I’m continuing this theme of healthy ways to better writing (a theme I did not plan ahead of time, it just kinda happened) by talking about exercise and how it can have a positive impact on your creativity and writing. Exercise is obviously one of the most healthy activities one can pursue as it helps keep you in shape and reduces the risk of a lot of diseases.

Exercise and the brain

Most people think of exercise as only helping the body (as I talked about above). But staying active also has a positive impact on the brain. In fact, exercise can do everything from reduce depression to helping you feel more alert. I found an article from the website Medicine.net called Train you Brain with Exercise:

“I like to say that exercise is like taking a little Prozac or a little Ritalin at just the right moment,” says John J. Ratey, MD, an associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and author of A User’s Guide to the Brain. “Exercise is really for the brain, not the body. It affects mood, vitality, alertness, and feelings of well-being.”

Christin Anderson, wellness and fitness coordinator at the University of San Francisco goes on to say:

“When one exercises,” Anderson says, “you can think more clearly, perform better, and your morale is better. This is pure science — stimulate your nervous system and function at a higher level.”

Thinking clearly. Improved performance. Increased morale. All of these can have a positive impact on your writing. Just being able to think clearly will help you in terms of organizing your writing, structure, ideas, editing and so forth. For example, if you’re writing a novel, being able to think clearly could help you organize your plot and create more rounded characters.

The good part about exercise is that it really doesn’t take all that much to reap its benefits. The article states that working out (whether it’s running, walking, swimming, etc. for 30 minutes 3 times per week is enough to keep your brain in top shape. Of course, the more you exercise the more benefits.

Exercise as a creative boost

People who exercise regularly often report a ‘meditative’ aspect to their fitness routines. As I wrote in a previous post, meditation and meditative-like states can really increase your creativity and improve writing. Furthermore, when one feels that sense of well-being and euphoria, stress and other worries seem to fade away, giving your brain a chance to focus on other things.

From my own experience with exercise, after I’m finished with a workout, I really do have more energy and feel ready to tackle any writing project – often with a fresh perspective. The only problem I have is keeping a regular exercise schedule.

No drugs needed!

There is a general stereotype about creative people that they often use drugs to enhance their art. While this might apply in the short-term, in the long run, people who use drugs to increase their creativity are only hurting themselves. How many famous artists, musicians and writers have died from complications of drug use? Quite a few. This goes without saying, but it’s hard to be creative when you’re dead.

The cool part about meditation and exercise is that the benefits increase over time by improving your health. A side-effect of drugs is that you need more and more of the drug to get the same results. With meditation and exercise, that doesn’t happen. And if it does, it’s only benefiting you.

Do you exercise on a regular basis? Has it improved your writing or other creative endeavors? Leave a comment below and share your experience.

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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.

In a recent Bloggasm post Tor authors express worry over their careers because of Macmillan/Amazon dispute (Tor is an imprint of Macmillan), we get a first-hand account from author Jay Lake about how the decision by Amazon to pull Macmillan titles has affected him:

“The worry would be if I had a book released last Tuesday or this,” he said. “A significant portion of my initial sales velocity comes from the first days on Amazon. Writers like me sell relatively few books so that missing a few hundred initial sales, and the related rise in sales ranking and attention, could be damaging, quite possibly seriously.”

Another Tor author, Tobias Buckell, expresses the same concern about impact on sales:

“And for the past five or six years I’ve worked really hard to send people from my website to Amazon because it’s the dominant online book store. It has a tremendous impact because all my sales for my original Tor books will be dropping by 80% probably.”

I’m sure there are many more authors that express the same concerns as Jay and Tobias. It was downright un-ethical for Amazon to stop selling Macmillan titles because it hurts the authors the most.

I know readers can retaliate by not buying anything from Amazon. What recourse do the authors have? I guess they could take their titles elsewhere, although I’m not sure how easy it would be for them to bail on their current publishing contract. I think most authors could do a lot better (sales-wise) selling their books directly to consumers – as print and ebooks.

