self publishing children s books

The PC in those Mac ads, the Daily Show's "resident expert" — yes, him. After a star turn in our recent State by State film, John Hodgman returns to Powell's with More Information Than You Require, his second volume of complete(ly made-up) world knowledge. At the Burnside Street store, during a break from Wordstock, he talked about mole-men and hobos, of course, but also Battlestar Galactica, Mall of America food stands, and life as a famous minor television personality.]]>

Graphic designer extraordinaire Chip Kidd presents Bat-Manga!, the first collection of Japanese Batman comics anywhere in the world! Originally published in 1966, at the height of the first worldwide Batman craze, and written and illustrated by manga legend Jiro Kuwata, these adventures were never collected in Japan, and had never been translated into English. We spoke with Kidd about his lifelong Batman obsession, the process of hunting down and collecting these incredibly rare issues, and why these 40-year-old comics are some of the most entertaining Batman stories ever made! ]]>

Thirty years after its initial publication, the new edition of Art Spiegelman's Breakdowns is bookended by a brand new, career-spanning, illustrated comic and a prose postscript supplemented by yet more classic drawings. Together, the three sections offer a grand, unifying vision of a master's career. In conversation, Spiegelman covered just as much ground, from the seminal early strips in Breakdowns to Maus (winner of a Pulitzer Prize in 1992) to In the Shadow of No Towers, even his much-loved commercial work. (Remember Wacky Packages and Garbage Pail Kids?)]]>

Iain Banks first published The Crow Road in the UK in 1992, and it is one of his best-loved books. Time Out called it "Riveting...exhilarating...its pace, development, intensity and, above all, its hip and sexy humour never allow it to flag." The Crow Road is a philosophical saga and a romantic coming-of-age story, a mystery and a comedy, and a raucous, moving, and deeply human look at relationships and family. As Publishers Weekly says, "Readers unfamiliar with Banks's prodigious output have a great starting point here." ]]>

Neal Stephenson has been a staple name in science fiction ever since his incandescent opus Snow Crash appeared. What separated Snow Crash from the other cyberpunk novels of the world was, first, Stephenson's knowledge of computers and programming and, second, his wealth of research on topics as obscure as Sumerian mythology. This theme of in-depth research has continued through his other books, especially Cryptonomicon and The Baroque Cycle. Before his reading, Stephenson discussed the mathematical philosophy and quantum mechanics in his newest novel, Anathem, as well as why he still writes by hand.]]>

Inspired by a WPA state guide series from the 1930s and 40s, State by State will surely rank among 2008's most notable literary achievements. Fifty writers on fifty states: Anthony Bourdain on New Jersey, Susan Orlean on Ohio, Sarah Vowell on Montana, S.E. Hinton on Oklahoma, Dave Eggers on Illinois... the list goes on and on. Weeks before publication, editors Matt Weiland and Sean Wilsey discuss working with the authors, noteworthy contributions, pleasing surprises, and the new Out of the Book film, which stars 19 of the collection's contributors.]]>

Annie Barrows's creative process for co-authoring The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society was, by her own admission, unusual. It's not often that your adored librarian aunt hands you a rough manuscript to finish. And allowing for the fact that we are prejudiced towards the novel's pure expression of love for booksellers, we found it to be absolutely delightful. Barrows takes the time to explain her experience of co-writing Guernsey, what it means to be a community of readers, and why we hunger for charm in these modern times. ]]>

As David Carr tells it, "The dude was addicted to coke, got off the coke, obtained custody of his kids, a single parent, got off welfare, survived cancer, married well. But that's not what is resonating with people. It's much more the pathology." The dude being Carr, himself. Kurt Andersen attests, The Night of the Gun is "a breathtakingly candid, laugh-out-loud funny, heroically rigorous, consistently riveting, and deeply moving account of a nightmarish descent and amazing redemption." Carr discusses coke and cancer, fact and fiction, parenthood, new media, hope, and his new remarkable book.]]>

