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On Sunday 27th January 2013, we launched the first Penguin Chat (#PenguinChats) with Margaret Stohl and Kami Garcia, authors of the fabulous Beautiful Creatures series. #PenguinChats was launched to offer the chance to get an author's undivided attention on Twitter - to ask them any burning questions you just needed to get off your chest.
The Beautiful Creatures Penguin Chat lasted 30 minutes, and so many of you participated that Margaret and Kami couldn't even answer all the questions in time! We really wanted to share some of the questions and answers for you, so we created a Storify to capture just some of the conversation.
Watch this space for more #PenguinChats coming soon - we'll annouce the latest over on the #PenguinChats blog page, so do keep checking back.
In the meantime, did you take part in the Beautiful Creatures Penguin Chat? We'd love to hear what you thought. And, if you have any suggestions for who you'd like to have a Penguin Chat with, let us know in the comments below.
LinkedIn has unveiled a new Alumni tool that will help you find old classmates and discover literary alumni living in your city.
It is a powerful tool for publishing professionals. You can actually narrow your search by field of study, finding fellow creative writing students, English majors or library science graduates around the world.
Social Times has more: “LinkedIn has created an Alumni tool for mapping your college connections that may answer the question, where are they now? The tool shows where your fellow graduates live, which companies they work for, what they studied in school, what types of jobs they have now and what their skills are.”
The uncharitable might say that I write the same book every four years or so. Some critics certainly accuse me of having said the same thing for many years. I don’t disagree. Since the early 80s, my enduring interest has been in the ways in which technology can modernize and improve the work of the legal profession and the courts. My main underpinning conviction has indeed not changed: that legal work is document and information intensive, and that a whole host of information technologies can and should streamline and sometimes even overhaul traditional methods of practicing law and administering justice.
What have changed, of course, are the enabling technologies. When I started out on what has become a career devoted largely to legal technology, the web had not been invented, nor had tablets, handheld devices, mobile phones, and much else. As new technologies emerge, therefore, I always have a new story to tell and more evidence that suggests the legal world is shifting from being a cottage industry to an IT-enabled information sector.
The evolution of my thinking reflects my own technical interests and career activities over the years. My first work in the field, in the 1980s, focused on artificial intelligence and its potential and limitations in the law. This began in earnest with my doctoral research at Oxford University. I was interested in the possibility of developing computer systems that could solve legal problems and offer legal advice. Many specialists at the time wanted to define expert systems in law in architectural terms (by reference to what underlying technologies were being used, from rule-based systems to neural networks). I took a more pragmatic view and described these systems functionally as computer applications that sought to make scarce legal knowledge and expertise more widely available and easily accessible.
This remains my fundamental aspiration today. I believe there is enormous scope for using technology, especially Internet technology, as a way of providing affordable, practical legal guidance to non-lawyers, especially those who are not able to pay for conventional legal service. These systems may not be expert systems, architecturally-defined. Instead, they are web-based resources (such as online advisory and document drafting systems) and are delivering legal help, on-screen, as envisaged back in the 1980s.
During the first half of the 90s, while I was working in a law firm (Masons, now Pinsent Masons), my work became less academic. I was bowled over by the web and began to form a view of the way it would revolutionize the communication habits of practicing lawyers and transform the information seeking practices of the legal fraternity. I also had some rudimentary ideas about online communities of lawyers and clients; we now call these social networks. My thinking came together in the mid-1990s. I became clear, in my own mind at least, that information technology would definitely challenge and change the world of law. Most people thought I was nuts.
A few years later, to help put my ideas into practice, I developed what I called ‘the grid’ – a simple model that explained the inter-relationships of legal data, legal information, legal knowledge, as found within law firms and shared with clients. I had used this model quite a bit with my clients (by this time, I was working independently) and it seemed to help lawyers think through what they should be doing about IT.
In the years that followed, however, I became even more confident that the Internet was destined to change the legal sector not incrementally and peripherally but radically, pervasively, and irreversibly. But I felt that, in the early 2000s, most lawyers were complacent. Times were good, business was brisk, and the majority of practitioners could not really imagine that legal practice and the court system would be thrown into upheaval by disruptive technologies.
