Now it’s time for links!

First up, Laura Fraser explores the politics of Chick Lit and Dude Lit at The Daily Beast. This is a FANTASTIC post. Read it!

Agent Nathan Bransford warns of the “pernicious momentum of first ideas”.

Agent Rachelle Gardener gives tips on author headshots (Remember Monday I said I thought every writer/blogger needed one?)

Both Jodie Renner and Simon L. Carter wrote excellent posts on how to format dialogue and write dialogue tags.

Jessica at Book Ends asks what makes a classic?

Jenn posits that playing World of Warcraft will make you a better networker (don’t tell my husband that!)

Michael Hyatt offers four surprising conclusions about author websites (be sure to have your own website graded on WebsiteGrader.com).

Writer’s Digest’s digital Big 10 Issue is out. I have yet to read a magazine on my iPad, but I’m going to download this one.

Chilean artists released a bomb of poems on Berlin Tuesday, so I’m going to bomb you with a poem, too. Written by my friend Matthew Zapruder, I give you Pocket.

Have a great Labor Day weekend!

But you CAN borrow e-books—from your local library. First I checked out the Berkeley Public Library, which has a huge downtown branch and several satellite branches, but all they have are Safari Tech Books Online, no literature. Then I went to the San Francisco Public Library and signed up for a library card. It turns out that you need to apply in person for a library card, so you can’t, for example, use the New York Public Library e-book system unless you go to New York, show them your New York ID, and get a New York Public Library card. In California, you don’t have to live in the city of the library, just in the state. So even though I live in Berkeley, I got myself a San Francisco library card. There I found three databases of e-books: Safari Tech Books again, NetLibrary Books, and Overdrive eBooks. Someone on staff (a librarian perhaps?) said Overdrive works best with iPads, so that’s where I began. If you’re interested, you can watch the tutorial here.

First I found a page that says I can listen to audio library books on my iPad but cannot read e-library books from Overdrive because it doesn’t support the ePub format. Here is a list of compatible devices, including the B&N nook, the Sony Reader, and the Kobo eReader. I haven’t gotten a clear feel yet for what books are available. Through Overdrive, when I click on “Most Popular,” I get a list of authors/books that begin with Stephanie Meyer, Stieg Larsson, Dan Brown, and page after page of romance novels. Since none of these books will work on my iPad, I lost interest in searching through the database. I’m working on finding out if library e-books will eventually work on the iPad or whether, thanks for Apple’s proprietary measures, I’ll be stuck paying $9.99 for every book forever. (Does anyone know the answer to this? I’ve queried Overdrive and am waiting for an answer.)

Meanwhile, what about you? Have you ever read a library e-books on your e-reader? Which database did you use? What was the selection like? And how easy/pleasant was the experience?

By the way, for those of you who look forward to Link Love on Fridays, I am headed off on my third camping trip in five weeks today (with a toddler and an infant) and have yet to pack, so I’ll be posting links next week. In the meantime, be sure to check out Nathan Bransford and Sierra Godfrey, who always have great roundups of links on Fridays.

An in case you wonder how I spend my free time, yesterday it was learning about the different Caterpillar trucks after my toddler saw a bunch doing construction on a Berkeley street. After perusing the website, I found this one pretty cool. I know it’s not environmentally friendly, but look at the way it slices and gathers trees! Now I understand why kids get excited about trucks.

Have a great weekend!

As you’ve probably heard by now, according to Jeff Bezos, e-book sales have surpassed hardcover book sales at Amazon (but I’m curious to know how e-book sales compare to paperback sales).

And from The Nation, the trouble with Amazon.

From my friend Connie Hale over at Sin and Syntax (have you bought her book by the same name yet?), an A to Z on e-books.

On NPR, writers reveal why they write.

In case you’ve been living under a rock for the past few weeks like I have, you may not have heard about 16-year-old pop sensation Justin Bieber’s memoir deal.

Great posts, as usual, from Alan Rinzler: one on the author background check and how important it is to present yourself professionally online (does that mean I shouldn’t be posting vidoes of myself doing backflips?) and one on how to boost your book sales with niche marketing.