Another option for authors would be to take legal action against Amazon. Since the e-retailer is so big and dominates online book sales, there’s a lawsuit in there somewhere. If any lawyers out there want to weigh in on this, please feel free to do so in the comments below.

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• Author’s Guild backs Macmillan in feud with Amazon
• Amazon ‘glitch’ stirs rumors of alleged censorship
• Update: Was Amazon a victim of ‘mob mentality’ after computer glitch?

When I first began Brad’s Reader, my main focus was on literature and writing. Since the world of literature is so big, I needed a way to see all the important bits of news and related blog posts at-a-glance. What did I use? I created a Google Alert using the search term “literary news”.

Every day (usually in the morning) I get an email in my inbox entitled “literary news” that has a comprehensive list of links related to literature. These include links to news stories, blogs and even current literary events like book fairs. In fact, I have received a lot of blog post ideas from that one Google Alert.

Now that Brad’s Reader has expanded into the world of ebooks and self-publishing, I created a Google Alert for those respective search terms as well. Bang! All relevant news and information in my inbox each day. It doesn’t get any easier than that.

A few easy tips

Setting up a Google Alert is easy. Just enter in a search term, decide if you want a comprehensive, news, blog, web, video or clips alert. I use comprehensive, as it includes everything in the email. Then select how often you want your alerts to be sent to you. I always choose daily. But you have a choice between daily, weekly, and as-it-happens (this one can fill up your inbox fast). After that, select the length of your alert email. You can choose between 20 and 50 results (I keep mine limited to 20 to make scanning the email much easier).

Finally, select the email you want your alert to be delivered to. This is a lot easier if you have a Gmail account – then you can manage everything all in one place without logging in and out of multiple accounts. I use one account for my Gmail, Google Reader, News, Google Alerts and Notebooks. Keep it simple.

The sky is the limit to what your alert can be. Here are a few suggestions for you regular readers of this blog:

• Literary news
• Self publishing
• ebooks
• Your favorite author
• A specific publisher/e-retailer (great to keep track of the current Amazon v. Macmillan feud)
• publishing news
• fill-in-your-own-preference-here

Google Alerts are a great way to stay informed about your topic of choice without spending countless hours scouring the web for important information. For me, this has been an invaluable tool and has really helped me grow Brad’s Reader. I hope Google Alerts can help you too.

Update 2/7: In a bit of irony, when I got my Google Alert for ‘literary news’ this morning, I was pleasantly surprised to see this very post listed under the blog section:

Keeping up with the world of publishing & ebooks | Brad’s Reader
By Brad Vertrees
Since the world of literature is so big, I needed a way to see all the
important bits of news and related blog posts at-a-glance. What did I use?
I created a Google Alert using the search term “literary news”. …
<http://www.bradsreader.com/2010/02/keeping-up-with-the-world-of-publishing-ebooks/>
Brad’s Reader
<http://www.bradsreader.com/>

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Freelancing aside, I’ve also been busy with various other writing projects. Some are long-term others will come to fruition a lot sooner.

That’s it for today. I’m keeping the intro to this week’s Friday Link Love short and sweet. Enjoy these links and, as always, have a happy and safe weekend.

History in fiction

Things publishers will do to kill ebooks

Selling paper

Internet uprising overturns Australian censorship law

Are you using setting to deepen your characters?

Genius and hypochondria

A change in opinion about self-publishing

Data recovery after the end of the world

How not to hurry

The iPad and ebooks: A missed opportunity

Who will save us?

A music exec’s take on the Macmillan/Amazon throwdown

Annual bean-throwing festival in Japan

Get in the habit of writing every day

Hatchette to adopt agency model for publishing

Science fiction or reality: When do the machines take over?

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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:

Yet if Macmillan prevails, the eventual payoff for its authors (and all authors, if a successful result ripples through the industry) is likely to be significant and lasting.

