www.ExactingEditor.com/Newsletter.html
This web document is the February 2008 EXACTING RESULTS, an electronic newsletter assembled by D.C.-area editor Frank Gregorsky. Before the newsletter, you see the User’s Guide, adapted from an e-mail welcoming the charter subscribers. Five issues per year – February, April, July, September and November -- with an occasional bulletin when something is compelling. To receive it at no cost, go to http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ExactingResults
Greetings
from ExactingEditor.com:
(1) EXACTING RESULTS is a "survey" of current web literature and
platforms. You'll get a set of URLs, each one preceded by a summary.
(2) The audience is non-fiction researchers, writers and editors, and the purpose of those URLs is to help you and me enhance literary effectiveness, exposure, and income.
(3) Since a majority of the people on this listserv are self-employed, expect some items that deal with marketing and personal management -- for example, business travel -- in addition to the classic "writer" topics.
(4) Authors profiled on ExactingEditor.com who also joined the newsletter-distribution list include Ira Chaleff, Richard Etulain, Loretta Hall, Lauren Kessler, Elizabeth Lyon, Julianne Lutz Newton (now Warren), Myrna Oakley, Elizabeth Royte, Andrea Schara, Ferenc Szasz, and Chief Justice Frank Williams.
(5) Given the diverse membership, expect no political statements -- though occasionally I will use an investment, institutional or marketing saga to draw conclusions about an individual’s savvy or the strength of a particular message.
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would not mean more than 10 electronic "deliveries" per year. At the
same time, new friendships and collaborations could well emerge.
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With
exacting appreciation,
Frank
Gregorsky (FrankGregorsky@aol.com
and AudioHistory@aol.com)
Oakton,
Virginia, USA
Enhancing
literary exposure, effectiveness and income
EXACTING
RESULTS, February 2008 (Issue #1)
(1)
Don Worster is Added to the Author Profiles Gallery
As you know, innovative nonfiction authors are showcased on
ExactingEditor.com. Main topical categories are business,
history
and ecology. In the latter realm, Professor Donald
Worster wrote the
definitive biography of John Wesley Powell (A River Running
West,
2001) and is at work on one about John
Muir. In this first author profile of 2008, we discuss biographical
methods and
dilemmas; map just how wide the environmental field has become; and
celebrate
the distinctions of the Great Plains.
EXTRACT:
<< I had
been taught that "biography is not history." I still believe there's
a distinction to be made between the two. History deals with broader
social
forces and tries to explain those social forces -- those broader
changes over
time... So the distinction is an important one. But I have come around
to think
of the differences more as differences of scale; and I think we have to
learn
how to write at all "scales" about the past -- from the global scale,
right down to the scale of the individual. And in some ways, the
hardest of all
scales to learn -- to master -- is the biographical, the individual.
Not so much
in the Powell case, but in the Muir case, you are overwhelmed with
volumes and
volumes of letters that were saved. I have 55 reels of microfilm of
John Muir's
writings, letters and so on. >>
www.ExactingEditor.com/DonaldWorster.html
Worster is former president of the American Society for Environmental
History
and a member of the Western History Association. He turned 66 in
November and
teaches a full load at the University of Kansas in Lawrence. The
interview took
place down the hall from his office.
(2)
How to
Wreck a Career in One Easy Lesson
Terry Teachout is a music and culture commentator for Commentary
and the Wall Street Journal.
A political conservative, he doesn't
have to compete for space in Rolling Stone
or Vibe, and
he's aware that popular music existed before rock and
roll. On February 16th, Terry gave us a marvelous piece about how high
expectations -- either yours or the audience's -- can strangle
creativity and
output. Give this link to anyone you know who is paralyzed by thinking
that
their next -- or perhaps it's their first -- swing at bat just has to
be a
grand slam:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120311487595072493.html
(3)
Does a New
Author Really Need a Website?
A first-time author (serious book, impressive packaging) asked me
whether she
needed a website. I responded: "That all depends on whether you seek an
independent existence as an author who also publishes commentaries; or
you
exist in a professional sense mainly [as the leader of your particular
nonprofit] who produced a book on the side. If it's the
latter, the only
web pages you need are those of the on-line booksellers…" This person
is a
professor and foundation leader; in other words, "author" is not her
primary professional identifier, and most of her income does not come
from book
sales.
A slightly different self-marketing question might be: "Does my book
require a site centered on just that title?" Well, you can own a piece
of
the web without having a site. You can obtain a book-centered web display
without pouring time and money into a personal marketing site.
Alternative #1: Elizabeth Royte is author of Garbage Land: On
the Secret
Trail of Trash in America
and the forthcoming Bottlemania.
