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Do you dream of using crowdfunding to support a writing or research project that you could never tackle by yourself?

Today on the Morning Media Menu, journalist and literary blogger Edward Champion introduced his Indiegogo campaign to raise money to take and document 3,000-mile walk across the country. He also talked about his dispatches from the roadand shared advice for creating perks for your campaign. Here’s an excerpt:

This is, above all, a vicarious experience in which I hope to impart vital knowledge and awareness of the many people who live between Brooklyn and San Francisco who don’t get the kind of massive and detailed attention that this particular project will offer (that other mainstream outlets do not). It’s the kind of thing you can imagine, maybe even five or ten years ago, magazines might have put up money for this. But those days are now gone. This is long, long form journalism and it’s the kind of thing that may only be possible through something like IndieGoGo or crowdfunding.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

The Smoking Gun broke the news that Penguin has sued a number of authors “who failed to deliver books for which they received hefty contractual advances.”

The list of writers includes Elizabeth Wurtzel, Ana Marie Cox and Herman Rosenblat. Trident Media Group chairman Robert Gottlieb wrote a scathing comment on the story.

Check it out: “Penguin this is wrong headed. Authors beware. Books are rejected for reasons other than editorially and publishers then want their money back. Publishers want to reject manuscripts for any reason after an author has put time and effort into writing them all the while paying their bills. Another reason to have strong representation. If Penguin did this to one of Trident’s authors we could cut them out of all our submissions.”

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Journalist and author Jonah Lehrer has come under media scrutiny this week after he was caught recycling his own writing from The Wall Street Journal for NewYorker.com, where he recently joined as a staff writer.

Media critic Jim Romenesko discovered that Leher had repurposed copy about how and why people respond incorrectly to a simple arithmetic question about the cost of a bat and a ball. Literary blogger Edward Champion found recycled material in Leher’s recent book as well.

Since Romenesko’s discovery, The New Yorker has updated the post with an Editors’ Note, which reads, “Portions of this post appeared in similar form in an April, 2011, post by Jonah Lehrer for Wired.com. We regret the duplication of material.” (It is also is an October WSJ story, as Romenesko points out). continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

In a Morning Media Menu interview this morning, literary blogger Edward Champion shared stories from the Occupy Wall Street eviction last week and offered resources for writers, journalists and readers looking to follow the evolving story.

Champion also talked about how coverage of the controversial University of California, Davis pepper spray incident spread online–including his phone call to the officer videotaped spraying students.

Here’s an excerpt from the interview: “Being there in a physical capacity is very important. If you are in a city where an Occupy movement is happening, the best thing to do is simply go down there … The #OWS hashtag is always dependable, that’s always a good place to find stories. If you’re trying to corroborate something on YouTube if you have a name, that’s helpful. If  you have a verb: pepper spray, occupy, these are helpful things to look for.”

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

GalleyCat contributor and eBookNewser editor Dianna Dilworth will be covering the National Book Awards tonight at Cipriani Wall Street. Follow her coverage live on our GalleyCat Twitter feed and on this blog. Below, we’ve linked to free samples of all the National Book Awards finalists.

At the ceremony three years ago, this GalleyCat editor interviewed Sex and the City author Candace Bushnell, NBA finalist Salvatore Scibona, NBA executive director Harold Augenbraum and literary blogger Edward Champion about the Great Recession (video embedded above). The stock market had just plunged 400 points and writers gathered for the awards a few blocks from the New York Stock Exchange.

This year, the city is still divided over Occupy Wall Street eviction and readers around the country wonder about the future Occupy Wall Street library. It should make for an interesting evening.

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Will you be writing about the Occupy Wall Street protests? As this movement grows, it will give writers around the country a chance to explore some of the toughest issues of our generation.

Today on the Morning Media Menu, journalist and literary blogger Edward Champion shared stories from his coverage of the Occupy Wall Street protests. Champion covered the controversial arrests on Brooklyn Bridge and spent many hours capturing the stories and songs of individual protestors.

Here’s an excerpt from the interview: “This particular protest offers so many unusual angles because Occupy Wall Street has now started to spread into additional cities, everywhere from London to Tuscon to Los Angeles … You don’t necessarily have to be in New York to take a look at this movement. If you just start to talk to people–which I think is the best way, if you are interested in journalism  and this particular issue–you’ll probably unearth a great deal of unexpected nuggets.”

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Last week The Economist speculated that the new 15-inch edition of the IKEA Billy bookcase illustrated how bookshelves are used for everything “except books that are actually read” in an eBook world.

