Monthly Archives: February 2011

It’s always feast or famine

Posted on by John Hedtke

Suppose you’re writing a book, any book. That’s wonderful, but remember that unless you have a really fat advance, you’re not going to be making money while you write the book. If you can spit a book out in 3-4 months, you’ll probably not deplete your savings too badly, but you’re going to want to have something lined up you can leap on when you’re done.

Let’s further suppose that another writing contract heaves into view. It doesn’t matter what, but it represents real money that you can use to refill the savings and pay off the miscellaneous expenses that you’ve ~a-hem~ been putting on a credit card. And that’s really good, too.

The only problem is getting the timing to work out right. Can you predict accurately to the day, or even the week, when the book is going to be done? No, probably not. You can certainly set yourself deadlines and push yourself to achieve them and you may, but writing a book is not the easiest thing in the world to estimate. Even more so, you may be picking things up as you go (as Bill Zinsser describes it, “writing to learn“), making it that much harder to identify parts of your process. You’ll be enriched and enlightened by what you discover, but the chances are very good that you’ll see at least one delay as a result of your educational process.

Or even worse for your schedule, what if the new gig comes in so that it overlaps the last few weeks of your book writing schedule? The new gig may be another great book, a long-term writing contract at $60/hour, or a magazine article you promised to do, but the problem is still that you have to squeeze out twice as many writing hours/day as there probably are. And the worst part is that the overlap is hitting you at the very worst part of your writing madness on the book.

What do you do? First, try to get as much slack in the new schedule as you can. If you don’t really need to start the new project immediately and have some time for delivery, you may have all the wiggle room you need. You’ll drink a lot of coffee, bang the keyboard that much harder, and finish the book… then you’ll drink a lot more coffee, bang the keyboard, and meet your first deadlines on the new project. (See, I told you: writing is fun!)

Another possibility is subcontracting: if there’s some way to quietly farm out a small piece of whatever you’re doing on one project or another, consider doing it. You’ll make a little less money than you would’ve, but you’ll still make more money than if you’d said “No” to the new project.

Most of the time, the answer is to scream a little in your office, and just blaze away as hard and fast as you can. Authors and freelance writers all recognize that “burning the candle at all three ends” feeling that happens regularly. The life of an author is always feast or famine. It’s always better to have too much than too little, but you’re still going to work hard for it at times. You may console yourself with the thought that this is a job with no heavy lifting and keep typing.

Tweaking the blog

Posted on by John Hedtke

I’m not a big fan of justified text, so I’m pleased to have the blog changed to ragged right. I’m not a WordPress maven, so special thanks to Vonda McIntyre (for those of you who don’t know her, Vonda is the World’s Nicest Person®) for telling me where to look for the text alignment setting.

Speaking of Vonda McIntyre, you should check out the Book View Café, where you can buy ebooks from Vonda, Ursula LeGuin, and many other fiction writers for relatively small amounts of money. It’s a major bargain and a chance to read great novels you haven’t read before.

The books I always recommend

Posted on by John Hedtke

There are a few books that I recommend to everyone who’s a writer, everyone who’s a freelancer, everyone who’s a captive employee, and everyone who works in high tech. Yes, they’re that meaningful. And none of them are “The Secret” or “Who Moved My Cheese?” or anything insipid like that. These books are:

Okay, now I’ll tell you why they’re important.

“Clutter’s Last Stand” is at the top of the list because everyone needs this, no matter who they are. Don Aslett defines “clutter” as anything that you’re not using and have no immediate plans for but that you’re hanging on to for whatever reason. This includes things you’re hanging on to because they might be worth something someday, you may have a need for it, or just because you don’t want to throw it out. In fact, most of the time, clutter is filling up space in your life and using up time, blocking out things that you really want to do or get to and can’t. The message of “Clutter’s Last Stand” is that if you’re not using it and you don’t have plans for it and it doesn’t make you feel good to keep it, get rid of it! It’ll save you time, it’ll make it easier to move around, and you’ll feel incredibly free for the doing of it.

“The Richest Man in Babylon” is the first book you need to read about making and saving money. There’s an updated version “for the 21st Century” but you don’t really need that; stick with the basics. This is good, solid advice that I recommend. It works. And as you’re reading it, your internal dialog is going to be saying “Yes, but….” here and there. Here’s how you deal with that: the book is right. You’re wrong. Shut up and keep reading. Then do this. It works. It really works. It’s all that simple. If you stick to it, you’ll be in good shape. You can follow up by reading “The Millionaire Next Door” (which is also pretty good and along the same lines) if you need more financial smacking around. “The Richest Man in Babylon” has been around for longer than you or I have been alive and is readily available in the library if you don’t want to buy it.

