How to Publish a Book Readers,

This week at How to Publish a Book, I've got several really cool videos that touch on different aspects of how to publish a book. First up, this is an interview I did last Sunday at Quail Ridge Books in Raleigh, NC with published memoir author Elaine N. Orr. If you are interested in learning how to write and how to publish a book that is a memoir, I'd encourage you to watch the video. Elaine's insights are great, and I absolutely loved her reading from her book.

 

 

Next up today, I interviewed true crime author Amanda Lamb last Friday about her book Deadly Dose. This How to Publish a Book discussion focuses primarily on the case behind the book, the murder of Eric Miller by his wife Ann Miller. I think it's fascinating to consider this discussion in comparison to Elaine Orr's (above) because both authors have published non-fiction books... but the types of non-fiction books that they've published are at opposite ends of the book publishing spectrum. Additionally, their process for writing their books is pretty different from one another, yet the end result (as with most of our how to publish a book discussions) is that a book was published and that readers have enjoyed them. Amanda's How to Publish a Book discussion involves a lot of her insights into marketing published books as well... she has been on the Today Show as well as featured on true crime documentary TV shows like Snapped and Captured.

 

 
Finally for today, I have created and uploaded my first Book Trailer for CLAWS, a novel I plan to self publish next summer (2009). I think a book trailer is an essential part of the total package of book marketing and book publishing. I'm planning to produce a series of these book trailers over the next 6-9 months. It'll be interesting to see how this goes.

 

Here is the book trailer for CLAWS:

 

 

 

Thanks so much for checking out How to Publish a Book. As always, if you have any questions feel free to drop me a line via the How to Publish a Book "Contact Us" link on the left of the page. Thanks so much.

Stacey 

How to Publish a Book Readers,

It's 10:22 PM Sunday night following one of the busiest how to publish a book weekends of my life. Thursday was my wife's birthday, and I took her out to eat at a great local restaurant.

Friday, I had two how to publish a book television interviews: one with WRAL reporter and author Amanda Lamb, and one with NPR radio personality Frank Stasio.

Friday evening, I attended the North Carolina Writers Network Fall Conference opening ceremonies and met and talked with a lot of folks about how to publish a book.

Saturday started at 6:30 AM. I was on a panel at the North Carolina Writers Network Fall Conference at 8:00 AM where we talked about book marketing and how to publish a book, and I acted as videographer the rest of the day. I did a reading from the book that is my current work in progress at 4:30 PM, and I acted as MC for the faculty reading. I made it home Saturday night after the banquet around 10:30 PM.

Today, I moderated a how to publish a book panel discussion at Quail Ridge Books in Raleigh on the topic of Memoir Writing and Book Publishing for the Raleigh Write to Publish Group. We had over 85 folks in attendance with many questions regarding how to publish a book, and I video-recorded the event as well.

Then, this evening I met with one of my writing group critique partners to workshop her current work-in-progress and to discuss how to publish a book. She has a book publisher for her current book, and she's planning to publish another book in December.

The video from this afternoon's discussion is currently rendering on my MacBook, and I need to HandBrake the video of the how to publish a book interview from Friday with Amanda Lamb. Overnight tonight, I'll upload the video from the NC Writers' Network Fall Conference... which brings us to tonight's how to publish a book video.

This is Frank Stasio, who you've probably heard on NPR. In North Carolina, he hosts The State of Things, a daily ideas talkshow heard over most of our state. In this interview, I ask Frank about his show, about his early career in radio, and about the state of radio today.

I hope you enjoy it, and as always I thank you for stopping by How to Publish a Book. Thanks so much.

Stacey 

How to Publish a Book Readers,

I had the opportunity to interview #1 New York Times bestselling author Michael Connelly today. This is one of the coolest interviews I've ever done and I am putting it up here online at How to Publish a Book.

Enjoy this one, folks. And thanks for checking out How to Publish a Book.

Stacey

 

How to Publish a Book Readers,

This past weekend I was in Baltimore for the Bouchercon World Mystery Writers Convention. Bouchercon is one of my favorite writers convention. It convenes annually and includes a healthy balance of fans, writers, and book publishing professionals (including literary agents, book editors, book publishers, and independent book store proprietors).

