Booklife: Strategies and Survival Tips for the 21st Century Writer

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Overview
Editorial Reviews
What People Are Saying
Product Details
Meet the Author

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Overview

Offering timely advice in an era when the burden of production and publicity frequently falls on authors, this essential reference reflects on methods for being focused, productive, and savvy in the craft of writing. Discussing a wide range of essential topics for self-promoting authors, this important guide explores questions such as How can authors use social media and the internet? How does the new online paradigm affect authors, readers, and the book industry? How can authors find the time to both create and promote their work? and What should never be done? Through good-humored encouragement, practical tips of the trade culled from 25 years of experience as a writer, reviewer, editor, publisher, agent, and blogger are shared. Including topics such as personal space versus public space, deadlines, and networking, the benefits of interacting with readers through new technologies is revealed.

What People Are Saying

Leslie Ann Henkel

I've long marveled at Jeff's mad alchemist-like techniques of creation, promotion, and artistic survival through his artful navigation of brambly networks of writers, artists, musicians, historians, hatmakers, bloggers, booksellers, reviewers, and fans. To steal a line from an Eddie Izzard stand-up act, 'No one can live at that speed.'

Peter Straub

A brilliant writer! (Peter Straub, author, Lost Boy Lost Girl)

Tamar Yellin

Jeff VanderMeer is an extraordinary writer . . . passionate, beautiful, complex, terrifying. (Tamar Yellin, author, The Genizah at the House of Shepher)

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

Author and blogger VanderMeer (Finch) outlines ways for writers to harness both the emerging power of the Internet and their own creativity in this informative guide. VanderMeer differentiates between a “Public Booklife” (marketing the book and the writer) and a “Private Booklife” (strategies to help get words on the page) and suggests that one's ideal Booklife is a dynamic balance of the two. Even though the Web's landscape is constantly shifting, his hints about ways to maximize a writer's exposure—including weighing the pros and cons of Facebook, MySpace and Twitter—can certainly be applied to future social networking sites and blogs. The tips for creating a flourishing Public Booklife will appeal to a wide variety of writers, from those just starting out to those trying to navigate the changing world of book publishing, while the Private Booklife section seems more tailored to new authors. With anecdotes from VanderMeer's own life as a writer, reviewer and blogger, as well as input from agents, editors and publicists, this guide will surely help writers traverse the often difficult journey from first draft to finished product. (Oct. 15)

Cory Doctorow

Well-organized master-class in understanding how to fit both writing and a writing career into your life.
— Boingboing.net

More Reviews (4) Fewer Reviews

NPR Weekend Edition Sunday

The thing about life is that it's bittersweet. It is both funny and dreadful and horrific and beautiful and everything else. And so to capture that . . . I turn to fantasy for that reason.

Publishing Spot

VanderMeer has struck a new sort of balance with the internet: charming his dedicated fan base on the web, creating multimedia promotional tools for his books, and actively seeking out new readers . . . in the digital crowds. One of my favorite writers.

Ron Hogan

One of the most literary fantasy writers or fantastic literary writers we've got working these days, take your pick.
— Mediabistro's GalleyCat

Wired.com

One of the things that sets VanderMeer apart is his embrace of technology and media. His online presence is considerable and includes a number of web sites, frequent blogging, a short film adaptation . . . his Alien Baby photo project and even a project involving animation via Sony Playstation.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781892391902
Publisher: Tachyon Publications
Publication date: 10/15/2009
Pages: 240
Sales rank: 569,925
Product dimensions: 8.96 (w) x 6.08 (h) x 0.89 (d)

Meet the Author

Jeff Vandermeer

Jeff VanderMeer has been involved in the publishing industry for more than twenty-five years and in many capacities. His award-winning novels have been published in fifteen languages and his nonfiction has appeared in the Washington Post, the Barnes & Noble Review, and the Huffington Post. He is a regular contributor to Amazon’s book blog Omnivorous and his short fiction has appeared in Wired. He is an editor of anthologies for Bantam, Pan Macmillan, and Tachyon (The New Weird, Steampunk). He has conducted master-classes and given workshops all over the world including at the Brisbane Arts Center in Australia and the University of California at San Diego. VanderMeer is also a frequent guest at such multi-media venues as Utopiales in France, the Bumbershoot Festival in Seattle. He lives in Tallahassee, Florida.

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LouisEagle

Posted May 23, 2011

Boring

What comes to mind while slogging through this tedious tome is, "Will this guy ever shut up?"
Once in a while there is a kernel of useful information. Otherwise, we get page after page after page of me, me, me strean
of consciousness rambling.
I bought this book hoping, expecting to learn something about the business or writing, publishing and PR. Not to read about the life
and times of (yawn) Jeff Vandermeer.
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plappen

Posted February 9, 2011

Belongs on every writer's reference shelf

Writing used to be all about putting pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard). In the 21st Century, there are so many other things for a writer to consider. This book aims to answer some of those questions.

Every published writer needs some sort of Web presence. Will yours be a static website to which you post every week or so? Will yours be an active blog to which you post every day, along with daily Facebook updates, and a couple of tweets daily? Choose which is best for you; every minute blogging or tweeting is a minute taken away from writing. Isn't writing the most important part of all this?

Create checklists and stick with them. For instance, write an entire short story, edit it, and get it ready for mailing, every month. As soon as a story is returned from Magazine A, get it in the mail to Magazine B as soon as possible (the next day, if possible). How do you juggle a full-time job with a writing career? Few writers can make a living from writing. If writing is important enough to you, you will make time for writing (even just an hour a day).

Most writers will have to handle their own marketing and publicity. How good are you at reading a selection from your novel (no more than 15 minutes long), then answering questions from a live audience about it? If you have a hard time with that, then concentrate on podcasts and posting to other people's blogs. Again, choose which is best for you. Along with seemingly every other business book written in the 21st Century, the author stresses the power of networking. That person you casually meet at a literary convention may be a popular blogger, or know a magazine editor who would be interested in a submission from you.

On the personal side, the book looks at the process of editing and revising your stories, and how to re-charge your creative batteries.

This book will not help you get that first novel sale (there are plenty of other books available for that). But when you get that first check from a publisher, one of the first things you should do is buy a copy of this book. It will be of immense help in answering that eternal author question, "How do I get people to buy my book?"
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Anonymous

Posted December 16, 2009

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