Then came the global recession and, in turn, lawyers became more receptive than they had been in boom times when there had been no obvious reason why they might change course. Dreadful economic conditions convinced lawyers that tomorrow would look little like yesterday.
With many senior lawyers now recognizing that we are on the brink of major change, my current preoccupation is that most law schools around the world are ignoring this future. They continue to teach law much as I was taught in the late 1970s. They are equipping tomorrow’s lawyers to be twentieth century not twenty-first century lawyers. My mission now is to help law teachers to prepare the next generation of lawyers for the new legal world.
Richard Susskind OBE is an author, speaker, and independent adviser to international professional firms and national governments. He is president of the Society for Computers and law IT adviser to the lord chief justice. Tomorrow’s Lawyers is his eighth book.
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Subscribe to only law and politics articles on the OUPblog via email or RSS. Image Credit: ‘The Grid’ courtesy of Richard Susskind. Used with permission. Do not reproduce without explicit permission of Richard Susskind.
Self-published author H.A. Goodman took out a sponsored ad on Reddit for a 99-cent sale on his fantasy eBook. Instead of ignoring reader comments, Goodman logged into Reddit and answered every single comment with a personal message–creating a massive 61-comment thread for the sponsored post.
Check it out: “pricing the ebook at 99¢ has helped with sales tremendously. I have a paperback that’s around ten bucks, but I only care about my ebook sales in this day and age, since Amazon has taken enormous control of the the literary industry. I also have a nook and iTunes version, but I really only concern myself with the Kindle sales, which have been doing well – in large part due to my Reddit ad and to this amazing Reddit community. The literary industry is changing rapidly, and every year all publishers – from big to small – learn that marketing and sales techniques change exponentially.”
The question and answer community Quora has launched a blog network. According to the site, most active writers on Quora get more than one million estimated annual views and now they have a new set of tools. Check it out:
Blogs on Quora are great for people who (1) don’t have a big, established online presence already and (2) don’t want to do the time-intensive, heavy lifting of marketing their blog and slowly building an audience. If you are a good writer but don’t have thousands of Twitter followers or a big audience for your blog, Quora is an ideal place to write. Your blog will be discovered quickly without you having to do any work besides writing. Writing one great post on Quora will attract a big audience, no matter how many people already know or follow you.
Using the simple tools provided by Quora, we were able to create a self-publishing tools blog from scratch in five minutes. Below, we’ve linked to some other writing blogs on the network, ranging from writing tips to short stories.
Want to challenge yourself to read more this year?
Over at Goodreads, you can monitor your reading goals at the 2013 Reading Challenge. In 2012, 303,232 participants resolved to read 17.8 million books.
Follow this link to join the free 2013 Reading Challenge. Simply log in and answer the question: “My goal is to read ____ books this year.”
Goodreads counted 13 million users this year, those avid readers publishing a staggering 20 million book reviews.
In an infographic about the company’s growth, Goodreads revealed that Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn was the most-reviewed book, counting 22,383 book reviews. John Green had the most added quote from The Fault in our Stars: “I fell in love the way you fall asleep: slowly, then all at once.”
Click the image above to see the complete Goodreads infographic.
Here is his most important piece of advice: “The most important thing to remember about goodreads is that members of this site REALLY hate self-promotion. Primarily because too many authors come to the site and do drive-by posts and leave. This makes their radar on such matters very sensitive. The key to goodreads is to become a member of the community first…and mention your writing only in context and when appropriate.”
As you can see by the graphic embedded above (click to enlarge), the chart has a steep growth rate. If you want to read more about the genre, check out our What Is New Adult Fiction? post for free samples and definitions.
Here’s more from Goodreads: “Publishers and readers are already embracing it, and here at Goodreads we’ve recognized the rapidly growing interest with our own genre page … We see the positive signs of readers taking to the new genre on Goodreads. Beginning in 2011, there was a spike in the number of readers identifying books as New Adult through custom shelves and rating books in the category. Two examples of recent New Adult success are Slammed by Colleen Hoover and Easy by Tammara Webber. Also, The Perfect Game by J. Sterling is a New Adult book that is trending well.”
