Join us for The Libbooration of Publishing – An Authors Meet Promoters / Marketers “Speed Dating” event on Feb 28th, Cambridge MA

Writing a book and getting it in the book shop window isn’t what it used to be.  Writers need to spend their precious time writing, not marketing.  Would you like to have a team behind you to do the marketing and promotional work, helping you find the audience your great book deserves?

Libboo wants to invite you to a exclusive event on February 28th from 7:00pm to 9:00pm at the British Consulate in Kendall Square at 1 Broadway – map – Libboo is bringing authors and promoters, social media gurus, bloggers, marketers – together for an evening of networking. This will be the first ever “speed dating” event to help pair authors, who aim to be discovered, with promoters.

Do you think you have the promotion skills and influence to help talented authors “break-out” and become discovered?

Are you an ebook author who could use help selling your work?

CLICK HERE TO REGISTER FOR FREE

- Our featured speakers will be author Annie Bourne and Peg Fitzpatrick -

A.B. Bourne worked closely with Danny Lewin at Akamai Technologies on strategic deals with IBM and Oracle, and managed Akamai’s IPO, raising $234 million in 1999.  The author graduated from Yale College and the University of Michigan Law School and practiced law in Boston.  She lives in Massachusetts with her family, consulting for start-up technology companies and writing The Second Secret of Edwin Hoff.

Annie Bourne

Peg Fitzpatrick is a positive vibe producer, social media butterfly and the Brand Sparker for re:DESIGN, a synergy of high end design, social media expertise and traditional work ethics.  She is also Director of Marketing and Social Media Manager for Kreussler Inc.  Along with being a writer and managing partner at 12 Most, Peg created the popular #MyBookClub, a monthly online chat, hosting such well known guests as Guy Kawasaki, Mari Smith and Dave Kerpen. She is honored to be on several “best of” online and blogging lists.  Please follow Peg on Twitter & Pinterest, circle her on Google+, visit #MyBookClub or stop by 12 Most or her own blog. She loves meeting new people!

Peg Fitzpatrick

CLICK HERE TO REGISTER FOR FREE

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“The Libbooration of Publishing”  gives you the chance to meet other authors, poets, editors and word people who want to get their ebooks up online and find the audience they deserve. If you’re an ebook author, a book promoter or book blogger, you need to join us.

Please contact fernando [at} libboo [dot] com for more info about this event.

Picture Credit:  Wikipedia.org

It’s been a while since our last blog post (sorry about that!), but we’ve been super busy at Techstars. Although it’s taken over our lives, we’re loving every minute of it.

Of course, we have to take breaks occasionally and there’s nothing we enjoy more than messing with Fernando.

Like taping him to his desk.

Doesn't that doll look just like Fernando? They're even dressed alike.

That’s all we have time for today, but keep an eye on the blog because we’ll be announcing something really awesome for those of you in the Boston area.

-Team Libboo

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If you are visiting us for the first time, join our growing community of readers, writers, illustrators, editors etc. at http://www.libboo.com. Libboo is 100% free and fun! Be sure to “like” us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!

Team Libboo has been accepted into the Techstars Boston 2012 program – arguably the world’s most successful business accelerator – to make Libboo rock in 2012. We look forward to totally transforming the publishing industry and finally putting our grand ideas into the marketplace.

For those who don’t know, Techstars is a highly selective program where typically less than 1% of applicants get accepted. That’s a lower acceptance rate than Harvard or Yale! The purpose of Techstars is to achieve in 3 months what most companies couldn’t dream of achieving in a whole year with the help of some of the world’s most successful innovators.

So, we are psyched, pumped, mega driven and super charged. We can’t wait to help our community go the extra mile and become the world’s most successful authoring community.

Chris Howard
Team Libboo

Vacations, holidays and trips with friends and family are supposed to be fun and relaxing, a time to get away from it all: work, school, the daily routine. However, things don’t always work out the way they should. Everyone has a story about a vacation or a family reunion gone awry, so we’ve asked you to share those stories with us in our second bounty. Whether they’re fiction or non-fiction, we’re dying to read your stories, so we’ve decided to post trailers and clips from some great “vacation and holiday mayhem” movies to get your creative juices flowing.

National Lampoon’s Vacation
If you’ve never had a chance to see it, National Lampoon’s Vacation follows the Griswold family on their journey to the Walley World theme park. As you might have guessed, their road trip doesn’t go as planned, but we’ll let the trailer speak for itself:

*Fun fact: National Lampoon’s Vacation was actually based on a short story, which you can read here.

Home Alone
Ah, the film that caused a revolution in facial expressions and introduced the “Home Alone Face” to the world.

The Home Alone Face

The Darjeeling Limited
A very different movie from the two mentioned above, but still a great example of trips and family reunions gone wrong:

Eurotrip
This is the movie for those who like their “vacation gone awry” comedies on the raunchy side. We just couldn’t resist adding the robot fight scene to this list:

We hope these clips inspire you to write and to submit your true or not-so-true stories to our Vacation & Holiday Mayhem bounty.

-Team Libboo

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If you are visiting us for the first time, join our growing community of readers, writers, illustrators, editors etc. at http://www.libboo.com. Libboo is 100% free and fun! Be sure to “like” us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.

