It’s hot out. There’s nothing to do but find some AC and kick back with some fine reading material. But a hard drive spinning in a laptop can get cooking and the greedy heart of a publisher can  make books pricey. What’s a reader to do? We got you covered.

Order your copy of Annalemma Issue Six: Sacrfice today and get $5.00 off any back issue of your choosing. That means you could get $5.oo off Issue Five or you could get Issues #3 or #4 for FREE.

To take advantage of this discount that’s wildly unscrupulous on our part, simply add Issue Six to your cart, add one back issue of your choosing, then enter the coupon code “Summer” (case sensitive) in the coupon code field at the checkout page.

Think the savings don’t get any better? Think again! From now until August 15th, the Annalemma Bundle is a whopping 20% off! That’s all the available issues of Annalemma for a mere $20.00 plus S&H.

The summer sale ends this Sunday, August 15th. Head over to our store now!

You’ve got roughly 15 hours before the deadline for Annalemma Issue Seven: Endurance closes for good. Deadline for submissions is at 12:00 midnight EST tonight. We’ll be closing submissions for the next week in order to get a breather. After that we’ll only be reading for online publication for a while.

If you want to appear in the print issue this is your very last chance for a very long time. Time’s a-wasting! Submit already!

{image via}

I’ve been working on some copy for a website for the last couple days. The purpose of the copy is to play the hatefully baffling SEO keyword Google ranking game. A game that I’m typically skeptical of (but something I realized lately about marketing and sales is that there’s rarely one golden goose marketing strategy that turns everything around for your business or project. The most successful strategies are usually multi-faceted plans that cover a lot of different media outlets. You’re don’t invest yourself into one book trailer and hope that goes viral, you spread yourself across many platforms, hoping to reach as many people through as many different outlets as possible. But anyway, keywords.)

The biggest flaw in Google ranking is that it doesn’t rank quality sites highest, but instead it ranks sites that contain highest concentration of the words you’re searching for. In a perfect world, only the best sites would have a high concentration of those words you’re searching for, but when you know how Google ranking works, regarles of your sites quality, you can jam your site with keywords to get to the top of the list.

Before posting this I searched “most prestigious literary magazine” “best literary magazine” and “most successful literary magazine” hoping it would take me to the site of a respected lit mag that publishes quality stories. Instead it took me to a few blogs talking about which mag was the best. Then I wrote the following paragraph hoping it would take this post to the top of the rank (it didn’t, not enough keywords):

Annalemma is the best literary magazine that has ever existed. There have been many literary magazines that have existed before Annalemma, but none as recognized and prestigious as Annalemma. In print and online, Annalemma is the most successful literary magazine that has ever existed. Annalemma is benevolent with the power and influence that it wields. Many people cower in fear at the accomplishments the best literary magazine in the world has achieved. Annalemma touches them on the shoulder and whispers, “Fear not, my child. You are in the presence of supreme good.”

Sorry about all that. Just trying to prove a point. I felt really shitty writing all that because it was something I knew wasn’t true. I won’t deny we got a pretty good thing going here but it can’t really live up to those claims. Which is my main problem with SEO: it’s an easy quality filter to circumvent. Not only that, but there’s so much emphasis placed on it in internet marketing. Ideally it should only be one part and parcel to your entire marketing strategy. I guess the thing that bothers me most about SEO is that it makes it easy to use language in an ugly way for selfish gain. Then it struck me. Most people attempting to write fiction use language in this manipulative SEO marketing style, without the intent of evoking any sort of image or emotion or connecting in a meaningful way with a reader, jamming their stories with words they hope will click on receptors in peoples brains that make them remember times when those now-empty words were used skillfully.

Words are such beautiful things, using them like this seems perverse.  But it doesn’t have to be that way. The challenge that faces you when playing the SEO game is the challenge that faces every person attempting any discipline of writing: use language in a beautiful way in order to accomplish what you need in times you live in.

If you’re waiting for the last minute to submit to Annalemma Issue Seven: Endurance, then you are very close. Deadline ends Friday, August 6 at midnight. We’re gonna try to read all of the outstanding ones over the weekend then make the call Monday.

