Thanks to Margot Kinberg (who we interviewed yesterday) to her Wise Words!

What is your favourite writing site/online resource?

Read more >

In the first of our new series of Writer Interviews,Margot Kinberg talks about her writing career.  

Our series of writer interviews is intended to show the wide variety of work involved in being a writer, as well as the highs and lows of the writing life.  I also hope that these interviews will help to dispell many of the preconceptions and myths that some new writers hold, only to have lead to disappointment later when reality hits home. 

What is your primary type of writing?

Read more >

Quotations: Writers on LifeAs everyone who writes knows, writing definitely gives you a different perspective on life than most people and this is not necessarily a bad thing. As part of a weekly series of Writers' Quotations, here are a few  quotations from different authors on life. Please feel free to share any of your favorite  quotations on life in the comments section and if you would like to take a look at what writers have to say on writing, you can check this out.

Margaret Atwood:  Don’t let the bastards grind you down.

Read more >

William Paul Young wrote an incredible book, "The Shack," and it is no surprise that it is a #1 New York Times Bestseller and has over two million copies in print.  It's written as therapy for the author, as he relates very closely to the pain inside of the main character, Mackenzie Allen Philips.  Young held in deep, dark secrets of sexual abuse, a none relationship with his parents, and adultery, while Mack battled a terrible relationship with his father and the loss of his youngest daughter.  According to USA Today, "Young functioned by stuffing all the evil done to him and by him into a "shack" — his metaphor for an ugly, dark place hidden so deeply within him that it seemed beyond God's healing reach."

Read more >

Read more >

I'm familiar with the term "piracy" as it relates to eBooks - either genuine eBook files being distributed online, or regular books where someone has sliced off the binding and fed the whole thing into an automated scanner.  These things are bad, agreed, but they seem so… pedestrian… compared to the Chinese unauthorized Harry Potter books!

Turns out, Harry Potter is as popular in China as he is here in the United States.  And Chinese publishing companies are not about to waste that opportunity!  This hilarious article looks at 11 different Harry Potter pirate manuscripts.


Read more >

This video was produced by fabululous childrens', reference, and travel book publisher Dorling Kindersley for a recent sales conference. There's more here than you might think, so watch all the way. Palindromes are good for us.

Staircase Bookshelf ExtraordinaireI want this extraordinary staircase bookshelf in my next home!

Do you own a Kindle or other handheld reading device? Have you ever read a novel through a text messaging service? How about simply an online book?  During eBook Week, you can celebrate the portability of these books, reading them from anywhere from the Subway to your lunch break at work.

Besides their portability, however, just how great are eBooks? After all, they don’t have that wonderful, old book smell (or new book smell, for that matter). They aren’t that great for reading in the bathtub or bed—unless you get used to the handheld sort of thing. And many of them, as I’ve discovered, aren’t of great quality to begin with; for example, certain books that you might read as full versions may have similar books marketed as eBooks that turn out to be shorter and not nearly as well-developed, particularly in the fiction world.

Read more >

The Kindle: An Item of PrivilegeI'm a fan of eBooks and eBook readers in general.  And I dislike the fetishization of books as objects.  This particular critique of eBooks isn't going to wallow in the supposed luxury of walls of books, or the smell of the paper, or the ability to jot notes on the flyleaf.  As far as I'm concerned, the most important part of a book is the words.  The physical book is just the box the present comes in.  And also, I would like to point out that eBooks can't get mildewed or basement-y.

However, in thinking about eBooks lately, I have come across two potential problems.  I find these troubling indeed.  We may not be able to stop the wholesale rush to eBook gold, but we should start discussing these problems now before it's too late.

Problem #1: EBook Readers Aren't Free


Read more >