It's going to be 2010 in 45 minutes. It's pretty cool.
But for now, I sit at Phil Dragash's house and watch people play Halo.
2009 was a geat yeaqr full of so many different things in both my personal and professional life...I cannot express how much I will love this year and how eager I am for the year to come. 2010 will herald a decade to remember. Which includes both my high school and college graduations.
That's weird to think about.
Dawson
www.DAWSONVOSBURG.net
5 self-publishing resources
Here are my top 5 self-publishing resources for all you self-publishing authors out there:
Dawson Vosburg
www.DAWSONVOSBURG.net
- Marketing Tips for Authors
- POD People by Jeremy Robinson
- Dan Poynter's Self Publishing Manual
- Get Published TV
- CreateSpace Self-Publishing
Dawson Vosburg
www.DAWSONVOSBURG.net
terminal velocity launch
With all the hustle and bustle going on around me, I've not remembered to introduce everyone to Terminal Velocity, the sequel to Double Life. Terminal Velocity has been released unto the world!
Terminal Velocity, I can guarantee, is more interesting, intriguing, thrilling, and exciting than Double Life (and exceeding Double Life's length by 40 pages). In Terminal Velocity, you will get to know better Josiah, but also your understanding of Tom will grow exponentially. You will also get to meet the slimy, untrustworthy RED veteran--Lewis Trenton.
But certainly the most intriguing and mysterious of all aspects of the new novel is the appearance of a "mysterious third party" calling themselves by the alias GREEN, including a French general and a mysterious (and short-statured) savior to Josiah.
Here's the book trailer for the all-new novel, Terminal Velocity:
Terminal Velocity by Dawson Vosburg - Book Trailer from Dawson Vosburg on Vimeo.
As you can see, this is going to be an exciting novel in an exciting time. Pick up your copy of Terminal Velocity today!
Dawson
www.dawsonvosburg.net
Terminal Velocity, I can guarantee, is more interesting, intriguing, thrilling, and exciting than Double Life (and exceeding Double Life's length by 40 pages). In Terminal Velocity, you will get to know better Josiah, but also your understanding of Tom will grow exponentially. You will also get to meet the slimy, untrustworthy RED veteran--Lewis Trenton.
But certainly the most intriguing and mysterious of all aspects of the new novel is the appearance of a "mysterious third party" calling themselves by the alias GREEN, including a French general and a mysterious (and short-statured) savior to Josiah.
Here's the book trailer for the all-new novel, Terminal Velocity:
Terminal Velocity by Dawson Vosburg - Book Trailer from Dawson Vosburg on Vimeo.
As you can see, this is going to be an exciting novel in an exciting time. Pick up your copy of Terminal Velocity today!
Dawson
www.dawsonvosburg.net
newsletter
Hey, everyone--it's been a great time for me recently. I've enjoyed some time hanging out with family, with shopping, laughing, and as always, good food (more of which to follow tomorrow night; I'm making my famous pizza I've been perfecting for years).
I wanted to let everyone know that I have a newsletter that I'll be sending out every week to those who opt in to subscribe. Here's the form:
If you want to keep up on news beyond the window you get from this blog, you can sign up and get a couple issues. You can unsubscribe any time you want if you decide you don't want to have an email all about books in your inbox every week.
Thanks to those who signed up--look forward to the first issue later this week!
Dawson
http://dawsonvosburg.net
I wanted to let everyone know that I have a newsletter that I'll be sending out every week to those who opt in to subscribe. Here's the form:
If you want to keep up on news beyond the window you get from this blog, you can sign up and get a couple issues. You can unsubscribe any time you want if you decide you don't want to have an email all about books in your inbox every week.
Thanks to those who signed up--look forward to the first issue later this week!
Dawson
http://dawsonvosburg.net
dawsonvosburg.net
Hey. Hope you had a merry Christmas. I know I did.
Take a look at the web URL at the top of the browser. It isn't dawsonvosburg.blogspot.com anymore.
That's right, I finally have a website. It was my best Christmas gift from my brother David (who does a ton of web design). You should check out http://www.dawsonvosburg.net and see how awesome it can be.
And if you're stuck in a rut of typing http://dawsonvosburg.blogspot.com like I know I am, it will redirect right to blog.dawsonvosburg.net.
I know, most people have .coms, Dawson--get your head out of the sand. But http://dawsonvosburg.com is already taken. And if you look at it, it's pretty dumb.
Dawson
Take a look at the web URL at the top of the browser. It isn't dawsonvosburg.blogspot.com anymore.
