Gather.com, the folks who put together a chat with Jonathan Safran Foer not too long ago, have announced a new writing contest. Online writing contests are a dime a dozen, but the cool thing about this one is that the four winning short pieces (fiction or non-fiction) will be “published and sold on Amazon Shorts,” which would undoubtedly be a terrific venue for any aspiring writer. In fact, it’s along the lines of what I hoped Amazon would do with its Shorts program.
A way in to Amazon Shorts
Amazon Blogging
Amazon has blog, and they’ve been at it since May. Why did it take me so long to find it? The Amazon bloggers don’t seem to link to any of the many book blogs out there very often, and that, typically, is how bloggers discover one another.
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Music Meme
1. The person who passed the baton to you.Scott.2. Total volume of music files on your computer.At the moment I’ve got a bit more than a gig, much of it the songs that have managed to follow me through the three computers I’ve been through since the Napster heyday.3. The title and artist of the last CD you bought.Sadly, I rarely buy music anymore. I used to spend a decent chunk of my disposable income on music, but in recent years I haven’t had much disposable income, and I definitely haven’t kept up with new music with the fervor that I once did. Accordingly, I last purchased a CD in October of 2004, Flight from Echo Falls by The Vells4. Song playing at the moment of writing.I listen to more and more NPR-type stuff instead of music these days (All Things Considered at the moment). When I do feel like listening to music at my computer, I’ll often listen 3wk.com, an Internet radio station that plays lots of great, obscure stuff.5. Five songs you have been listening to of late (or all-time favorites, or particularly personally meaningful songs)See above.6. The three people to whom you will ‘pass the musical baton.’DerekCemJustin
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Solitude for sale
Writing at home can be distracting and discouraging. It’s hard to concentrate when surrounded by all your stuff. There’s TV to watch, chores to do, people to call on the phone, a dog to walk. Days can go by without a word ever being put on the page. So writers seek refuge outside their homes to write in more conducive settings, a local coffee shop or University library, for example. Writers of a certain stature might attend a writers’ colony hoping for a stretch of forced productivity, while others will fashion their own writers’ colonies by secluding themselves in a rented office to toil away.With this in mind, two enterprising former MFAs in New York City, noting the need so many writers have for a place to write, have created Paragraph Workspace for Writers. As they describe it:Paragraph is a membership organization dedicated to providing an affordable and tranquil working environment for writers of all genres. We are open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.Paragraph was created by writers for writers, with an understanding that writers work best in a quiet, comfortable space away from the hurry and obligation of urban life.For between $80 and $132 a month (depending on length of commitment and level of access) writers can use the space – a decked out 3rd floor apartment on 14th Street – as their own little writing venue. The online application for membership includes space for references, presumably to weed out the crazies. I can think of a few other reasons why this may not work – the more members the group gets, the less worthwhile the space becomes for each individual member; there are hundreds of places in New York that provide the same environment (though perhaps not the 24 hour access), starting with libraries; a writer in need of such a space is not likely to have the disposable income to spend on it – but who knows, maybe it’ll work.
The Road: A Comedic Translation (Part 2)
The city was blackened, burned to completion. No sign of life. Not a hobo nor trollop, tourist nor knishvendor. Cars swimbled with ash, heavy with parkingtickets. Never to be paid nor contested, no weary fist shaken at the judge’s vacant robes.
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What about JT Leroy?
The people behind the JT Leroy* scam (our other literary scam), must be happy about the breathing room that the James Frey saga has given them. But is that it? They were called out by the press, but does it end there? As far as I know (and please correct me if I’m wrong), there has been no public declaration by Savannah Knoop, Geoffrey Knoop and Laura Albert in which they come clean, apologize and promise to donate all their ill-gotten gains to charity. Frey did it; shouldn’t they?Meanwhile, adding to the list of people who are unburdening themselves of their unwilling involvement with this scam, actress Ann Magnuson, with whom I had the pleasure of discussing Leroy during my recent trip to Los Angeles, lays out her correspondence with Leroy and also discusses how the scammers demeaned the state of West Virginia.*Now that we know Leroy isn’t a real person, I suppose I should quit making his name boldface, a stylistic treatment that I usually reserve for real people.
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Amazon reviewer shenanigans
Amazon reviews are kind of silly. One has to wade through lots of cranks to get to a useful review, and even then it’s hard to put that much faith in a few sentences penned by a complete stranger (although I have been known to pen Amazon reviews, on occasion). Still, they undoubtedly do have an effect on sales and on peoples’ perceptions of particular books, so when instances of unfair play come to light it can piss people off – like when it was revealed that authors were pseudonymously reviewing their own books (scroll down). With these same concerns in mind, I reprint this email that I received from an eagle-eyed Millions reader today.If you go to this page and scroll down to reviewer #235 (who calls him/herself “nyy”) you should notice that this reviewer has not reviewed any books. Zero. I emailed Amazon about it, and just got a canned reply about how their reviewers are rated. What do you think — a typo or a hack or something else?I have no clue, and I’m sure Amazon would explain it away as a glitch, but it does make me wonder if the customer review system is completely on the level.Update: The original New York Times article about authors reviewing their own books at Amazon.
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