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Tag: copyright

#SXSW Report: Days 2 and 3

I’ve been going pretty well nonstop so this is the first opportunity I’ve had to sit down and write my summary of the past 2 days of interactivity at SXSW 2012. Hashtags for panel twitter discussions I participated in are in parentheses.

I began Saturday with a panel about copyrights (#sxcopytrolls) which was grossly underattended and somewhat informative about obtaining and protecting copyrights, which was something I knew next to nothing about so I’m glad I went. After that, I was able to pull up a spot on the floor in the hallway for the simulcast of a conversation with Joss Whedon (#sxjosswhedon) since the room was full. Naturally, I was all too happy to pick up on some insights from the master storyteller of Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Angel, Dollhouse, and I could go on and on but I won’t. Plus he’s a very funny ginger, which I respect as a semi-funny ginger. Just a note, he wrote the screenplay for his new film Cabin InThe Woods in 3 days. That’s a hardcore writer for ya.

After that, I headed to The Rise of Analytics: Impacting the Editorial Process (#sxeditdata) which wasn’t as much about the impact of the need for data, keywords, links, etc. on the editorial process as much as I would’ve liked, but more about the data. Then it was off to the Hyatt for some 15-minute talks about books and content, including Books Win the Attention Economy (#sxbooks_win) and Delivering Content Experiences Across Platforms (#sxplatforms) which closed out Saturday for me.

Sunday was a good morning of panels, starting with Publishing Models Transforming the Book (#sxpubmodels), where panelists from the new publishing industries spoke about their models and the panelists from the traditional publishing industry defended theirs. Up to and including this panel, I have to admit that everything that I heard in most of these sessions was all stuff I have heard before, some even at previous Souths By. Luckily for me, I stumbled into a panel that proved to be worth the price of admission: Discoverability and the New World of Book PR, where I got some amazing ideas for how to keep getting The Redheaded Stepchild noticed and how I can start building a campaign for Portrait of Woman in Ink: A Tattoo Storybook. I furiously took about 3 pages’ worth of notes – the advice was just that good. I wish I had time to test out some of the stuff I heard about today, but I have more sessions, beer, and parties to head off to. And I might actually watch a film today since many of the bookish panels are more of the same stuff I have heard before over and over again.

Oh, and last night I got a photo with Steven Moffat – writer for Dr. Who, Sherlock, and Jekyll (again, I could go on, but I won’t). Worth the wait in line for sure. I also watched Rainn Wilson give a talk about his project Soul Pancake. It’s pretty rad. Go check it out.

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Huh. Thanks, Goodreads!

I signed up with Goodreads forever ago, which in the social media/tech world means about a year ago. As part of my recent blitz to get my work out into the world, even if I had to do it myself, I looked into what Goodreads provides for authors. Sure enough, you can post anything you want, as long as it’s not violating any copyrights or anything.

And of course, you have to promise to be an adult and not cyberstalk people who read your stuff, or slam people who slam your work. I’m a writer. I know how it goes – even a bad review will get more people to read your stuff, and I’ve been rejected so many times in passive form letters, which is a far worse form of rejection than actual criticism.

So, I decided to give it a whirl. I started by posting The Other Dentenia Zickafoose, just to see where the experiment would lead. I did that tonight, at about 10:00. It’s now 11:30, and I already had someone read my story and leave a review. And it’s a positive one at that! (Thanks Shymoon; I promise I won’t shower you with affection for being my first public positive reviewer.)I posted more stuff on Goodreads, and will do more tomorrow. For now, I am going to curl up with the book on my currently-reading shelf on Goodreads. Follow me there, too, if you dare.

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