Interview With Zachary Bonelli on Community Days

I was privileged to host Zachary Bonelli's first Google Hangout interview!

Zack is the founder of Fuzzy Hedgehog Press, a group of speculative fiction writers who wanted to create a powerful collaboration to make it easier to spread the word about their work. You can find out more about him by checking out his website, or see what he's up to on Twitter.

In addition to spending time creating fantastic works of fiction, the authors at Fuzzy Hedgehog Press also take time to promote the work of others through their Indie Spec Fic Fund. They highlight cool-looking projects from Kickstarter and Indiegogo, helping innovative, new writers have their chance at the spotlight.

Here is a video of the interview, and below is a partial transcript. Hope you enjoy!

Tell us a little bit about your background.

I've been writing for a very long time, I started when I was in high school. As I kept writing, a I latched onto a character and a world (well, actually, multiple worlds). That became a book, Voyage. I became embittered with the whole traditional publishing system, decided I couldn't get it ever published that way, and put that on the back burner. I wrote little stories over the last ten years, but basically it was stalled. And then recently, Hugh Howey and the big self-publishing thing happened. Not only did I decide now is the time for me to really write Voyage and get that out into the world, but I wanted to create a space for people like myself. My biggest worry with putting out Voyage, at least through the traditional publishing machine twelve years ago, was that my main character is gay. Someone along the way would tell me "oh, he has to be straight or it won't sell," of course that would be the end of my relationship with any publisher or editor. Even though, clearly, that's not the case today, the publishers would be more receptive to that, I wanted to create a community where anyone who finds themselves in a similar situation [would be supported].

What are the benefits of a writing collective for authors?

The different models of collectives are varying a lot. Part of the core values for me, at least, are 1.) authors owning the rights to their own work, and 2.) no one in the group will ever tell you that you can't publish "x." They may disagree with you strongly, but there's no such thing as "Oh, that's a topic that's not allowed in literature." The other major thing that separates us is, if you look at groups like the Science Fiction Writers of America, people are only allowed in if they have "acceptable publications" in "acceptable venues." We are not an exclusive group, in fact, exclusivity is totally contrary to the core values... If you have a piece of writing that you're working on, and that you intend to publish or self-publish, you're welcome.

Interview with Nedzad Lomigora on Community Days

Welcome to the newly revamped Community Days! Now that I'm interviewing people on Google Hangouts, I realize that trying to fit all of the interviews on Fridays doesn't make as much sense as it once did, so I'm leaving the "day" part of this feature flexible.

Today's guest is Nedzad Lomigora, founder of the author promotion platform Zeeen.com and organizer of the terrific Publishing Innovator Meetups in both Boston and New York. I recently worked with Ned to organize a Kickstarter for Authors panel, and hope to arrange more great events in the future.

Here's the broadcast as recorded from Google Hangouts. If you're interested in reading a partial transcript of the video, you can scroll down the page. But if you have time, watch the whole thing - there's plenty of good info to absorb. Hope you enjoy!

Tell us a little bit about your site, Zeeen.

It's a platform for authors that identifies, attracts, and engages readers. Our predictive analytics engine lets you set your goals, receive real-time alerts on the status of those goals, and access actionable recommendations (what to do to improve on reaching your goals). That all leads to more book sales.

What experiences brought about the idea for Zeeen?

I had a lot of experience in my past with finding industries that were going through a huge change, and publishing was one of those industries... I remember having a conversation with somebody, and asking: "This kind of tool you're using, all of the people in the publishing industry are using, right, because this would make sense. It's so easy, and why wouldn't they?" The answer was no; the publishing industry was so far behind [from a technology standpoint]. I realized the pain that authors were going through, that publishers can't help them with because they don't have the right tools or time. So you have authors left to their own devices... and they can't keep up with all the changes in technology. We decided to set up a company to focus on making the technology much easier to use for authors, and giving them tools that they need to promote and market their books in a way that takes the least amount of time out of their day so they can focus on writing.