The report sparked alarmed stories in a number of outlets, including The Consumerist, The Wall Street Journal and Time. In an interview with Edward Champion, an IKEA spokesperson dispelled these rumors of the demise of bookshelves.

Here’s an excerpt: “The Billy bookcase with the 11 inch depth will still be stocked. Production will not be curtailed. An additional Billy bookcase, with a 15 inch depth, will be introduced in all countries — an effort to respond to how customers are presently living their lives … As it turns out, not only had the 15 inch bookcase been in development for a period of eighteen months to two years. Ebooks didn’t factor at all into the decision.”

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Champion analyzes her new book, but the online review allows him to trace the thematic threads connecting her three radically different novels. Check it out: "the novel represents both an extension and an evolution of what might be best perceived as a narrative inquiry into the relationship between humanity and environment."

If you want to read our interview with Sarah Hall, follow these links:

As Hall told us How To Describe Nature In Your Stories

and How To Budget Time For Your First Novel

then showed us How To Turn Everyday Sights Into Novel Settings

and then How To Research Your Novel

and finally, Hall talked about The Beauty of Influences.

I should have linked to this over the long weekend, but I forgot. Sorry, but...

Bat Segundo returns! Check out more thoughtful podcasts featuring everybody from novelist and editor Ed Park to cartoonist Mort Walker.

Next, the Harper's book blog strikes again, archiving the 85,000-most-meaningful-words of criticism all published in the last three weeks. Wyatt Mason makes the best argument against critics (like Cynthia Ozick and Laura Miller) who think that literary thought is withering on the digital vine--he actually does the math and links to under-appreciated essays.  Here's his sad conclusion:

"I would insist, to anyone who might take the time to read the variously rigorous and intelligent essays below—not to say the mass of them that accumulates over a year, year in and out—that the 'mass of critics' can not be said to have been gauged, much less mulled, with great thoroughness."

What happens when three women band together to share their literary adventures? Things get purple. Last week I discovered Purple Hearts and quickly subscribed for literary tips, publishing secrets, supportive community and thoughtful link round-ups. 

So, Ed Champion is closing up shop--taking some of my favorite links and commentary along with him. But I'm not worried...

I've worked with Ed in the past. He can't sit still. He can't focus on just one boring old project. I predict he'll be back in less than a month with a crazy project, a new job, or at least a manic list of links that piled up over the holidays.

Friends like Ed (on or off the Internet) are the best thing a writer can have. Your RSS reader should be loaded with manic thinkers who keep your head stocked with new ideas. 

Case in point: For my daily dose of innovation, I was blown away by Jeff Jarvis' essay about the photography storytelling experiment of Jonathan Harris (the photographer pictured above). It's called The Whale Hunt.

You should study this mish-mash of story and text, figuring out how to make your own webby work more creative (if you like this photography work, check out 10×10, We Feel Fine, and Universe).

Ed Champion is gone, but he'll be back. In the meantime, stay tuned here for more ground-breaking storytelling like this:

"[I wanted] to experiment with a new interface for human storytelling. The photographs are presented in a framework that tells the moment-to-moment story of the whale hunt. The full sequence of images is represented as a medical heartbeat graph along the bottom edge of the screen, its magnitude at each point indicating the photographic frequency (and thus the level of excitement) at that moment in time."

It's been a big year for the book reviewing community.

Some bloggers bragged that we are nearing the end of the paper-review and the rise of the lit-bloggers. Others, like mystery novelist (one of my favorite contemporary pulp fiction writers, incidentally) Michael Connelly, feel that we will cripple the book writing business as we lose newspaper reviews.

If that doesn't make you think, check out The Millions' blogged Year in Reading feature, a book round-up packed with special guests that can challenge even the most comprehensive year-end coverage of a print organization. 

I don't know what I can add to this conversation. I think it's a rocky, thrilling time to be a writer, and you must learn how to interact with web communities. No matter what happens to the book-reviewing world these dedicated readers can sustain you.

Most of the readers on this site--myself included--live in that treacherous region called The Land Before Your First Book. We all dream of finishing novels, screenplays or non-fiction books, struggling without the reassurance of a steady writing paycheck.

Today Tao Lin wrote a sort of kindness manifesto about what motivated him during that rough time in his life: "many writers probably continue writing (or are able to produce new stories and eventually books) only because every couple of weeks or months they read some little thing on the internet, some evidence that their writing has had an actual effect on a human being that they do not know."