“Up the Organization” was the foundation of “Theory Y” management: the idea that people want to work and they want to work hard and well given the opportunity. It’s a bunch of little pieces of no more than 200 words each that Townsend would jot down in a notebook. There are surprisingly few things that are dated. I have often found myself quoting things from this. There are a few additional books he wrote in the same style, all of which are equally good. You can find Townsend in the public library, too.

“The Secrets of Consulting” is a book that anyone who wants to get into freelance work of any kind needs to read. I like most of what Gerry Weinberg wrote, but this is my fave of his. “The Secrets of Consulting” presents many different lessons about consulting using stories and parables. They all end with a moral you can remember, such as Rudy’s Rutabaga Rule: “After you solve your #1 problem, your #2 problem gets a promotion.” (See how easy that was for me to remember?) This is a book that is fun to read. BTW, if you’re working programmers, I strongly recommend “The Psychology of Computer Programming.”

“Peopleware” is a seditious book. It may not quite as much use to you if you’re working in a non-technical environment, but it’s still valuable. The premise of the book is that it’s rarely the technology that kills projects, it’s managing the people. Their example of this is accounting software. Accounting software is not rocket surgery; it’s the antithesis of rocket surgery, in fact… yet 9 out of 10 accounting systems are never completed. Ergo, it’s a people issue. They’re right, too. But I think I can sell you on the book by telling you how I was sold on it: Chapter 8 is entitled [insert drumroll] “The Furniture Police.” That oughta tell you everything you need to know about the book.

There are lots of other books that I can recommend, and probably will as I think of them. But the fact that I always think of these books when I list books that people should read says to me that these are the books that you should read, too.

My office today is reminding me…

Posted on by John Hedtke

…of Peregrynne’s Law: “Kibble increases as the cube of available floor space.” I’ve had some success with debriding some rampant piles of paper on the desk but they’ve rallied and fought back. There’s also a pile of hard disks–my desk currently has about 6TB of storage on it–that need to be installed in the RAID server, along with the RAID card that will drive them. However, the overall quantity of stuff has been somewhat reduced and the things that are here at the moment are work more than anything else. Hot diggety. :)

Is technical communication the job for you?

Posted on by John Hedtke

Every so often, I get asked about being a technical communicator, mostly by people wondering if they should sign up for college classes to learn to become a technical communicator.

I like it a lot for a lot of reasons, but this is one of those “It all depends” situations. I’m going to tell you about all the good and all the bad I can think of to give you as complete a picture so you can make a fully-informed decision.

What Is Technical Communication?

Before anything else, I want to try and nail down the idea of “technical communication” (or “TC” just to save my wrists) so we’re talking apples and apples.

The first thing that most people think of for TC is technical writing. Technical writing is creating product and user manuals, online help, FAQs, tip sheets, product spec sheets, maintenance documentation, knowledge bases, quick reference guides, training materials, APIs and programmer references, and installation instructions. You can work in any number of industries doing any number of things, too. The software and hardware industries are big users of technical communicators, but there are many other kinds of technical writing. Here’s a sample of technical communication in a variety of industries:

  • automotive–those manuals that come with your car, maintenance manuals
  • medical–retail and professional medical supplies packaging and instructions, medical equipment operation and maintenance manuals
  • consumer electronics–installation, operation, and maintenance manuals
  • industrial equipment–operation and maintenance manuals
  • manufacturing–documentation for car seats to beds to stoves to plumbing fixtures to sewing machines
  • food–someone has to write the recipes on the back of cake mix boxes
  • government–anything the government produces, from tax instructions to drivers license manuals to landscaper training materials

As you can see, TC covers a lot of ground. Any time you see words in a row that describe how to do something, it’s TC and some grown person somewhere got paid to do that. (Even when you don’t see words in a row and it’s just graphics, such as with IKEA instructions or airplane safety cards, it’s still TC and some grown person got paid for it.)

What Are Technical Communicators Like?

