Natalia M. Sylvester

Like I mentioned in a previous post, I’m still on the fence about the whole traditional books vs digital books debate. While traveling over Labor Day weekend, I’m sure I made a few airplane passengers uncomfortable as I lingered in the aisle a bit too long, peeking over their shoulders at their Kindles. Yes, they carried less baggage on board than I did with their slick screens and 1,500 book memory, but I happily sat in my seat and finished my paperback copy of Elizabeth Strout’s Olive Kitteridge. Now that I’m halfway through another book (The Art of Mending by Elizabeth Berg) I’ve noticed I’ve been hypersensitive to the experience of holding a book in my hand.

I can safely say that I’ve taken quite a few steps back towards the traditional books side of the fence, and what’s made the difference are the little things. These are things that make the experience of reading a book worth holding on to.

1. When I read a book in bed at the end of a long day, my bookmark rests on my belly, and re-inserting it into the book’s pages when I’m done brings a sense of accomplishment.

2. Squeezing the book and seeing how the bookmark’s placement moves from the beginning, to the middle, to the end of the pages. It’s progress.

3. Dog ears. Yes, I use bookmarks to keep my place, but I use dog ears when I find a line in a book that just shakes me, to the point that I know that on a random day a few months from now, when I’m making a cup of tea or heading out of my home on a hectic day, I’ll want to pluck the book from its shelf and read those lines,  let the words grab me over and over.

4. I love that when I’m done with a book, its spine is a bit worn and the cover’s edges curl up ever so slightly, proof that it was read and loved.

Would love to hear readers’ thoughts, from either side of the fence.

You knew this was coming. Everyone’s talking about it. Local news stations have an account. Your kids’ PTA has one. Most of the blogs you follow have one. Heck, even your dry cleaner has one.

So what can you really get out of Twitter other than updates on your friends’ lunches and the whereabouts of your coworkers on their off days?

Short, insightful glimpses into the lives of people that matter to you.

Now, let’s not get personal. I’m not talking about a best friend or a grandchild. I’m talking about people that matter to your goals. I was just as hesitant to join Twitter as the next guy until I realized how many literary agents tweet little nuggets of information to whomever is willing to listen in. The result is that I’ve learned more about publishing from Twitter than I would have from any book. Getting the information in such concise spurts (and from so many different perspectives) leaves no room for jargon or overwhelming confusion. The point is…people get to the point.

The hardest thing about joining Twitter is figuring out who to follow (follow me!). Shameless plug aside, if you have a book in the works and you’d like to learn a thing or two about publishing, here are my recommendations for some of the most informative literary agents you’ll find on Twitter (shall we call them Twiterary agents? Sound too creepy? Yeah, I thought so, too). Read the rest of this entry »

Outside of this blog, I don’t usually tell people that I’m writing a novel. Sure, my family and close friends know, and the topic might have come up here and there over lunch with a few acquaintances, but I usually try not to make a big fuss over it because, well…most people make a big fuss over it.

My parents and sister swear my book will be a bestseller. Friends ask me if I’m done writing it so that they can buy it in stores (if only it were that simple, right?).

But I’m trying to be a realist. I’ve tried to immerse myself in the world of publishing and researched how it works. I’ve read the do’s and don’ts of writing a query letter and know that when the time comes, mine will be up against a digital pile so high it may take some agent several minutes of scrolling to get through them all. I know that even once I have an agent they’ll have to sell an editor on it, and even if a publishing house buys the book it won’t make it an automatic bestseller.

I’m armed with a sense of reality only attainable by keeping an eye on with those who are actually in the biz. I’m betting plenty of the writers who read this blog and other publishing blogs are with me on this: When people tell us they can’t wait till our books become movies, we just kind of nod and smile politely. There’s no need to tell them that in actuality, many books that are optioned for films just get shelved, never to see as much as a script or a pre-production meeting.

But I have to wonder, are we being such realists that we’ve become cynics? Maybe we shouldn’t underestimate the value of talking about our books with people who aren’t in publishing.

After all, we are so in tune with the hardships of publishing that we often forget to pat ourselves on the back (or, as Nathan Bransford suggested, give ourselves a big hug) for writing a book in the first place. We need other people’s enthusiasm to remind us that yes, in fact, it IS so cool that we’re writing a book, and yes, it IS amazing that we’ve stuck with something for so many years despite not knowing if we’ll ever get paid for it. Maybe we need to look at our accomplishments through an outsider’s eyes every once in a while to stay motivated.

And, feel-good emotions aside, we should talk about our books with non-publishing people because, though they may not be editors, they could be our readers down the road. If you tell someone about your work, you can usually tell who’s feigning enthusiasm and who’s truly interested, and you can learn a lot about what does and doesn’t work from both types of people. You’ll also learn how to describe your book in just a few sentences, because chances are that’s all most people will tolerate over drinks at a dinner party or loud music at a club.

And no, you won’t jinx it by talking about it. The way I see it, that only happens when you brag, right?

Last week on Nathan Bransford’s blog, he wrote about how his preferred method of e-reading is, surprisingly, on the iPhone. When it comes to eBooks I’ve been kind of like a child who wants to walk over a frozen pond but worries he’ll fall through the ice: I’m curious about it, sure, but there’s a little voice in the back of my mind that hesitates, that’s all uppity,  yelling “you can’t be a real bookworm if you’ve got no books on your shelf!”

So I read Nathan’s post and went to bed that night with my flimsy, paperback, pages you can smell, copy of Elizabeth Strout’s Olive Kitteridge. My husband was lying next to me with his G1 phone, reading what I assumed were a quick couple of emails or Twitter updates before bed. Twenty minutes passed and I noticed he was still reading, so I asked him what he was doing.

“Just reading some articles,” he said.

There, in our bed, was our own microcosm of the whole traditional vs. digital reading debate. Read the rest of this entry »