Why do Americans spend more than $10 billion a year on bottled water? "The facile answer is marketing, marketing and more marketing," supposes the New York Times Book Review, "but Elizabeth Royte goes much deeper into the drink, streaming trends cultural, economic, political and hydrological into an engaging investigation of an unexpectedly murky substance." The Boston Globe calls Bottlemania, "Ingenious. Amiably, without haranguing or hyperventilating, this veteran environmental writer has produced what could be, assuming enough people read it, one of the year's most influential books."]]>

City of Thieves, the newest novel by David Benioff, author of The 25th Hour and When the Nines Roll Over, has been hailed by critics as "a smart crowd-pleaser" (Publishers Weekly, starred review), a "gut-churning thriller [that] will sweep you along" (Kirkus, starred review), and "a funny, sad, and thrilling novel" (Entertainment Weekly). Set during the Germans' brutal siege of Leningrad in World War II, the novel follows the captivating odyssey of two young men trying to survive against desperate odds on an impossible mission through unimaginable depravity. Surprisingly, it's also thrilling, absorbing, and very funny. In this interview, Benioff discusses why it took so long to finish the first chapter, the difficulty of trying to capture the voice of a 17-year-old Russian boy during World War II, and more.]]>

Kirkus calls America America, Ethan Canin's first novel in seven years, "[a] novel of character [that] is powerful and haunting, a major work." It is a sweeping, epic story that more fully explores themes Canin has written about previously — class, politics, fatherhood, wealth, and power — in a seamless and beautiful multigenerational American saga. America America is both an important work and a page-turning summer read. Especially in this election year, it is a powerful reminder about what is great, and what is broken, within our country. In this interview, Canin discusses his new book, the politics of generosity, class-jumping, and method acting for writing.]]>

It's rare that you have the opportunity to interview someone as notorious as James Frey. Whether you were a fan or reader of A Million Little Pieces, you couldn't escape the news of the Oprah endorsement or the subsequent drubbing Frey received on her program when it was revealed that parts of his memoir were embellished. After reading an early advance copy of his new novel Bright Shiny Morning, we couldn't wait to talk with him about it. It's a compelling book about hope and firmly establishes James Frey as the comeback kid of 2008. Kudos aside, our interview with Frey made for one of the most interesting conversations we have had in recent memory.]]>

Adamson and Wroblewski

Two predictions: The Outlander will win at least one major award. And The Story of Edgar Sawtelle will find a home on bestseller lists. When we discovered these two remarkable debut novels and decided to feature them together in Indiespensable, Powell's subscription club, someone on staff proposed a joint interview with the authors. Their books share more than you might imagine: runaways, ghostly visions, improvised outdoor survival, scenes rendered so powerfully you may forget you're reading fiction (you may forget you're reading, altogether), and characters that linger long after you close the book.]]>

Google's Good Writing Content Filter
By Joel Walsh

I was recently struck by the fact that the top-ranking web pages on Google are consistently much better written than the vast majority of what one reads on the web. Yet traditional SEO wisdom has little to say about good writing. Does Google, the world's wealthiest media company, really only display web pages that meet arcane technical criteria? Does Google, like so many website owners, really get so caught up in the process of the algorithm that it misses the whole point?

Apparently not.
Most Common On-the-Page Website Content Success Factors
Whatever the technical mechanism, Google is doing a pretty good job of identifying websites with good content and rewarding them with high rankings.

I looked at Google's top five pages for the five most searched-on keywords, as identified by WordTracker on June 27, 2005. Typically, the top five pages receive an overwhelming majority of the traffic delivered by Google.

The web pages that contained written content (a small but significant portion were image galleries) all shared the following features:

Updating: frequent updating of content, at least once every few weeks, and more often, once a week or more.