Technical communicators (TCers) are an odd bunch. For one thing, there’s a high percentage of TCers with Asperger’s Syndrome. Not as high a percentage as, say, programmers, but enough that you’ll notice the lack of a sense of humor in some of your compatriots. In addition, the majority of TCers are introverted, which is neither good nor bad, but it’s important to be aware of. (Old joke, equally true of technical writers and programmers: “How can you tell a technical writer is introverted?” “He looks at your shoes when he talks to you.”) If you’re an extrovert (like me), you can either assume that your jokes aren’t going to always be understood or that in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. Both are equally true.

Good TCers tend to be very focused on details and have at least fair organizational skills. Most TCers do not do office politics well, in large part because they don’t read people as well as they might.

As a final comment, I’d like to point out that Tina the Brittle Tech Writer in Dilbert is a real person. No, I don’t mean she’s real like we all know someone like that, I mean that Tina is modeled after one, specific, live human being who you could actually meet in person. There’s a story that hangs on this as you might well imagine and it’s not my story to tell and I’m not gonna. (So there!) But she really is real. And she really is exactly like what you see in Dilbert.

What Kind of Educational Background Do You Need?

Some TC jobs require specific skills; for example, if you’re documenting medical equipment, you may need to have specific training or background. On the other hand, you might not need any background at all except for the ability to write. Taking writing courses is pretty much always a good idea, as there are basic planning, writing, and organizational skills that every TCer will benefit from.

If you have no background in TC, look for a TC certificate program at schools in your area. You can also take remote classes in TC from a number of colleges and universities, either as single classes or as part of a TC Certificate program. Check out the University of California, Riverside Extension program for both live and online classes. They have a great certificate program, too.

In my experience, the best TCers have come to the field from other places: people who were chemists or accountants or musicians or whatever. The additional life experience gives them background to work with, particularly if they’re doing writing in the field in which they have personal experience. There are many TCers who have degrees in TC specifically, but it’s not necessary. The person I talked to that sparked the idea to write this post has a background in industrial engineering, organizational management, writing training materials, doing training, and several other things in general business environments. She’s going to be a dynamo as soon as she gets even a few good technical writing courses under her belt.

Note: You don’t necessarily have to have any training at all to be brilliant. I’ve got a high school diploma. I attended college briefly but I was a complete washout academically. The most important training I received after high school was a CETA program that taught me to type, how to use a variety of office equipment, the basics of accounting, and entry level programming. From there, I got a couple dozen temp jobs, then became a programmer, then started writing documentation, became a technical writer, and things just sort of blossomed from there. So by way of reference, I’ll stack my career up against anyone’s at this point, but I don’t have a college degree or writing training. (Damn, I’m good. I ain’t humble, but I’m really good!) I can’t honestly say that I’d recommend doing it this way–it’s hard at times!–but it’s possible to do it if you wish.

What’s the Money Like?

The money’s not bad. If you’re working captive for a company, you can get anywhere from $40-75K as a TCer. Freelance writing can get you anywhere from $25K-$100K or even more depending on the type of writing and how good you are at marketing your skills. (If you’re looking for more money in a technical field, consider programming, which earns as much as $100K captive and as much as $150K freelance.)

Do Technical Communicators Get Respect?

There is very little respect to be had in TC. I don’t care how many degrees you’ve got or how fast you can whip stuff out; TCers don’t get respect. Part of this is related to the introverted personality type of TCers, but a lot of it is situational. Here’s how it works.

Most jobs in a company are vertical. Sales, Development, Marketing, Testing, and Support are all vertical with tightly defined relationships. Work flows in from and is handed off clearly specified people or positions. Technical Publications, on the other hand, is horizontal. Technical Publications cuts across all the other groups of the company. Work can come in from anywhere in the company and be handed off to anyone in the company… or even outside the company. It is possible that a single TCer could talk to a shipping clerk, the receptionist, a developer, and the company’s CEO in the same day for the same project. (Think about it and I’m sure you’ll be able to think of a scenario yourself.)

Because TCers talk to everyone, TCers are the ones that hear that the product Development is creating, which leans sideways and is painted green, is being eagerly anticipated by a Marketing department that has been telling everyone that this thing stands on its head and is painted blue. Because TCers are the first to identify these disconnects in a company, TCers are also the ones who have the painful obligation of pointing out these disparities in goals. And TCers, ultimately, are the ones who are ritually slaughtered as the bearers of bad news. (In “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” you never hear what happened to the little boy that points out the Emperor’s nakedness after the story ended. TCers know from personal experience.)

