We've been hearing for a while that new technologies for authoring, designing, printing, publishing, marketing, distributing and consuming books will disrupt the traditional book publishing business model and empower the everyman self-publisher. The combined effect of new technologies will supposedly blast open the floodgates that have been simultaneously protecting readers from hordes of hack writers and arbitrarily keeping down literary geniuses whose works don't fit into obvious conventional pigeonholes. With Print-On-Demand technology for paper books, with distribution channels such as Amazon and the Apple Store to connect book sellers with book buyers, with devices like the Kindle, iPad and Nook for readers to consume books anywhere, it has become fashionable to say that writers no longer need publishing houses, that the poisonous stigma attached to self-published books is losing its venom. But is it true? Self-publishing is not the walk in the park that some would have you believe. This panel brings together four writers who are explicitly concerned with the novel/novella form. We're not merely self-publishing writers, we're self-publishing novelists. We are custodians of an art form that is under threat by the very technologies that open the marketplace to anybody at all who claims that their manuscript is a novel. How shall novelists and the novel itself survive?
As a woman writing in a man's field (historical thrillers), Carolyn has broken down barriers while forging a path as a social media expert, founding the Indie Book Collective.
An outspoken advocate for the indie author, The Collective has a weekly radio show covering marketing topics and hosts events such as the Blog Tour de Force and Bestseller for a Day. The Collective also gives free workshops for authors who want to up their social media game and, ya know... sell some books :-)
As the former publisher and editorial director of Writer’s Digest, Jane Friedman is an industry authority on commercial, literary, and emerging forms of publishing. She has spoken at more than 200 writing events since 2001, and is known within the publishing industry as an innovator, cited by sources such as Publishers Weekly, GalleyCat, PBS online, and Mr. Media. She has been a speaker at BookExpo America, an adviser to Digital Book World, and recently served as a panelist for the National Endowment for the Arts, to review 2011 grants in literature. Jane currently serves as a visiting professor of e-media at the University of Cincinnati, and is a contributing editor to Writer's Digest. Since 2008, she's offered advice for writers at her award-winning blog, There Are No Rules.
John Sundman is the author and publisher of the cyber-nano-biopunk novels Acts of the Apostles, Cheap Complex Devices, and The Pains, and has been called "the future of printed fiction" by SXSW keynoter Bruce Sterling. John has been a manager of technical publications and software engineering at companies in Silicon Valley and Boston, a long-haul truck driver, a construction worker, and a famine relief worker in west Africa. He resides on the island of Martha's Vineyard where he's a volunteer firefighter and food pantry worker.
Sundman is also the founder and one of the lead writers at Wetmachine.com, a group blog about, mostly, the nexus of technology, science and social policy in the USA. Wetmechanics also write about software praxis, technoparanoia, the craft of writing, self-publishing, neurobiology, genomics, politics, and random bullshit.
Along with Neal Stephenson, Greg Bear, and others, Nicole Galland writes The Mongoliad, a collaborative serialized historical novel. It is available online and as a download to a variety of mobile devices through the auspices of Subutai Corporation, which is helping authors explore new modalities for publishing in the online world.
Nicole's historical fiction is published by HarperCollins. Her novels include The Fool's Tale, Revenge of the Rose, and Crossed: A Tale of the Fourth Crusade. Her current project is the story of Shakespeare's Othello told from the villain Iago's point of view. It is due to be published by Harper in 2012.
Although somewhat nerdy in her teen years, Nicole is essentially a non-geek in a geek's world, and so she comes to this panel as ready to learn as to inform. But don't think that means she has no strong opinions in her little non-geek head. No, sir. Come and hear what she and her fellow panelists have to say. And check her out at nicolegalland.com