It has been well-documented (on this blog and others) that what Macmillan seeks, and what the Guild supports, simply does not work. Authors don’t make more in royalties because higher ebook prices turn off a lot of consumers, leading to more piracy. Publishers still have a long way to go in learning about the economics of ebooks.

Macmillan wants to set higher ebook prices

Bad idea. The demand for ebooks dictate the consumers are unlikely to pay much more than $9.99 for ebooks (the price Amazon uses as a standard). Macmillan’s reasoning is that higher ebook prices will increase author royalties and not “devalue” the books sold on Amazon.

However, as I said before, it has been shown that just the opposite is true – lower ebook prices equals more sales and more revenue for the author and publisher. A great example of this is author Joe Konrath, who has been published through traditional routes, and self-publishes his novels as ebooks on the Amazon Kindle. His blog, A Newbie’s Guide to Publishing chronicles his experience. He makes more money selling his ebooks at low prices than he does in royalties from his traditional publisher. Other authors have had similar experiences.

Use of “Windowing” as a tactic to increase print sales

“Windowing” is the practice of waiting until a particular edition of a new book has been on the market for a while before making cheaper editions available.

The Author’s Guild statement continues:

Windowing e-books is similarly believed to help protect a publisher’s sales channels for physical books. The risk with windowing is that some owners of e-book devices are angered that low-priced e-book editions aren’t available as soon as books are released in hardcover form.

The risk of delaying the release of the ebook version is more than just “angering” ebook device owners. The real risk is piracy. In fact most of the book piracy is scanning print books and converting them to ebooks. This is often done when the ebook is not available due to windowing or because the author/publisher refuses the ebook option. I wrote a recent post What can we learn from a book pirate that details this from one who actually pirates books.

The irony, of course, is that authors/publishers trying to prevent piracy through such tactics only encourage the practice.

Amazon also to blame

While it’s easy to demonize Macmillan for their demands, Amazon is by no means in the clear either. The largest online retailer has been criticized all around for everything from DRM, high ebook prices (a lot of consumers, myself included, think even $9.99 is too much for most ebooks), to prices not being high enough (from publishers), remotely deleting titles off the Kindle, forcing POD publishers to use Amazon’s own service, and the list goes on. So I’m not giving Amazon a free pass here. There is plenty of criticism to go around.

The ebook industry is still in its infancy and there are no ‘industry standards’ in place yet. Amazon is trying to set those standards and publishers still think ebooks should be sold and priced like print books. I hope that publishers don’t repeat what happened to record labels (who continue to self-destruct).

What do you think of this Amazon-Macmillan feud? Leave a comment below and share your thoughts.

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I’m not suggesting that writers should just sit around doing nothing all day. Of course we have other obligations; some have day jobs, family, chores, social lives and so forth. Writing is just one part of our lives. So how do we give our minds the chance to relax and unwind without becoming a lazy bum?

I found the answer in meditation.

When I first began experimenting with meditation I was worried that I wouldn’t do it right and it would take years to see any results. Boy was I wrong. Mediation is not only easy, but you can feel the benefits right away.

Easy ways to meditate

Meditation is as easy as sitting in a quiet room and breathing deeply. There are a lot of methods of doing this. Some require you inhale for so many seconds, hold your breath, and then exhale. But I’ve found that just breathing in deeply, holding for a second or two and then slowly exhaling does the trick. This can be done anywhere.

A more formal approach to meditation is to sit in a quiet, comfortable place and concentrate on your breathing for an extended period of time. For me, 15 minutes is just right. During that time, I listen to very soft meditation music that is often accompanied by sounds of nature (the ocean, birds, thunderstorm, etc.). These soundtracks can be found easily on CDs and online music stores like iTunes.

There is no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ way to meditate. Close your eyes, relax your body, breath from the stomach and clear your mind. The last step is probably the hardest. Your mind is used to being bombarded with external stimuli and internal thoughts. Let your thoughts come and go, but don’t dwell on anything. Let your music soothe you. After a while you’ll find this gets easier.

How does meditation help writing?