I'm often asked how to get a literary agent here at How to Publish a Book, and story after story seems to confirm that most writers meet their agents at writers conventions. At Bouchercon this year, I met four literary agents, two of whom I've met and spoken with previously (one of whom I've submitted work to before). Additionally, I met three book editors and two book publishers, both publishers of small (but successful) indepedent presses. Two of the editors I met work for major book publishers, and one had the good grace to follow up by sending me a cordial email on Monday after the convention.

Additionally, I hung out with many published writer friends and other publishing professionals. I was also asked to record the Guest of Honor Interviews, which I'll be posting here at How to Publish a Book.

The value of attending a writers conference like this is difficult to assess. It accomplishes a number of things: 1) it brings people in book publishing together, 2) it fosters a sense of community, 3) it presents the opportunity to pitch ideas or to talk about what works in publishing, 4) it gives writers opportunities to meet with editors, publishers, and literary agents.

Most days of the scheduled writers conference consist of panel discussions from 8 AM - 5 PM. The evenings are filled with parties, and the parties are where you get the best opportunity to have face time. The panels are interesting, but they're not so much a dialogue as a lecture. I definitely learned a few things through the panel discussions and had other ideas confirmed, but it's the parties that offer the best opportunity for writers to speak with book editors, book publishers, and literary agents.

I've been to a lot of these over the last decade, and I've begun to view this "face time" as a kind of campaign. For example, the two agents I had previously met remembered me, and one of them I hung out with (along with a group) for about two hours at the hotel bar Saturday night. I've got to think this helps the cause the next time I have work to submit to the agent, but this is difficult to quantify.

Similarly, the two small press publishers that I met remembered me from previous meetings. One of them makes for today's video and was the Lifetime Achievement Award Winner Guest of Honor at this year's convention.

Barbara Peters and Robert Rosenwald own the Poisoned Pen Press, one of the leading independent mystery publishers in the U.S. Barbara also runs the Poisoned Pen Bookstore in Scottsdale, Arizona. This store was where I did the second bookstore event of my life (back in 2006), and I revisited the store this summer (2008) to do a well-attended event. I like Barbara. She probably knows more about the crime and mystery writing community than any other single person I know.

Additionally, she has successfully run an independent bookstore for almost twenty years, and the Poisoned Pen Press has been in operation for over a decade.

One of the biggest points that she made to stand out in my mind was something I'd heard before by indepedent bookstore owners: Do not lease the property of your store. If you're going to try and run an independent bookstore (God help you) buy the property, don't rent. Also, I found her and Robert's discussion of book marketing, book sales, and how to publish a book particularly fascinating.

I present it to you now, How to Publish a Book Readers. Barbara Peters, Robert Rosenwald, and Twist Phelan on how to publish a book...

Stacey 

How to Publish a Book Readers,

This past Sunday, I drove down to Wilmington, North Carolina to interview publishing guru John Fuhrman on the topic of How to Publish a Book: Literary Agents, Book Marketing & Publishing. The result of the trip is a 75-minute video of our discussion.

In addition to talking about how to publish a book, John offers some incredible tips on book marketing and publishing. If I've learned one thing about how to publish a book over the past couple of years, it's that no two people have the exact same philosophies. I was most surprised to hear about John's experiences comparing his publishing with small presses in contrast to major publishers.

He's done both, and his insights on the subject were unexpected.

Also, he discusses how he landed over 300 radio interviews for his first book and how he found a literary agent with a major New York literary agency. I had to press him a little bit for the specifics, and those are all included in the video.

I found it particularly interesting to hear him discuss how he and his literary agent actually went from publisher to publisher in person when they were ready to sell his book to a major publisher. I have never heard of someone else doing this before, but it makes a lot of sense to me... particularly if the author has a lot of personal charm and makes good impressions on people when meeting in person.

All of this is to say that this interview makes for one of the more interesting and insightful discussions of late on the topic of how to publish a book.

Enjoy!

Stacey 

How to Publish a Book Readers,

A couple of weeks ago I had a very interesting how to publish a book discussion at Quail Ridge Books in Raleigh, North Carolina with a former E! Entertainment Network Executive Producer on the topic of how to be a television producer.  Beyond how to publish a book and how to be a television producer, we talked a lot about how to get into television as a career, how to be a television personality, and how executive producers find and develop new on-air talent.

If you've ever watched a TV show and thought I could do what he does, this how to publish a book video will be very interesting to you. While not directly talking about how to publish a book per se, this interview highlights a central point of my developing personal philosophy regarding how to publish a book in the 21st Century.

