Monday, October 25, 2010

Won't They Ever Learn?

ABFFE Earns Injunction in Alaska (From Publishers Weekly)






Booksellers, librarians and other media groups won an injunction on Thursday in Federal District Court in Alaska to Senate Bill 222, which made anyone who operates a Web site that features content deemed "harmful to minors" criminally liable.

The plaintiffs--among them Fireside Books, the Alaska Library Association, American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression, the AAP, and the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund--claimed the bill infringed on citizens' First Amendment rights and would also result in potential prosecution for librarians and retailers based on what they lent and sold online and in their stores.

The plaintiffs' attorney, Michael Bamberger of SNR Denton, said the statute was "overbroad" and his clients were happy the courts recognized it posed a "clear violation of the First Amendment rights of all citizens, in Alaska and throughout the country."

SB 222, as the bill is called, was signed by Governor Parnell in May; the details of the case, American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression, et al. v Sullivan, and Alaska, can be found at www.akclu.org.





Sunday, October 24, 2010

And The Sign Said…

“…. that despite my authors invectives, I persist in my efforts to seek publication.”


Dear (Name Withheld)….


It is rare indeed that we receive submissions from fictitious sources; enough so that our curiosity was indeed aroused. 


Having perused the proffered sample submission, we feel that we must extol your author to further calumnious verbosity.


Kind Regards;

Tuesday, October 19, 2010

Outline What?

NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) begins on the first of November. So many things to do and so little time to prepare for thirty days of concentrated mind-altering insanity.
First on the list is deciding what it is you're going to write: fiction, nonfiction, comedy, satire, poetry... 
Wait a minute! A fifty thousand word Novel in poem form? Well, maybe not. 
It doesn't hurt to have an idea of the story you want to tell, or what genre it fits. 
Next, forget that your idea is going to be seen by hundreds, or possibly thousands of other writers, or that it may inspire others. 
As my friend and publishing columnist for the Toronto Examiner, Renee Miller wrote: "Have faith in your ability to write something truly unique. The important part is the writing, not the concept. Anyone can take a concept and do something with it, but only a select few will do something wonderful."
After that comes the easy part: writing an outline of your novel. The amount of detail is up to you, but it should include a summary of events, main characters, settings, etc.
It's neither as easy as it sounds nor as hard as it looks.  
The hard part, the writing of a novel, or at least the first fifty thousand words of one, in thirty days and thirty nights is the hard part.  Don't worry about editing... that comes later.
Oh... and Don't forget to stock the pantry.  

Good Luck to all, and may sanity prevail.

Friday, October 8, 2010

Picture Books Aren't in Trouble Just Because NYT Says So.

"The worry of the day is the The New York Times article that tells us that the picture book market is fading as parents push their kids into chapter books. Now the kidlit folks will all go crazy defending picture books and deriding parental pressure. 

But people, we are forgetting one important thing here. This is The New York Times. And in terms of children's and young adult literature, this is what they do. Some writer comes up with a topic in this field in which they know very little. They "research" that topic with a few interviews, an observation or two, and a quote from man on the street. Or in this case, parent in the bookstore.** 

They've done this with the topic of Young Adult literature being too dark. They've done this with summer reading lists being too light. They've done this with The Catcher in the Rye being useless for today's teens. And with Twilight as the defining book for our generation. Or profiling a family that blogs about children's books as being this amazingly unique concept..."


Read the rest at MotherReader

Sunday, October 3, 2010