Ed Champion responded with an equally important observation about the unfriendly state of media culture: "the world is often a casually inconsiderate place, particularly here in New York, where I am still negotiating the way in which people — even supposed acquaintances — snub each other when more “important” people are present."

What's the point? We've only got each other people, so support your fellow fledgling writer and drop somebody a friendly line on their blog. You could be the person who saves some wonderful novel or movie or poem from the trash bin.  

I would even take that a step further and urge you to actively seek out writing friends, to prevent yourself from falling into the Depression Tar Pits that fill the Land Before Your First Book. LWOT (Lies with Occasional Truth) has a program to help you find your writing buddy  have a nifty feature called Write Match--a way to be artificially hooked up with your writerly soul-mate.

Would you write a book for $25,000 and a publishing deal?  

This New York Times’ article about Penguin's new contest has got the Litblog world buzzing. Readers can submit manuscripts to the publishing house's Breakthrough Novel contest, and a team of agents and editors will pick a winning novel for publication.

Ed Champion cried foul, generating a string of comments debating the contest and judges--including some additional investigation by blogger Mark Sarvas. It's all worth reading...

Once you win the contest and savor your book deal, Bookninja has the scoop on all the trials and tribulations you will face at book readings. Author Meg Rosoff explains her least favorite reader question:

"I get “who’s your favourite author?” with terrifying regularity, or its variant, “what’s your favourite book?” You’d think after the first four hundred and eighty five times, I’d have a prepared answer, but there simply isn’t one. I don’t have a favourite book, or a favourite author. I have fifty, but not one."  

Publishing Spotted collects the best of what's around on writing blogs on any given day. Feel free to send tips and suggestions to your fearless editor: jason [at] thepublishingspot.com.

Do you remember the giddy thrill of book fairs and book orders in grade school? As a kid, I used to live for those days when some bookseller would brings cases full of the newest Hardy Boys books to my school.

Over the weekend, the Brooklyn Book Festival made me feel the same way. I saw so many cool people: Rachel Fershleiser from Smith Magazine, author A.M. Homes, editor and novelist Ed Park.

A.M. Homes won my Best Advice for Fledgling Writers Award, telling Brooklyn writers to pay attention to the economics of their characters. Questions like "How do they earn money?" and "How do they spend money?" are equally important as questions like "Where do they live?"

I missed Ed Champion and Matthew Cheney, and Matthew missed Ed too, but he turned the whole experience into an existential crisis:

"I never saw Ed. Sure, there were 10,000 people at the festival, but still. If anybody can stand out amidst 10,000 people, it's Ed. I think one of us doesn't exist."

Fantasy novelist Robert Jordan has died. I spent many happy days buried under blankets and reading his fantasy series, Wheel of Time. I never even finished the gosh darn collection, but the experience of reading him was truly satisfying. Rest in Peace.

Did YouTube kill the political star?

Last night the first installment of the YouTube/CNN presidential debate was waged. I missed it, but Steve Bryant has provided me with a cornucopia of links and analysis. Check it out:

"At one point Barack Obama noticed that almost every question reflected cynicism. Ya think? That right there is the most important YouTube contribution: Demonstrating the anger seething in America...Here's the transcript from the debate. PoliticsTV has a good series of candidate response videos, while the NYTimes' Caucus blog embeds the YouTube question videos."

How will blogs affect literary style? Ed Champion writes in the Los Angeles Times about a new breed of confessional literature spawned by our interactive times. Rachel Kramer Bussel adds more discussion on her blog.

Sarah Weinman reports on the death of the most imaginative newspaper ever stuffed into a supermarket rack. Weekly World News is dead.

Publishing Spotted collects the best of what's around on writing blogs on any given day. Feel free to send tips and suggestions to your fearless editor: jason [at] thepublishingspot.com.

Ever had your credit card stolen?

I got robbed a couple weekends ago and somebody took my card for a run. I wish I could be more like Jeff Barnosky and turn it into a Philip Roth-esque ride through a society built on shaky credit. 

Speaking of money problems, Edward Champion just wrote a fierce essay about his ethical position as a reviewer in this new media world where journalistic rules can too easily be broken: "I do not care if I am forced to live on a diet of Top Ramen or if I must pay my rent by sifting through the coins in my piggy bank. I would sooner pump gas or work retail somewhere than allow myself to be corrupted like this. Let it stand for the record that my opinion cannot be purchased."