How does a self-published bestseller start? In the graph embedded above, you can trace the actual path of a hit indie book.
At a PubWest presentation called “How Readers Discover Books Online,” Goodreads founder Otis Chandler shared some fascinating statistics about how a book’s popularity spreads on Goodreads. Looking at Slammed by Colleen Hoover, Chandler mapped how the book traveled from giveaways to bloggers to a book deal. Here’s more from the founder:
The graph above shows the various methods Goodreads members used to discover Slammed. As you can see, Slammed was published in early January of 2012. The book didn’t get a lot of attention those first few months, which illustrates how tough it can be for a first-time author. But Hoover smartly took matters into her own hands, running a pair of Goodreads giveaways in late February and early March. These are free for authors/publishers to set up—the only cost is in mailing the book to the winners. It immediately got the book onto people’s shelves and generated a few reader reviews, which is vital for any new book. Then, in late March, a few prominent bloggers her in genre wrote about the book, spreading the word to their many followers on Goodreads through their reviews.
Most of our readers have never visited the community of writers, artists and creators at deviantART, but there are many resources to be discovered inside the social network with millions of members.
On the Morning Media Menu today, we spoke with Ron Martino, the producer and director deviantART Network. Martino explained how writers have found audiences and book deals from the site, giving tips for creators looking to explore the social network.
Martino also outlined the community’s Oddyssey II project, a collaborative writing project guided by novelist Clive Barker–all writers can enter this massive effort to crowdsource a new novel from within the deviantART community.
The Casual Vacancy by J.K. Rowling set a Goodreads record for the all-time biggest “started reading” day. Currently, more than 40,000 people have marked the book “to-read.”
The book unseated Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins as the book with the strongest “started reading” day. Insurgent by Veronica Roth holds third place. As of this writing, The Casual Vacancy has 38 percent five-star ratings on Goodreads.
Goodreads CEO Otis Chandler had this statement: “The Casual Vacancy is one of those stand-out books where people not only pre-order it, they start reading it as soon as they get their hands on it. On Goodreads, it beat the record for our previous all-time ‘started reading’ day which was set by Mockingjay.”
Following a GalleyCat article yesterday, self-publishing company Author Solutions will remove social media accounts for Jared Silverstone–a set of profiles for an “Awesome Publishing Consultant at Author Solutions” that used a fake image from a stock photo company.
Here is the official statement from the self-publishing company: “At Author Solutions we take our social media activities very seriously, and we are committed to following industry best practices. The manner in which the accounts were set up is not supported by our company-wide social media policy, and in no way is condoned by our company. We are taking appropriate action and we are in the process of removing the content from social media accounts.”
User-generated online writing project Open Book Projects is looking for writers to participate in its crowd-sourced community writing project. The site is inviting writers to view the trailer (which we have embedded above) and write the next chapter in the story.
Writers are encouraged to take the story to the next level. The website explains more: “At the end of the most recent chapter, readers all over the world are asked to write the next episode themselves and send it to us. From all the stories received by the deadline, an in-house jury then chooses one as the official next episode. After that episode is published, readers are again called upon to continue the story.”
The first title from this community storytelling project will be published under the name, “Face.” Authors whose submissions are chosen will share in the revenue generated from eBook sales. The project comes from a collaboration between technology company Mzure and digital publisher Osutoria Publishing.
Social publishing site Scribd has been revamped and the iPhone app have been updated as well. The idea behind the redesign is to make it easier for new users to navigate while at the same time making it more engaging to long-time users.
TechCrunch explains the update: “The website was previously dominated by your social feed, showing you the documents uploaded and read by other users that you’re following. Now the social feed has been pushed off to the side, and in its place there’s a feed of ‘featured’ content, which has been hand-picked by Scribd.”
The latest iPhone update includes the ability to bookmark documents for reading when offline. The update should hit the company’s Android app soon.
Pinterest, the social networking site that lets users “pin” images to a virtual cork board, has launched a new iPad app and a new Android app, as well as updated its iPhone app, the company said a blog post .
