Authors and Wall St, conferences, and podcasts

Dave Knadler finds some poetry in comparing Willa Cather with the current situation on Wall St: "This is the country we've made. No starlight at all, just streaming video and freeway exits and BlackBerries buzzing during matinee showings of Righteous Kill.It's a country where we pay guys a lot of money to tweak pitchbooks on a Sunday afternoon. Or used to. Maybe that'll seem poignant 90 years from now, the way My Antonia seems now." Lovely post.

Clare Dudman reports on a day in York at an authors' meeting about the effects of the internet on publishing. One aspect is that of economics in an era where more and more content is available free: "publishers are now expecting authors to do their own picture research, indexing, create and maintain their own website, and pay for any permission fees from their own pocket. I certainly had to do these last three things for my novels, and I remember it being a bit of a shock." Clare also passes on some good advice about web analytics, as well as some thoughts on creative writing courses, booksellers and e-books.

Mack, of Mack Pitches Up, recommends CrimeWAV, "a nifty concept. Crime writers read their short stories. ...if you think you would enjoy listening to crime fiction then I'd like to steer to toward three of Seth Harwood's projects. I've been a fan for a while and, besides being a nice guy, Seth's a very talented writer and podcaster (except when he does the voice for Momma Ponds)." You can try a few out via the links at Mack's post.

Comments

[Mack]

Thanks for the mention Maxine, though now I wish I'd used a different word than "nifty." Not a bad word but sounds a bit more casual than I intended.

I was listening to CrimeWAV on the way into work today and listening to Megan Abbott read Cheer was a real treat. Short stories are wonderful for commuting. I'd like to steer readers to another podcast, Behind the Black Mask at http://btbm.libsyn.com/. Clute and Edwards present insightful interviews with crime authors including the aforementioned Megan Abbott.