In some ways today was just another day, May 5, 2012, but suddenly I thought about all I was doing without much of a second thought. I just updated my Facebook status, on my Publishing Facebook page to announce that I was finally starting to use Twitter, thus I’d be sending out tweets. I also added a widget to my website via my ftp account in order that folks can now follow my new Twitter account. Good grief, the above combination of social media options and web functions seem like a mouthful. There’s no doubt about it, I have come along way in this world of working with storytelling.

Hey that’s not all I did today, it get’s worse, or better, depending on your point-of-view, I also posted my latest tweet using my wi-fi iPod with a Twitter app. Gez-louise I’m not even tech-savvy and I do all this.

I am just old enough to remember taking a brush up course in talking to the media, when we actually had face-to-face conversations. I recall the use of the US mail system to get publicity out, faxes were high-tech. I recall how I agonized over half-tones when including photos in books. Scanners were a remarkable idea, heck, email was a breakthrough, attaching a file to an email even more amazing.

I’m not even fifty years old yet, but believe me, I’m ancient in some ways. I am so proud of myself for creating a QC code in my next book even though I know this is as commonplace as a text. I am getting in the groove with eBooks. I heard a comic the other day, who joked, as he was involved in a text message session, comment, someday we should invent a thing that you can use to talk to people directly with.

What surprises me is that the variety of ways to share information still hasn’t become any easier in the world of publishing. We still need to devise sentences and paragraphs and chapters and books that read well. We still need to format text blocks that suit the subject matter, calculate margins that present the words wonderfully. Covers whether matte, or gloss, eBook, hardcover, or paperback must be well-designed and attractive.

The trick is that everything can’t have the same priority. I can’t ignore the physical book in favor of Facebook likes. I can’t ignore the paper type in order to increase my email marketing list. I can’t ignore speaking directly with authors and instead reply to emails. The variety of things to do is exciting, but I do need to remind myself that the thing that matters the most is the story, if I forget this all the tweeting in the world won’t make any difference.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/7045033

How important is it that more books be published this year? How vital is it in this culture of tweets, of Facebook status updates, of writer blogs, text messages, e-mails, e-books, e-pamphlets, and the like that we have more books coming out?

The struggle and value of publishing a new book seems not only futile, but overwhelming in a world in which more and more printed, electronic, and mobile content is being generated. As a publisher, now going in to my 20th year of business, I sometimes wonder what the point is. I hear all the time that there are too many books out there, that people don’t have time to read. People are so caught up in speed that a whole book (whether one written or read) seems like a leap to the moon.

On the other hand I hear people ask me, are there any Hemingway’s, or Borges, or Steinbeck’s out there anymore? Will we ever have authors like this again? I take this to mean that even though most people seem too busy to read, they still wish there was a good book to read. Confusing right. Or they wonder, is it even possible to be a writer anymore.

I believe that yes, there are new Hemingway’s out there: Jonathan Safran Foer, Junot Diaz and many more………..environmental writing is intriguing these days. However, to be in search of the next great, Pulitzer Prize winning author is a bit of a quest for perfection and much beyond the powers of most people to perform.

We need new books for lots of reasons, just as many people declare how much they like a mid-day rain and the chance to sit on their front porch. We all know that the stream of e-mails and flurry of text messages are like small-talk and chatter. We know that what takes time to create, what takes time and thought to read and think over are what we most value and consider of the highest quality in the world.

It could just be that there are more books each year because there are more people in the world, but this is kind of bland to say. There are more books each year for all the right reasons and all the wrong reasons. Some want to get their name in print and just be “famous” and I consider this the wrong reason. Some want to share what they are passionate about and share what they have dreamed about understanding and creating, sometimes for a lifetime, with others. This is the book I am looking for and the book we all want to read.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/7012323

Like Sex, Drugs, and Rock ‘n Roll, the words truth, gossip, and rumor captivate reader’s and writer’s minds as if engaged in a strong addiction. Gossip and rumors, they can be the driving forces of stories. I’ve said this before, but almost everyone will perk their ear toward a group of people talking gossip, will ease a bit closer to hear what’s being said. If we, as publishers and writers, could capture this sort of rapt attention all the way through out books then we would consistently have best-sellers on our hands. As the saying goes, “What’s truer than the truth? The story of course,” comes to mind.