She is married to Peter Kreutzer, marketing director for a
firm that builds the equivalent of websites around specific books. For
the
brass tacks, start here --
or take a look at what Peter did for Garbage
Land...
www.booknoise.net/garbageland/index.html
Such a web display is good for self-management as well as sales. But
first --
why do I call it a "display"? Because it's more than a
"page," but less than a "site." Strictly speaking, a
website starts with a unique domain name. The Garbage Land
display, which has multiple documents
within it, is one of many subsections of a single corporate site
(Booknoise.net). You therefore don't pay server costs as a separate
outlay; the
relationship is with one vendor; and you, as book author, will
not need to play "web publisher."
A Booknoise.net display helps introduce a new author to reporters and
researchers; gives them a taste of the book in an excerpt;
and will also
excerpt from reviews. To encourage media interviews --
or boost the
productivity of the ones you get -- it's simple to say: "You
can
learn more about my book by going to Booknoise.net and typing in the
title…" If your book's content has tangible applications or
some activist angle, the web display can offer extras that
empower
readers. For example, Royte told me she added a "what to do" page
"because people were always asking me what they could do to make a
difference" in reducing their household waste.
(4)
"Wiki" is Easier, and Looser, than a Standard Personal Site
Now for the second alternative: If you want a web display that
will cost
you start-up time but no money, create an entry at www.wikepedia.org,
the best-known web
encyclopedia. As long as you are not blatant with the marketing, that
entry or
"article" can center on a single book. There are no design costs
(because you accept the Wiki graphics and fill in the content) and no
server costs.
You don't even have to register a domain name! Does all this too
simple? Well,
I did mention the start-up time outlay. And there is
the bizarre fact
that you can never tell who structured a given Wiki article. Someone
could
produce one on you.
Seeing
a great display
featuring an old friend and recent client, I wrote to congratulate him
on it.
His response reminded me of how surreal webbified publishing can be: "I
only discovered the entry a few weeks ago and my first guess was that
you'd
written it," Jerry e-mailed back. "So, the bottom line is that I'm a
victim, not a perpetrator." At the same time, Jerry's Wikipedia
"entry" is so thorough that he has not felt compelled to do any
revisions!
Of all the authors on the EXACTING RESULTS listserv, two have a
Wikipedia
entry:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lauren_Kessler
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_J._Williams
In
each case, "this article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by
expanding
it." It's pretty plain to me that someone other than Justice Williams
and
Ms. Kessler created these pages. Elsewhere we learn: "Visitors do not
need
specialised qualifications to contribute, since their primary role is
to write
articles that cover existing knowledge; this means that people of all
ages and
cultural and social backgrounds can write
Wikipedia articles. With rare exceptions, articles can be edited
by anyone with
access to the Internet, simply by clicking the edit this page
link.
Anyone is welcome to
add information, cross-references or citations, as long as they do so
within
Wikipedia's editing
policies and to an appropriate standard."
Bottom line on www.wikipedia.org: If you make your book or its primary
theme
into an "article" there, you'll have a respectable web home. But the
doors have no locks: You built your own web display, without
permission; but
someone else can add to it, also without permission. The hurdle for
going with
Wiki therefore is: Do you have any enemies? Or does the book
you are
showcasing face aggressive rivals, or make certain elements mad?
If the answer is yes, make sure only you or your vendor
can change text on your web display. That requires a set-up
like
Booknoise.net offers or a full-blown independent site with a unique
domain
name.
(5)
Down to
a Run of One: Your Own Hardcover Book for $29?
Business Week
loves splashy cover
stories, and they're often embarrassing to read a year or two later.
But their
stable of columnists is very good. Stockpicker Gene Marcial has been
there
since 1981, and Stephen H. Wildstrom
-- who writes "Tech & You" and is another long-termer -- is a
down-home geek. Last month Wildstrom explained how he created a book
with lots
of photos. Twenty-eight pages took about that many hours. Page by page,
he did
what the software said to do, and hit "submit." A few days later, in
the mail, arrived "a real book, complete with a glossy jacket and even
a
standard book number code. It's well printed on heavy stock, the photos
are
faithful to the original, and it cost me just $29.95 for a single copy"
--
hardbound, no less!
www.businessweek.com/print/magazine/content/08_03/b4067000256155.htm
"Technology has democratized publishing," Wildstrom concludes. Do you
see anything wrong with this picture? The company whose ultra-cheap
process
Wildstrom took advantage of -- Blurb and its BookSmart software -- is
using
new technology to solve an old problem: The per-unit costs of
vanity-publishing a small quantity. For a brilliant new novelist with
no
contacts, this offers a way out of the black forest -- because novels
still
need the physical form of a book. For us hard-core nonfiction-types,
though,
especially with literary roots in the public sector, it makes more
sense to
have a website with regular updates aimed at growing your network
electronically.