As a result of all this, there’s a situational problem with getting respect on the job. And that’s okay, you know: if you’re aware that you’re unlikely to get respect, you won’t be looking for it. Unfortunately. many TCers get wrapped around the axle about why there isn’t respect and start making waves to get validation. That’s their choice, but there’s just no winning in this situation. Respect is not a coin that TCers get paid in. I’m fond of saying that, if you want a career with respect, you should become a nurse or a school teacher, because both those professions get a lot more respect than TC.

What’s the Career Path?

Typically, you progress to senior writer, group lead/project manager, writing manager, and possibly even director of communication. There are many offshoots from basic technical writing leading to related fields such as technical marketing writing, web content development, corporate communication, executive presentations and white papers, user experience expertise, and training. TC is noted for having a very thin glass ceiling; generally, the higher up you go, the higher the ratio of women to men.

Other Types of TC to Consider

Besides manuals and documentation as I’ve already described, you can try your hand at non-fiction books (which you’re probably already interested in, because that’s what this blog is about) and magazine articles. There’s lots of material about books elsewhere in this blog, but I want to mention that magazine articles pay very well for a relatively small amount of work… and they’re fun. (I’ll talk more about writing magazine articles in a later post.)

If you have a business background, you can try being a business analyst. Business analysts go into companies and figure out what needs fixing and how. The skill sets for business analyst and TCer are about the same, but there’s something you should know about business analysts: they tend to make a lot more money than TCers and they get treated with lots of respect. Yeah, they’re probably the bearers of bad news, too, which doesn’t make sense; that’s just the way it is. But it’s fascinating work if you’re interested.

Freelance Opportunities

TC has many opportunities for working freelance. Virtually all the jobs I’ve described can be done remotely and/or freelance from the pleasure of your own home office.

Are You Interested or Still Not Sure?

I’ve tried to present many of the pluses and minuses of TC here without spending too much time doing it. (And I’ve probably gotten a few things wrong, too. Comments are welcome.) I certainly like it: writing is a fun way to make a living. The hours are tolerable and there’s no heavy lifting.

If you’re interested at this point or would just like some more information, I encourage you to hang out at a few meetings of the local chapter of the Society for Technical Communication. Chapters vary dramatically in size and focus, but you can rub shoulders with people who do this for a living and see if you like it.

Buffalo wolves

Posted on by John Hedtke

Many years ago, I went to Wolf Haven in Tenino, WA. It’s a great place: they provide sanctuary for captivity-born wolves, raise awareness about wolves, and provide protection for wild wolves in a variety of ways. While I was there, I saw a buffalo wolf.

Buffalo wolves, we were told, are “triply extinct.” (It makes me sad to write this, even now.) Their habitat’s gone (the plains), their food source is gone (buffalo), and at the time I saw them, there weren’t enough left to form a viable captive breeding population. If they’re not gone from the Earth now, they will be soon. But that’s not the point of this story.

Buffalo wolves (canis lupus nubilus), also known as “Great Plains wolves,” are a subspecies of gray wolf. They hunted buffalo. Buffalo, in case you aren’t familiar with them, don’t take garbage from anyone. Bulls can weigh a ton or more. They stand 5-6′ high at the shoulders. They’re incredibly agile and they can sprint at 30mph. They can jump over a 6′ fence from a standing position. They are tough dudes.

Nevertheless, buffalo wolves would hunt, kill, and eat buffalo regularly. This went on for thousands of years (before humans came along and screwed things up). How did they do that to an animal that could kill them just by stepping on them? The answer is that, like other wolves, buffalo wolves hunted in packs. They didn’t need to face down a buffalo single-handedly. No one wolf had but a fraction of the strength and power of a buffalo, but a lot of them together were able to whittle a buffalo down, kill it, and eat it.

This story gives me heart and hope. I’ll never be as strong as a buffalo myself, but the buffalo wolf has taught me that I don’t need to be. I just have to be part of a big-enough pack of other buffalo wolves focused on bringing down that particular buffalo and we’ll win every time. It’s a very appealing image.

Office supplies

Posted on by John Hedtke

I wanted to talk about office supplies for a moment.