That how to publish a book philosophy goes something like this: It isn't enough to write and publish a book anymore. Literally hundreds of thousands of people do that every year. To excel as a writer, I believe that authors should be multi-media savvy and aggressively develop audiences through other channels beyond simply writing and publishing a book.

I think I first noticed this with a first-wave of internet authors about ten years ago. Dave Eggers built an audience online with McSweeny's back in 2000 and 2001, which led to his bestselling memoir publication a couple years later. Soon thereafter, a number of savvy Internet authors realized the power of creating an audience via the Internet, and it became an integral part of how to publish a book.

Similarly, I have developed this how to publish a book website and media hub into a next-generation version of that. (Or at least I'm trying to.) We largely utilize video production as a means of discussing how to publish a book. Many of you probably found your way to this site by searching for "How to Publish a Book" in Google, Yahoo, or whatever search engine you use.

I think online video media is going to be the big thing for the next 3-5 years (at least), and I see a massive hole in book-related video content. On my television at home, there is no single channel (out of like 500 channels) dedicated to book content. I see this as an opportunity to develop video media related to books, authors, and topics like how to publish a book.

At any rate, all of this kind of leads back to this week's video for How to Publish a Book. My first question to Executive Producer Billy Warden goes something like this: Is television going to be relevant in 10 or 20 years?

Enjoy the discussion, and feel free to drop me a line, folks.

Thanks so much.

Stacey 

Dear How to Publish a Book Readers,

Well, I've been keeping a low profile for a couple of weeks, and then this weekend kind of exploded on me. On Friday, I had two in-studio TV interviews. On Saturday, I moderated a discussion at Quail Ridge Books. On Sunday, I drove down to Wilmington and interviewed an author at Pomegranate Books. And on Monday, I met with my critique group to workshop a section from my current novel.

Nearly all of this I filmed and have uploaded to the internet.

I'm kind'a torn which video to put online first because they were all very good, but I think the one that'll be most helpful to folks trying to decide how to publish a book is the the discussion from Wilmington on Sunday.

In Wilmington, I interviewed local bestselling author Jacqueline DeGroot. Jackie is something of a phenomenon. She is a true self-publishing success story and is the kind of person who re-defines how to publish a book.

She earns about 40,000 dollars per year purely from self-published novels, which she sells locally up and down the Carolina coast. I was impressed with a number of her marketing strategies.

More than any other self-published author I've met, she understands how to self publish a book and make money from it. She understands the value of low printing costs, and she understands the power of her local media.

In the next week or so, I'll most likely put online the other videos from the events mentioned above, but I think Jackie's discussion of how to publish a book with Lightning Source is pretty remarkable. Lightning Source was literally where Print-on-Demand began.

Today, nearly every major publisher from Simon & Schuster to Tor/Forge has embraced the power of print-on-demand and have incorporated it into their traditional distribution models for books.

If you're considering how to publish a book, you could do far worse than to explore Lightning Source, the lowest priced Print-on-Demand service in the United States.

Enjoy the video, folks!

Stacey 

How to Publish a Book Readers,

I have a new video that I shot this weekend at Quail Ridge Books in Raleigh, North Carolina. This "How to Publish a Book" discussion was on the topic of publishing an online audio book, how to publish an eBook, and online book marketing. 

We had a turnout of about 25 folks, and they all asked excellent questions about how to publish a book. Several folks were interested in publishing an audio book at Podiobooks.com, which is a type of eBook. We also talked about more traditional eBook publishing and Amazon's Kindle.

At the very end of the discussion, we talked about how to use Google Adsense Video Units to generate revenue on your website... which reminds me, you probably noticed the YouTube video screen at the top of the homepage here at How to Publish a Book. If you click on the video, we actually make about a dollar per "view" here at How to Publish a Book.

So please click on the video at the top of the page.

Thanks so much, everyone.

Enjoy the site!

Stacey

How to Publish a Book Readers,

This week I interviewed New York Times bestselling mystery/suspense author J.A. Jance. This was one of those interviews where I felt so prepared that I was able to be completely relaxed.

Considering that Jance probably has more books in print (and more books published) than any other author that I've ever interviewed (somewhere in the 10 million+ books in print range), I was happy with how everything came together.

Towards the second half of the interview, we managed to discuss some emotionally-rich territory. It seems like with every studio interview, I learn a little bit more. Enjoy.