AppNewser has more: “The company previously had an iPhone app, but this has been updated based on user feedback to include a 2 column layout. The newly launched Android app has been optimized to fit the varying Android devices and is available in Google Play and in the Amazon App Store. Pinterest said that the iPad app may have the best experience of all. The blog continues: ‘The app offers users new ways to engage with pins, whether swiping the screen to resume browsing after viewing a board, or using the embedded browser to see what others are pinning from their favorite sites.’”
Twitter co-founders Evan Williams and Biz Stone have launched a new publishing platform called Medium. The entire network is built upon themed collections of text and images, giving writers more space beyond the 140-character confines of Twitter.
Here’s more about collections, from the founders: “Collections are sometimes closed (like this one) but optionally open to contributions. For example, here’s an open collection of crazy stories. Here’s one of nostalgic photos. Collections give people context and structure to publish their own stories, photos, and ideas. By default, the highest-rated posts show up at the top, helping people get the most out of their time in this world of infinite information.”
Below, we’ve collected all the information writers need to know about this new site.
Writing teacher Cassandra Neace has launched social media photo project called “Daily Book Pic” at Book Riot.
Here’s more from Book Riot: “What I am going to do for the month of July is a Daily Book Pic (or #dailybookpic). I’ll be sharing my pics on Twitter and Pinterest, and anywhere else that I think of on that given day. I invite you to join along. I know July is already underway, so jump in whenever you like.”
Above, we’ve embedded the photo prompts for each day of the project. The project was inspired by Australian blogger Fat Mum Slim‘s “Photo a Day” game.
LinkedIn revealed today that you can no longer share your tweets on the career-oriented social network. Many writers had connected their LinkedIn and Twitter accounts, automatically sharing tweets on LinkedIn.
Although you can still post your LinkedIn updates on Twitter, the social networks reached an agreement to keep users from posting Twitter content straight into the site. LinkedIn head of content products Ryan Roslanskyexplained in a post:
As Twitter shared earlier today in a blog post from Michael Sippey, they are increasingly focused on ‘providing the core Twitter consumption experience through a consistent set of products and tools.’ Consistent with Twitter’s evolving platform efforts, Tweets will no longer be displayed on LinkedIn starting later today. We know many of you value Twitter as an additional way to broadcast professional content beyond your LinkedIn connections. Moving forward, you will still be able to share your updates with your Twitter audience by posting them on LinkedIn. (Via AllTwitter)
Looking for new ways to find readers? Here’s an idea: host an online drawing contest using Doodle.ly, a free website and iPad app that lets you draw and share sketches.
Here’s how it can work. Use your social networking pages to invite loyal readers to make sketches about your book for the chance to win prizes (Free books, free eBooks, t-shirts, the chance to design your next book cover? You decide).
For a work of fiction, this can be a character from the book. For a cookbook, this can be a meal. For a work of poetry, it can be a location. Make it up based on whatever makes the most sense for your book. Then ask these fans to share their drawings on Facebook, adding a hashtag that ties into your book. The promotion can get your readers excited and help spread the word about your work to their friends. continued…
Here’s more from The Wall Street Journal: “Quora Inc., a question-and-answer site started by two of Facebook’s earliest employees, Adam D’Angelo and Charlie Cheever, has raised $50 million in a new financing that values it at $400 million, up from a valuation of around $86 million two years ago, said people familiar with the matter.”
Being on social media is a great way to find new readers. If you are clueless about how to use Twitter and Facebook and have never even heard of Pinetrest, we can help. Beginning June 7th, Mediabistro is holding a Social Media Marketing Boot Camp, an online class that will teach you how to jump start a social media strategy.
The eight week course will include instruction from leading social media experts such as Brian Carter, author of The Like Economy; Alex Leo, director of web product at Thomson Reuters Digital; and Gracey Newman, digital marketing manager at VH1, among many others. If you sign up by tomorrow, you’ll save $100.
Here is more about the event: “You’ll learn how to track traffic, engagement, and conversion to sales with various content strategy and monitoring tools. Over eight weeks, you’ll participate in a dynamic online event to tune in to live weekly video webcasts, participate in ongoing forum discussions, complete strategic assignments, and work with a small group to receive one-on-one feedback on your social media plans.”
