The Librarian Writer

YA Author Cory Doctorow is giving away free downloads of his new sci-fi novel, Little Brother . The reviews on Amazon are beyond glowing from such YA titans as Neil Gaiman and Scott Westerfeld. I've downloaded it and am looking forward to the read. BUT ... would you give away your blood, sweat, and royalties so easily? Doctorow's contention is that obscurity is worse than piracy . Get the book out there, make people aware of it, and book sales will actually increase. It probably helps that the book is, according to reviews, a damn good one. Doctorow covers himself with a Creative Commons license that allows non-commercial sharing. Readers can create fan fic, which is especially important for YA readers, who become invested in the characters and like to continue the story on their own (I certainly wrote my share of comic book fan fic as a teen). But give away the whole novel? Seriously? Why not just the first three chapters to whet appetites? Would teens' short attention spa...

Librarians tend to be book-loving, reading-happy, creative-thinking people. These kind of people also tend to be writers. Maybe you've never shared the 5000 page mega-fantasy you've been working on since 9th grade with your co-workers. Maybe you jot off ideas for a "cute meet" in your romcom screenplay when the Reference desk is slow. Maybe you've revised that YA novel so many times that the rural coming-of-age story now involves vampires who go to an exclusive Manhattan prep school and must stop the coming nuclear apocalypse. If so, then this blog is for you. To give advice and support to other librarian writers who like to tell stories, I'll be sharing my own writing angst, missteps, and occasional good news. Any interesting articles, webpages, blogs, or other miscellany on writing, librarianship, and the world at large will be passed on to you. And please share your own writing angst, missteps, and good news. Because we're in this together, baby.