Stacey

 

 

How to Publish a Book Readers,

I am at the 2008 WorldCon in Denver, Colorado. For the past three days, I've been sitting in on publishing panel discussions with all manner of book publishing professionals: editors, publishers, agents, writers, etc. I'll be here until Sunday.

This is my third WorldCon, and the first where I am actively not promoting any of my own work. I decided to do this one in a sort of low-profile style.

I just wanted to listen to other people at this convention. I figure that if I spend more time listening rather than ramming my book down people's throats, I'll get a lot more out of the experience.

Take, for instance, this insight I gleaned from one of the publishing panels I've just come from. Two of the panelists were executive editors, and I asked the question, "Are editors paid on salary or do they receive a commission on the titles they acquire?" I was fairly well stunned to learn (at least at the house represented on the panel) that they receive no commission. None. Zero.

The panelist who responded clearly would have liked to have been receiving at least, say, 10% commission, and said as much.

To me, as I'm beginning to ferment the idea of starting my own publishing company, it just makes total sense to be paying editors at least partly, if not totally, on a commission basis. What incentive does "Editor A" have to find the hottest new writer on the block over "Editor B" if they're both making about the same amount of money regardless of how well the book does? Other than helping out the company and getting salary increases from time to time, there's no incentive.

This is an astonishing insight.

Do you realize how attractive it would be to the best editors in the business if a publishing company paid them on commission? And I'm not talking about the editors who are flailing around with authors who can't break even. I'm talking about the editor whose recent acquisition just became a New York Times bestseller and sold 3 million copies last year.

If these panelists represent the publishing business as a whole (and I just can't believe that they could), the editor who acquires the million copy bestseller has very little personal incentive (compared to if they were receiving 15% commission on sales of the book) to find such hot new talent.

No wonder the publishing business is completely stagnant.

At any rate, it was just one of those moments in a career, where suddenly the light bulb came on, and I realized, Holy shit, there's one major thing a publishing company could do to energize the acquisition of hot new talent. Pay the editors for discovering that new talent.

Even if it was only as part of a bonus, say, if a certain book hit a threshold of sales that then the editor would receive 15% commission. That would so incentivize editors to really get out there and find the best new talent for their publishing company.

It could only help everything in the long run.

Stacey

How to Publish a Book Readers,

I have a new "How to Publish a Book" panel discussion video online. I interviewed authors Martha Witt and Val Nieman on the subject of literary agents, how to publish a book, and how to market a book. We were also joined by NC Arts Council Marketing Director Rebecca L. Moore.

This is part of a monthly series I've been doing at Quail Ridge Books on the subject of how to publish a book.

This week, I'll be flying to Denver, Colorado for the World Science Fiction Convention. I'm planning to bring my camera, so hopefully I'll have some good footage of that to put online here at How to Publish a Book later this month.

Take care, folks.

Stacey

How to Publish a Book Readers,

I've got a new "How to Publish a Book" video online today. The following was a how to publish a book discussion at Quail Ridge Books in Raleigh with Podcast Novel authors P.G. Holyfield, Mur Lafferty, and Elisa Lorello. We discussed how to publish a book as a Podcast Novel (or "Podiobook") at Podiobooks.com and how to develop a readership through an online community for writers.

Enjoy...

Stacey 

How to Publish a Book Readers,

I am officially a writer under contract with Bedford/St. Martin’s Press. Earlier this month, my wife and I received contracts on a textbook to be co-written with us and another colleague. I’ve had years to think about how I would first announce my becoming a professional author, and have had many published authors’ experiences to learn from. I am both humbled and excited by the opportunity to co-write a book for a publisher like Bedford/St. Martin’s.

Susan and I met with the acquisition editor at a conference in Denver, and she (the editor) treated us to a wonderful dinner. I’m reluctant to talk too much about this because the book has yet to be written. It’ll be a textbook on writing for use in college programs around the country. We sold the book largely on the table of contents and on the good word of mouth regarding Susan’s first book.

At any rate, this is an exciting project. I’ll be spearheading an audio-visual component to be produced online in conjunction with the textbook, and it’ll be fun to co-write much of the project with my wife and with our friend and colleague Roy.

I submitted my very first work to a publisher in 1989. It’s been nearly twenty years, and I have received over 2000 rejections over that time. But it looks like I will finally be working as a writer on a book for an established traditional publisher.

