Well, I’ve got more to post this week than I have for the past couple. First of all, I’m planning on launching the new book website prior to June 1st if all goes according to schedule. Stay tuned here or follow me on Twitter for the latest updates.

Publishing Renaissance had a great post about how indie authors need to take some cues from the indie music and movie industries, titled Finding Our Defiance. Mentioned in that article is an article by Henry Baum titled The Last Stigmas of Self-Publishing, which I thought deserved it’s own mention here.

Wil Wheaton was featured in an article in The Washington Times on self-publishing, Self-publishing finds commercial niche in digital age. Definitely worth a read.

I had another article on authors who tweet (this time it’s nonfiction authors) go up on Mashable today. Go check it out and please retweet it if you find it interesting.

And, last but not least, Nathan Bransford has his usual roundup of even more publishing news on his blog.

Hope everyone in the U.S. has a great Memorial Day weekend! And I hope everyone not in the U.S. has a wonderful regular weekend!

This is going to be another short one. On a personal note, my freelance writing has really picked up recently, with three new inquiries in the past couple of week and two new regular gigs. Keep an eye on my portfolio page for updates on new articles I’m writing. I’ve also picked up a ton of new Twitter followers (you can follow me @cameron_chapman if you aren’t already).

Dan Holloway wrote a great article on the future of books over at the Streamwriting site (which is run by Hannah Davis). It’s a great article. Dan is really on top of new technology coming out in the publishing world and is taking advantage of a lot of it himself (have you seen the interactive novel he’s writing in a Facebook group?) At some point in the future I’m supposed to have an article going up on the same site. Stay tuned for that.

I am almost finished with the website for the new book. It’s currently in the hands of it’s first beta readers and I’ll be starting some edits this weekend on the first few chapters. I’m forever greatful to those who are taking the time to read it and they’ll all be mentioned in the acknowledgements and possibly get a case of champagne if the book does really well…

Nathan Bransford has his usual excellent round up of other publishing news. My favorite of the stories he mentions is the one from the New York Times addressing piracy concerns over ebooks. Very interesting read.

Not much news to report this week, other than that some of you might have noticed the site being down for a good portion of the week. It’s back up now and will (hopefully) stay up.

I had two great articles posted this week on Mashable. The one that went up today might be of particular interest to most of you: Literary Tweets: 100+ of the Best Authors on Twitter. You can follow me on Twitter here.

In other news, I’m hoping the website for the new book will be up next week. I’ll post as soon as it is.

First of all, let me say I can’t believe it’s already May! This year is flying by for me, probably because I’ve been so busy with all these different projects.

I don’t have a whole lot of news to share this week, as I’ve been busy again. But here are some highlights.

With the financial crisis what it is, it doesn’t surprise me that Atlas Shrugged and Ayn Rand are seeing renewed interest. Atlas Shrugged is my absolute favorite book. I only read it last year (and my copy is currently loaned out to a friend) but it had such a profound, life-changing effect on me. If you haven’t read it yet, I would strongly recommend you do.

The Espresso Book Machine has launched in London. This machine has the potential to completely change the publishing industry, making it possible for book stores (and any other business) to carry a virtually unlimited variety of books. Basically, the Espresso is a print on demand machine that prints and binds a book in less than five minutes while you wait. Since books are stored electronically, there’s virtually no limit to the number of books a shop can carry, including out of print and self published titles. If anyone has actually laid their hands on one of the books printed by this machine, I’d be very interested to know the quality of the finished product (feel free to post in the comments).

There was an interesting article written by Leo Babauta (of Zen Habits) over on Write to Done about copyright and why it actually hurt artists. I’m not entirely sure I agree with him on this issue. I may put my own views on the matter into a blog post at some point over the next week or two. One of the biggest issues I have is that once a work becomes really popular, the chances someone other than the original creator will be the one profiting from it increase (probably exponentially). I’ll have to look into it all a bit more before expressing a definite opinion. In the meantime, go read the article Leo wrote.

On a related note, Leo wrote a post over on his own blog, Zen Habits, about a certain author contacting him claiming he’d infringed on her trademarked book title. What was that particular phrase, you might ask? “Feel the fear and do it anyway”. In this case, I have to agree wholeheartedly with Leo. The phrase as he used it had nothing to do with her book (or any book) and was simply a reference to something a friend of his said on Twitter. Sometimes the whole copyright/trademark thing does go a little bit far. People need to use some common sense. To me this smells of an author trying to get a little free advertising on a very popular blog (though I could be wrong). And no, I’m not going to add the legalese this woman was requesting of him either. If you want to know who the author was, click through to Leo’s blog.

Writing forward had a great post on using questions to come up with writing ideas. It’s got some awesome information, so I definitely recommend you check it out.

Yesterday was supposed to be the (self-imposed) deadline for finishing the first draft of my new non-fiction book. I have three chapters left to write. A bunch of paid work popped up at the last minute and consider it’s the end of the month, I had too much other work to get done. So my goal is now May 3rd (this Sunday) for finishing the first draft. I’ll post as soon as it’s done!

Not a whole lot of news this week as I’ve been very busy working on the nonfiction book and some articles.

