Posts filed under 'Observation & Musing'
Here at Optimistic Future Publishing Enterprises we are always on the look-out for excellent candidates to fill our job opportunities as fiction novelists.
The successful candidate must have the following:
- An original manuscript, already completed, to our satisfaction.
The successful candidate should also display some (but not necessarily all) of the following:
- Work well alone
- Work well in a publishing team
- Self-starter
- Self-finisher
- Imaginative
- Observant
- Attentive to detail
- Patient
- Persistent
- Ambitious
- Withstand criticism
- Self-motivated
- Can work to a deadline
- Deliver long-running projects with no management intervention
- Avid reader (hundreds of novels in your genre ideal)
- Mastery of at least one major international language
- Word processing skills
- Proof-reading skills
- Editorial skills
- Research ability
- Psychologist
- Philosopher
- Good people interaction skills
- A large social network of friends
- Tireless self-promoter
- Knowledge of the latest marketing strategies
- An active blogger (a back catalogue of many years worth of blog posts is ideal)
- Frequent twitterer
- A keen observer of publishing trends
- A keen observer of social trends
- Media savvy (some training preferred)
- Knowledge of libel & slander laws
- A high public profile (celebrities preferred)
- Public-speaking experience
- Loves to travel
- Young
- Attractive
- Interesting
- G.S.O.H.
- A strong arm (whichever one you sign with)
If this sounds like you, we want to hear from you! For the right candidate, renumeration is negotiable(*).
* Renumeration is on sales commission basis only. No salary provided. Overtime will be required. Second income recommended.
November 16th, 2009
I thought this was interesting, given my interest in all things genetic. A court has reduced a murderer’s sentence because he tested positive for genes believed linked to agression.
Is this yet another potential change in society that genetic knowledge will foist on us? Will we no longer be responsible for our actions, but merely considered slaves to our genes? A society built on lesser personal responsibility does not bode well.
If science has killed God … now sin is shortly to follow. Broken evolution indeed.
November 5th, 2009
I’ve been searching reviews for a natural dietary supplement to see what it does and if it’s any good. The process brings me face-to-face with the real nature of the internet, and a lesson in marketing, during the very week I’ve been planning my own internet marketing strategy.
Image by inky
Upon searching for this particular supplement, I find that the reviews on the first couple of Google pages of links were all very positive. Nothing is so perfect. Perfection makes me suspicious. The reviews were similar in their wording. My guess is the marketing man (who shall remain nameless) from the company who make the supplement has entered into as many blog and review sites as he could find. SEO at its best … and worst. Manipulating search engines and saturating the bandwidth for those searching on the efficacy of a product is very shrewd marketing strategy, but I find it a little sad, because it erodes the internet’s usefulness as a resource for impartial, genuine, user reviews of a product.
Ah well, moral of the tale: if you want the genuine stuff, click straight to page 20 of the search results; if you want to sell stuff, get it into pages 1 and 2!
October 26th, 2009
I’m winding down to my long overdue vacation. Lately, I feel like I’ve been shooting into the fog, hoping to hit something. The final round of agent submissions felt like that. The attempts to heal my sciatica have felt like that. No targets hit so far, and worse … I can no longer see where the targets are, or what they are. Weariness from a year of constant pain has fogged it all over.
So I’m off for two weeks, to relax, recharge, and re-focus.
To keep myself going until that break, I decided to play around with the Gunning-Fog Index and the Flesch-Kincaid Test this week. You could be forgiven for mistaking them for obscure titles of gripping thrillers, but actually, they are metrics for grading the readability of text. It’s based around sentence and word length. I applied it to some chapters of my novel. The readability was quite good, but by adopting some of the change suggestions from Edit Central, I found I could improve every chapter by almost a further point, which brings it comfortably into my target audience range.
I might apply it to the whole novel when I return. Tighten it up even more. I wouldn’t recommend applying it blindly as an editing technique. It’s just interesting, that’s all. It makes me more aware of my style, and where it could trip up a reader. It made me think of even simpler, clearer ways to compose some sentences.
The most interesting thing of all, for me, is that readability was hardest in chapters where certain people were talking. This is mainly because those people would be having some technical conversations (with lots of multiple syllable words like ‘forensics’ or ‘genetics’). I could almost tell which chapter it is by the readability index alone. (I’m too damned close to this thing!) Is editing ever truly finished? Or am I just gilding the lily at this stage? Time to let go.
Ah well - holiday time too. Back in a couple of weeks.
September 4th, 2009
Back injuries got me thinking mortal thoughts lately. Contemplating a long-running ailment made me consider that my youth is at an end (physically at least). Early this morning I watched a discussion on breakfast TV about ageism - it is discrimination, but the guest was making the point that it is a very subtle form of it. There’s just an assumption that as we get older, we can do less. It has been said (by Dorothea Brande) that writing is something to be considered only after you reach the age of thirty. The quality of writing is one of those things that - arguably - improves with the age of the author. Which is probably just as well, since recent rejections have me thinking that if I want to be in this at all … it has to be for the long haul!
It makes me think too of our youth-centered culture. Marketing gurus love “yoof”. Reinvent and recast. Bring the most beautiful and appealing onto screen and stage. I’m thinking of the youngest actor ever cast to play Doctor Who. I’m thinking of a new young Star Trek film cast. I’m thinking of the rumour that Stargate: Atlantis was cancelled to make way for Stargate: Universe - a show which will, no doubt, be another pale Star Trek style rehash, but with a younger cast to appeal to a larger demographic. I’m thinking of the trend in recent years of announcing book deals with teenager authors, the kind whose pictures look pretty next to the byline. I’m not resentful - more luck to them I say. I’d have loved to be in that position when I was that young. But I held off, knowing that my work wouldn’t start to be of a quality I’m happy with until this stage of life.
Of course, there is another reason the marketeers like this youthful shim on our world - inexperience comes cheap. It is the beauty of the healthy balance sheet they like to ogle.
August 27th, 2009