For better or worse, we also have to enter truth in to the equation. This is where the runaway train we call gossip is halted as if running into a cement wall. We will listen to the latest celebrity gossip, or work place rumors eagerly, but only for so long. At some point if all we hear is the child hollering “Wolf,” or if the ceaseless gossip is mean-spirited, inaccurate, or too petty we tune out and walk away with more than disinterest, but with a feeling of disgust. In fact, we may start our own variety of gossip about the gossip tellers.

Recently, an episode of “This American Life” dealt with just such a topic. One of their stories turned out to be inaccurate. The host of “This American Life” confronted the story-teller and in-between silences we heard a classic attempt by someone trying to “justify” their story. However, it was clear the story-teller had broken the gossip/rumor line and entered the area in which we require “truth” in order to continue to form belief. It’s always a fine line between hearsay and truth.

Exaggeration is a good way to make this whole point. A certain amount of exaggeration can cause readers to want more, but too much causes us to stop listening. As a small publisher I often hear from authors about how they are “starving” artists, I suspect they use this exaggeration on me because they’ve heard other writers say this, but the truth hits me in the opposite fashion they want it to. The truth is I’m a small publisher, who, if they thought about it, is certainly more starving than they are. This is a classic example of needing to match your audience with your story.

Learning to insert hearsay, truth, gossip is a challenge for all writers. There use requires you to balance your writing in order to tell a truth that is truer than truth.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/6968045

How many of you are just like me? You are constantly attempting to catch up all the time. You have a list of things to do that you wish you did not have to do, a list of things you know you have to do–some of which are good and some bad, a list of things you’ve always wanted to do, and things you know you like but rarely, if ever, get to. Not to mention, you feel tired, are drinking coffee to stay alert and when you hear someone say they’re bored you nearly have a heart attack.

What we busily become is not necessarily who we really are. My confession is that I am a creative writer, who rarely, rarely, rarely, barely ever writes. I could probably be a radio show host, a comedy improv actor with enough work, but what do I do? I help writers. I help promote writers. I think about writing a fair amount and sometimes scribble out a paragraph that I think I’ll someday turn into a book. I also listen to those I’m enabling to be writers frequently tell me they need me to do more, it’s not easy to listen to.

One of the hardest things to do as a publisher, who was once (and still wishes to be) an author is listen to authors whine, complain, and get in their own ways as authors. To steal another line, I ask, “Where it written that your publisher is going to be a miracle worker?” I’m only as good as my authors. My biggest fear is choosing an author’s book and then having them do nothing to help sell their book.

But I digress. We are all so busy, we all want to see our words, or books, our thoughts become part of a larger audience and in some ways we are all our own worst enemies because we are convinced that all of this can, and should, happen and rather quickly so we race on to Facebook, Tumbler, Twitter, our webpages, create pages as if lightning bolts planting free electricity. It reminds me of when people used to get a business card printed and suddenly thought they were “official.”

If we would all slow down and focus on the few essential things we really want and focus on slowing our minds slow down (myself included) we would be happier. I once wrote, “life is too short to go fast” I still agree. Think of your written words as dreams you want to come true. Think of your publisher as someone who will try their best to help your dreams come true, but only with your help. Over time we’ll get it all right.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/6980322

What seems like much more than twelve years ago I penned the following sentence to a book I ended up writing entitled The Tin Prayer: Words of the Wolverine. “Each morning I reach into the earth and pinch a small amount of always constant clay from the ground. Roll this pinch of earth into a bead, place this bead of clay on my tongue and swallow. Starting each morning with a dosage of wild rosary.” My goal then, as it is now, is to explore and reveal the deepness of the language of the wild.