In 2003, Kevan Davis built a zombie Infection Simulation. The simple game allowed you to control the spread of zombies within a crowded urban area, bring the curse of the undead to an imaginary population of pink dots. It is surprisingly addictive and may help you write a very morbid story. (Thanks, SF Signal)

The Death of the Book Review. The Rebirth of the Book Review. The Book Review Gets a New Set of Clothes and Learns How To Dance.

Everybody has a theory about The Future of Book Reviews. Ed Champion weighs them all in this live-blogged, heated panel at the Book Expo. 

Maud Newton is on a roll. First she spots a picture of the reclusive Christian comic book tract writer, Jack Chick. Then she ruminates on the nature of novel structure and the benefits of writing pacts. Follow these links: "Mark and I have a writing pact, and he’s more than upheld his end of it. So I won’t ruminate about my progress except to say that lately I can’t stop thinking about structure. A book fails or succeeds on its architecture, and right now my draft is bloated and wobbly." 

Over at Mumpsimus, I just discovered Brian Francis Slattery's debut novel, Spaceman Blues. I loved the site's review of the book, and I was even more excited after I saw Slattery's website. I'm going to try and line up a Five Easy Questions about writing surreal space age immigration novels.

Publishing Spotted collects the best of what's around on writing blogs on any given day. Feel free to send tips and suggestions to your fearless editor: jason [at] thepublishingspot.com.

The Old Hag website is serializing an A.M. Homes essay. Ever since the Barbie Doll started talking in The Safety of Objects, I've always dug her casual, hallucinogenic style. Ed Champion just finished a 40-minute interview podcast with Homes herself.

Book Expo America just landed in Manhattan, overwhelming readers, reviewers and publishers with the most amazing collection of writers. Sarah Weinman provides some tips for New Yorkers and visitors headed out to the festivities.

John Coyne and creative writing professor are hashing out "The Rules for Writing a Peace Corps Book." Drop the Peace Corps part and you have some good advice for all fledgling writers, the easiest step in the process to skip. Take a writing class! "[Aspiring writers] should take writing courses from reputable instructors to learn the basics and to have the opportunity to workshop their writing among peers." 

Publishing Spotted collects the best of what's around on writing blogs on any given day. Feel free to send tips and suggestions to your fearless editor: jason [at] thepublishingspot.com.

John Coyne has some stern advice for Peace Corps writers who hope to publish a book. Print-on-demand (P.O.D.) authors of all stripes should listen very carefully. "It is tough to get anyone to read anything," he explains. Read Tom Bissell to see how a Peace Corps writer can change foreign experiences into something sublime.

The elegant Brooklyn experimentalist Richard Grayson welcomes Ed Champion to his new digs in Brooklyn. Score one for the East Coast lit-blog team that includes everybody from Richard Grayson to Susan Henderson to me.

As long as we have the attention of all you New York writers, why not volunteer to write for charity? Galleycat has the scoop: "The NY Writers Coaliton is looking for volunteers for its 2nd annual Write-A-Thon June 9 ... So far, the organization has raised nearly $8,500 from writers at all levels of experience who've gotten friends to sponsor them in an all-day writing session that offers free workshops, motivational boosts, and a guest appearance by National Novel Writing Month founder, Chris Baty."

Publishing Spotted collects the best of what's around on writing blogs on any given day. Feel free to send tips and suggestions to your fearless editor: jason [at] thepublishingspot.com.

I could blog about publishing and web journalism news all day, but that won't help anybody learn how to write better. Today, I have a couple new publications and writers for your reading, submitting, and thinking pleasure.

Last night I discovered the literary magazine Saltgrass, edited by blogger and writer Julia Cohen. They are a brand-new project mixing unknown poets with established writers--a virtual laboratory for fledgling authors like ourselves. Check out the Submission Guidelines and pick up a $5 issue for more information.

Then, Ed Park and Richard Grayson are guest blogging for Ed Champion this week. Ed Park blogged about a mystery publication called The New York Ghost. Maybe it's an incredible new magazine, maybe a fiendish trap. Either way, I subscribed.

Then, Grayson blogged about Peter Cherches, a New York writer with some great memories about his days as a struggling writer. Read it for some inspiration to get you through the next rejection letter or unanswered magazine query. Check it out:

"Long before I reinvented myself as a food and travel blogger, long before there were blogs, I was a “downtown” writer and performance artist. The recent publication of the anthology Up Is Up, But So Is Down: New York’s Downtown Literary Scene, 1974-1992 (NYU Press) has inspired this reminiscence. Over the years I’ve published fiction and other short prose pieces (which some choose to call prose poems) in many literary magazines, most with pretty small circulations..." 

