About Us — The Human Face of Digital Publishing
When I started Stillpoint Digital Press in 2011, all that I intended to do was to take my own varied experience as a writer, an editor, and an ebook designer and offer a service that was both more professional and more personal than that offered by the ebook self-publishing "services": digital publishing with a human face. From the beginning, that idea has resonated — and has brought me in directions that I never anticipated.
News from the Stillpoint
Timepiece giveaway ends tomorrow!
Goodreads Book Giveaway
BAIPA Needs Judges!
The Bay Area Independent Publishers Association is a diverse and open group involved in the world of independent publishing, from folks who simply have a book idea to published authors, editors to illustrators, readers to reviewers, agents to printers, audio book experts to book shepherds.
—Becky Parker Geist, BAIPA Board of Directors, President
WOULD YOU LIKE TO JUDGE SELF-PUBLISHED BOOKS?
- Judges will be asked to read up to five books from Sept. 30 to Jan. 15.
- Read in one of six genres (your choice): Fiction, Non-Fiction, Memoir, Young Adult, Children’s, Poetry
- Judges will read, review, and judge books using criteria provided by BAIPA.
- Judges will receive either a complementary BAIPA annual membership worth $90 or an honorarium of $75 (your choice).
By agreeing to judge books for BAIPA’s contest, you will be making an important contribution to independently published authors.
WE NEED YOUR HELP TO SERVE AS A JUDGE.
Please contact Bev Scott: [email protected]
Include name, email, the college/university, library, bookstore or organization that recommended you as a judge, and which genre you would prefer to read.
Roundup: 6 More Interesting Posts on Ebook Publishing!
We’re back! Here are 6 more interesting online publishing tidbits, coming at you hot off the (digital) press.
- Looking for tips on how to successfully interface with readers online? Don’t reply to comments when you’re hangry, and other helpful tips from Neiman Lab.
- For those not in attendance at the recent London Book Fair, here were bestselling author Joanna Penn’s main take-aways.
- Facebook’s newsfeed feature is constantly evolving — read this Social Media Today article to keep up to date with how to use its algorithms to your advantage.
- For those not up to date with Google’s new GDPR-compliant policy, here’s an interesting read on why publishing trade groups aren’t happy with the tech-giant’s latest update.
- If you’ve really been living under a rock re: literary scandals, here’s a quick update on why the Nobel Prize in Literature is postponing this year’s award.
- I recently stumbled across this list of best publishing podcasts, and have to say, I’m impressed! If you’re looking for a good listen, shuffle through a few of these — you’ll certainly learn something.
Also, Stillpoint publisher David Kudler posted recently on TheBookDesigner.com about whether or not it makes sense to offer your ebook for free — and the best way to make that happen if you decide it does. Check it out!
Questions? Comments? Concerns? Feel free to let us know below!
Musings
Toss them out the window! Using and forgetting the Hero’s Journey
This morning, I was giving a talk to a group of writers on Joseph Campbell and the Hero Journey or Monomyth (in this case, specifically with regards to setting, rather than plot or character). I ran the group through a basic overview of Campbell’s schema, and gave them a number of examples from movies (since visuals are always helpful) — including two movies that I know for a fact consciously used Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces as inspiration: Star Wars: A New Hope and The Matrix. And I mentioned that, while I loved the first Matrix movie, I felt as if I could hear the pages of Campbell’s magnum opus turning as Neo’s journey progressed. Call to Adventure? Check. Crossing the Threshold? Check. Belly of the Beast? Double-check…
One of the participants asked, very reasonably, how to use and honor the Hero’s Journey schema without falling into the trap of writing a story that is formulaic.
When I was studying to be an actor, we had a wonderful master teacher named Archie Smith. Now in addition to being a terrific teacher, he was also (though in his late 60s) still an actor and a student of acting; he would sit in on many of our classes with other teachers and go through the exercises they had us work on, then apply them to his own work on stage and talk to us about what he’d learned.
One day, one of our classmates asked Archie how we could keep all of our acting fresh, even as we tried to apply all of these technical concepts that we were learning. Archie told us to learn all of the techniques that he and our other teachers were giving us, to internalize them… and then, he said with great glee, “Toss them out the window!”
When I’m writing, I try to think about the Monomyth cycle (and about all of the other skills and techniques I’ve picked up) as I’m researching, outlining, and note-taking. But then I put all of out of my mind as much as possible. I take Archie (and Binky) to heart, and… toss them out the window.
I almost always find that in my books (for example, Risuko), I’ve followed the schema — just not quite as slavishly (hopefully) as they did in The Matrix. 😉
I think Campbell would say that the story will tend to follow the pattern whether we want it to or not — it’s an expression of the structures of the unconscious mind, after all.
However, being conscious of those structures allows us to make choices about how we want to follow the pattern. Knowing that the setting of the world of supernatural wonder (“the forest adventurous,” “the land of adventure,” etc.) has to reflect an inversion of some sort to the world where we and the protagonist started out allows us to make choices about what exactly is going to change, so we can make notes, draw, collect pictures…
Then toss them out the window and write.
Review: Lethal White — Deadly Fun
Since The Cuckoo’s Calling, I’ve enjoyed the Cormoran Strike series, written by J.K. Rowling as Robert Galbraith. Each entry has been a mind-tickling, exciting mystery in the old-style gumshoe detective vein, with all of the flourishes that made Rowling’s Harry Potter books so enjoyable — memorable characters, sly humor, exciting plot, and a deft hand at shifting moods unexpectedly. The latest entry in the series, Lethal White, provides many of the delights of the earlier books while revealing increased skill on the author’s part — but also revealing a disappointing tendency toward formula. Continue reading Review: Lethal White — Deadly Fun
Weekly Roundup
With the summer solstice comes longer days. With longer days comes more time for reading! Here’s this week’s roundup of what we found interesting in the world of ePublishing.
Weekly Roundup — What’s new in digital publishing?
From a scandal that rocked the world of digital publishing to some nice, relaxing podcast recommendations, here’s our latest weekly roundup. Continue reading Weekly Roundup — What’s new in digital publishing?
Elements of Style: CSS for Ebooks
I originally published this post on Joel Friedlander’s wonderful resource for self-publishers, TheBookDesigner.com
If HTML is the blueprint, showing how an ebook (or a web page) should be laid out, Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) are the interior design, saying how everything should look. While that may sound superficial, in fact learning to use CSS can have a profound impact on your ebook.
This is a somewhat complicated topic, so I am going to take three posts to cover it. This time round, I’m going to show you what CSS is and how to apply it. In the second post, I’m going to look at some of the different properties that you can use to define how your ebook looks. And in the last post, I’m going to talk about how to know which rules take precedence when.