If you live in the Bay Area, you’ll love Ian Tuttle’s flash fiction restaurant reviews at Stretchy Head (I love that name).

And from Sierra Godfrey, four tools for going paperless. (And while you’re over there, don’t forget to enter her fabulous character contest for a chance at winning an Amazon gift card!

And here’s a hilarious clip sent to me by my friend Ani from the documentary about SF sci-fi writer Harlan Ellison Dreams With Sharp Teeth on why writers shouldn’t work for free:

Pros

It’s VERY easy to buy a book. It’s easier through iBooks, but it’s not difficult through Amazon either. I haven’t tried the B&N app yet. Just one click and you own it. And you’re reading. Right there in the palm of your hand.

It’s great at night. If you’re in bed and don’t want to turn the light on because a baby is sleeping or your husband is sleeping or you’re in a tent and it’s really not comfortable to read with the battery pack of a headlamp behind your head, it’s fantastic.

Full color photos! I bought a cookbook through iBooks (you can’t do this with Amazon or B&N) and it has all the same graphics and color photos that the real book does.

Cons

It’s VERY easy to buy a book. Just one click and you own it. And you can’t return it. And it’s charged to your credit card. And you can’t pass it on afterward. I bought two books that I probably shouldn’t have. One I already owned in the paperback version but wanted to be able to read at night with the lights out. The other was a cookbook I wanted to take traveling without packing it in my suitcase. I used both for about five minutes each. It’s just too easy to make impulse purchases, and $10 here, $5 there, and $15 over there add up fast.

It’s great that there are so many things the iPad can do, but the drawback is that only one person can use it at a time. When I was on a four-hour plane ride and gave my iPad to my toddler to play games and watch Kipper to keep him from screaming and kicking the seat in front of him all flight, it was a godsend. Except that I couldn’t read any of my books. Fortunately, my 10-month-old was too busy jumping on my lap to let me read anyway. Still, on the return flight, I took a paperback along.

A lot of books aren’t available through iBooks yet, so you have to get them through Amazon. Which isn’t a bad thing, but the interface isn’t as nice (no color and the page doesn’t look like a real page.)

As much as I love my iPad, I still kinda prefer reading real books. Something about the feel, something about knowing what page I’m on, something about looking at the spine to see how far along I am in the book, I just love. I’ll keep reading iBooks, but I’ll keep reading real books as well.

What about you? Do you have an iPad? How do you like the e-reader function?

Cons

It’s beautiful. The interface is gorgeous. Everything about it is slick and delicious. I downloaded a ton of classics and even started reading The Count of Monte Cristo, which was great. A lot of books I’m interested in, like the Chicago Manual of Style, aren’t in e-book format yet. The nice thing is that if you can’t find a book in the iBooks store you can check the Kindle store through the Kindle for iPad app. The differences between the way they’re viewed: Kindle doesn’t have the “look” of a book with the pages on the sides, and the pages don’t “turn” like a real book, they just slide over, but Kindle has sepia tone, which is kind of cool, and more options for font size. Overall, they look pretty similar. One thing that’s annoying is that when you download a free Kindle book, it treats it like a real book purchase and sends you a receipt by e-mail. It’s a longer, more involved process than downloading books from the iBooks store, which takes about 2 seconds.

There aren’t a lot of iPad apps out there yet. You can use all the iPhone apps, but I don’t wan an app that is pixelated when I double the size to fit the iPad. I want apps designed FOR the iPad. So choices are limited at this point (I tried to download a stopwatch and a French dictionary and couldn’t find ones I liked.)

The app I’ve been using most so far: New York Times. It’s so slick. You get just eight stories per category (news, tech, biz, lifestyle, opinion), so some people may hate that, but for someone like me who doesn’t have time to read the paper anyway, it’s perfect. I check it in bed before I go to sleep and in the morning when I wake up, and while I’m feeding the baby.

My 2-year-old son has also gotten a lot of use out of the iPad. Toddler games are way better on the iPad than on the iPhone, as I imagine all games are.

I use Google Calendar instead of iCalendar, and I haven’t found a Google calendar app I’m happy with, but all in good time. I’m sure within the next three months there will be a gazillion more iPad-optimized apps in the store.

Maps works great, and is much easier to use in the larger format.

