Authors, Book Column, Book Talk, Events

Four Southern Book Festivals

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If you live in the South then you know the value of sweet tea and front porches. It’s those values that the following four book festivals, no matter how big or small they are, has in spades. Plus, you get to meet authors, listen to readings, buy books, and get your books signed. Did I mention there are books there? Check out what these four Southern book festivals have to offer in 2014:

Alabama Book FestivalAlabama Book Festival  Saturday, April 19, 2014 – for its 9th year, it will be held in Montgomery, AL’s, beautiful Old Alabama Town . It’s a wonderful venue, with walking paths between period buildings filled with authors giving talks and books to be bought. The Alabama Book Festival also has a great Children’s area with costumed characters and free books for kids. All those front porches in Old Alabama Town also mean that you never have to fear the rain as there’s always a place to gain cover.

Decatur Book FestivalDecatur Book Festival August 29th – August 31st, 2014 – this is a pretty large event, in Decatur, GA, and worth making the trip, if you don’t mind crowds. They have yet to publish a schedule or list of authors who will be attending, but they always have a list of big names that are fun to see (and have sign copies of your books!).

Southern Festival of BooksSouthern Festival of Books October 10th – October 12th, 2014 – this is another big event, in Nashville, TN. They always have 250+ authors, plus the added bonus of hosting a special venue for readings, literary performances and music (hey, it’s Nashville). I’ve heard that the hotel rooms are already all booked up. But they’re also planning an Authors in the Round Dinner, where you can buy a ticket to eat and chat with 40 visiting authors. That sounds kind of neat.

Mid-South Book FestivalMid-South Book Festival September 27th, 2014 – this one is a bit of a dark horse… a start up… a black swan, maybe? Held in Memphis, TN, this will be the inaugural year for Literacy Mid-South’s new book festival.  I don’t know what to expect, but I’m excited, because the folks organizing sure seem excited. It’s 2014, everyone should be in start-up mode, right!? I can’t wait to see what these folks put together to promote books and a life-long love of reading.

Book Talk, library, On the Web

Largest Photo Is of the Inside of a Library

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One of the largest indoor photos ever posted online comes in at over 40 gigapixels and is a fly-around-the-room tour of a library! How awesome is this place?

strahov library largest photo

This single image is made up of more than 3,000 images stitched together. If they were printed out the site claims the photo would be 78 feet long!

strahov largest library photo

This gargantuan gigapixel image has been online since 2011, showing the world the largest and smallest details of the Strahov Library. The Strahov Llibrary is in Prague inside the Strahov Monastery.

largest photo of a library

I could just watch this image all day checking out all of the spines in such detail. What an amazing library. This 40 gigapixel image is very cool, but I bet this place is something else when seen in person.

Book Talk

New Site Focuses on Business Books

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Simon & Schuster has launched 250words.com, which professes to be a “publisher agnostic” site focused on business books.

Staffed by five folks from with in S&S’s ranks, they report they will deliver daily a short single 250-word single post sharing some business wisdom or inspiration gleaned from a business book.

250words.com bookshelf

At launch, the seem to already have dozens of posts written. No doubt there will be no shortage of topics and titles to discuss. It’s amazing how many business books get published every year.

This year book publishers are aggressively going after “verticals” or “niches” or “silos” or “walled gardens”, etc. This is a tactic to answer the way people search and buy books these days. It’s something that has been refined by tor.com (one of my favorites) and narnia.com, plus a few others.

I’m anxious to see what the folks at Simon & Schuster make of 250words.com. They are also on Twitter and Facebook, if you want to check them out there.

If 250words.com doesn’t fit the bill for you, I would recommend you check out:

  1. 800CEOread – a blog about business books that I really enjoy. It’s certainly one of the most consistent ones out there
  2. Todd Sattersten – he’s a consultant for writers of business books, but his posts and twitter feed are always on my “to read” list
Authors, Book Column, Writing

Amor Towles Talks Writing

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Amor Towles’ Rules of Civility was one of my favorite books I read in 2012. It’s such a good book and so well written. I just ran across this very short interview with Towles asking about his writing and writing habits. I was surprised that Rules of Civility was written in just a year! And it was intentionally done so:

I gave myself one year to write that first draft because I wanted to maintain the brightness, the lightness, the nice poetic urgency that is part of the first draft.

You see, that makes sense to me. That’s actually encouraging. In the interview, Towles also offers some thoughts on inspiration and finding time to write (he had two young kids when he wrote Rules of Civility).

Amor Towels

But I also like what he had to say about revising his work:

I revised Rules of Civility from beginning to end three times in three years. All of that revision work was driven by the goal of economy.

It wasn’t about just the poetry or turn of a phrase, though if you read Towels’ book you’ll see he nailed those as well. I like the idea of writing with economy in mind. That has a very ‘newspaper’ feel to it. A feel that a reader would find useful and appreciate when reading a long novel.

Go read the full article. It’ll only take you a few minutes, but it’s packed (economically so) with wonderful insights that are immediately applicable to your own writing. And Amor Towels pulls no punches when it comes to “being a writer”:

Writing is a craft. It’s not a mystical state. It’s not a single emotion. It is craft.

And a craft can be learned. Very insightful and encouraging!

Books, Publishing and Birmingham