Spelling and grammar: few or no errors. No page had more than three misspelled words or four grammatical errors. Note: spelling and grammar errors were identified by using Microsoft Word's check feature, and then ruling out words marked as misspellings that are either proper names or new words that are simply not in the dictionary. Does Google use SpellCheck? I can already hear the scoffing on the other side of this computer screen. Before you dismiss the idea completely, keep in mind that no one really does know what the 100 factors in Google's algorithm are. But whether the mechanism is SpellCheck or a better shot at link popularity thanks to great credibility, or something else entirely, the results remain the same.

Paragraphs: primarily brief (1-4 sentences). Few or no long blocks of text.
Lists: both bulleted and numbered, form a large part of the text.

Sentence length: mostly brief (10 words or fewer). Medium-length and long sentences are sprinkled throughout the text rather than clumped together.

Contextual relevance: text contains numerous terms related to the keyword, as well as stem variations of the keyword. The page may contain the keyword itself few times or not at all.

SEO "Do's" and "Don'ts"

A hard look at the results slaughters a number of SEO bugbears and sacred cows.

PageRank. The median PageRank was 4. One page had a PageRank of 0. Of course, this might simply be yet another demonstration that the little PageRank number you get in your browser window is not what Google's algo is using. But if you're one of those people who attaches an overriding value to that little number, this is food for thought.

Frames. The top two web pages listed for the most searched-on keyword employ frames. Frames may still be a bad web design idea from a usability standpoint, and they may ruin your search engine rankings if your site's linking system depends on them. But there are worse ways you could shoot yourself in the foot.

JavaScript-formatted internal links. Most of the websites use JavaScript for their internal page links. Again, that's not the best web design practice, but there are worse things you could do.
Keyword optimization. Except for two pages, keyword optimization was conspicuous by its absence. In more than half the web pages, the keyword did not appear more than three times, meaning a very low density. Many of the pages did not contain the keyword at all. That may just demonstrate the power of anchor text in inbound links. It also may demonstrate that Google

takes a site's entire content into account when categorizing it and deciding what page to display.

Sub-headings. On most pages, sub-headings were either absent or in the form of images rather than text. That's a very bad design practice, and particularly cruel to blind users. But again, Google is more forgiving.

Links: Most of the web pages contained ten or more links; many contain over 30, in defiance of the SEO bugbears about "link popularity bleeding." Moreover, nearly all the pages contained a significant number of non-relevant links. On many pages, non-relevant links outnumbered relevant ones. Of course, it's not clear what benefit the website owners hope to get from placing irrelevant links on pages. It has been a proven way of lowering conversion rates and losing visitors. But Google doesn't seem to care if your website makes money.

Originality: a significant number of pages contained content copied from other websites. In all cases, the content was professionally written content apparently distributed on a free-reprint basis. Note: the reprint content did not consist of content feeds. However, no website consisted solely of free-reprint content. There was always at least a significant portion of original content, usually the majority of the page.
Recommendations

Make sure a professional writer, or at least someone who can tell good writing from bad, is creating your site's content, particularly in the case of a search-engine optimization campaign. If you are an SEO, make sure you get a pro to do the content. A shocking number of SEOs write incredibly badly. I've even had clients whose websites got fewer conversions or page views after their SEOs got through with them, even when they got a sharp uptick in unique visitors. Most visitors simply hit the "back" button when confronted with the unpalatable text, so the increased traffic is just wasted bandwidth.

If you write your own content, make sure that it passes through the hands of a skilled copyeditor or writer before going online.

Update your content often. It's important both to add new pages and update existing pages. If you can't afford original content, use free-reprint content.

Distribute your content to other websites on a free-reprint basis. This will help your website get links in exchange for the right to publish the content. It will also help spread your message and enhance your visibility. Fears of a "duplicate content penalty" for free-reprint content (as opposed to duplication of content within a single website) are unjustified.

In short, if you have a mature website that is already indexed and getting traffic, you should consider making sure the bulk of your investment in your website is devoted to its content, rather than graphic design, old-school search-engine optimization, or linking campaigns.

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Resources

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