I haven’t downloaded Pages (word processing) yet, but will do that today.

I think the biggest question about the iPad is where does it fit into my life? It’s not small enough to carry in my pocket or purse like an iPhone (it’s definitely not an iPhone replacement for that reason), and I can’t picture myself writing my book on it, although I did get the keyboard and once the case that props the iPad up is available, there’s no reason why I couldn’t write on it (except that I use Scrivener, and I’m sure it will be ages before Scrivener has an iPad app since they don’t even have a PC app yet). I guess the best way to view it is as a super-e-reader. You take it anywhere you’d take a book-and then you have your e-mail, calendar, and a gazillion other apps, too. But when I’m hopping in the car with no intentions to read a book, I’m not sure whether to bring it with me. For an airplane ride, or a hospital stay, it would be perfect. But do I need it every day?

What do you think? Do you have an iPad? Do you plan to get one? What do you/would you use it for?

My favorite link this week is an incredibly inspiring post that all aspiring writers must read.

From Nathan Bransford, 10 questions to ask yourself if you’re considering self-publishing as more and more authors turn to web and POD publishing.

Also from Nathan Bransford, all about co-op, “a catchall term for, among other things, that magical (not really) process by which books non-magically appear at the front of the store.” And more about co-op over at Pimp My Novel.

Also from Pimp My Novel, a list of abbreviations of publishing terms that you should know.

GalleyCat reports the latest in e-book news on the eve of the arrival of the iPad. And Borders repays its loan on time. In other words, the bookstore giant will remain in business for the time being.

According to YA literary agency Upstart Crow, queries by writers with MFAs are taking more seriously than queries by those without.

Agent Jenny Bent has a great post on confidence and how writers can maintain it despite all the rejection.

For insights into the teen reader mind, check out Market My Words’ Teen Panel Part I and Part II. (Hint: They judge books by their covers!)

And if you’re looking to combine a publishing and platform building workshop with some yoga, massage, and Balinese dancing IN BALI check out The Creative Penn for details.

Two great posts from Alan Rinzler. One about Kristen Tracy, a YA writer with book deals for two series and how she did it, and another on how you can turn your academic paper into a book deal.

Via 80,000 Words, T-shirts for writers like this one: “Never Wrong a Writer. They Get Their Revenge in Print.”

And Sierra Godfrey has two great posts, one that questions whether we should use expletives in our writing and another on how to give feedback when you hate the person’s writing.

How about you, what was your favorite link this week?

Alicia Dunams is author of the Amazon bestseller Goal Digger. She is a dynamic speaker, book packager, and business coach.

In 2007, you self-published a book titled, Goal Digger: Lessons Learned From the Rich Men I Dated. Why did you choose to self-publish?

I shopped it around to literary agents and was told I didn’t have a big enough platform to sell a book, so I did it myself. I thought the whole literary agent/traditional publishing route was a block, and I was on a roll. The book was done, and I just wanted it out. The publishing of the book created a certain platform for me.

How can a book be used to build your brand?

I didn’t make money with Goal Digger, but because I published that book, in my first full year of coaching, I made six figures. When I wrote the book, I figured, okay, I wrote the book, how am I going to make money? Because I wasn’t making money selling $15 books. So I started picking up the phone. I called other authors who specialized in wealth creation for women—Loral Langemeier, Christine Comaford, and Marci Shimoff—and I decided to create a seminar. I did it all myself, but I had 13 speakers. I thought I’ll charge $300 and everyone will come—and they didn’t. I got totally burned out, and I think I was in the red. I didn’t know what I was doing, and I was doing everything myself. I marketed the seminar, and a week before Loral Langemeier was in San Jose. I, along with a thousand other people, paid $1000 to see her. And I could hardly give tickets away to my seminar. That was in January, 2008. I wasn’t on any of the social networks. Facebook and Twitter were just getting popular in the business and networking community then.

How many copies of Goal Digger did you sell?

2500. I printed 3500 and I have about a thousand left. I found that it was tough to sell books, and it’s tough to be in the book peddling business. Writing the book is the easy part. Selling it it hard. You have to have an audience—whether your book is fiction or nonfiction. For fiction, it has to be damn good. For nonfiction books, you have to have a marketing plan in place, people following you. Whether you sell financial products or you’re teaching people how to clean their houses in ten minutes flat, you need to have a following.

