrated so many times in recent years. If successful, this project may mark a new chapter in the history of modern fiction literature, and be the roll-model for many similar ventures that are jet to come.

You'll be able to follow "People" daily progress on its official blog at http://www.makeliterature.com/.

Self Publishing Made Easy - iPhone App Publishes Directly To Millions Of Users

eBookApp.com (http://www.ebookapp.com/) is launching a brand new service, designed to provide authors with worldwide exposure and readers with content that can be read right on their iPhone. This marriage of convenience has the potential to revolutionize the publishing industry and eBookApp.com is at the forefront.

Thanks to this new application, authors will have access to millions of readers via the popular iPhone. The service converts existing books into iPhone friendly reading material, which can then be purchased and downloaded, right from the iTunes store. eBookApp is also designed with readers in mind, giving them one of the best iPhone reading experiences in the industry.

The CEO/Founder of eBookApp.com Roger Lichfield stated, "I am always amazed at how quickly developers can produce some great applications so quickly, we feel we are one of the first to the help lay people access to the best and most affordable iPhone applications, without needing technical knowledge. Our goal is to help Authors / Publishers put their content into reader’s hands, we expect developers to want to use this app engine as well.”

For a limited time, EBookApp.com is offering free service to authors who wish to take advantage of this technology, at their main site - http://www.ebookapp.com/

New Hampshire Authors Launch Publishing Company

New Hampshire authors Rick DeCost and Bob Griffin have launched a new publishing company and an online presence.

Absent Willow Publishing LLC is an independent book publisher that will provide its readers with high quality stories of horror, fantasy and science fiction. Its online efforts include The Absent Willow Review. The Absent Willow Review plans to publish fictional stories in the horror, fantasy, and science fiction genre while allowing its readers access to the magazine anywhere in the world. Additionally, the Absent Willow Review will publish paperback anthologies from their collected works.

"We're huge fans of the genres we publish," remarked Griffin. "We started this company to find greats works of fiction and to locate the next generation of great writers." With its online magazine spotlighting new works and its print publications soon to be available through Amazon.com and other retailers, the Company is planning to renew interest in short works of fiction. "For new and established authors of short fiction in the horror or fantasy vein, the market is light," DeCost added. "We are hoping to change that."

Website: http://www.absentwillowreview.com/

NY Publisher Announces Plans to Become Bank

Dolyttle and Seamore, the NY-based publisher of Dr. Young's Guide to Demotivating Employees, announced today that it would become a bank-holding company to give it access to the same level of support that is available to other financial institutions.

"The economy is in a bit of a spot now and this makes it very difficult to sell books," said Mark Young, president of Dolyttle & Seamore. "Rather than take a chance by publishing books that may not sell, we've decided to take the easy route and ask the government to bail us out.

"While there are some disadvantages, such as having the Federal Reserve as our regulator, we believe the advantages outweigh the disadvantages 10-to-1. Like American Express, we don't anticipate any changes to the way we do business.

Young went on to say that economy would not turnaround in the short term and his decision was made out of necessity.

"The government has already started nationalizing the banks and insurance companies and will soon move into car manufacturing. But banking is where the money is at the moment at we want our piece."

Young said he was unsure how much money his company would receive, but said he hoped it would be enough to take over his competitors such as Bertelsmann, Harper Collins and Scholastic. "It would also be nice if we could spend a few months in South Pacific devising our strategy."

For more information about Dr. Young's Guide to Demotivating Employees go to http://www.dolyttle.com/ or http://www.demotivationist.com/.

Forget the Degree in Creative Writing: Just Sit Down and Write

With the economy failing, finding the $27,600 to $108,900 a year to finance a Masters of Fine Arts in Creative Writing is even more challenging for aspiring writers. With a view towards a better return on investment, a new generation of writing experts advocates that instead of paying to learn how to write at a university, aspiring writers should just sit down and write. In fact, more than 100,000 people are doing it right now.

This November, notable writing coaches and authors Chris Baty of National Novel Writing Month ("NaNoWriMo") and Ivory Madison of Red Room (www.redroom.com) have joined forces to get thousands of established and aspiring writers to write an entire novel in the month of November as part of the largest writing contest in the world. More than 100,000 writers from over 80 countries are working to prove the hypothesis that all it really takes to produce a novel is a deadline--a very, very tight deadline of 50,000 words in just 30 days--and a whole lot of coffee.

