Have you weighed in on the MFA question this week? We’d love to hear from writers who’ve earned MFAs, who are working on MFAs, or who are wondering if they should pursue MFAs.
Another popular post this week was part two of featured author Ken Waldman’s “In Defense of Self-Promotion.” Ken’s post along with Mark Coker’s Smashwords Book Marketing Guide inspired author Arne Bue to push his comfort zone to post a “non-academy award winning video I made, starring old me.”
Also, author Ann Chandonnet shares a link to BookTour.com, where authors can enter and search for upcoming events.
Of course, blogs are another great place to promote your work. Debby Dahl Edwardson, author of the picture book Whale Snow and Blessing’s Bead, is featured in an interview on a blog called Through the Tollbooth
Our own ex-gov Sarah Palin apparently has her own ideas about how to get readers to buy a book: omit the index. That way folks who want to know what you said about them have to plunk down some cash. But then again, with a print run of one million, do you really care? But is it really one million? Daily Finance crunches the numbers on the Palin memoir, providing some interesting insight into how these things do (or don’t) work.
Praeger Books announces the release of Barry Scott Zellen’s second nonfiction book on the transformation and modernization of the Arctic region: Arctic Doom, Arctic Boom: The Geopolitics of Climate Change in the Arctic. The second of a three-volume project exploring the foundations of security, stability and sovereignty in the modern Arctic, it examines the challenges and opportunities of a polar thaw; considers the impacts on geopolitics, international security, and international commerce; and discusses what a “post-Arctic” world might look like.
The book includes an introduction by former Alaska Governor and U.S. Interior Secretary Walter J. Hickel, and a foreword authored by Professor Daniel J. Moran of the Department of National Security Affairs at the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School. “The author argues that the twilight of the reign of ice in the Arctic marks the dawn of a new geostrategic pivot and economic powerhouse—a rich new navigable “Mediterranean” basin full of beneficial promise for the future of the Arctic rim nations, the indigenous Arctic peoples, and human history,” notes the publisher.
Looking for an agent? Check out the recent Writers Digest article “24 Agents Who Want Your Work” and its companion piece, “10 Things You Should Do Before Querying an Agent.”
Note from this week about the Elbow Room, featured in Cindy Dyson's "And She Was," our book club discussion novel for September: there was an article in the New York Times last Sunday about the Elbow Room!
Huh. The last one is brilliant, if only in the combinations of what certain agents do and do not want– it's how tastes work together, I guess.
Thanks, I'll check them out.