Generally, meditation clears the mind of all those distractions that stifle creativity. And when your mind is clear, it becomes open to more possibilities. After just a few days of meditation (once a night for 15 minutes each session) I found that my writing had improved drastically and writer’s block hit less frequently. I also found that my little ‘inner editor’ turned off and I was able to just write without worrying about editing until later.

I know that I, and a lot of other writers, suffer from at least a little anxiety about writing – especially faced with the dreaded blank page. Meditation is a natural anxiety reducer and will help face those blank pages with much more optimism.

A natural alternative to drugs

I find it sad that so many writers and other creative types turn to drugs (I include alcohol, as it is a drug) to help them with their writing and to ‘be more creative.’ In the short term, drugs may help (the jury is still out on whether drugs improve writing or just give the illusion of improvement). But as time go on, drugs become more of a problem and most writers begin to spend much of their time dealing with the consequences of drug use rather than concentrating on their writing.

Meditation is just the opposite. It really does help creativity and meditation becomes more effective over time. Meditation also helps more than just your writing. You’ll see your blood pressure decrease, stress levels decrease, anxiety and depression become less of an issue and you’ll be able to deal better with all life throws at you.

I’ve cut alcohol out of my life completely. Instead I try to drink a lot of water, juice, tea, coffee and beverages like Sprite or 7up. I know that my writing has not suffered in the least because of my abstinence from alcohol. I’m not saying I’m any better than someone who has an occasional glass of wine, rather, just giving you my own personal experience.

Try meditating, you have nothing to lose

Give meditation a shot. Even if you spend 5 minutes a night, you’ll see the benefits and you will naturally want to increase your time meditating. Once you get in the habit of doing it, meditating becomes as routine as brushing your teeth.

After you try meditation, leave a comment and let us know how it works out for you. Or, if you already meditate on a regular basis, leave a comment and tell us how it has benefited your life over the long term.

Happy meditating!

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I’m not going to be ordering an iPad anytime soon. Between my 1st gen iPhone and Sony Pocket Edition, I’m good to go in the gadget department. Also, I don’t quite have the funds right now. Maybe in a few years when the price has come down.

The other news rocking the literary world this week is the death of a great American writer, J.D. Salinger, known best for his novel Catcher in the Rye. It’s still January and we’ve already seen the death of Salinger and mystery writer Robert B. Parker. I hope this isn’t a sign of things to come in 2010.

The good news today is that it’s Friday! As always, have a safe and happy weekend.

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The first blog comes from Adobe, of all places. Reports say that Adobe is steaming mad that the iPad doesn’t support Flash. But on their blog, they go further than that. Apple’s iPad – A Broken Link?

It looks like Apple is continuing to impose restrictions on their devices that limit both content publishers and consumers. Unlike many other ebook readers using the ePub file format, consumers will not be able to access ePub content with Apple’s DRM technology on devices made by other manufacturers.

In other words, I won’t be able to buy an ebook from Apple and then load it onto my Sony Pocket Edition. And I’m assuming that if I were to buy ebooks from other sites, I would not be able to load them onto the iPad’s ebook reading app.

Ars Technica also picked up on this DRM lockdown by reporting that a very small group of protesters from the Free Software Foundation were at yesterday’s Apple event. Protesters: iPad is nothing more than a golden calf of DRM:

Members of the Free Software Foundation staged a small protest outside today’s Apple event in San Francisco, making the case against Apple’s use of DRM.

The big question I have is now that Apple is in the ebook business, will they forbid ebook reading apps like Stanza (one of the most popular for the iPhone/iPod Touch? Will iPad users be unable to download such apps from the app store. If there are no such restrictions, than the DRM on iBooks becomes less of a worry.

Still, if Apple really wanted to put a dent in the Amazon Kindle and all the other ebook readers out there, they’d just have to open up their ebook app on the iPad by getting rid of the DRM. I guess they don’t see it that way.