"Aspiring novelists don't need an MFA in creative writing, a book agent, an airtight plot, or a winsome cast of characters to get a novel written--they don't even need to know what they're doing," noted Baty in his book, No Plot? No Problem!: A Low-Stress, High-Velocity Guide to Writing a Novel in 30 Days. "When most people give themselves two years to write the first draft of a novel, what they're really doing is giving themselves a year and a half to procrastinate and feel guilty about not working more on their novels."

"Writers should have a voice of their own," said Madison, who founded the Red Room Writers Society in 2002 and redroom.com in 2008. "I don't see that from many of the writers coming out of even the most prestigious MFA programs." Madison personally helped hundreds of aspiring and professional writers complete their books, and, as a result, was named "Best Writing Coach" by San Francisco magazine.

"Many of the world's most respected authors were self-taught, including Ernest Hemingway, Emily Dickinson, James Joyce, J.D. Salinger, Jane Austen, T. S. Eliot, and Virginia Woolf," said Madison. Dubbed "a literary MySpace" by the San Francisco Chronicle, Red Room is the only social network to feature celebrity authors including Dr. Maya Angelou, Khaled Hosseini, James Patterson, Dorothy Allison, and Amy Tan (none of whom attended MFA programs).

"I'm a great believer in the seat-of-the-pants rule: apply the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair," said Sara Gruen, whose NaNoWriMo novel Water for Elephants was a #1 New York Times bestseller. "I think my advice would be to set aside, say, two hours on Saturday and/or Sunday, announce that this is your writing time, and insist that everyone—including yourself—respect it." Gruen is one of many NaNoWriMo authors whose manuscripts resulted in book deals and critical acclaim. Approximately 18 percent of NaNoWriMo participants "win" every year by validating that they've written more than 50,000 words in 30 days.

Bestselling author Terry McMillan is also using NaNoWriMo as an inspiration to finish her next novel, Getting to Happy, which revisits the characters from Waiting to Exhale fifteen years later. "I'm a fast writer. My drafts usually come quickly, in a rush," she said. "Mama took about a month; Disappearing Acts, two weeks; Exhale, a few months. These are just rough drafts, the version you don't dare show a soul."

Madison said a cornerstone of the "Red Room Method" is to separate your writing from your editing from your marketing. "For the entire month of November, be in writing mode only," she said. "I've seen hundreds of people without writing training become great writers through the process of writing and finishing their first novels."


ABOUT RED ROOM – Red Room is the online home of many of the world's greatest writers and the only social network to feature celebrity authors including Khaled Hosseini, Dr. Maya Angelou, Salman Rushdie, Amy Tan, Candace Bushnell, Tobias Wolff, Alice Hoffman, and James Patterson. Red Room provides authors and readers with free, easy-to-use, elegant online homes. It's a place where aspiring writers can promote their work, express themselves, and connect with their favorite authors. Find out more at http://www.redroom.com/.

ABOUT NATIONAL NOVEL WRITING MONTH – NaNoWriMo was founded in 1999 by freelance writer Chris Baty, when it had just 21 participants. In 2007, over 100,000 people took part in the free challenge, making it the largest writing contest in the world. Find out more at http://www.nanowrimo.org/.

Professor Lands A Competitive Fellowship To Complete A Memoir

West Virginia University professor has landed a competitive fellowship to complete a memoir of her experiences in Germany as a Fulbright Scholar.

Ethel Morgan Smith, an associate professor of English in the Eberly College of Arts and Sciences, will attend a writing retreat in May 2009 at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts.

During the retreat, she will complete "Blue Notes: Memoirs of an African American in Germany." The memoir recounts Smith's experiences 10 years ago teaching and conducting research at the University of Tubingen in Germany as a Fulbright Scholar.

Fulbright is the U.S. government's flagship program in international educational exchange. It bears the name of its creator, the late U.S. Sen. J. William Fulbright.

"Ethel's work exemplifies why it is so important for faculty members to spend time teaching and researching abroad," said Donald Hall, chair of the Department of English. "Her experiences in Europe have enriched her work, and in turn, they enrich the lives of her students and readers.