Being on social media is a great way to find new readers. If you are clueless about how to use Twitter and Facebook and have never even heard of Pinetrest, we can help. Beginning June 7th, Mediabistro is holding a Social Media Marketing Boot Camp, an online class that will teach you how to jump start a social media strategy.
The eight week course will include instruction from leading social media experts such as Brian Carter, author of The Like Economy; Alex Leo, director of web product at Thomson Reuters Digital; and Gracey Newman, digital marketing manager at VH1, among many others. If you sign up by tomorrow, you’ll save $100.
Here is more about the event: “You’ll learn how to track traffic, engagement, and conversion to sales with various content strategy and monitoring tools. Over eight weeks, you’ll participate in a dynamic online event to tune in to live weekly video webcasts, participate in ongoing forum discussions, complete strategic assignments, and work with a small group to receive one-on-one feedback on your social media plans.”
STATUS: All my Texas blog readers, Kristin Callihan's FIRELIGHT is going to be included in the romance round-up on Good Morning Texas tomorrow, Wed. May 2. Station WFAA-TV channel 8. It's the ABC affiliate in Dallas/Fort Worth. How cool is that. I wish I could tune in.
What’s playing on the XM or iPod right now? DOMINO DANCING by Pet Shop Boys
When I was at the Pikes Peak Writers Conference last week, I had a writer rush up to me in a panic to ask a question. She was incredibly worried that she had not established her social media platform for her novel yet.
If her release date was in 4 weeks, then I would say she had cause to panic.
But given that she hadn't actually finished writing her work-in-progress (let alone begin querying for her agent search), I found her concern a little premature.
*grin*
I advised her that at this point in her professional career, she should focus on writing the best novel she possibly could. Plenty of time to get the social media cranking while it's on submission. I personally don't know any agent who would say no to an author for a project they love just because the publicity platform isn't there yet.
I can build that with an author. I imagine most agents feel the same.
12 Comments on The Concern Is Perhaps Premature, last added: 5/4/2012
Platform-building is such a wonderful distraction from writing, though! Instead of working on revising ad nauseum, you can obsess over posting on every social network you possibly can, despite having very little to talk about and no one to talk to. Then you can wallow in the misery of knowing that your book will clearly never sell because no one is reading your blog!
I would urge her to dip her toe into the waters, but not with the goal of building a platform to entice readers. I've found social media (blogging and Twitter in particular) to be an amazing source of encouragement and sharing with other writers. In this solitary road to publication, putting our journey online means we are no longer alone. Even just knowing other writers have shared my struggles helps. At best, we form meaningful friendships across the globe.
If we do achieve our goal of publication, the strategy will then need to evolve.
The post on our marketing blog today was the same advice. I know it's rude to pimp our site, but it's a resource we've put out to help our fellow authors.
Feel free to share - or delete this comment - as we explain the basics of creating the author persona to be prepared when there's a book to promote.
I should be finishing my sci-fi WIP this fall, do you think I should buy a tux for the Hugo award ceremony, or can I just rent one when the time comes?
There's so much hype about social media these days I often wonder how much it really does work in terms of web exposure/platform. Of course there's no way to know for certain and we all have to do it. But I often think too much social media can hurt an author more than help him/her. Slam me with too many book announcements about a new release and I'm blocking you faster than you can say "facebook event." I think most people feel the same way.
Blog. (Check) Facebook page. (Check) Twitter account. (Check)Goodreads page. (Check) Pinterest pagre. (Check. Why? Don't know. I don't get it. Anyway, check) Facebook page for "virtual blog tour." (Check) Photos on Tumblr (or Flickr or some lol-cat site?). (Check). Checks rolling in from massive sales of ebook novel? (LOL)
Thank you for that. I've seen several blogs now suggesting than an agent would pass us "first timers" by if we can't show our ability to cultivate a following. Phew!
Elizabeth Dunn said, on 5/2/2012 12:16:00 PM
Love Steven not getting Pinterest. I-really-really-don't-get-it.
