Eat Your Serial

Today we have a Q&A with Shawn Abraham – one of the people behind the site Eat Your Serial. We thought this might be of interest to our readers….check it out!                  – Catherine

Q: What kind of website is Eat Your Serial?

Eat Your Serial is a new online platform designed to connect up and coming creative talent with a hungry audience. Stories are released as serials, with a new chapter every week. At the moment, we have five concurrently running serials in a variety of genres and styles.

Q: Who are the people involved, and what are their backgrounds?

The team at Eat Your Serial is comprised of a group of dedicated and diverse individuals. The founder and President worked for Random House, the largest trade-book publisher in the world. The rest of our staff has experience in: online marketing, talent management, education, sales, and service. For more information on our team, you can visit http://eatyourserial.com/the-team/our-staff. Eat Your Serial also boasts a talented editorial staff who work closely with our authors to ensure the strongest possible end product.

Q: Can you tell readers how the idea for this site came about?

There seems to be a misnomer floating around about how nobody reads anymore. The original idea for the site stemmed from thoughts and conversations about how off the mark that is. People are reading more than ever. It’s just the mediums that are changing. People spend a remarkable amount of time reading and absorbing content on blogs, social networking sites and more. So we felt like there was a niche waiting to be explored with easily digestible portions of creative content. Serials are a tried and true method of content delivery, and we feel like audiences will respond well to our model.

Q: What types of work do you publish?

We publish work in all genres. From sci-fi and fantasy to romance and introspective semi-autobiographies. Some are funny, some are sad. We want to make sure there’s something for everybody, and we have many pieces waiting in the wings that will further diversify our list.

Q: How can writers or readers who are interested learn more about how this works?

The best way is to visit www.eatyourserial.com, and click around. Read some of the serials, leave comments, and enjoy! We’re always on the lookout for new talent, and our submission guidelines are up on the site.

Q: What are your upcoming plans for the site?

We don’t want to tip our hat too early, but we have a lot of exciting plans in the works. Looking ahead to some of the books we’re going to be publishing, we’re really proud of what our authors have been creating. But beyond that, all I can say is that I’m pretty sure there’s more to serials than just text and prose. Some of the most popular TV shows of all time were serials…

Resource: WordSpy

by Catherine L. Tully

Today just a quick resource for you vocabulary junkies out there…

WordSpy is a site that will keep you up-to-date on all the latest words being added to our language. Examples include “neurocinematics” and “pajamahadeen”.

This is a fun site with plenty to keep you occupied–just make sure you don’t get so caught up that you neglect your writing...

You can check out the top 100, or search posts by category or date. And if you’re interested, there is also a book. However you choose to consume it–it’s a good read.

Plus, you just might learn something.

Freelance-Zone Named in Writer’s Digest Top 101 Websites for Writers

A big thank you to all our readers who nominated Freelance-Zone.com for the Writer’s Digest Top 101 Websites for Writers list for 2011. Today on the Borders newsstand we found the Writer’s Digest Writer’s Yearbook 2011 edition, which lists Freelance-Zone alongside 100 other valuable resources for freelance writers including The Renegade Writer, The Copywriter Underground and many others.

2011 our third year in the running as a nominated Writer’s Digest Top 101 Website For Writers site, and for every year we’ve been able to report our name made the list, it’s clear that we couldn’t have done it without you.Without you, there’s really no reason for us to research, write, and report.

We look forward to serving you in 2011–we’re hard at work on revising our collection of Writers Groups by State and creating a brand new section, Writing Programs by State, which lists colleges, universities and independent writing centers and the programs they offer. Freelance-Zone.com has new features coming that we’ll be unveiling soon…we’re very excited about the future and we’re very grateful for your continued interest and support.

Here’s to another great year.

GuideGecko: Write Travel Guide Apps

Today on Freelance-Zone we have a special treat–GuideGecko Founder, Daniel Quadt is here to walk readers through the process of writing a travel guide app. Be sure and check out their site–it’s a great resource.               – Catherine

1. GuideGecko has a new offering for writers—a travel guide app. Can you tell us a little about what that is and how it works? 