"Each time we expand our world views through professional activities overseas, we send out a ripple that can have positive effects worldwide," added Hall, who has taught abroad in Rwanda, Austria, Finland and Sweden.

Smith will be completing the manuscript for her memoir in a peaceful setting nestled in Virginia's Blue Ridge Mountains near Sweet Briar College.

The Virginia Center for the Creative Arts invites about 20 visual artists, writers and composers at a time to focus on their individual creative projects. As one of the nation's largest year-round artists' communities, the center serves about 300 artists annually.

Typical residencies range from two weeks to two months, and artists are provided with food and lodging. There are no schedules or obligations, and the distraction-free atmosphere enables artists to be highly productive. Many fellows have received worldwide attention through publications, exhibitions, compositions, performances, and major awards and accolades.

"The VCCA provides a peaceful, nourishing environment and support from artists working in all genres," Smith said. "Just having the time and means to totally devote myself to my writing is a wonderful gift."

Smith specializes in black literature, fiction and creative nonfiction. She is author of "From Whence Cometh My Help: The African American Community at Hollins College" and has been published in national and international journals, including Callaloo and African American Review. Her essay "Love Means Nothing" was the winner of the 2005 Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation Award.

She is the recipient of the Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship in Bellagio, Italy; a Fulbright Fellowship to Germany; and a DuPont Fellowship. She has also been a visiting artist at the American Academy in Rome and a visiting fellow at Brandeis University Women's Research Center.

Children's Book Business Expected to Drop Again in 2009

Books for children and young adults are set for a drop in 2009, marking their second decline in as many years, according to Children's Publishing Market Forecast 2009, a new research report from media industry forecast and analysis firm Simba Information.

"The profound economic pressures felt by American consumers will lead them toward buying fewer books, or even no books at all," said Michael Norris, senior analyst of Simba Information's Trade Books Group.

Growth is also being hampered by changes in the consumer book retailing landscape. The growing number of big-box stores and the shrinking number of physical bookstores is putting the squeeze on the largest bookstore chains and publishers alike. "Publishers are beginning to pay the price for allowing retailers with no real stake in the future of print books to grow as powerful as they have become," said Norris.

Children's Publishing Market Forecast also covers new ground by showing the nuances between books for young children and books for young adults. "The enormous success of young adult titles from Stephenie Meyer and others has painted a misleading picture of the industry," Norris said. "A smaller percentage of teens are reading now compared to 15 years ago, and data suggests adults are buying some of these sorts of books. While every sale is a good one, YA books may be to publishing what the PG-13 rating is to Hollywood."

In addition to providing analysis and overview for this segment of publishing, CPMF 2009 provides, for the first time, a five year overview of more than a dozen leading children's and young adult categories, providing the industry with an exclusive guide to demand. The report also features a thorough overview of the leading authors, books and imprints over a two year period; allowing trends and patterns to be seen.

The report also contains demographic data on children's book buyers, which completes the picture of this complicated market by exposing who the consumers really are. Additional information can be found at http://www.simbainformation.com/.

Ebook Authors! - Are You Selling Ebooks in All the Available Marketplaces?

If you are an eBook author selling your own eBooks, or you are selling eBooks written by someone else, are you taking advantage of all the available places you can market your eBooks online?

You do not even NEED to be an author. You might be someone who finds a problem a group of people have and then find what are known as Private Label Rights (PLR) to solve their problem.

You simply buy the right to publish the content that someone else has written and allows you, in most cases, to use as is or edit and publish as your own.

These days, actually writing an eBook and putting up your sales page is only half the battle. The way to maximise your sales is to make sure your book is shown on as many sites as possible as well as your own. Most eBook authors will know about Clickbank (one of the most popular arenas for selling eBooks online) and there are a few other well known places. But if you are to be truly successful selling eBooks, you need to stay ahead of your competition. You really need to be researching the latest and little known places to sell your eBooks. Do not consider places like EBay because people sell books there for cents sometimes! Why is this important? To get the bet sales for your ebooks you need to be one step ahead of your competitors.

People are flooding onto the internet each and every day and it will continue.

What are they looking for?

Information! These are the people you need to be chasing as EBook authors. They are already looking for something. OK, so you have an ebook to sell with content that is really hot and that you know people want to buy. How are they going to find you or indeed you find them?