That's right, I finally have a website. It was my best Christmas gift from my brother David (who does a ton of web design). You should check out http://www.dawsonvosburg.net and see how awesome it can be.
And if you're stuck in a rut of typing http://dawsonvosburg.blogspot.com like I know I am, it will redirect right to blog.dawsonvosburg.net.
I know, most people have .coms, Dawson--get your head out of the sand. But http://dawsonvosburg.com is already taken. And if you look at it, it's pretty dumb.
Dawson
not your grandmother's book trailer
Check out the book trailer for Double Life (made it today (finally) in two hours). The effect is best in full-screen. Even if it takes some extra buffer time, it's worth it.
This is not your grandmother's book trailer.
I did this with so much attention to it looking good and being short and sweet because so many people don't do book trailers very well. When I see a book trailer that has Windows MovieMaker effects on top of their Comic Sans-font text that fills up the whole screen, it makes me want to rip my hair out. Add in some Google image search results and you've got the average, made-in-5-minutes promo.
I like to call it a demotion, since you're lowering your audience's expectations for the book. Look, I know what they all say--book trailers move books. But really, if you can't make it good, it's going to end up hurting more than helping.
Dawson
This is not your grandmother's book trailer.
I did this with so much attention to it looking good and being short and sweet because so many people don't do book trailers very well. When I see a book trailer that has Windows MovieMaker effects on top of their Comic Sans-font text that fills up the whole screen, it makes me want to rip my hair out. Add in some Google image search results and you've got the average, made-in-5-minutes promo.
I like to call it a demotion, since you're lowering your audience's expectations for the book. Look, I know what they all say--book trailers move books. But really, if you can't make it good, it's going to end up hurting more than helping.
Dawson
today in books: trends
If you haven't noticed before, there are a lot of trends in the book world. For six months a certain genre or idea for a novel will be very popular with bibliophiles, then it will shift to another.
In no other super-genre (it's not a regular genre--it's far too big for that) is this more true that Young Adult Fiction. Literary fiction comes in at a close second.
Let's look at this closely: when Harry Potter was king (and to me it's still fresh in my mind) there were tons of traditional old fantasy novel. And now, when Twilight's king, there is no end to what the vampire world will see. I can't imagine what way they'll find to take a classic creature, ruin it (or as they call it putting a "twist" on it) and make a girl fall head over heels for it.
But you can tend to notice a pattern with this. There's that one breakthrough novel, that one really good book that everyone wants to read and is many times excellent in writing and plot and description (exception, of course, being Twilight, which has garnered popularity through flowery writing people say is "good" and a "hot" male character). And the rest of books that go with this trend are usually low-quality, B-grade books or below.
The question that this gives is that as a reader or writer, what do you want to be: someone who makes a new trend, or one who follows another popular author to ride on the coattails?
By rule, a person who sets a trend has to go out of the current comfort zone and read what no one is really read about. This means risk. This means you might have to even self-publish or read books by authors no one has ever heard of.
Or you could be a trend follower, swinging along with whatever's going along.
Neither of these are always right, neither are always wrong. If what you legitimately want to read or write is not the norm right now, do it anyway. This is how all the trends we see today are set. If your passion leads you to somewhere that appears to be overdone, there have been great successes for revitalizing a genre that was once thought to be dead.
So just think about it when you next walk into the Barnes&Noble nearest you or sit down in that good-old Starbucks to pen the first words of your next work of fiction. Think about what you're going to do with what's out there, and you may end up setting the next trend.
Dawson
In no other super-genre (it's not a regular genre--it's far too big for that) is this more true that Young Adult Fiction. Literary fiction comes in at a close second.
Let's look at this closely: when Harry Potter was king (and to me it's still fresh in my mind) there were tons of traditional old fantasy novel. And now, when Twilight's king, there is no end to what the vampire world will see. I can't imagine what way they'll find to take a classic creature, ruin it (or as they call it putting a "twist" on it) and make a girl fall head over heels for it.
But you can tend to notice a pattern with this. There's that one breakthrough novel, that one really good book that everyone wants to read and is many times excellent in writing and plot and description (exception, of course, being Twilight, which has garnered popularity through flowery writing people say is "good" and a "hot" male character). And the rest of books that go with this trend are usually low-quality, B-grade books or below.
The question that this gives is that as a reader or writer, what do you want to be: someone who makes a new trend, or one who follows another popular author to ride on the coattails?