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He bragged in college about his literary talent and ambitions, and wrote swaggering letters to Whit Burnett, the editor of Story magazine. But success, once it arrived, paled quickly for him. He told the editors of Saturday Review that he was “good and sick” of seeing his photograph on the dust jacket of “The Catcher in the Rye” and demanded that it be removed from subsequent editions. He ordered his agent to burn any fan mail.

My thoughts are with his family and friends.

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For the last year or so (maybe even longer) there have been rumors that Apple would eventually release a tablet device. That day has come. At first glace, iPad is a beefed up version of the iPhone/iPod Touch. But under the hood the iPad is impressive. I want onto the MacRumors blog and here’s what they had to say:

At today’s highly-anticipated media event, Apple announced the iPad tablet device, featuring a 9.7-inch, 1024 x 768 display and 16 GB, 32 GB, and 64 GB capacities. Carrying a custom 1 GHz “Apple A4″ chip, the iPad weighs in at 1.5 pounds and is .5-inch thin. The iPad will be priced at $499, $599, and $699 for the varying capacity models without 3G, and $626, $729, and $829 with 3G.

The price surprised me, since everyone was speculating that the price point for the iPad would be around $999, the same price as Apple’s basic Macbook. The entry price for a basic unit is $499. This is just a little more expensive than the Kindle DX and about double the basic Kindle price. However, given the number of features the iPad sports, those considering the Kindle might be better off with a multi-use device.

For the sake of comparison, the Sony Daily Edition Reader comes in at $399 and the Barnes & Noble Nook is priced at $259. How will the iPad affect the sales of those dedicated e-readers? Only time will tell.

I think the most exciting thing about the iPad is the built in iBooks app – which allows you to buy, download and read ebooks. Before the release today, Apple had been busy negotiating with some of the larger publishing houses to make their books available on the iPad. If you watch the demo video on Apple’s website, you’ll see that the device renders the text beautifully and the page turning (with the swipe of a finger) is very realistic.

Dedicated or Multi-use?

This is the big question ebook enthusiasts and anyone looking to get into the ebook game now face. I’ll admit that I love my dedicated Sony Pocket Edition. No distractions. Just pure reading. Yes, I do read ebooks on my iPhone as well, but not nearly as many and my reading sessions are much shorter.

There’s also a good argument for multi-use devices like the iPad. It’s an all-in-one device (except for the phone) where you can manage your entire digital life from the tablet. The virtual keyboard is almost the size of a laptop keyboard, making typing emails, notes, working on your novel much easier. But again, all these other features can be distracting – especially when checking email or blog stats is one click away.

Will iPad revolutionize ebook reading?

It might be too soon to tell how the iPad will affect ebooks. Before the Barnes & Noble Nook was released, it had a lot of hype and people were speculating about how it would impact all the other e-readers out there. Now that the holidays are over and Nook has been out for a few months, the excitement has greatly dwindled and I really haven’t heard much about it.

This leads me to believe that it might be several months, maybe even a year or so, to see what impact the iPad has. Given the unexpected lower price, the iPad is now a much more realistic option for a lot of people. At the very least, I think the iPad will give the Kindle a run for their money. If Amazon isn’t shaking now, they soon will be.

ePub featured on the iPad!

One item I got really excited about was learning the Apple has chosen the open ePub format for the iPad. This means, in theory, that you can buy ebooks from Apple and read them on any other device that can read ePub (including my Sony Pocket Edition, Yay!). I’m thrilled that Apple didn’t create their own proprietary format for ebooks, bogging us down in yet another format and more DRM.

In the end though, I think that the iPad will make a great addition to an already impressive lineup of ebook reading devices, regardless if they are dedicated or multi-use. Furthermore, another device on the market means more competition, which means that we’ll see more advanced e-readers in the years to come, and lower prices.

For the record, I have no immediate plans to buy an iPad. My trusty 1st gen iPhone is plugging along just fine. And my funds are a little low to plunk down $499 on a shiny new gadget.

What do you think of the iPad? Are you going to pre-order one, or save your money for something else?

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