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.

Interview with Tobias Buckell: Kickstarter Success Story and More!

I usually do these interviews on Community Fridays, but running the Kickstarter project has messed a bit with my schedule. So here ya go, a special Community Monday interview! Community is great, so what's wrong with having another day of it?

Today's interview is with Tobias Buckell. I originally contacted him to learn more about his thoughts on using Kickstarter to fund his novel The Apocalypse Ocean, but I learned a lot of other interesting stuff about him in the process. For example, it turns out that he's had TWO successful Kickstarter projects, and that he's taking the interesting hybrid approach (more and more common these days) of combining crowdfunding and traditional publishing.

Find information about his Kickstarter projects here and here, and don't forget to stop by his website and follow him on Twitter!

You departed from the world of traditional publishing to self-publish Apocalypse Ocean. Why?

I sat down with my editor to talk about how my book series had been doing up to that point, and what we felt the chances were for book four. We both felt that while sales would hold steady, due to bookstore orders decreasing with each book and sales online ticking up to match it, I was sort of stuck where I was with only tiny growth in readership from book to book. So we decided to stop doing the series and start fresh with a book, that just came out recently, called Arctic Rising. Near future instead of far future adventure. But as time ticked past core readers and fans of the first series kept asking if I'd continue writing the two books I'd planned to wrap it all up. After a while, I started eyeing the idea of crowdfunding the book, as I'd know then before I started it whether I'd gotten enough readers on board to make it a doable project.

Interview with R. S. Guthrie on Community Fridays

Welcome to Community Fridays! During this weekly event, I interview authors, editors, publishers, and pretty much anyone else who I can get my hands on from the writing and publishing community. Hope you enjoy, and feel free to suggest new participants. Check out current and past interviews here. Only have a minute? Click here for interviews at a glance.

Today's guest is R. S. Guthrie, a writer exploring different publication types and an activist promoting the use of writing to make a difference.

Your embrace of the philosophies of both self-publishing and traditional publishing struck a chord with me. Many people are vehemently for one side or the other. Can you explain why you think some books should be self-published, and others traditionally published?

This is a great question! I think traditional publishing still carries with it a (somewhat deserved) badge of prestige, whereas self-publishing carries with it a bit of a stigma. Whether we all want to admit it or not, the sea of self-published books is wide, deep, and in spots, a bit smelly. It is like everything else in life: nothing comes without cost. The problems with going the traditional route, other than potential rejection after potential rejection, I see as primarily twofold:

1. The time to publication. In this market, unless you are well-known, you might as well be an indie. The uphill marketing battle is nearly the same (and requires nearly as much work on your part). That said, getting more books out there is pretty important. If you have to wait a year and a half for your book to be released, you could be falling behind.
2. You likely lose some, if not all, rights to your work. This means your publisher can demand changes, controls price and distribution, and takes a cut. You can't just sign up for a promotion or drop the price of your book for Christmas. Not unless you obtain the permission of your publisher.

If your work is good enough for the traditional route, it may be worth it to go through the time and heartache to have it published by a known publishing house. I certainly wouldn't go through all that for a no-name publisher. Both options mean a ton of marketing work for the unestablished author. I think more and more the self-publishing route is becoming the better option, but showcasing your needle in a nearly indefinite stack of needles is a huge challenge.

On your blog, you talk about the difficulty of finding good books based purely on ratings. What do you think is a better way for readers to discover good, new authors?

Interview with Dianna Gunn on Community Fridays

I'm thrilled to be bringing Community Fridays back to my blog!

During Community Fridays, I interview authors, editors, publishers, and pretty much anyone else who I can get my hands on from the writing and publishing community. Hope you enjoy, and feel free to suggest new participants. Check out current and past interviews here. Only have a minute? Click here for interviews at a glance.

Today's guest is Dianna Gunn, an intern at the speculative fiction emagazine Penumbra, and also a writer and blogger. Stay tuned for promotion ideas for writers and tips about getting published in e-magazines.

You're working as an intern at Penumbra eMagazine, which publishes speculative fiction. Tell us a little about the magazine's focus, and how it's different than some of the others available.

First off, Penumbra is an eMagazine. Running everything online means we have a pretty low overhead compared to other magazines in the same genre, so we can afford to sell Penumbra for less without sacrificing the authors' pay. Second off, we pay our authors the professional rate of five cents per word. There are only a handful of other magazines that pay the professional rate for stories. So when you buy from us, you know you're not just supporting Penumbra--you're supporting the authors you love.