By rule, a person who sets a trend has to go out of the current comfort zone and read what no one is really read about. This means risk. This means you might have to even self-publish or read books by authors no one has ever heard of.
Or you could be a trend follower, swinging along with whatever's going along.
Neither of these are always right, neither are always wrong. If what you legitimately want to read or write is not the norm right now, do it anyway. This is how all the trends we see today are set. If your passion leads you to somewhere that appears to be overdone, there have been great successes for revitalizing a genre that was once thought to be dead.
So just think about it when you next walk into the Barnes&Noble nearest you or sit down in that good-old Starbucks to pen the first words of your next work of fiction. Think about what you're going to do with what's out there, and you may end up setting the next trend.
Dawson
six
That's how many copies of Terminal Velocity are currently in customers' posession.
You can get your copy right now right here. They just came out today, so they're fresh off the presses.
By the way, this marks my least successful book signing yet! I feel like I need to celebrate somehow.
But right now I'm bushed from doing a local production of A Christmas Carol, so I'll be off. Be sure to pick up a copy of Terminal Velocity, all of you who have been waiting anxiously.
Dawson
You can get your copy right now right here. They just came out today, so they're fresh off the presses.
By the way, this marks my least successful book signing yet! I feel like I need to celebrate somehow.
But right now I'm bushed from doing a local production of A Christmas Carol, so I'll be off. Be sure to pick up a copy of Terminal Velocity, all of you who have been waiting anxiously.
Dawson
morning thoughts: stretched too thin
First, there was this blog.
Then there was Twitter.
Then Facebook.
Tumblr.
Linkedin.
And you discover more every day. There are so many social networking sites, not to mention ones just for books like Goodreads and LibraryThing and Shelfari, that you try to sign up for all of them and get quite overwhelmed.
Don't let this happen to you, O writer. That is, if you are a writer.
If you're a reader, well...make sure to follow the author on every social network you both have. That will help him out. But let me ask, as a reader, does it get a bit cumbersome to follow the same person on twelve social networks when you could just follow him on the basic four?
Just a few thoughts about the social networking explosion.
Then there was Twitter.
Then Facebook.
Tumblr.
Linkedin.
And you discover more every day. There are so many social networking sites, not to mention ones just for books like Goodreads and LibraryThing and Shelfari, that you try to sign up for all of them and get quite overwhelmed.
Don't let this happen to you, O writer. That is, if you are a writer.
If you're a reader, well...make sure to follow the author on every social network you both have. That will help him out. But let me ask, as a reader, does it get a bit cumbersome to follow the same person on twelve social networks when you could just follow him on the basic four?
Just a few thoughts about the social networking explosion.
today in books: kindle for pc
Kindle has been advancing more and more--I've been nothing but astonished at how the technology is moving forward. Now there are several competitors, such as the Sony reader and the Nook from Barnes & Noble.
Now Kindle has come up with a really good idea--Kindle for PC. If you don't have the 270 bucks to shell out for a specialty eBook reader, now you can just download it for your PC (and there's a Mac version in the works).
Although I am unable to download it for normal everyday use (I use Suse Linux and not Windows) I think this is definitely a convenient idea. Especially since it costs a total of nothing compared to $270 for the reader. And since most people already have laptops that run Windows (unfortunately) this is a great marketing opportunity for authors.
I'd encourage you to download this. If you're tight on money it would really save you quite a bit (and for your favorite books, nothing replaces the real paper stuff, so you can use the eBooks for pretty much everything else). If you've intended to buy my book but you've been short on funds, this would be a good opportunity to buy the Kindle version.
Very interesting idea, though--will the other publishing companies follow suit? You can discuss it by commenting on this post.
Dawson
Now Kindle has come up with a really good idea--Kindle for PC. If you don't have the 270 bucks to shell out for a specialty eBook reader, now you can just download it for your PC (and there's a Mac version in the works).
Although I am unable to download it for normal everyday use (I use Suse Linux and not Windows) I think this is definitely a convenient idea. Especially since it costs a total of nothing compared to $270 for the reader. And since most people already have laptops that run Windows (unfortunately) this is a great marketing opportunity for authors.
I'd encourage you to download this. If you're tight on money it would really save you quite a bit (and for your favorite books, nothing replaces the real paper stuff, so you can use the eBooks for pretty much everything else). If you've intended to buy my book but you've been short on funds, this would be a good opportunity to buy the Kindle version.
Very interesting idea, though--will the other publishing companies follow suit? You can discuss it by commenting on this post.
Dawson