Garrison Keillor is the latest author to slam self-publishing in a recent NYT Op-Ed. His rant is typical of those who hate indie authors who go it alone into the world of self-publishing. And in the same Op-Ed, Keillor manages to take a swipe at modern technology.

I don’t know what it is about self-publishing that drives some people nuts. After all, musicians who skip the large record labels and become “indie” are widely respected and have successfully thrown themselves into the mainstream – with little to no criticism. So why are indie authors seen differently?

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Fan fiction (fanfic) is when a fan of a novel, movie or even television show writes their own stories using the same characters.  However, fanfic remains in legal and ethical limbo. Some authors maintain that fanfic is just innocent flattery. But other authors go as far as to say it’s illegal.

Personally, I’ve never been enthusiastic about fanfic, not because of its legal implications, but because I just don’t find it very exciting.

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I always love to read author’s self-publishing success stories. They are not only very inspiring, but these stories chip away at the negative stigma of self-publishing. The route these authors take is a hard one, they don’t have the resources of a large publishing house and distributor behind them. Thus they often have to promote their work themselves using their own websites, Twitter, Facebook and other methods.

But one author has taken self-publishing to a whole new level. Christopher Herz decided to use the POD model with his book The Last Block in Harlem (aff link) and then take it to the streets, literally. He’d hand sell one copy at a time to strangers on the street. You might recall that I wrote about him in my previous post Author sells self-published book one copy at a time. His efforts were even picked up by Publishers Weekly. Well, all of his hard work has finally paid off.

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After my grandmother passed away last December, my mom and her brother and sister have been going through her house to get her belongings sorted out. Among those items was a short story I wrote when I was 12, around the time I was in the 7th grade (about 1992). I sent it to my grandparents and they had apparently filed it away for all these years.

I don’t remember writing this specific short story, but I remember it being an assignment for my creative writing class. We had to read them in front of the class – which was probably the worst part. The only other memory I have of this story is was received pretty well by my classmates and my creative writing teacher.

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My local bookstore held a book signing for 3 authors last weekend. It drew a sizeable crowd and there’s no doubt a lot of books were sold to customers anxiously seeking an autograph from their favorite author/s.

I’ll confess, I’m a literary autograph hound myself. I have a small collection of autographed books (a collection I hope to expand). There is something about having an author sign his/her own work that makes owning that book like a trophy – as hokey as that sounds.

But with ebooks rapidly growing in popularity, what’s going to happen to author signings? After all, I wouldn’t want an author to sign my Sony Pocket Edition. As popular as ebooks have become, and as their popularity will continue to rise, I still think there will be a spot for print books in the literary marketplace.

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Ever since I became an ebook evangelist I have promoted the idea that ebooks are the perfect platform to offer more than just the text of the novel/short story. What does this mean? An enriched ebook offers a glimpse of a working author in a “behind the scenes” sort of fashion.

While there are any number of ways to enrich an ebook, I always envisioned them with rough drafts (so the reader can see how the story evolved), outlines, interviews, alternate endings and more.

Bestselling novelist David Baldacci has done just that with his new book Deliver Us from Evil (aff link). According to Galley Cat, he’s offering an enriched ebook with a smorgasbord of features including a video tour of his office (I love seeing author’s working spaces), audio Q & A about the book, research material, deleted scenes (including the original ending) and other goodies that will enhance the reading experience.

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Looks like the Bard might have written more than his already prolific canon of plays. A Shakespeare scholar from the University of Nottingham is fairly certain of the confirmation a new play was written by Shakespeare. According this article from the AP via Yahoo! News:

After years of literary investigation, a professor at the University of Nottingham said Tuesday he’s certain “Double Falsehood, or the Distressed Lovers” was born out of “Cardenio,” a play Shakespeare scholars believe existed…”There is definitely Shakespearean DNA,” said English literature professor Brean Hammond, who has worked since 2002 to determine if “Double Falsehood” has Shakespearean roots.

As the article mentions, there is not enough proof with 100% certainty that “Double Falsehood” is based off of this mysterious “Cardenio” play.

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Science fiction author Philip K. Dick died 28 years ago. If you haven’t read any of his books and/or short stories, you are probably still familiar with his work. His writings have been adapted into such films as Blade Runner, Total Recall, Minority Report, Screamers and more. I’ve seen the movies Total Recall and Minority Report, but as usual, I enjoyed Dick’s writing a lot more than the Hollywood adaptation.

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This tip was sent to me from Simon Owens from Bloggasm. Thanks Simon!

The feud between Amazon and Macmillan has seemed to settle down, at least for now. Macmillan titles are again being sold on the online retailer. But the ripple effect still lingers and its anyone’s guess how the ripples created by this feud will play out in the long run.

A lot of attention has been given to Amazon and Macmillan. But what about the authors? Each party claims it has the best interest of the authors in mind, although after seeing the way Amazon and Macmillan acted, that’s a little hard to believe. I think the biggest and most direct hit on authors came from Amazon’s decision to suddenly pull all Macmillan titles from their site. Not cool.

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So far I’ve been silent about the recent feud between Amazon and the publisher Macmillan because there have been so many articles, blog posts, forum comments and other coverage, that I didn’t want to contribute to all the ‘noise.’ However, there is a slightly new development in this story that I do feel it’s worth writing about.

Today the Author’s Guild released a statement that pretty much supports Macmillan in the feud. There’s really nothing surprising about that since the Guild usually supports the large publishers and higher ebook prices. The Author’s Guild believes that if Macmillan succeeds in having more control over ebook prices, it will be good for the industry as a whole:

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