You have to build an audience first and then release the product. Before you even write the book, you sell it first. First you create the cover of the book and start promoting it—start marketing it on Twitter—before you even write it. Then when people say, “I can’t wait to read it” you say, “Oh shit, I better write this book.” Because why create a product and have it sitting in your garage? The marketing of the book is more important than the book itself. You want to produce quality work, but you also want to know that the marketing is important.

What tools have you found to be the most useful in building your brand? Facebook? Twitter? Podcasts? Newsletters?

Marketing is a wheel with different rungs. There’s social media, TV and radio publicity … networking and word-of-mouth is huge. There’s traditional marketing, there’s having a blog, and there are press releases, but Internet marketing is the way to go.

They all feed into each other, so you have to have everything. If you’re on View From The Bay, you put it on YouTube, you put it on your blog, you put it on Facebook. One of my clients was on an extremely popular national TV show and sold only 423 books. I’ve had clients who’ve sold thousands of books by marketing them online. Because who’s watching daytime television? People are at work. They’re on the Internet. So you have to take that content and repurpose it. It’s all about repurposing.

Being a guest blogger or being on a podcast is important. People are looking for content—for topics and for products to review. Things don’t die on the Internet. After View From The Bay is over, it dies. Your blog articles can be book chapters and your book chapters can be blog articles.

How do you earn your income? Working as a business coach?

I operate as a business coach, but I help business owners become bestselling authors. I help them use their book as a core for their business. Once they create more revenue streams to their core business and their book builds a platform for their brand, they can create new revenue streams, such as speaking. They can earn online revenue or become high-paid speaking consultants. I prefer clients who already have a business and then they can make a book. For example, there’s a clinical psychologist who has a clinical practice. He’s so specialized in his business that he creates a book and sells the book. People want more from him because they can’t go to his office because he’s in Seattle, so I sit down with him and create an online membership package so people can have access to his most recent research findings from Hoboken, New Jersey. He’s creating a business where he’s making an hourly salary of $150 and now getting speaking engagements for $1000–$2000 a pop, selling his book at those speaking engagements, and getting thousands of people to download his package online.

What effects have you seen of the recent changes in the publishing industry?

There have been extreme changes in the publishing industry. People who have a built-in audience should self-publish. There are two reasons to be in the traditional publishing business—distribution and name recognition. It would be great to have Simon & Schuster or Harper or Penguin publish you, but you still have to do the marketing hustle. Distribution is something you can attain by going to a vanity publisher or becoming your own publisher. There are a lot of people who have pretty significant audiences who are self-publishing because they can make more money.

What do you think of e-books?

I think e-books are good for a lead generation tool to give away a special report or an excerpt from your book, but I think you have to have a real book to have credibility. To get on TV and get publicity, you have to have a physical book. A book being available on Amazon is a big thing.

Is there an e-book version of Goal Digger?

I do have an e-book version of Goal Digger, but it’s not in a Kindle version yet. I just haven’t done it yet.

Tell us more about your networking events.

I have a seminar this Sunday: Authors Who Mean Business—how to write and publish your business nonfiction book, how to market your message, and how to make more money. It’s a full-day seminar where people are going to leave with an outline of their book, a title for their book, everything they need to get them started. I’m going to walk them through marketing and monetizing. For $95.

Do you have another book planned?

I have thoughts of writing another book, but I’m going to do things a lot differently. I’m going to make sure I have my audience built out before writing it, plenty of pre-marketing. I wouldn’t write it until I knew what people wanted me to write about. The thing about Goal Digger is that it really needed a marketing push and I didn’t have time because I needed to make money. So I went into Plan B mode—consulting and coaching. I feel like there’s a lot of good content in there and if I put any kind of effort into it, I could sell a lot more. I marketed it for about three months and then stopped. I think you need a good three-to-six months lead up and then a year afterwards. In fact, rather than writing another book, I was thinking about doing a revised and expanded version of Goal Digger.

What are your long-term career goals?