Stacey

 

How to Publish a Book Readers,

The last four days have been extremely "How to Publish a Book" busy, and I've got some really cool stuff to get up here on the blog.

Last Thursday night, I held the first How to Publish a Book and Write to Publish Organizational & Planning Meeting in Raleigh, North Carolina at Cameron Village Public Library. Fifteen folks came to the meeting, and the major issues to come out of the discussion were:

1. Filing for Non-Profit 501 (c) (3) status for How to Publish a Book and/or Write to Publish;
   
   
2. Organizing workgroups with independent leaders for a:
   

• critique group open to the public,
  

• an organizational and steering committee open to the public,
  

• a marketing group for writers
  

• a self-growth group.

Friday night, I was asked to help set up and film an event at Quail Ridge Books in Raleigh for two-time Academy Award Winner GENE HACKMAN. Mr. Hackman is on tour for his latest book Escape from Andersonville, co-written with Daniel Lenihan and published with St. Martin's Press. 

On Saturday night, I administered an Open Mic Night Contest for the Raleigh Write to Publish Group at Quail Ridge Books. We had 38 attendees, and seven folks were chosen randomly to read. The best reading was decided by audience vote, and she received about 30 bucks for her winning reading. That author was Ashley Steineger, and here is her reading... 

Then on Sunday, I drove down to Wilmington, North Carolina and led a discussion at Pomegranate  Books on How to Publish a Book as a Podiobook. We had about 15 folks who came to the discussion, and there were many excellent questions. I hope to have the video of that discussion online in the next day or so.

Thanks so much for checking out the blog this week, and I hope you enjoy the videos!

Stacey

How to Publish a Book Readers,

On May 9, 2008, I began serializing my book THE COLORADO SEQUENCE as an online Audio Book at Podiobooks.com. The way this works is that a writer publishes his/her book chapter-by-chapter in a serialized format, basically publishing about 30 minutes per week online. Listeners at Podiobooks.com “subscribe” to your serialized book, and are notified when a new episode becomes available. They can listen to it on their computers, and they can download it to their iPods. They could even burn CDs of it in iTunes to listen on a CD player.

Podiobooks.com has a liberal acceptance policy and a low rejection rate, and in four years, they’ve built an audience of close to 50,000 registered members.

Since THE COLORADO SEQUENCE started to be published online on May 9, I’ve received close to 4,000 total downloads and now have 436 registered subscribers to the book. These numbers grow daily, and it’s possible that by the end of publishing the serialized Audio Book (probably sometime in December), I may have somewhere around 30,000 downloads and a couple thousand subscribers.

A Podiobook.com listener can start subscribing at any time and so as a producer, you’ll constantly be gaining new subscribers as episodes are published online (not unlike how a TV show gains new viewers as it increases in popularity).

Without getting too technical, I wanted to write a blog post here at How to Publish a Book regarding how to publish a book at Podiobooks.com

1. You’ll need some sort of microphone to record your reading. I actually have an actor-friend doing the narration for the book, and I loaned him one of my SAMSON CO1U mics and a pop-stopper.
2. You’ll need some sort of digital recording software program. I recommend AUDACITY because it’s free, and it's user-friendly.

And that’s basically it.

Once you learn how to record yourself reading, there are specific digital formats that Podiobooks.com requires producers to use in publishing their books at Podiobooks.com. You’ll want to spend some time reading all of the details at their site. Podiobooks.com does have a community mentoring forum, where you can ask questions online and get advice from more experienced book publishers.

What are the PROS and CONS?

The advantage of publishing a book via Podiobooks.com is that you can reach a whole other audience that you wouldn’t reach otherwise. In terms of building a readership and in terms of publicizing a book, I haven’t seen a better vehicle on the Internet in the past five years.

If you published 2-3 novels at Podiobooks.com and built your subscriber list up to 5,000, that’s solid SOCIAL CAPITAL for an up-and-coming writer.

The downside is that there’s very little money (read “no money”) to be made directly from publishing a book at Podiobooks.com. There is no charge to listeners to subscribe to books published at Podiobooks.com. Any money earned is based on donations, and I haven’t received a single donation to date.

That said, if you’re stuck with a book (or books) that can’t find a home at a traditional publisher, publishing your book as an online Audio Book at Podiobooks.com might be worth considering.

