How to Publish a Book Readers,

Yesterday, I drove down to Wilmington, North Carolina where I organize a monthly How to Publish a Book Writers Group at Pomegranate Bookstore. Usually, we feature a speaker on the subject of books and how to publish a book, but yesterday, we held an Open Mic Contest with the winner determined by audience vote.

It was like a literary American Idol, but with an audience of about 25 people (instead of 25 million).

This is how it worked: 1) attendees brought a ten-minute sample of their writing; 2) each participant could purchase a "raffle ticket" for one dollar  to enter into the reader drawing; 3) six readers were drawn from all the tickets entered into the pot; 4) each reader read a ten-minute sample of his/her writing; 5) after all six readers read, the audience participated in a write-in vote, selecting their favorite of the six readers; 6) the votes were tallied and the winner received a portion of all monies collected for entries.

One twist to this included that each participant could purchase as many one-dollar raffle tickets to enter into the drawing as he/she desired. So, to increase your odds of being one of the six selected readers, you could purchase five tickets (or more). This generated quite a good deal of money with about 25 folks entering (and many of them purchasing five or more raffle tickets) .

It's really quite a clever idea, and it's a ton of fun. It's kind of a twist on the standard Open Mic Night, with the audience voting at the end and the winner receiving cash money.

We've done it twice now in Wilmington, and the readings have gotten tremendously better. 

And, of course, I filmed the whole thing.... so you can see the winning reader here at How to Publish a Book.

When I got home late last night, my wife and I watched the winning entry on our TV, and we brainstormed ideas for televising this kind of audience-vote-selected Open Mic Contest on a national scale.... with the idea in mind that the winning reader would receive a publishing contract.

I think it's a hell of an interesting idea, but it would take a little bit of money and quite a lot of logistics to work everything out.

The most innovative thing about this is that the audience is selecting their favorite reading. I'd love to figure out a way to do this on a national scale (or international scale), televise it, have the audience vote on the best writer/reader, and give the winner a publishing contract.

At any rate, the winning entry won unanimously yesterday. Though there were six readers to choose from, the audience voted overwhelming for one reader. Here is that entry.

Enjoy!

Stacey 

How to Publish a Book Readers,

Yesterday, I discovered a feature on Ask.com whereby you can check out the relative success of various websites on the Internet by seeing the number of "unique" visitors to a site. The How to Publish a Book website was launched back in August and didn't really start ranking high enough in search engines to be discovered until December. Since then, the How to Publish a Book website has steadily grown in the number of "unique" visitors this calendar year.

 

Because I've never before viewed other sites' statistics like this, I quickly searched several similar but better established book and publish related websites. For example, Sarah Weinman's crime fiction book and publish information website Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind. While it peaked around 6,500 unique visitors in June of 2007, her March 2008 visitors is only slightly more than what we achieved at How to Publish a Book. I was honestly surprised because the How to Publish a Book site is so new and hers has had years to build a following.

Interestingly, the website AgentQuery.com which I highly recommend receives about 15,000 unique visitors each month according to these analytics.

The thing that was most interesting to me about the How to Publish a Book website is that we're actually on the ballfield, so to speak, with these much better established websites. For a few months this past winter, I wasn't sure how much the How to Publish a Book website was catching on and whether it was worth the time and effort. If the numbers continue to improve like this for the How to Publish a Book website over the 2008 calendar year, I'd say it's definitely worth it.

So help spread the word, folks! Send the http://www.howtopublishabook.org link to all of your writer friends and post it on your blog! Let's keep the discussion on How to Publish a Book alive and growing.

Thanks so much, How to Publish a Book readers! 

Stacey 

How to Publish a Book Readers,

Well, this is an exciting post. A few weeks ago, I interviewed three New York Times bestselling authors Jeffery Deaver, Margaret Maron, and John Hart on the subject of how to publish a book. This was my highest profile panel to date, and I owe a special thanks to Marnie Cooper-Priest and Will Neary who were in charge of the filming.

I hope you enjoy this how to publish a book discussion with these three New York Times bestselling authors!

Stacey 

How to Publish a Book Readers,

This week I interviewed author Oronde Ash regarding his memoir 17 to Life. We discussed matters close to the heart of the book like identity, race, transformation, and immigration. Like so many aspiring writers, Oronde has an outstanding book, but no publisher has been made aware of it. 100 agents have passed on it.

This interview focuses primarily on the craft of writing a memoir, how to choose the moments in your life for a book, and how writing a book can help us come to a better understanding of who we are and why we are here.

I think Oronde's story is one of the most inspiring I've heard and one that seems to capture the very essence of what the American experience is like.

If anyone knows of a publisher or editor for this type of book, please do let me know. Thanks so much.

Stacey