Get a book, make a donation

Concord Free Press does something that used to be very unusual.
They give away their books. Free.
Before the "free download" marketing strategy, giving away books was pretty rare.
Concord Free Press has been doing it for a while longer.

Here's "the catch" (and I put that in quotes for a reason; it's not one)

You make a donation. To a charity of YOUR choice.
Then tell Concord Free Press about it.**
AFTER you get the book.
They trust you to do the right thing.

I like that a lot.
(I like that alot too)

Here's the bigger "catch": this is the ONLY way to get these books, and there are only 3000 copies printed.
And they're really good books.

Here's the one that will be available starting tomorrow, 9/15 errrr...10/15 (thanks to an eagle eyed commenter for that!)

A HANDBOOK OF AMERICAN PRAYER (a novel) by Lucius Shepard.


More info available at the Concord Free Press website.



**(the list of donations is pretty interesting reading in and of itself)

The times they are a'changin', yes indeed

For as long as we've had websites and electronic addresses for writers, it's been a truism that most agents won't clink on a link, won't go to a website, won't do anything but read queries to find new work.

That's still 85% true (I made up the number but what ever it is, it's less than the 99.5% it was two years ago.)

What changed? Twitter and Facebook arrived.

Here's what that means to you:

I follow 224 people on Twitter.  I see everything those 224  write in general; everything they write to me (@janet_reid); and everything they write to people I follow (those 224 folks again).

But, I can also see, if I want, people who write to me or about me by clicking on the "Mentions" tab.  And I see a couple tweets a day from people I don't know, and often it links to their blog, or their site, or something that ...ta daaa... I click on.

So, yes, you're more likely to see a shark swimming in your backyard pool now than you were two years ago.


Here's why knowing this is important. You want to  BE READY.

(I've yammered about Being Ready before--this is the electronic equivalent)

If you have pages of your novel posted on your website, you should also have what could be thought of as an introduction, an overview.  It might be your query. It might just be a paragraph that gives me the time period of a historical novel. It's a brief statement that you use to answer the question: What is your book about?


I've gone to hundreds of websites in the last year and looked at 20-25 books posted there. Almost no one has an intro. It's like standing in a forest. I can see the trees, but I don't know where I am or which direction to go.

Think of the overview as giving me a map.

I know I know, one more thing.  But, if it gets your work read, if it makes serendipity and luck work in your favor, you'll do it.  Won't you?

If you're a writer, read this.

I found the link to this post by Ira Glass on the DorothyL list (thanks Bonnie Riley). 

“What nobody tells people who are beginners — and I really wish someone had told this to me . . . is that all of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste.

But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, and it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not.

But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you.

A lot of people never get past this phase. They quit.


Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this.

And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know it’s normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work.

Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story.


It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions.

And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile.


You’ve just gotta fight your way through.”