I believe the wild and creativity to be much the same. I see the need to reveal and hunt for secrets as a way of probing the calmness, the hollow, the sometimes sorrow-filled place we call silence. To produce good writing, to find yourself a publisher, digging deep and finding hidden truths is essential.

One tip, which you’ve probably heard before, is that an author needs to reveal their deepest thoughts and secrets in order to tell their best stories. This requires digging deep into your thoughts and opinions and by no means remaining quiet. You must not hold back, you must open up and engage with the rumour mill of your mind. An authentic story is your goal, something all yours, something that comes from the single, deep, silent soul of your mind. Revealing deep secrets from silence make writing “real” not “fake.”

What separates the real story from the fake story is the common versus the mysterious. A reader wants to be surprised and engaged in new ways when they read. We all know that when you come across the phrase, “the sunset was like a reddish, orange, and purple water-color painting…” that no one is particularly captured by this description because we’ve all read something like this before.

You have to go deeper, into what you most feel about a sunset to describe it best. For instance, maybe the colored air has an odor that you remember coming from your grandmother’s bread recipe when you were six years old which then reminds you of the shade tree in her backyard, which leads to more and more thoughts which then turn the sunset before you into a rich and unique secret being revealed for the first time. The best of all stories are when you surprise yourself. Surprise is a good measure for a story, finding moments that were once deep in the silent recesses of your brain is rewarding for both reader and writer.

So, as the Taoist saying goes, “The way is easy, strive hard.” Breaking the silence is mostly having the confidence to reveal what you most fully believe to be true and then being willing to share these thoughts with others. Easy and difficult all at once.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/6925717

Is there a more powerful set of words than, “Once upon a time,” or, “In a land far, far away”, or maybe, “On a dark and stormy night?” What are all these? Each of them excite and trigger in each of us the anticipation of a coming story. The thrill of hearing a new story causes next to everyone to stop what they are doing and pause with excitement in hopes of a surprise, of a wonderful bit of knowledge, or detail about life we did not know about before being shared.

I have, like most story tellers and authors, watched the eyes of, and attention of, both children and adults as they pause for an approaching story. The catch-22 is that anyone can utter the all-powerful beginning such as, “You will never believe what I saw today…” Proving of course that we can all be storytellers (I would say we all should be), but of course we have all witnessed how quickly the same children and adults move from rapt attention to boredom as we add just five more words to our story. We can lose people’s attention in as little as three seconds can’t we? Why is this? Well isn’t this the million dollar question for both author and publisher? Learning how to maintain the flow of a story once you have your reader’s attention is what we want to discover.

There is a lot going on with the simple phrase then of, “Once upon a time…” It is clear we all crave a good story. In fact, I love the old phrase, “What’s truer than the truth? The story, of course.” History, knowledge, love, all things ride the rails of story. We listen, or read a book, go to an author reading to be told about an adventure, to discover a tidbit of knowledge we did not know before. But, we have all had the experience of losing interest, of having our minds go blank and become bored. So, for invisible reasons story telling is really difficult.

We know we truly value story tellers though and it follows that we need publishers to find and share great stories. A publisher, after all, is someone who discovers good stories, is someone that allows readers to put their trust in. It is clear we are all addicted to good beginnings and helping fulfill this need is useful.

Author and publisher alike come to realize that it is the use of details, of inspiration, creativity, and passion that are what are needed. Elusive talents, I know. When you write ask yourself if you’re entertaining yourself, surprising yourself. Have you considered lots of view points, lots of angles?

In future articles I’ll consider the elements of getting past, “Once upon a time…” but for now isn’t good to know that people crave stories and that there is no end in sight to this craving. Until next time, write on!

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/6873377

IceCube Press Publisher Steve Semken packs up books for shipping at his home office in North Liberty. (Brian Ray/ The Gazette)