Have you heard about publishing in digital text on dedicated readers?

Digital text is text that exists in a "digital" electronic format which anyone can read on a computer or one of the new digital reading devices available today.. This can include plain text files (.txt) and word processor files (.doc), among others. You can even use graphics in .GIF, .PNG, .BMP, and .JPG formats.

I would recommend you explore the stand alone digital reading devices out there as some of them do not allow people to download your book to a computer where it could be printed and given to others without payment to you. You can make your income stream that little bit more secure.

You have access today, yes right now even if it is two am in the morning to start publishing your eBook to millions of potential customers, and the remarkable thing is how easy it is to do. Oh, and it is usually not going to cost you anything to publish either!! There is no need to go to the expense of getting an ISBN number.

A friend of mine has had absolute nightmares with a publishing company and feels he is not in control of his own book. They even wanted to heavily edit a lot of it. He can now take that control back and so can you.

About the Author:
If you want to discover one of the latest and hottest places for selling eBooks online, discover what clever eBook authors are doing here ... http://www.kindleprofitsecrets.com/

Feathered Quill Book Reviews Seeks Submissions

Feathered Quill Book Reviews is now accepting books for review. Along with books from large, traditional publishers, this site also searches out unique books from small, independent presses.

Feathered Quill Book Reviews prides itself on giving the reader an honest, unbiased critique of each and every book on its website. Unlike many sites that skim a title and then give a brief synopsis, Feathered Quill reviewers read each book cover-to-cover and write a comprehensive, thought-provoking evaluation.

Every reviewer is carefully selected based on their educational background, expertise, and dedication to reading a broad spectrum of genres. Reviewers are consummate professionals who are committed to giving the consumer an honest and all-inclusive appraisal, delivered in a timely fashion.

For more information and submission guidelines, please visit http://www.featheredquill.com/

Authors, Publishers, and Google Reach Landmark Settlement

The Authors Guild, the Association of American Publishers (AAP), and Google today announced a groundbreaking settlement agreement on behalf of a broad class of authors and publishers worldwide that would expand online access to millions of in-copyright books and other written materials in the U.S. from the collections of a number of major U.S. libraries participating in Google Book Search. The agreement, reached after two years of negotiations, would resolve a class-action lawsuit brought by book authors and the Authors Guild, as well as a separate lawsuit filed by five large publishers as representatives of the AAP's membership. The class action is subject to approval by the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.

The agreement promises to benefit readers and researchers, and enhance the ability of authors and publishers to distribute their content in digital form, by significantly expanding online access to works through Google Book Search, an ambitious effort to make millions of books searchable via the Web. The agreement acknowledges the rights and interests of copyright owners, provides an efficient means for them to control how their intellectual property is accessed online and enables them to receive compensation for online access to their works.

If approved by the court, the agreement would provide:

More Access to Out-of-Print Books -- Generating greater exposure for millions of in-copyright works, including hard-to-find out-of-print books, by enabling readers in the U.S. to search these works and preview them online;

Additional Ways to Purchase Copyrighted Books -- Building off publishers' and authors' current efforts and further expanding the electronic market for copyrighted books in the U.S., by offering users the ability to purchase online access to many in-copyright books;

Institutional Subscriptions to Millions of Books Online -- Offering a means for U.S. colleges, universities and other organizations to obtain subscriptions for online access to collections from some of the world's most renowned libraries;

Free Access From U.S. Libraries -- Providing free, full-text, online viewing of millions of out-of-print books at designated computers in U.S. public and university libraries; and

Compensation to Authors and Publishers and Control Over Access to Their Works -- Distributing payments earned from online access provided by Google and, prospectively, from similar programs that may be established by other providers, through a newly created independent, not-for-profit Book Rights Registry that will also locate rightsholders, collect and maintain accurate rightsholder information, and provide a way for rightsholders to request inclusion in or exclusion from the project.