For quite a few agendas or messages, The Web really
does supplant A Book.
On the other hand, though the web lets you become many things, you
can’t be an
Author without a book.
And what kind of "book" did Steve Wildstrom get for his 28 hours of
prep and 30 dollars of payment? It was a collection of vacation photos
with
diary-like commentary.
(6)
"Substituting Memory for Research and Reporting"
ExactingEditor.com Q&A subject Lauren Kessler
is founder and editor of the online quarterly Etude.
There and elsewhere, she campaigns against letting
the tactics and behaviors of what she calls "the F-word" -- i.e.,
fiction -- corrode nonfiction essentials: "It's bad enough that it's
called nonfiction, named for what it isn't rather than what it is, as
if we
decided to call poetry nonprose,
or day nonnight.
It's bad enough
that some practitioners of this genre that has no proper name of its
own have
undermined its credibility, chipping away at its special power of
authenticity
by fabrication and invention, or dulling its fine edge by substituting
memory
for research and reporting. Now there's something else to be concerned
about:
It may be that fans of this beleaguered genre don't actually want
nonfiction at
all. They want fantasy."
How
so? Kessler contrasts
the 2001 book Tales of a Female Nomad
with the ostensibly nonfiction chart-topper Eat, Pray, Love.
The latter's author gets a big advance to go to
Europe, where "she flirts and eats, flirts and eats. And eats." After
Oprah Winfrey lauded this book, the hordes had their marching orders.
The
readers of Eat, Pray, Love,
concludes Kessler, "wanted a 'true' story -- after all, they bought
nonfiction not a novel -- but really they wanted a dream. They wanted
to read
about the luminous young woman who found everything she was looking
for…in six
months flat. They were uninterested in reading about the earnest
middle-aged
woman who [wrote Tales of a Female Nomad]
while she camped out in youth hostels and lived out of her backpack
while venturing deeply into other people's lives…"
We should back Lauren's campaign to keep fantasy out of nonfiction, and
--
unless it's labeled "memoir" – shun authors who
"substitute memory for research and reporting." We might even need a
replacement for that word "nonfiction.” For now, Oprah reigns, and
books
such as Eat, Pray, Love
"raise the bar for readers' expectations. They will not be satisfied
with
stories of mere mortals making their hesitant way through the world.
They want
writers who look like movie stars living out the kind of adventures
that
virtually no one but that writer has or ever will have."
http://etude.uoregon.edu/winter2008/craft/
(7)
On
Strategy: Avoid the Majority, Empower the Resisters
"Strategy" is a comfortable word only for those who come out of the
military, business or politics. But they rarely define it for everyone
else.
Here's my definition: Strategy is a Big How. It
isn't a What (substance)
or a Why (vision, purpose). Neither is it a "how to" action plan
(which would consist of a set of medium and small Hows). In one long
sentence
or a few short ones, a Big How spells out the essential manner
in
which something or someone will break through, settle
the land, or
nail the niche. Strategy? An army or politician needs to do that, and
so might
a book.
It's not enough to write in-depth about something 5% of the population
is
interested in, or to be able to describe that 5% for a publisher. Five
percent
of 220 million adults is a fine theoretical audience, but you'll do
better --
with almost the same product! -- positioning your 5% (or it could be
20%)
against the much larger mass that has the opposite view. The rest of
this newsletter offers four examples, starting with one I have
watched
play out at close-hand.
The Books-A-Million website shows some 3,600 books with "leadership"
in the title or subtitle. Before 1995, though, no one offered a book on
FOLLOWERSHIP. As of 1988, when Robert Kelley published "In Praise of
Followers" in the Harvard Business Review,
no one of note even used the term, except in-passing
or as a pejorative. Perhaps no author wanted to build on the word,
which would
connote disciples, fans, or fanatics.
The market was transformed in 1995 by Ira Chaleff's
book The Courageous Follower.
Its subtitle was "standing up to, and for, our
leaders." I contend this to have been strategy and positioning at the
highest and best level, and one of the few new business ideas to come
out of
the techno-distracted 1990s:
<< In this
model,
followers do not primarily
serve leaders. Rather, both leaders and followers serve a common
purpose, each
from their own roles. This gives both of them the responsibility for
making
good decisions, taking productive action and engaging the other in
dialogue if
they have concerns about the other's actions. How does the HR
professional fit
into the picture? Your role becomes creating the conditions in which
this
dialogue can successfully occur. In many cases, this means that you
will become
a coach to the leader and the follower on how to productively engage
the other.