Writers can now publish iPhone travel guide apps with GuideGecko, and sell them through Apple’s app store. You simply enter your content using our super-easy website and we’ll do the rest. The apps look really good, and they are tailor-made for travel guides. They even feature offline maps so users do not incur hefty roaming charges when using them abroad. Take a look at http://www.guidegecko.com/publish for some screenshots.

2. Are there any particular requirements for writers?

You should know your topic and have a very good command of English. It helps if you have written or contributed to travel books or online guides before, but it’s not a requirement.

3. Why did you decide to move in this direction in terms of offering travel writing content?

Apps are an extension of our existing services for writers and publishers. Since our launch in March 2009, we have published over 200 guidebooks by independent authors, as printed books and for download. Apps allow us to create much more interactive, appealing products with advanced features. For example, with the app, you can easily check for nearby restaurants when you are hungry. Or you use the interactive map to plan your itinerary.

4. What other opportunities do you have for writers?

Another exciting service that we launch together with apps is “Web publishing”, which allows writers to become part of our network of destination sites. You can earn a substantial income with destination sites through ads and booking links, and we share this income with our writers.

It’s very easy: You suggest a destination and a topic, e.g. “New York on a Budget” or “Paris with Kids” and publish your content on GuideGecko.com. We promote the individual sub-sites and the network as a whole, leading to synergies that are very difficult and time consuming to achieve for individual authors. Just think of all the Search Engine Optimization you would have to do to bring in visitors! It’s much easier to attract visitors to a large site, and the network effect naturally leads more visitors to the individual sub-sites.

Web publishing is also ideal for writers who know their topic, but don’t want to bother about site structure, HTML+CSS, layout, Adsense, and so on. We manage all that, and writers can concentrate on what they know (and like) best.

Even better: If you want to do Web publishing and iPhone apps together, you have to enter the content only once. We can use the same content for apps and for the web.

5. How can people find out more information about writing for GuideGecko?

Simply go to http://www.guidegecko.com/publish. This page has all the info, and you can apply for web publishing and to make an app.

Please Vote: Writers Digest 101 Best Websites For Writers 2011

It’s that time again…please nominate Freelance-Zone.com for the Writers Digest 101 Best Websites for Writers list by sending an email to writersdig@fwpubs.com with the phrase 101 Best Websites in your subject line.

In your e-mail, please mention you’re nominating Freelance-Zone.com for the 101 Best Websites for Writers list, hit send, and your vote has been cast! We greatly appreciate being nominated for the 2011 list.

As always, thank you for making Freelance-Zone.com a success. We’ve been named on the Writers Digest 101 Best Websites list two years running now, and we’re very grateful for those who helped make that possible.

Writers’ Bookshelf: “Toxic Feedback” by Joni B. Cole

Writer’s Bookshelf: Toxic Feedback by Joni B. Cole

Book review by Erin Dalpini

J.K. Rowling, Stephanie Meyer, John Grisham, and Stephen King. What do these writers have in common? Their first novels were rejected at least a dozen times (in King’s case, dozens), before being published. Imagine what we would have missed out on if those writers took to heart the negative feedback they received in the form of rejection letters or unanswered queries. Negative feedback stinks. But far worse than negative feedback is toxic feedback, the kind of commentary that makes any writer want to curl up in the corner and wallow or worse yet, stop writing all together.

Experienced writing workshop leader and author Joni B. Cole knows a lot about this kind of feedback. So much, in fact, that she decided to write a book about it. In Toxic Feedback, Cole addresses not only the problem of toxic feedback, but also proper responses to it.  If you’ve ever suffered from a severe case of “It’s all wrong”-itis—I’m looking at you, fiction/creative nonfiction writers—take note: this is definitely your go-to book. Toxic Feedback is a light-hearted, engaging look at the best (and worst) ways to process feedback, and how to, a-hem, go about dishing it out in a polite manner.

“As a writer, you have no hope of surviving, let alone thriving in, the feedback process if you don’t first recognize your own role in creating the kind of toxicity that can result in literary paralysis or an assault charge,” asserts Cole. … Continue Reading