Publishing Renaissance has put out a piece on becoming an indie publisher. It’s a three part series (part 1, part 2, and part 3) and is a great look at the ins and outs of starting your own publishing company. [via Publetariat]

The Elements of Style turns 50 this year and they’re releasing a 50th anniversary edition. I have a confession to make: I do not own a copy of The Elements of Style; I’ve never even opened a copy. Am I the only writer out there who hasn’t? I do, however, own a copy of The Chicago Manual of Style. [via New York Times]

Nathan Bransford has a great roundup of some other news in publishing this week, as always. A couple of my favorites: Dan Brown’s new book is getting a 5 million copy first printing (from what I understand, a first-time author generally gets a 10,000-20,000 copy first print run) and this royalty statement from NYT bestselling author Lynn Veihl.

Here’s this week’s publishing and writing news.

Amazon is dealing with backlash over the removal of gay and lesbian lit books from their sales rank statistics. Their reason? They’ve deemed them “adult” content. The big question now is why they didn’t do the same for a collection of Playboy centerfolds? An article over on The Guardian offers a good overview. Here’s Amazon’s response to the whole thing (they’re calling it a glitch on their part) and here’s another article where a hacker/troll is claiming responsibility (though Amazon appears to deny this claim). The whole thing has been one giant mess, but I’m glad to see it’s being sorted out. Here’s another article from seattlepi.com that offers up an insider’s account of what happened.

Write to Done has a great post about energizing your creative writing.

If you follow me on Facebook, you may have already seen this one. Fast Company had a short article about HarperStudio, a newish imprint from Harper Collins. It’s a very interesting business model and hopefully one that will catch on.

My favorite post on this blog this week was Why Self Published Books Fail. It’s a look at the reasons why so many self published books tend not to do as well as those put out by traditional publishers. And here’s a hint: it’s not because they’re self published.

Each week I’m going to do a roundup post with the week’s news, any particularly popular posts on this blog, and links to any articles I’ve written elsewhere. To me, this is a cleaner way of presenting relevant information, rather than posting a short post or four every day with newsworthy items.

CNN had some great coverage on web and Print on Demand publishing.

The Guardian covered the #queryfail and #agentfail extravaganzas, and the comments section brought out a lot of great information on self publishing.

My suggestion for one of the best writing how-to books, Between the Lines by Jessica Morrell, was featured on Editor Unleashed in their “The 10 Best Books for Writers” post (it’s the 4th one down). Other books on the list include Stephen King’s On Writing and Plot & Structure by James Scott Bell, both of which I also own.

Writing Forward had a couple of excellent articles this week: Writing on the Go and How Poetry Writing Improves All Other Writing. I wrote poetry in high school and at this point I’m glad I lost all those notebooks (or burned them…whatever).

Nathan Bransford has a great rundown of other publishing news for the week, as he does every week.

This isn’t exaclty news this week, since it was published last August, but it’s still worth reading. Novelist Paulo Coelho finds the perfect alchemy of print & digital from the Guardian talks about how using the Internet and even releasing books for free online boosts sales.

Photo by Joe Lanman, via Flickr

I’ve got three different kinds of writing prompts I’ll be offering up. Here’s the schedule as it stands now:

• Visual Writing Prompts will be offered up on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. These prompts are based on photos or artwork from around the web.
• SPAM Writing Prompts will be offered up on Tuesdays. These are based on the subjects of actual SPAM messages that my SPAM filter catches (and they’ll be kept PG-13 for the most part).
• Musical Writing Prompts will be offered up on Thursdays. These are based on song lyrics from all musical genres and all kinds of artists.

If you’re feeling particularly proud of some writing you’ve done based on a prompt, I’d like to encourage you to post an excerpt (or the whole thing) in the comments for that post. As participation increases, I may start offering prizes to the ones I think are best each week. I’ve preloaded a week’s worth of writing prompts here, to give you an idea of what they’ll be like and to get those creative gears turning!

A bit about myself is probably in order, seeing as this is a completely new blog. I’ve been blogging for about two and a half years now. I started on my own blog, GreenStyle Magazine back in July of 2006. It’s still around, though currently on hiatus right now. In 2007 I started writing semi-regularly for Mashable, the 8th most popular blog out there and the most popular blog focusing on social media. And recently I’ve started writing for Smashing Magazine. You can see more of my writing on my portfolio page.

Photo by Silence Of Night, via Flickr

This blog is going to focus primarily on writing and publishing. I’ve written five novels, all in various stages of rewrites at this point, as well as two screenplays (unsold) and various poetry (really horrible and will never see the light of day). I’m currently working on my first book-length non-fiction project, which I plan to self-publish within the next few months. Details of this project will be forthcoming and progress will be reported regularly. In addition to posting about my own writing trials and tribulations, I’ll be offering up writing prompts and discussions of the craft of writing and the business of publishing.

I plan on posting on a daily basis, with a regular schedule of writing prompts (though these will not be the standard “write about an early childhood experience” or “once upon a time…”). An upcoming post will detail that schedule. You can expect regular progress reports and at least one article on publishing and one on craft each week. On occasion I may also post parts of various works-in-progress for your entertainment (and feedback if you’d like to offer it).

So sit back with some tea (or wine) and put your feet up. Enjoy yourself, offer some feedback, tell me I’m crazy (I probably am), or I’m a hack (also a possibility), and have a good laugh.