As writers, we collect a lot of office supplies. It’s not just “pens and paper.”  It’s everything:

  • staples
  • markers
  • highlighters
  • rubber bands
  • push pins
  • Scotch tape
  • pencils
  • paper clips
  • Post-it notes
  • note pads
  • stamps
  • return address labels

I could probably spot 50 different items on my desk right now that count as “office supplies.” (Admittedly, it’s a large and somewhat cluttered desk, but still….) Mind you, this doesn’t count the paper products in the office: reams of papers (three-hole punched, cheap bond, expensive extra-bright bond, granite finish, cover stock, colored papers, and a big carton of stuff printed on one side that I use for drafts where I just need to see something on a page before I recycle it), a dozen kinds of envelopes for letters, an equivalent number of manila and padded envelopes, stacks of legal pads, notepads, transparencies, blank CDs and DVDs, binders, folders, specialty papers… and that doesn’t even begin to get into the label stock!

For any number of years, I tried putting things on shelves or areas of the desk, but the small items were difficult to deal with. They spread too easily, sometimes on their own. Office supplies tend to breed and multiply as badly as hangers when you’re foolish enough to look away. And I know that I will bring more home, too: every conference I go to has pens (I’m a sucker for giveaway pens; they’re easy to carry and always useful), customized Post-it notes (including some beautiful cased sets of Post-its of sizes and colors), and note pads (hard to have too many notepads).

Over the years, a lot of the stray conference giveaways, such as pens that light up, bouncy toys, erasers, funny pencils, novelty pencil sharpeners, and squeezy toys, would end up being given to the kids next door or across the street. At the moment, I’m without a good destination for these things, so they’re stacking up until I find a suitable destination for them again.

Surrounded by an increasingly tall and unwieldy stack of office supplies, I finally hit on a multi-pronged solution that works very well for me. On the desk, I have:

  • A collection of pens, highlighters, markers, the letter opener, scissors, and a couple of screwdrivers that get pressed into service frequently when working on the computers are all in a couple of large pencil cups on the desk.
  • Small things that both accumulate and spread quickly–paper clips, rubber bands, small bulldog clips, and push pins–are in small glass apothecary jars.
  • Larger typical desk-y things: a stapler, a Post-it note holder, a small wooden tray that holds 3″x5″ cards that was a gift from someone I’m very fond of at one of my publishers years ago, and a small vertical file that holds sheets of address labels, postage stamps, and a small collection of notepads.
  • A few cakebox containers of blank CDs and DVDs of various types, and one cakebox for work-in-process backups.
  • A brass bowl and large yogurt container with undifferentiated kibble: things like the sewing kit, sun glasses, dental floss, and packets of Emergen-C. I also have a container for spare change, which always seems to accumulate up here for some reason.

For all the rest of the small office supplies, I purchased a six-drawer supply cabinet at IKEA in the late 90s that fits neatly under the desk. It’s a lovely little blue metal unit on casters a smidgen more than 2′ tall on casters with 6 wooden drawers. The one I bought is no longer available, although they have something similar, even if it’s not as pretty. All of the small office supplies go in this and it’s right there when I need it. The drawers are labeled clearly and it’s all kinds of convenient. (Question: How many pens can you squeeze into a drawer 11″ x 4″ by 7″? About 350. How many pencils? Only about 150, but that’s because the Post-it notes, sharpeners, and erasers go in the same drawer… and I rarely use pencils, anyway.)

Dedicated shelves work pretty well for paper products. I’m currently occupying a couple of 4-shelf pine bookshelves, but I recommend that you also try a bunch of the stackable trays for small quantities of special papers, label stock (such as address or CD labels), transparencies, notebook dividers, and so on. They make things easy to see and you don’t keep having to straighten the shelves because you pulled something out of the middle of a stack. Remember, though: you don’t need to have things like paper products in the same room if you’re not using them that frequently. When I had an office in my last house in Seattle that was 26′ by 14′, I still kept the paper products in another room.

You may not have the love of office supplies that I do, nor, if you’re just starting out as a writer, will you have the zillions of oddments that inevitably seem to accumulate. But I guarantee you that you will sooner or later. [insert maniacal cackling laughter that fades off in the background here.]

A quick intro to mind mapping

Posted on by John Hedtke

I told you in an earlier post that I’d tell you about mind mapping. A mind map is a diagram that starts with a central word or concept, then spreads out to show how you visualize other words or concepts (or project tasks or images or anything else) connected to that. Mind maps are inherently non-linear, with the focus of the mind map in the center of the page and then everything connected to it moving out from there.

Mind maps are visual, so here are several examples of mind maps to give you a better idea of how they work. Note that these are mind maps about mind mapping, so they’re illustrating the connections between the core concept of mind mapping and the concepts and tasks associated with it. (Be sure to check out the source websites for additional information and resources on mind mapping.)