What should you do when an interview doesn't work out?

Ed Champion wrote an essay about his brief, unsuccessful audio interview with Marisha Pessl, and scores of readers wrote in with thoughts about the art of literary conversation. The whole debate is required reading for fledgling journalists and reviewers looking to polish their craft. Enter the fray here.

Steve Bryant reports that YouTube will pay its most popular video producers a share of ad revenues. They aren't the first web video company to experiment with this model, but Steve thinks they are the smartest company to attempt such a project.  

Deadlines help keep my writing on track, from this blog to my novel. Jeffrey Yamaguchi just linked to a photographer who set an impressive deadline for himself: "[Bill] Wadman has challenged himself to take a portrait a day for 365 days -- not a self-portrait, but a portrait of someone else. And these are absolutely stunning photographs." Check out the full post here.

Publishing Spotted collects the best of what's around on writing blogs on any given day. Feel free to send tips and suggestions to your fearless editor: jason [at] thepublishingspot.com.

The brilliant No Fear of the Future blog explores an under-researched area of film theory: entirely random appearances by famous writers in movies. I dig the imaginary Love Boat episode where "an enfeebled Jorge Luis Borges" plays himself in a script that could fit perfectly inside a Borges story. (Thanks Ed Champion for the link).

Politics is already a lot like a reality show. Now MySpace is building a reality televsion show where aspiring politicians compete to win election campaign funds. Salvation for a politically apathetic nation or the last gasp of an image-conscious political scene?  Don't ask me, ask Steve Bryant.

Steve also informed me that we both live in the bloggiest neighborhood in the country. If you want to move to Clinton Hill with us, do it soon--rents are climbing faster than an out-of control rocketship.

Publishing Spotted collects the best of what's around on writing blogs on any given day. Feel free to send tips and suggestions to your fearless editor: jason [at] thepublishingspot.com.

Who is Roberto Bolaño, and why should you be reading him?

Earlier this week, Ed Champion observed: "Four people have mentioned The Savage Detective in the past forty-eight hours." I just finished that book--Bolaño's newly translated masterpiece.

It's my first time reading him, and I was sad to discover he died in 2003. The book takes a dark, pulpy look at the evolution of Latin American poetry during the 1970's, featuring plenty of hardboiled action and mind-blowing dream sequences.

It's inspiring. I finished the book in two weeks, and I've been writing like mad every time I close the book. Here's my favorite passage, something to think about for the rest of the weekend. Dig it:

"Do you know what the worst thing about literature is? said Don Pancracio. I knew, but I pretended I didn't. What? I said. That you end up being friends with writers. And friendship, treasure though it may be, destroys your critical sense."

As long as you are visiting Mr. Champion's site, check out his comprehensive Kurt Vonnegut memorial post. I've read almost every novel that Vonnegut wrote, and the best way to remember him is to read some more...

Yesterday I was staring at five gigantic volcanoes. Today, I'm back at a desk... 

I'm back from Guatemala. I know you missed me. I'll be posting photos and other goodies over the next few weeks, but today I'll be a little slow. Here's a post to get us started.

I come home to find Ed Champion re-designed his whole site, but he's still posting quality stuff. Here's a little community writing exercise that he discovered for all the novelists out there. Check it out:

"Turn to page 123 in your work-in-progress. (If you haven’t gotten to page 123 yet, then turn to page 23. If you haven’t gotten there yet, then get busy and write page 23.) Count down four sentences and then instead of just the fifth sentence, give us the whole paragraph."

Just follow that simple recipe, and then listen to David Lynch explain his own work to Mister Champion.

Following an exhausting week at my day-job, I'm starting the new week with a tired brain.

Luckily, the tireless reporters at Publishing News haven't been slacking, and they have some important insider gossip, straight from an exclusive "agents briefing" at Random House. 

While this site only skims the surface of the Big Picture in the publishing industry--we focus on the web writers and lit bloggers in the new digital wave--we still need to pay attention to these seismic shifts occurring at the highest levels of publishing.

Check it out:

"The message was clear: it's not getting any easier out there. Publishers' share of the trade is shrinking while at the same time discounts are rising. There has been conglomeration among retailers and wholesalers (EUK's takeover of Bertrams was mentioned) and the pressure on all publishers remains intense. 'They're saying something has to give,' was one assessment afterwards." 

Thanks to Ed Champion for the link.