The final video interview I did at the Montrose Christian Writers Conference (MCWC) was on the last morning, Friday. Writer Cathy Mayfield lives a couple of hours from Montrose and has been attending the MCWC since 1997. She talks about why she keeps returning each year and offers her advice for new writers. Thanks for taking time to speak with me on camera Cathy!
Two of the biggest and brightest minds in the world of business (both of them authors), talk about why blogging is vitally important—for everyone! But especially for authors. Seth Godin, once VP of marketing for Yahoo! and author of books like Purple Cow, Permission Marketing and Linchpin sounds off about blogging, as does Tom Peters, once upon a time from McKinsey & Co and the author of business blockbusters including In Search of Excellence. The video is only 1 minute 37 seconds long. Give it a look.
While at the Montrose Christian Writers Conference (MCWC), I caught up with Mary Sue Seymour from The Seymour Agency taking a break and rocking on the porch (a favorite hangout during the MCWC). Mary Sue talked about her role at this year’s conference, what type of books she’s looking to sign, the best way to contact her if you have a book proposal and her thoughts about the MCWC. Thanks for chatting with me Mary Sue!
Multiple news sources are reporting that Barnes & Noble, the bookseller with 720 stores and the recent Nook e-reader, is thinking about putting itself up for sale. (Full disclosure: B&N is my favorite book or any other kind of store. I’m a fan.)
Being a publicly traded company, B&N is constantly under pressure to try and make its stock performance attractive for investors. And it’s falling short. So one of the options is to put itself on the auction block. Possible buyers include the founder and chairman of the board Leonard Riggio who, it’s said, is looking at putting together an investment group to buy out the company and take it private.
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At the 2010 Montrose Christian Writers Conference (MCWC), I had the pleasure of meeting popular Christian fantasy author Bryan Davis and his lovely wife Susie. In fact, I had dinner with them (we sat at the same table) on the last evening of the conference. It was a treat for me to talk with both Bryan and Susie about writing, how they came to live in Tennessee, home schooling and even Harry Potter. 😉 Bryan is the author of the very popular Dragons in our Midst series, as well as Oracles of Fire and Echoes from the Edge, among others.
After dinner, I caught up with Bryan to ask him about the MCWC. This is what he said…
Contemporary and historical romance novelist Patricia Ryan recently had an online “chat” with TeleRead where she offered her insights and predictions about established authors turning to self-publishing via e-books. Since 1995, Ryan has authored 27 novels and novellas for the likes of Bantam, Berkley Prime Crime, Signet, NAL, Harlequin and and St. Martin’s. It’s a big deal when established authors like Ryan start trumpeting self-publishing with e-books. Here’s one small section of the interview I found enlightening:
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Once upon a time, not more than a year ago, Firefox was my favorite web browser. But then updates came along for Firefox that made it extremely slow on my old Windows XP machine. And I had troubles with some of the extensions (little helper programs that embed in the browser). Having no choice, because speed is such a critical issue, I changed to Google Chrome. And I haven’t looked back.
It seems I’m not the only one who came to the same conclusion about Firefox. From PC World via Yahoo! News:
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