Under the agreement, Google will make payments totaling $125 million. The money will be used to establish the Book Rights Registry, to resolve existing claims by authors and publishers and to cover legal fees. The settlement agreement resolves Authors Guild v. Google, a class-action suit filed on September 20, 2005 by the Authors Guild and certain authors, and a suit filed on October 19, 2005 by five major publisher-members of the Association of American Publishers: The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. (NYSE: MHP) ; Pearson Education, Inc. and Penguin Group (USA) Inc., both part of Pearson (LSE: PSON) (NYSE: PSO) ; John Wiley & Sons, Inc. ; and Simon & Schuster, Inc. part of CBS Corporation (NYSE: CBS.A) (NYSE: CBS) . These lawsuits challenged Google's plan to digitize, search and show snippets of in-copyright books and to share digital copies with libraries without the explicit permission of the copyright owner.

Holders worldwide of U.S. copyrights can register their works with the Book Rights Registry and receive compensation from institutional subscriptions, book sales, ad revenues and other possible revenue models, as well as a cash payment if their works have already been digitized.

Libraries at the Universities of California, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Stanford have provided input into the settlement and expect to participate in the project, including by making their collections available. Along with a number of other U.S. libraries that currently work with Google, their significant efforts to preserve, maintain and provide access to books have played a critical role in achieving this agreement and, through their anticipated participation, they are furthering such efforts while making books even more accessible to students, researchers and readers in the U.S. It is expected that additional libraries in the U.S. will participate in this project in the future.

Google Book Search users in the United States will be able to enjoy and purchase the products and services offered under the project. Outside the United States, the users' experience with Google Book Search will be unchanged, unless the offering of such products and services is authorized by the rightsholder of a book.

"It's hard work writing a book, and even harder work getting paid for it," said Roy Blount Jr., President of the Authors Guild. "As a reader and researcher, I'll be delighted to stop by my local library to browse the stacks of some of the world's great libraries. As an author, well, we appreciate payment when people use our work. This deal makes good sense."

"This historic settlement is a win for everyone," said Richard Sarnoff, Chairman of the Association of American Publishers. "From our perspective, the agreement creates an innovative framework for the use of copyrighted material in a rapidly digitizing world, serves readers by enabling broader access to a huge trove of hard-to-find books, and benefits the publishing community by establishing an attractive commercial model that offers both control and choice to the rightsholder."

"Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful. Today, together with the authors, publishers, and libraries, we have been able to make a great leap in this endeavor," said Sergey Brin, co-founder & president of technology at Google. "While this agreement is a real win-win for all of us, the real victors are all the readers. The tremendous wealth of knowledge that lies within the books of the world will now be at their fingertips."

For more information about this agreement, including information about whether you may be a class member, please visit http://books.google.com/booksrightsholders.

New Website Helps You Publish Your Personal Stories, Life Anecdotes or a Memoir

Bookstand Publishing has launched a new website, http://www.publishmymemoir.com/
a new resource for people looking to publish their personal stories.

"Our new website, http://www.PublishMyMemoir.com helps Bookstand Publishing accomplish its objective of making publishing available to everyone," said Nigil Bloom, Editor-in-chief at Bookstand Publishing. "Over the years we had the pleasure of helping hundreds of authors publish their memoirs, life anecdotes and personal stories and we wanted to create a dedicated website that provides resources and direction to individuals looking to publish their personal stories. "

The new website provides:

* practical advice and direction for anyone looking to publish a memoir or a collection of personal stories;

* examples of published memoirs and autobiographies to inspire and guide potential authors;

* encouragement to potential authors to take advantage of the new technologies that make it possible for them to publish a book and share their story with their families, friends and even the world;

* a FREE Self-Publishing checklist which shows authors how to prepare their manuscript for print-on-demand publishing.

According to Bloom, "Most people don't realize how easy and affordable it is today, with the advent of print-on-demand technology, to publish a memoir or collection of personal stories. At Bookstand Publishing, a paperback memoir can be published for as little as $500 including 48 high quality books for family and friends. Hardcover packages including 10 hardcover books begin at $700."

"We hope http://www.PublishMyMemoir.com encourages more people to consider publishing their memoirs and personal stories, not just because that is our business, but because publishing a book is such an exciting and powerful experience for most people," said Bloom. "I love to be able to help grandparents leave a legacy for their children and grandchildren. I love helping people preserve their dramatic and compelling personal stories. When I see the excitement and joy that come from our authors when they receive their printed books, I remember why I love our business of making publishing available to everyone."