Thanks so much for reading this week’s installment of How to Publish a Book.

Sincerely,

Stacey Cochran

How to Publish a Book Readers,

Every once in a while, I get a really, really awesome interview subject, and everything comes together just right. My how to publish a book interview yesterday with Garth Stein was one of those.

You folks will really get a kick out of this one because Garth's novel The Art of Racing in the Rain was just published last week with Harper-Collins. It's his first major book deal, and so he's able to relate to where we're coming from as aspiring writers. Two days ago, The Art of Racing in the Rain hit #22 on the New York Times bestseller list.

One of the most interesting questions in the interview was my last; I asked Garth how he landed his literary agent. His response was so insightful I haven't been able to stop thinking about it since.

Additionally, in this interview, he discusses the craft of writing, and he defines a category difference between the craft (which he states can be learned) and the art (which he says can't be learned).

If you're an aspiring writer, or if you wonder what it takes to get your first book published with a major publisher like Harper-Collins, you won't want to miss this interview.

Enjoy!

Stacey 

How to Publish a Book Readers,

A couple weeks ago, I had the opportunity to interview the new Executive Director of the North Carolina Writers Network, Ed Southern. We talked about how to publish a book, how to find literary agents, and how the North Carolina Writers Network serves the writers in its community. Ed was also able to talk about his work for the Book Publisher John F. Blair Publishers.

This interview also includes a Book Report segment by Natasha Gilliam on Brett Battles's upcoming book The Deceived to be published by Delacorte Press, a division of Random House, Inc.

 

Stacey 

I was asked yesterday on another forum about my experiences self-publishing my books.

The decision to self-publish a book is one that all of us have to face at one time or another. This was how I responded on the other forum:

Regarding your question about self-publishing, I've been extremely happy with everything I've managed to accomplish with a self-published book.

To date, I've sold around 500 books total, done more than 100 bookstore and library events, now have an author-interview TV show, am currently putting together a mini-national workshop tour in conjunction with Lulu and Borders, and have a major publisher contracting me to lead workshops at colleges this fall. I have two audiobooks, know how books sell and are distributed, know how to design an online marketing campaign, know how to speak at writers conferences, etc.

None of this would have gotten going had I not originally self-published my books.

I do recommend trying extremely hard to find a traditional publisher first, but if that fails, don't do nothing with your book. Get it out there and learn as much as you can from the experience!

A lot of this holds true. The fact remains that the business of publishing, marketing, and selling books is not an easy one to learn. There really is no way to learn how books are produced, distributed, marketed, and sold unless you jump right into it.

The problem with traditional publishing is that it may take years (even decades) to get your first book published (if ever). I guess the way I looked at it was that I didn't want to waste my life (professionally speaking) waiting for a traditional publisher to see the value in my writing. I took the approach that I would enter into self-publishing to learn everything that I could about the publishing process.

And I guess, now that I'm on the other side of four years after having decided to do it the first time, I have learned so much about how books are published, distributed, marketed, and sold that I'm amazed.

What I think happens to some writers, though, is that they are forced to self-publish. When they do so, they run into the harsh reality that may come with only selling a few dozen books. Then, discouraged that their book didn't become a bestseller, they give up.

A better approach to take, I feel, is that of realizing that with every book, you learn a little bit more and a little bit more. By staying in the game, keeping a positive attitude, and sincerely trying to learn as much as you possibly can about this business, you really can carve out a career for yourself as a writer.

It just takes a tremendous amount of self discipline to hang in there when the times are tough.

Stacey

How to Publish a Book Readers,

This week I interviewed New York Times bestselling author Bart Ehrman about his books God's Problem and Misquoting Jesus. Bart has published nineteen books, and he makes an interesting distinction between his scholarly books published and his more mainstream books published with Harper One.

Dr. Ehrman has been on The Colbert Report and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and has been featured on The History Channel, CNN, NPR, and other top media outlets. In addition to publishing his books, Dr. Ehmran is the James A. Gray distinguished professor of Religious Studies at UNC Chapel Hill. His scholarly research focuses on early Christianity and the life of Jesus Christ. More specifically, he has focused on Proto-Orthodox Christianity, turning textual criticism around to show how the early scribes altered the Bible.

On a personal level, this was one of the most interesting interviews I've ever done. I found it completely fascinating, and I highly recommend God's Problem.

Stacey 

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