The short list has grown into a shining stack of excellence, so if you were holding back with your best piece, now is the time to submit it. The competition has teeth.

While it would have been easy to sleep in, to stay in bed until noon watching TV reruns on the laptop, we decided to do something different with our day.

It was forecast to be the hottest day of July on record. And it was. And we had no shade. And no hat. And it was a spectacular display of sweating. Book covers baked in the sun. Vendors of iced products raked in cash.

But despite the oven-like conditions, books were sold and readers (heretofore unaware of the small press/independent literature world) were connected with. The best part was turning people on to books that we loved, to be able to say you will love this book, and have them trust you. It was cool to know that they are about to embark on a journey that’s worth their while and you were a part of that. And maybe they’ll have their eyes opened to all the amazing things that are happening with all of these presses. It was worth the v-neck sunburned received.

See you in a month, Brooklyn Flea.

We’re joining forces with a handful of publishing power houses this weekend to sell books at the Brooklyn Flea. Are you in the area? Come visit us and pick up some quality books. And why not grab a a corn dog and a vintage ottoman while you’re at it? See you there!

Were you aware that the deadline for the Annalemma Issue Seven: Endurance is less than a month away? It’s true. The short list is already expanding into a stack of truly humbling words. Some of you submitters out there have been trying to shoe-horn your old stories into the theme. That’s to be expected and we don’t fault you for it. Eh, maybe we fault you a little. But perhaps we were unclear with what we wanted.

If you want to read a hell of a meditation on endurance please read the following Dear Sugar column that has been making the rounds at a few different places. It will rock you to your bones. It will make you cry. It might even change your life. Everything good writing needs to accomplish. If you’re thinking about submitting in the next couple weeks, keep this one in mind.

We’re looking for stories that people will connect with. Stories that encourage people persevere when everything is telling them give up. The word ‘hope’ has lost some currency in the past couple years. That doesn’t mean we still don’t need it. Submit stories of light in the darkness. Submit stories of hope.

Consider this a non-sexual-slap-on-the-butt bit of encouragement. Now get to it and good luck!

Last week we had a discussion about community and it became clear that the majority among us indie lit writers and publishers (that felt moved to comment on this blog) believed that writing and publishing with the indie lit community in mind may not be the primary goal, but was very important to keep in mind.

Since then, it’s become abundantly clear to me that the writing that we produce and publish, the stuff that all this wall head beating is for, is being marketed by us, right back to us. We are the audience and we are the producers. It’s created a very clear niche.

The positive effect seems to be that with each powerful story that we write, with each novella and journal we publish, we seem to up the bar for one another, making a decent training ground for us to hone our chops in the hopes that we may be able to graduate to the big leagues. However, some of us are fine just where we are, harboring no interest in publishing with, or on the level of, a major publishing house. A lot of those guys have fucked the publishing industry into the ground with their inability to adapt to a changing market, so why would you want to have anything to do with them?

The negative effect is that the more we write and publish toward each other, the more insular we become, the more splinter factions of style choices are created, the smaller the niches grow until it’s Writer A writing a story for the singular audience of Writer B and vice versa, ad infinitum, the literary version of a circle jerk.

The problem: We, as an indie lit community, aren’t connecting to readers. Independent film has had its boom, and was shortly followed by a boom in independent music. It’s time independent literature had a boom of its own.

There’s a prevailing attitude these days is that no one reads anymore. This is bullshit. Books haven’t lost their power to speak to people and there are folks out there who want to read, they just don’t know what to read. When faced with an overabundance of choices, a person is going to go with what’s familiar. That’s why the bestselling authors stay bestselling authors and why it takes a new author at least a $100k marking campaign to tap into that list. There are people out there craving the good words we’re producing but we’re nowhere close to reaching them. However, as indie publishers and writers, we don’t really have $100k to throw around on marketing campaigns. So what can we do to connect with readers outside of our immediate circle? Do what we’ve always done: start small.

1. People react most to word of mouth. Recommendations are how people make choices on what book they’re going to read next. Did you love The Adderall Diaries? Suggest it to a friend. Did We Take Me Apart change your life? Pass it on to someone you love and tell them that it means a lot to you. Do book trades. Promise your girlfriend that you’ll read the Harry Potter books she holds so dear if she reads A Jello Horse.

