Because I have a website providing resources about illness, recovery, dying, and grief, I am often asked to recommend books that will help people cope with a medical or mental health problem. I find that memoirs are often most helpful because they provide the narrative account of an illness that someone coping with a crisis is most likely to be able to concentrate on and get something out of (including understanding of their own emotional turmoil. These are some of the titles
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Consent the best defense against invasion of privacy lawsuits
July 14, 2011
by Pat McNees (updated 6-5-21)
Consent is the best defense against invasion of privacy lawsuits.
Truth is the best defense against a suit for defamation.
Biographers should be concerned not only with matters of copyright, fair use, and permissions, but also with the privacy and publicity rights of those they are quoting or writing about, said entertainment lawyer Kirk Schroder on the “Can I Quote That?” panel I moderated at the Compleat Biographer conference
Guides to scanning, digitizing, and editing for video and multimedia
June 21, 2011
Need to scan photos for a book, slide show, or multimedia presentation, and don't know a dpi from a pixel? Luckily you can find plenty of good tutorials online about everything from scanning old photos and recording telephone interviews to mastering various pieces of software and editing tools. Learn about Adobe Acrobat, Audacity, camcorders, Final Cut Pro, Photoshop, digitizing analog recordings, time coding video, editing for the Web, and other mysteries Read More
Mike Shatzkin on bookselling's past, present, and future
June 7, 2011
Mike Shatzkin's predictions about what's going on in book publishing and bookselling, and his histories of the trade (from mass market paperbacks through eBooks), are both compelling and unnerving. Technology, curation, and why the era of big bookstores is coming to an end (Shatzkin Files, 6-7-11) Read More
The frontier world of self-published e-books
June 6, 2011
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"In the winter of 2010, the cheerfully effervescent romance novelist Nyree Belleville suffered the same fate as many a scribe — she was dropped by her publisher," writes Neely Tucker in Novel rejected? There’s an e-book gold rush! (Washington Post, 5-6-11). The most any of her 12 spicy romances, penned under the name Bella Andre, had earned was $21,000." Read More
"In the winter of 2010, the cheerfully effervescent romance novelist Nyree Belleville suffered the same fate as many a scribe — she was dropped by her publisher," writes Neely Tucker in Novel rejected? There’s an e-book gold rush! (Washington Post, 5-6-11). The most any of her 12 spicy romances, penned under the name Bella Andre, had earned was $21,000." Read More
Agents as publishers--a new conflict of interest
May 17, 2011
TweetIn the UK, literary agent Ed Victor set up Bedford Square Books to publish e-book and print-on-demand versions of books that were out of print or for which rights had reverted to the author. Within days, this news (Ed Victor set up publishing imprint by Charlotte Williams, The Bookseller 5-10-11) became a trend and people in the industry began itemizing the ways in which a) it represents a major conflict of interest and b) publishing is changing radically. Read More
EBook basics for authors (part 2: DRM, or copy protection)
May 13, 2011
Can authors self-publish eBooks from their own website?
Technically yes. In real life, says Josh Tallent, no. ePub is a great open-source format that several firms use. The problem is DRM (copy protection), for which the bookseller pays a sizable fee. So you can sell your own eBook from your website, but you can’t sell a locked-down copy-controlled version of your eBook.
This is part 1 of a 3-part report on a talk eBook experts Josh Tallent and David Rothman made to the Washington Biography Group, May 2, 2011. Some of the details may now be out of date, but the broad explanation may still be helpful. <a href="https://www.smashwords.com/about"target="_blank">Smashwords</a>, for example, boasts of "producing DRM-less ebooks" on its About page.
Should you copy-protect your eBook? That depends.
eBooks basics for authors (part 3, trends and questions)
May 13, 2011
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Among the trends David Rothman predicted in his talk to the Washington Biography Group was a subscription series for eBooks that would work something like NetFlix. Those who will benefit most from such a development, says David, will be "small presses and more obscure writers, who will enjoy more exposure for their works — the same as indie film makers do on Netflix. Readers will be more inclined to try what they’re already paying for."
Other trends Read More
Among the trends David Rothman predicted in his talk to the Washington Biography Group was a subscription series for eBooks that would work something like NetFlix. Those who will benefit most from such a development, says David, will be "small presses and more obscure writers, who will enjoy more exposure for their works — the same as indie film makers do on Netflix. Readers will be more inclined to try what they’re already paying for."
Other trends Read More
With Bookish, Publishers Compete with Amazon for Direct Sales
May 10, 2011
Three publishers (Simon & Schuster, Penguin, and Hachette), frustrated that few book buyers visit their company sites, have created Bookish.com, hoping it will become a destination for readers the way Pitchfork.com is for music lovers and IMDb, Rotten Tomatoes, and Netflix Read More
How long does copyright last?
April 24, 2011
When someone asks if she can reprint a biography of her long-dead relative first published (probably self-published) in 1960. Among other things, the underlying question is, How long does copyright protection last? One person suggested "life plus fifty years," which used to be true but no longer is
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