I can relate to your nervious writer-to-be. Perhaps she read the current issue of a well-known publication for writers, which ran a feature article under the banner "Publishing Today." The author -- herself an agent -- states quite emphatically, "Over the past year, I have seen a distinct diminishment in publishers' willingness to take a chance on new authors, especially authors of fiction." She strongly advocates building a platform and even self-publishing to that end. So just dying of curiosity, which is it?
I too would rather devote my energies to perfecting that novel that distributing my effort across multiple social media :D
LinkedIn 
Have you ever paid for an online ad or sponsored post to promote your book? One author 
The question and answer community Quora 
Want to challenge yourself to read more this year?
Have you joined Goodreads? This bustling community of readers seems perfect for writers, but it is very easy to make a bad impression on its members.
Most of our readers have never visited the community of writers, artists and creators at 
Social publishing site 
Pinterest, the social networking site that lets users “pin” images to a virtual cork board, has launched a new iPad app and a new Android app, as well as updated its iPhone app, the company said a 
Twitter co-founders Evan Williams and Biz Stone have launched a new publishing platform called Medium. The entire network is built upon themed collections of text and images, giving writers more space beyond the 140-character confines of Twitter.
LinkedIn revealed today that 
Looking for new ways to find readers? Here’s an idea: host an online drawing contest using 
The question and answer social network Quora 
Being on social media is a great way to find new readers. If you are clueless about how to use Twitter and Facebook and have never even heard of Pinetrest, we can help. Beginning June 7th, Mediabistro is holding a 
Oh dear, I've had three novels published and not set up my Social Media Platform yet. Nor panicked.
Platform-building is such a wonderful distraction from writing, though! Instead of working on revising ad nauseum, you can obsess over posting on every social network you possibly can, despite having very little to talk about and no one to talk to. Then you can wallow in the misery of knowing that your book will clearly never sell because no one is reading your blog!
...No?
....hm. Better get back to editing, then ;)
I would urge her to dip her toe into the waters, but not with the goal of building a platform to entice readers. I've found social media (blogging and Twitter in particular) to be an amazing source of encouragement and sharing with other writers. In this solitary road to publication, putting our journey online means we are no longer alone. Even just knowing other writers have shared my struggles helps. At best, we form meaningful friendships across the globe.
If we do achieve our goal of publication, the strategy will then need to evolve.
The post on our marketing blog today was the same advice. I know it's rude to pimp our site, but it's a resource we've put out to help our fellow authors.
Feel free to share - or delete this comment - as we explain the basics of creating the author persona to be prepared when there's a book to promote.
http://authormarketing101.blogspot.com/
I should be finishing my sci-fi WIP this fall, do you think I should buy a tux for the Hugo award ceremony, or can I just rent one when the time comes?
We do tend to get ahead of ourselves sometimes. :)
There's so much hype about social media these days I often wonder how much it really does work in terms of web exposure/platform. Of course there's no way to know for certain and we all have to do it. But I often think too much social media can hurt an author more than help him/her. Slam me with too many book announcements about a new release and I'm blocking you faster than you can say "facebook event." I think most people feel the same way.
Blog. (Check) Facebook page. (Check) Twitter account. (Check)Goodreads page. (Check) Pinterest pagre. (Check. Why? Don't know. I don't get it. Anyway, check) Facebook page for "virtual blog tour." (Check) Photos on Tumblr (or Flickr or some lol-cat site?). (Check). Checks rolling in from massive sales of ebook novel? (LOL)
Thank you for that. I've seen several blogs now suggesting than an agent would pass us "first timers" by if we can't show our ability to cultivate a following. Phew!
Love Steven not getting Pinterest. I-really-really-don't-get-it.
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I can relate to your nervious writer-to-be. Perhaps she read the current issue of a well-known publication for writers, which ran a feature article under the banner "Publishing Today." The author -- herself an agent -- states quite emphatically, "Over the past year, I have seen a distinct diminishment in publishers' willingness to take a chance on new authors, especially authors of fiction." She strongly advocates building a platform and even self-publishing to that end. So just dying of curiosity, which is it?
I too would rather devote my energies to perfecting that novel that distributing my effort across multiple social media :D