2. Ask your friend’s band if you can sell your book at the merch table at their show. If you’re book looks lonely at the table all by itself then sell other books you like. Contact us publishers, I’d happily send out a stack of mags if someone said they were going to sell them for me at a rock show.

3. Start an indie lit book club! Holy crap are book clubs awesome, sitting around a friends living room one night a month drinking wine talking about books. Damn good times, my friend.

4. And blog, people. For the love of god, blog. If you love a book, write a review. It doesn’t even have to be a great review, you don’t even really need to say anything more poignant than, “This is a good book. Here’s why. You should buy it.”

There’s people outside of the writing game who are looking for good words and they’re not finding them. Instead they’re going with whatever’s on their immediate field of vision, meaning books published by corporate publishing houses. Last week my friend IM’d me saying he wanted to start reading some novels so he bought Never Let Me Go. However he claimed he had a short attention span and thought short stories would be more his speed. I sent him links to AM/PM, SFAA and A Common Pornography (the HP version. Technically not an indie lit book, but definitely a gateway to it). He added them to his cart at Powell’s almost immediately. People have a fever, they need good words to cure them. You are the doctor. Prescribe them some good stuff.

As writers we can’t sit back and let the publisher worry about how this is going to get into the hands of readers and vice versa. This is something we love and no one’s going to market this stuff for us, so the onus is on us as writers and publishers to get it out to people who are going to react to it.

These are just some beginning ideas on how indie publishers and writers can connect to readers. If you have nay others please shout them out in the comments. We’re all in it together.

(this was the first thing that come up when I Google-imaged “online writing community”)

Last week Darby Larson and I had a brief discussion over at HTMLG regarding Annalemma and its submissions policy, but that’s not what this post is about. Without recounting the entire conversation (it’s at the bottom of the thread, you can read it here), we got on the topic of community, to which Darby said:

“i come at it a little differently maybe as an editor, not so community-driven. i dont think of submissions as potential forgings of relationships or trying to help writers get better. just words for me. ones i like stay, ones i dont go away, not much else.”

This comment cocked my head a bit. Wouldn’t it be in your best interest to be community driven? Wouldn’t it benefit you in the long-run to forge relationships? That’s why communities are formed. So a group of like-minded individuals can work together towards a common goal. I was going to bring this up in the thread but it was Friday and the weekend loomed and I had steam to blow off. So I bring it up here now.

There is a very good chance that if you’re reading this you are a member of the online writing community. Let me ask you this: Are they just words to you? Are you simply interested in publishing wherever you can, regardless of the format? Are you working towards a goal that benefits your own interests of becoming a famous writer? Or are you publishing and writing with the community in mind? Do you wish the success of the places you publish? Wouldn’t that ultimately mean the success of your own writing?

Announcing the theme for the next print issue of Annalemma and the call to submit.

Every day the world tests our will, our ability to keep moving forward. With this in mind we chose the theme for Annalemma Issue Seven: Endurance.

The word has a connotation of athletic ability and physical stamina. But the mind is more willful than the body. This is not a call for sports stories. This is a call for stories about the power to persist in the face of obstacles. Suggested questions to consider (but are in no way required to address):

– Why do you persist? What keeps you from throwing your hands up to the world and going to live in a cabin in the woods?

– What is it that fuels the pursuit of your dreams or goals?

– Who would you give up those pursuits for if they asked you to? Who has that power over you?

– What happens when someone/something can’t be stopped?

– How do you deal with an immovable object in your way?

– When is it okay to quit? Is it ever?

– Where do you go when there’s nowhere left?

The specs:

We are accepting fiction and creative nonfiction submisions. No submissions over 5000 words will be accepted. Deadline is Friday, August 6th, 2010. Any submissions not pertaining to the theme will be considered for online publication only.

One submission at a time please. No previously published pieces will be considered.

All rejections are final.

Submit to our Submishmash page here. If you’ve submitted to the old email address within the last month, your submission will still be read, but will be considered for online publication only. You are welcome to withdraw your current submission and re-submit a new piece through Submishmash if you want to be considered for print publication.