Tuesday Books Blog Report: Demands on Today's Authors, and Showing the Kindle to Dickens

Alan Sitomer has a new book coming out soon -- but admits he doesn't really know what he's doing in advance of its launch, in this new book publishing world of ours.

He leaves it to his readers to describe the altered terrain, though he provides a number of options -- exciting, chaotic, and unrecognizable among them.

To be an author in this day and age means you MUST do more than simply write a good book that people are going to want to read. Those days, at least to me, feel as if they are gone, Sitomer writes on his eponymous blog. Of course, this first element is still 100 percent vital, but whereas it used to be an end point, it is now really just a beginning.

First an author has to write a good book that people want to read and then an author has to get out the word about the fact that they have written what they believe is a good book that people will want to read. And by no means is this the same job, he continues. Or does it tap into the same skill set. Or is there any real playbook an author can follow to ensure a 'successful book launch' for a new title.

But there is no better way to figure things out than by doing, and Sitomer -- whose book Nerd Girls is to be published on July 5 -- says he will explore how the landscape has changed.

Over at something called Zakka Goods, Sam Vaknin declares that a novel redefinition through experimentation of the classical format of the book is emerging.

Until now e-books have mostly merely been an ephemeral rendition of their print predecessors, but they are really another medium that can and will provide a different reading experience with their links, interactivity, decision-driven plotlines, and the rest, Vaknin writes.

How would you explain the Kindle to Charles Dickens? At her blog, Madigan McGillicuddy highlights the neat project Cardiff School of Art & Design student Rachel Walsh thought up to do just that -- she created 40 mini-books and put them inside an old-school device that Dickens could relate to -- a hardcover book.

This is hilarious, and I can't imagine having the patience to individually create all of these tiny little masterpieces, McGillicuddy writes at Madigan Reads.

Here are some more quick hits from elsewhere in the books blogosphere today:

? L.S. Engler reviews the 29th title in her 100 Books Project -- Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman.

? At Peace, Love & Books, Evie J. advocates subplots for major-minor characters, which is one aspect that she loved about Lock and Key, by Sarah Dessen. It was extremely nice to witness with a first-person book. It's not often that I read books where the major-minor characters have their own struggles, stories, and outcomes that are so clearly sub-plots of their own, she writes.

? At Word & Film, Steven Pressfield, author of The Legend of Bagger Vance and The Profession (which is out today), advises how to successfully adapt a book into a movie.

He says that almost every novel adaptation is less satisfying than the book itself, not because film is inferior, but because the form demands truncation, condensation, and simplification -- and none of these helps any work of fiction.

One of his tips is to strip down the story to three acts.

The leisurely exposition of a novel by, say, Thackeray is out of the question in film, Pressfield writes. The audience will be asleep before the second reel.

Edward B. Colby is the Books editor of the International Business Times.

Have links you want to share or suggestions for Wednesday's Books Blog Report? Send them to e.colby@ibtimes.com.