I’m impressed with the graphics on these; when I do a mind map, it’s usually much more sparsely illustrated, something like the following example:

Sample rough mindmap from Wikipedia

As you can see, thought, the things that make mind maps most effective are to use lots of color and lots of illustrations. You not only have words and key concepts to hang your memories on, but the color and graphics make them easier to remember and make the concepts and relationships stand out. The right side of your brain thinks in pictures and colors far more than in words, so this technique gets both sides of your brain involved, increasing the depth of the associations on a subject.

In addition, you should put your thoughts down without trying to squeeze them into place in an arbitrary linear hierarchy. Mind mapping is a technique for getting your thoughts down on paper on a subject while recognizing that many concepts are not inherently linear. There are certainly many concepts that are dependent on other concepts, things that are linear and stepwise, but you don’t have to make things fit an outline that moves chronologically from A to Z just because.

In fact, if you think about it, outlining is most relevant for books or printed manuals… but if you’re creating an online help system or a web page or something else with hyperlinking and non-linear navigation, outlining presents a false structure. Mind maps are far more radial in their symmetry, frequently without a specific starting point from the central concept. The colors and graphics may give some clues, but it’s also possible that one starting point is as good as any other. Because the purpose of the mind map is to use visual and graphic elements to highlight relationships, the first two examples give a lot of information through the weight of the graphics.

Tony Buzan invented contemporary mind mapping. While there have been many pictorial record systems going back at least 2300 years, Buzan has popularized mind mapping in several books, such as Use Both Sides of Your Brain and The Mind Map Book. His techniques have also expanded on the connections between left and right brain activity and rung in software as well, for all of which is he richly deserving of credit.

Some other links worth checking out:

  • Wikipedia (there’s always Wikipedia)
  • A list of mind mapping software, both free and paid. (I don’t tend to use mind mapping software because I’m usually mind mapping when I’m taking notes or brainstorming on paper, so the process of doing the software takes too much effort that I could be using to write things down, leaping from concept tree to concept tree with a pen, but you may like it.)
  • Information about FreeMind, the mind mapping software package I do use when I use one. (Here’s where to download FreeMind if you want to try it.)
  • Information about Freeplane, another good mind mapping product (and a download link for Freeplane as well).

Mind mapping isn’t the tool you’ll want to use for everything, but it’s a great thing to know for breaking the bonds of a heirarchical outline. In fact, I will frequently mind map something first and then, with the concepts and relationships down on paper, I can start assigning weight, order, and presentation methodology in a linear outline. Try it out on some small piece of writing, such as an article or a blog post and see how it works for you.

Final tip: if you’re sweating too much over what goes where on the page, you’re putting too much thought into it. Mind mapping should be as light and quick as possible. Mind maps are usually a lot more fun than an outline because your right brain gets a chance to participate. If your pen is hovering over a section of the page too much, you’re probably stuck on something, so go do something else in another part of the mind map until whatever you’re trying to place pops up again.

Repost: How to sell lots and lots of your books

Posted on by John Hedtke

Speak Without Interruption, a blog worth following, recently had an interesting article about how to sell lots and lots of your books. This article briefly discussed how to use the Internet to sell your books by providing samples on your website and elsewhere.

I wanted to add that this is a major thrust of Amazon’s marketing, where they have the “Look inside this book!” option that lets you thumb your way through the TOC, the index, and a few pages to give you the flavor of what you’re getting. Not every book has this, but I’d wager that a majority of books in print do because it’s a smart way to go.

My upcoming book, being a book for a specific audience (still can’t say at this moment), will have a sample chapter available in PDF format from a number of venues (again, I can’t say specifically yet) that interested readers can download and review. If the book looks like it’s worth it at that point, they can buy it. I’m probably going to peddle it through Amazon, even though they take a 50% bite of the action, simply because it’s worth the exposure.

Harper’s has a morals clause in their publishing contracts now

Posted on by John Hedtke

This is not likely to affect most of us, but Harper’s is now including a morals clause. This says that Harper’s has the right to cancel your publishing contract if “Author’s conduct evidences a lack of due regard for public conventions and morals, or if Author commits a crime or any other act that will tend to bring Author into serious contempt, and such behavior would materially damage the Work’s reputation or sales.” This is, IMO, over the line.

There’s a lovely article at the Book View Cafe (a lovely site for authors, btw). You can also read the original blog post by Richard Curtis on this topic here.