Calling All Poets for The Common Good!

Common Good’s Amateur Love Poem Contest

Sharpen those pencils, ye poets of old, and young, and in between. Garrison Keillor and his bookstore, Common Good Books, St. Paul, Minn., have created the “Common Good Amateur Love Poem Contest” and are inviting poets who have not yet published a book of poetry to submit “poems of love or praise.”

The winner will be announced at the store’s “afternoon of poetry” Sunday, April 21, in the Weyerhaeuser Chapel at Macalester College.

“Poetry is a record of the life around us and in us, and you’ll get a better idea from poetry what it was like to be alive in 2011 than you will from the New York Times.”–Garrison Keillor

Copies of the winning poem will be published in Common Good’s newsletter, and will be printed and made available at the store.

Entries may be up to 14 lines or 200 words long and are due by March 18, with a limit of one entry per person. Poems should be mailed to info@commongoodbooks.com.

Finalists will be announced April 1, the start of National Poetry Month, at which point the store will display copies of the poems, and customers can vote for their favorites during the following two weeks.

2.5 Hours Later . . . .

Doing business taxes late at night is unbearable,
thank heaven there’s Turbo Tax.

Although, when you’re Number 330 in the TT Support Team’s chat que . . .

Oswa-a-a-a-a-ldo!

Where’s that double-expresso!

The Voice of an Angel — or something like it

This week we’ve been searching for a voice over artist. We’re putting Lily Does Sweden out as an audiobook, so audiobook narrator required. We’re going ACX.

ACX, for those of you that don’t know, is the Audio Creation Exchange. They are a partner of Audible.com and a wing of Amazon. ACX connects publishers (or authors) to VO talent.

Anyone can sign up as a narrator and apply for a project by submitting an audition — feel free to audition, the script is on ACX — but authors and publishers can also use ACX to invite narrators to audition too.

ACX has over 10,000 voices to sample. They have a sorting system to cut down the crush, but don’t get your hopes up.

1. Many ACX demo reels are of poor sound quality. We eliminated over 100 people because we thought they didn’t have the technical know how to produce an audiobook based on their poor quality reel.
2. Good quality VO reels, but it’s several commercials strung together. This type of reel tells you nothing about how well a VO artist can narrate a book. So they don’t get chosen.
3. One or two good reels, but the work doesn’t demonstrate a wide range of abilities. The reels don’t display the sort of voice or style you’re looking for, so you have to assume they can’t do what you need. That’s more talent passed over.

We narrowed our invite list down to 21 voices — all female.

From there we did a second round of listening (combined with looking at their various websites to find out more about each potential candidate — sometimes there are more demo reels on an artist’s website). We weeded out nine people completely this way. Problems included:

• Too young/old sounding (no reel demonstrating they could do any other vocal age).
• Too girlie-sounding (no reel demonstrating any other vocal style),
• good voice, but no comic ability or poor reading of text.
• good voice, but no demo reel showing they could do comedy,
• great voice, but stopped taking projects,
• great voice and comic timing, but poor with accents, gendered voices, etc.
• great voice, but doubtful they’d do the content based on their website information.

We of the 11 left, we invited a couple people to audition right away because they seemed ideal in every way.

Then we sorted through the list a third time.

• Two people we really liked we set aside because everyone agreed they both had an obvious regional accents (NY and Midwest) in every reel they did. That wasn’t a bad thing, it was just the wrong regional accent for our project and they had no reel to prove they could shed the accent. Many people don’t realize they have an accent.
• One person was put aside because, although she had loads of VO experience and a perfect voice, she delivered every line like a radio announcer and had no reel to prove she could do otherwise.

We then had seven people left and you’d probably be surprised by who they are. Among the top VO artists were a Latina from the Deep South, a white American from Germany, an African American from New York, a Canadian, and a Japanese American from California. They were all of various ages too!

Lily Does Sweden has many parts, but all very White and mostly adults over 30. However, a great VO artist isn’t locked into his or her natural ethnic, regional or even gendered accent. That’s why they are great VO artists.

In fact, we realized very quickly that finding the right person is a matter of simply closing your eyes and really listening. And that’s your Valentine’s Day tip! Now, go and listen for your Angel.

A Self-Published Author’s Media Rise

A big worry of authors, and one which keeps them from self-publishing, is the idea that only big publishing companies can get a book standard (non-social) media exposure. That is ridiculously untrue.

As proof, check out MJ Cope’s recent blog posts at Small Minds Enterprises. She wrote a press release, herself, for her recently self-published book Funny Australian Letterboxes. As result, she has been interviewed by newspapers (plural) and TV station GWN (see interview here).

There is nothing holding an author back today except antiquated ideas about publishing and marketing. If you are willing to take small steps, to give it a go, you can make yourself a success. Really!

Your Year of the Snake Fortune Foretold

Whatever You Do!

萬事如意 - “May all your wishes be fulfilled!”

Monday, again. Can’t I get an award for just showing up?

“Oh, my eyes! Is it really Monday, again?”

Apparently our blogger overindulged this [Super Bowl Sunday] weekend, again. So, here’s some book award news that’s fit to print!

Katherine Applegate has won the 2013 Newbery Medal for The One and Only Ivan (Harper). This novel, based on a true story, is narrated by a silverback gorilla that lives in an ill-run roadside attraction with other performing animals; illustrated by Patricia Castelao Costa. (Don’t worry, it has a happy ending.)

Jon Klassen has won the 2013 Randolph Caldecott Medal (for Picture Book Artistry) for This Is Not My Hat (Candlewick), in which a small fish gleefully steals a hat belonging to a larger fish and tries to get away with it; it was edited by Liz Bicknell.

For other award winners, check out Publishers’ Weekly extensive coverage.

The Week’s Top Ten SPAs

These are last week’s Top-Selling books by independent Self-Published Authors, as compiled by IndieReader.com

Read below to discover that ALL of these author’s are on the NY Times Best Seller List, Wall Street Journal Best Seller List, USA Today Best Seller List, and Amazon Best Seller List in the Kindle or eFiction category. So, where is the best opportunity for independent, self-published authors? EBOOKS!

And, in case your interested, the overwhelming genre SPAs are doing well in is Romance, of the “Adult”  Contemporary type (ie, recommended for readers 17+ due to sexual content, harsh language and heavy subject matter involving abuse or other mature issues.)

1.Hopeless by Colleen Hoover
Source: #1 New York Times Best Seller List, eFiction
#1 Wall Street Journal Best Seller List, eFiction

2. Someone to Love by Addison Moore
Source: #5 New York Times Best Seller List, eFiction
#7 Wall Street Journal Best Seller List, eFiction

3. Up to Me by M. Leighton
Source: #6 Wall Street Journal Best Seller List, eFiction
#12 USA Today Best Seller List

4. Fallen Too Far by Abbi Glines
Source: #11 New York Times Best Seller List, eFiction

5. The Valentine’s Arrangement by Kelsie Leverich
Source: #23 New York Times Best Seller, eFiction

6. Down to You by M. Leighton
Source: #31 New York Times Best Seller List, eFiction
#67 USA Today Best Seller List

7. Wait for Me by Elisabeth Naughton
Source: #5 Amazon Best Sellers, Kindle

8. Hard to Love by Kendall Ryan
Source: #32 New York Times Best Seller List, eFiction

9. Rule by Jay Crownover
Source: #7 Amazon Best Seller List, Kindle

10. Beautifully Damaged by L.A. Fiore
Source: #21 Amazon Best Seller, Kindle