This past Wednesday, artist Lucille Clerc tweeted the image below. It shows three images of a pencil, in three stages of existence: full, broken in half, and resharpened into two pencils of varying lengths, but both with equally powerful points. A fourth image might have both ends of a previously-broken pencil sharpened — or if the pencil reaches a point where it is too small to sharpen, the image might be of pigments on a wall, etchings on glass, or via other ways artists have expressed their work for eons. Broken isn’t the end. It’s the preamble to a new…

I knew little about cars—yet I tuned into NPR’s “Car Talk” and then stuck around for years, clinging to “Click and Clack’s” words. Tom and Ray Magliozzi (a.k.a. Click and Clack the Tappet brothers) were a mainstay in my life, introduced by my father, who was a fan of their humor, accents, alma mater, and car knowledge. I tuned in the first time to listen to what Dad was raving about. I stayed for every reason other than for the talk of cars. Theirs was the ultimate crossover show—a program that attracted the mechanically inclined, as well as the mechanically…

My neighbor called yesterday. She was in the hospital and her husband’s cell phone wasn’t working. He’d forgotten to bring a few things with him and was on his way back home to pack another bag for her. Would I pop over and ask him to grab a few extra things to bring back to the hospital? I adore these neighbors and would do anything to help them, so I dropped what I was doing and stuck my head outside. Empty car port. Back inside, I grabbed a sticky pad and pen and scribbled a note with the items she…

Roger Sutton made waves this past week for writing “An open letter to the self-published author feeling dissed,” which begat “No, I don’t want to read your self-published books” by Ron Charles, itself a G-rated echo of Josh Olson’s “I will not read your fucking script.” If you care about my thoughts on Sutton’s and Charles’ pieces, read “Dearest Writer: Nobody Owes You Shit” by Chuck Wendig, who said exactly what I would have if I had his writing chops and wasn’t too lazy to write something myself. There’s one thing about Charles’ piece that I would like to discuss…

I’ve been on the pitching and receiving end of books and films, as a publicist sharing information and as an editor and/or writer receiving and deciding what to do with that information. Personal value is the common thread. As both a publicist and an editor/writer, you have to find the elements of value. What is of interest on the surface and what is of interest if you dive deeper—and how can they be pulled out? A good example of this process resides in the following from Malcolm Gladwell, on how he finds a story: You don’t start at the top…

Before computers stepped in, if you wanted to find a book in your library, you walked over to a shelf of drawers (or a few walls of drawers depending on the size of your library), scanned the labels on the outside of each drawer, opened the drawer that corresponded with the author or title for which you were searching, and then flipped through the cards until you found the title. It took going through this process to find out if a specific book was available in your library. If the card wasn’t there, either the book wasn’t available, or (as…

For the past few weeks, Steve’s interviews with Jeff Simon have been appearing on this site. The last one ran just before Jeff’s Indiegogo campaign ended — fully funded I’d like to add (with a congrats to Jeff and Team Abercorn). I shared a bit about his campaign via the post “Why You Need to Know About Crowdfunding,” with lessons from crowdfunding that crossover into outreach, for sharing our work. A few additions to that piece: If Mozart Could Do It . . . Alexander Pope did it. Mozart did it. And . . . The “American Committee” (thank them…

In his “Acting ‘As If’” post last week, Shawn wrote: “Our books are not Frontlist. They are backlist, evergreen, long-term commitments. So we spend weeks, months, years on every single one we put out there in an effort to reach what we think is the publisher’s job . . . getting the book into the hands of 10,000 readers. We have plans to promote all of our titles every chance we get, in any way we can do it, for as long as we’re around.” How is this accomplished? By getting on base and playing the long game. Getting On…

Want to wage a successful outreach campaign for the launch of your new book or album or film or restaurant or _________ (fill in the blank)? Mimic successful crowdfunding campaigns. While you might not be raising funds via Kickstarter or Indiegogo, you’ll need to employ the same steps as those driving crowdfunding campaigns on these sites.

Would you have said no to Elvis Presley? Imagine Elvis calling you back in the day. He loves a song you’ve written, wants to record it—and even invites you down to the recording session. You’re excited and start telling your friends the news—and then (and this is a big AND THEN), a few days before the session, Colonel Tom Parker (a.k.a. Elvis’ manager) calls you up and says: “Now, you do know that Elvis is recordin’ your song. And you do know that Elvis don’t record anything that he don’t publish or at least get half the publishin’ on.” Would…