If anything, it takes more skill to coach the follower because of the
understandable perception the follower has of the power differential
between
follower and leader. >>
That was Chaleff in 2006, from http://www.cunahrcouncil.org/news/822.html
As for career positioning, Ira Chaleff told me he never chose
"followership" for its marketing power. Yet that does not detract
from its strategic soundness: The surplus of books on "leadership"
indicated, by definition, a deficit on "followership." But not a
market for that word alone. Chaleff made COURAGEOUS the
modifier, an even
more impressive "flip" of the standard view. Followers could now be
coached to function heroically, rather than be drones or groupies.
This month, Ira's new book -- co-edited with Ronald Riggio and Jean
Lipman-Blumen – hit the stands: The Art of Followership: How
Great
Followers Create Great Leaders and Organizations
(ISBN 978-0-7879-9665-9, published by Jossey-Bass).
Haven't read it yet, but the original one (1995, updated edition 2003)
is a
masterpiece: The Courageous Follower
is a business handbook that succeeds as literature while pioneering a
genre;
and a practical gift for any son or daughter trying to remain centered
in a
Fortune 500 or Capitol Hill environment.
If leader-follower analysis does nothing for you, stay with our point
about
strategy: When building your nonfiction manuscript, seek clarity on the
Big
How. Specifically, does your subject matter allow exploitation of the
conventional wisdom by “flipping” it? A writer can enlist a restless
but
unrepresented minority by taking up arms against one of the national
default
settings.
(8)
Against
Happiness, for Optimal Messes, and Beyond Optimism
Final segment, but same point: By being somewhat dismissive about the
notions
and terminology of the 80%, you can win friends and find buyers among
the 20%.
Author Eric G. Wilson,
a professor
at Wake Forest, is pitching to those of us who seek strength from the
bad
times. Someone got Wilson to be blunt about it, too: His book's title
is Against
Happiness,
and here's the WSJ
write-up from earlier this month -- http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120243301014752431.html
In a more lighthearted vein, Eric Abrahamson
and David H. Freedman offer A
Perfect Mess: The Hidden
Benefits of Disorder. I
adore
their title – the authors grab another common pejorative (“mess”), tack
on a contrary modifier (“perfect”), and set out after neat freaks, OCs,
and breezy claims
by the personal-organizer lobby. The subtitle does not let up: “How
crammed
closets, cluttered offices and on-the-fly planning make the world a
better
place.” Not that messiness is the ideal, but “we argue that there is an
optimal
level of mess for every aspect of every system" -- http://www.aperfectmess.com/excerpts.html
Yet another author, back in 2001, set out to “empower the resisters.”
Wellesley
professor Julie K. Norem
published
The Positive Power of Negative Thinking,
to scattered acclaim. I missed it in '01, but in late '03
Norem's
theme attracted me instantly. Why in 2003? Because a fellow obsessive
at Fortune
reviewed it -- some two-and-a-half years after the
book's release! Highly unusual for a high-gloss biz mag.
Norem's book
positioned the happy-go-lucky forward-looking no-sweat achiever against
the
much smaller group of us who sit at the table thinking: Exactly
what has to
happen during the next week or month for this thing to stay on the damn
rails?
The Fortune
write-up can't be accessed any more, but here's a better one, from when
the book came out:
http://archives.cnn.com/2001/CAREER/readingup/07/03/positive/index.html
I suspect Dr. Norem's "defensive pessimism" was the wrong phrase for
her target audience (too many syllables, for one thing). She also named
her
site DefensivePessimism.com -- a problematic rallying cry. But at least
one in
10 adults functions that way. They bail out the
gung-ho
groupthinkers in their midst by being skeptical and
methodical. They
are only "happy" after the work has been done to head
off most nasty surprises. They are not cynics, but they
contend that even
the brightest ideas will need a whole set of midcourse corrections.
Julie K. Norem wrote for this type. Her 2001
book sought to make
"worry," when linked with planning and work, into a social good. She
celebrated the 20% in ways that put the 80% in their place (without
much
dissing of the latter). But I bet you never heard of The
Positive Power of
Negative Thinking.
That means the
market is still there, for some other author. Perhaps the
breakout book
will need to offer the situational realism of The Courageous
Follower.
One
way or the other,
action-oriented worriers await a national champion. They need a book
that tells
them how to head off trouble more reliably, and without wrecking their
career.
-- Frank
Gregorsky, ExactingEditor.com, February
2008
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and REMINDERS
EXACTING
RESULTS surveys
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researchers,
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