To be retired by the end of this year. (She laughs) To continue to coach business owners and people who are passionate about what they do. I want to continue to support business owners, I want to build my business to a seven-figure-a-year business and expand.

Who are your inspirations?

Victor Cheng, my business coach. Tim Ferris, The 4-Hour Workweek. Daniel Pink. The Three Cups of Tea guy (Greg Mortenson), Leaving Microsoft To Change the World (author John Wood), anyone who is doing social entrepreneurship. I think when you focus on doing good, it automatically comes.

Have you read Free by Chris Anderson?

No. Everything that’s valuable is free, but costs time. You can sit on Twitter all day and it’s free, but you haven’t done your grocery shopping or done your job.

What’s a typical day in the life of Alicia Dunams?

I wake up, get my daughter ready for school and get her off to school. I come back, write my e-mail newsletters—one I write daily and two I write bimonthly. Then I’ll write a blog entry, or have someone on my team help me research and write a blog. I have a virtual assistant who does administrative and marketing initiatives for me and who also does client work. She writes success quotes and she helps me with setting up appointments. I have a team of ghost writers, editors, and graphic designers who help me on all my client projects. I connect with my team and then I do two or three client calls a day on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays. I usually go to two networking events per week—either in person or social networking. I’m in some networking groups in San Francisco and I go to one-off things and talk business with people. I meet up with friends who are business owners. It’s all about building and sustaining relationships. I end my day around 3 and pick up my daughter and I try not to work at night. And I usually take Fridays off. And I try not to take things too seriously.

Do you have any marketing advice for unpublished authors?

Really starting their marketing strategy is important, either by getting a team or doing it themselves. Provide really great content and value to your subscriber list. Don’t publish your book and expect everyone to buy it. Give them value. Share your life with them for years and years and years. You’ve got to romance them a bit. Give a lot of things for free—speak for free, give content out. I give a lot of knowledge. And you definitely have to start marketing before you write the book. The only thing you should write is the title and the subtitle. If you’re a nonfiction author, write the book, but don’t expect to make money from the book. Think about what your business is, how you’re going to monetize your book. Unless your book is really good or becomes a bestseller, the way you’re going to make money fast is through your business.

It has everything you would expect: Calendar, maps, iTunes, photos with slide shows, web browsing, e-mail, movies.

And here are the specs: 0.5-inches thin, weighs 1.5 pounds, 9.7-inch IPS display. 10 hours of battery life, a month of standby, accelerometer, compass, speaker, mic, dock connector.

It runs all third-party iPhone apps either small or full screen (2x), and developers can also develop specifically for the iPad, with fancier graphics for video games, etc.

It has iWork with spreadsheets, etc. (spreadsheet has onscreen calculator). iWork apps are $9.99, but I’m not sure what that means.

You can type on it with two hands, like a real keyboard, or you can connect an external keyboard through a keyboard dock.

It has a case (sold separately, like the keyboard?) that lets you prop it up a little or a lot to watch movie or read books.

It has an e-reader called iBooks, which looks like a (color) bookshelf and links to an iBooks store. Looks like all but RandomHouse of teh big five publishers are on board and book prices will vary (Ted Kennedy’s was priced at $14.99). Will use ePub format, which is way better than the Kindle because it allows you to download books from libraries and other e-book stores.

It syncs with USB, has WiFi and optional 3G. Data plans with ATT: $14.99/250mg; $29.99/unlimited. No contracts. Cancel anytime.

PRICE!: Wifi only: 16mb $499; 32mb $599; 32mb $699. Wifi+3G: 16mb $629, 32mb $729, 64mb $829.

Until I play with one, it will be hard to say, but it sounds like this thing could replace laptops altogether with the attached keyboard. Depends on whether you can work on a screen that small, though. I know I’d rather lug an iPad around than a MacBook Pro.

A few disappointments, but it sounds like @Jason of Endgadget had the next generation, due out in October (Why would they give him one that’s different than the one announced today? Seems odd.) Jason said the one he has has two cameras, one front and one back, mouse gestures, and fingerprint recognition. Will I have to wait until October to get mine? UGH! But seems worth it to get the cameras.

Now that you know the price – will you buy one? Will you, will you?