Thursday, July 9, 2009

Bookish Things That Have Me Thinking on a Thursday Night.

Written by Kat Meyer

So, I’m sitting here tonight, with a million thoughts spinning in my head — most of them bookish, or related to the bold new world of digital publishing. This week has been chock full of interesting e-ish events –some small, a few monumental, but all  of them thrilling for those of us who care about the state of storytelling.

A few events for you to ponder as well, should you so wish:

• The Amanda Project from Fourth Story Media: I was hipped to this very cool project by the lovely Miss Kate Eltham and I have been gushing about it all day. From Kate’s blog “The Electric Alphabet“:

  A while back I posted about The Amanda Project from Fourth Story Media, a cross-platform digital storytelling project aimed at teenage girls. It looks like they’re gearing up to launch it soon and there’s a slick teaser on the official site to get you excited. Highly anticipating this one…

• A two-part post by the charming Mr. Nick Harkaway – the first of which wherein he expounds upon how things (including ebooks) have costs, how authors and publishers should get paid for their work, and how you really must buy that beautiful marked down coat when you have the chance (lesson: a deal is a deal, even if it’s not as good of a deal as you may have originally thought); and the second of which wherein he rails on the evils of DRM, lets publishers know that what often passes for an ebook these days is a sorry excuse for a product, and demands that the industry:
  

  Stop thinking of the eBook as a cheap spin-off of the paper book. It’s a new, powerful thing, not something which is created simply by converting the .pdf of the novel to an ePub file. It has the potential wreck your (our) industry or to move it into a new form, or to work alongside the existing structures. What is almost certain at this point is that it’s coming, and if you don’t get on board whole-heartedly, somebody else will.

• Jane over at “Dear Author” also set my heart aflutter laying down the gauntlet and demanding digital publishers step up their game. At Quartet, we’ve all printed this out and taped it up where we can see it. We WILL make Jane happy.

Mostly though, I’m thinking about RWA. I have attended plenty of conferences in my lifetime: conferences in every academic field you can imagine–trade shows for industries ranging from publishing to equine medicine; consumer shows for gardening, home improvement – even accessibility products. But RWA – this is the first time a conference has me feeling like I’m headed to my first school dance.

I’m excited, and nervous, and worrying way too much about what to wear.

I am looking forward to meeting all the authors, and publishers, and agents, and I can’t wait to attend some of the sessions. But, what really brought it all home to me was today’s announcement of the Rogue Digital Conference/ session. Taking place on Thursday, July 16 at 8:30 am in “The Harding Room,” this event is co-sponsored by Quartet Press,  Books on Board, Red Sage Publishing, Samhain Publishing, and Smart Bitches.

This is cool stuff. There are a lot of wonderful people in romance publishing. People who are doing some very groundbreaking, collaborative and forward thinking things, and I get to hang out with them in DC next week.

So, yup. This is what I’m thinking about on a Thursday night.

~ Kat