Author John Scalzi is currently on a book tour and recently made an appearance at the Google offices. The folks at Google were kind enough to post it on youtube and I thought I’d share it here. I recommend this to anyone who is interested in writing, making money writing, or just enjoys entertaining conversations.
The video is around an hour long, but it really didn’t feel that long when I watched it. Scalzi talks about many writing related topics including how he got into the professional fiction writing business (he posted his novel online and a publisher bought it). A really funny part of the video is when he talks about the time he taped bacon to his cat and posted pictures on his blog. Anyhow, I had a good time watching this video and I thought you might as well.
The Struggling Writer 
Saw some of it. He’s quite the cutie. And he can talk!
The only book I was ever able to read online was Herland, and that’s because it was out of print.
That’s a great video, thanks for posting it. To be honest, I’ve never read any of Mr. Scalzi’s books, but I’m a big fan of his attitude, his reaching out to his audience (his site “Whatever” is a favorite of mine), and his take on publishing/web publishing/art. I would like to think that more writers will be like him as the publishing industry moves to more of a “community” model than a “artist in a tower” model. Sadly, I don’t think that too many writers are that interested in having the sort of conversations with readers that Mr. Scalzi is.
Sean – I think writers would just be hurting themselves if they discount the internet. I mean in theory writers are people, and people like money, so you would think they would therefore like the internet which can help them make more money. I totally agree with Scalzi about building an audience on the internet which then becomes loyal to a writer.
For example, there are people who will buy whatever he publishes, solely because of his blog. This is powerful.
Additionally, as a writer I want the most people I can to read what I write. The internet makes this happen. Without the internet, I doubt very many people would have ever read anything written by me.
Anyhow, thanks for stopping by. I hope you come back.
Thanks for posting this, I just watched the whole thing and thinks he makes a lot of good points about publishing in the future. I’ll have to go through the whole Authors@google series now and see if there are any other goodies in there.
Lee
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No problem Lee. Thanks for stopping by. I think he makes a lot of good points too and also is pretty entertaining.