Libboo started in 2009 as a simple pet-project by friends to allow their friends to create written content online together. 2011 however proved to Team Libboo that Libboo can be so much more.

Throughout the last 12 months, Libboo has won various innovation competitions, gained the exposure of the world’s leading press, created works with bestselling authors, and established itself as a forerunner in the new digital publishing age. However these next 12 months are going to be truly exciting and we can finally reveal what all our hard work has been for:

I am proud and honored to announce the launch of Libboo Team Publishing.

Team Publishing by Libboo is a world-first. We have dabbled and experimented these last few months to create a mechanism which will take the best out of the traditional publishing model and combine that with the efficiency of the self-publishing model. It is clear self-publishing is here to stay and the access it brings to authors is unquestionable. However self-publishing lacks the ability to find talent, gain exposure – and once you have self-published – managing royalties and copyright between many storefronts and your team members can be a nightmare. These were the benefits of the traditional model – and these are the benefits we have introduced into Team Publishing. Now you can create content in teams, market it in teams, and sell your work via the major online storefronts at the click of a button. Libboo does all the dirty work letting you and your team focus on creating awesome writing, and then sharing it once it’s complete.

We hope you find our new approach engaging, and I personally am incredible grateful of our team here at Team Libboo – Richard, Fernando, Katherine, Po, Dan, and Joey – for guiding Libboo to what it is now becoming.

Yours sincerely and a happy new year,

Chris Howard
Libboo.com

Every writer has that nail-bitting moment when your work is being reviewed. Especially, if it’s in the hands of someone you admire. How will the review come back? What will the say? These are just a few thoughts that fill your head. Being properly distracted is key and helps avoid chewing up the furniture, office supplies, poisonous plants etc….

One of the awesome joys of running Libboo Bounty is being able to help writers get exposure and notoriety. We were very very excited when writer and world renowned blogger Halley Suitt Tucker agreed to review In Delirium Bloom – Our first collection of short fiction from Libboo Bounty.

Halley Tucker is the founder of BoOkBoX – bringing news, interviews, reviews and stories about what is happening in the world of publishing now. Halley has blogged for the major news media and also shares her recommendations and favorite books. Here is a snip of Halley Tucker’s AWESOME review:

Halley Tucker’s BoOkBox – “In Delirium Bloom is the perfect short story collection with just enough after-life adventurers to make me happy, as well as entertain those who are blood thirsty for tales of the dead and sort-of dead.”…”Whatever your particular favorite twist is, in the dead men walking genre, this collection of lurid tales will entertain you from dark to dawn.”

Visit Halley Tucker’s BoOkBoX to read the full editorial review here

In Delirium Bloom is now available through Barnes & Noble and Amazon US and UK digital storefronts for $2.99. Be sure to get you copy today!

-Team Libboo

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Be sure to follow us on http://www.facebook.com/libboo and on http://www.twitter.com/libboo for the latest news and writing tips.

In Delirium Bloom

a collection of terrorific short stories is the first book published by Libboo Bounty. Now available to read online at Libboo.com.

BECOME A STAR REVIEWER TODAY!

Write a book review on Libboo and your review could be featured online on Barnes & Noble and Amazon

We are looking for top and insightful book reviews written on Libboo.com. Have it read and commented upon by friends and fans.  Your review could be featured online on Barnes & Noble and Amazon. This is your chance to become an influential critic!

WRITE AND PUBLISH YOUR REVIEW ON LIBBOO BEFORE DECEMBER 12TH

Are you a book reviewer and still not on Libboo? Join the growing community of readers, authors, illustrators and other content creators at www.libboo.com – it’s 100% FREE!

-Team Libboo

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Be sure to follow us on www.facebook.com/libboo and keep in touch with the latest news and content to help writers at www.twitter.com/libboo

Let’s start today’s blog by reading these two sentences out loud.

Women, without her man, is nothing.

Women: without her, man is nothing.

We are all familiar with them!  At times, we misuse and abuse them. Punctuation marks are those little symbols that indicate the structure and organization of language or reflect intonation and pauses. So who invented punctuation marks?

The earliest writings had no spaces, no capitalizations, no punctuation marks and no vowels. Wow, try reading this blog like that!  The oldest known documentent using punctuation, dates back to the 9th centuray BC – The Mesha Stele. It contains points between the words and dashes as punctuation marks.  The Greeks were using another form of punctuation by the 5th century BC – as vertically arranged dots indicating the end of a phrase. These were used by playwrights to tell the cast when pauses were needed during the performance of a play.

Fast-forward a few centuries to the 1400′s-1500′s – The rise of printing created a demand for a standardized punctuation system. And for these tiny symbols, we thank Mr. Aldus Manutius and his grandson. Manutius and grandson created the full stop or colon to end sentences [STOP!]. In the western world, punctuation marks became standardized by 1885.

Now let’s go back to those two first sentences I presented and read them out loud again without any punctuation. Pretty fun, eh?  There are many other examples out there. Can you find more? And if so, please share them with us by clicking on the post title and submitting your comments.

In the meantime, enjoy this funny video on punctuation by pianist and comedian Victor Borge!

-Team Libboo

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If you are visiting us for the first time, join our growing community of readers, writers, illustrators, editors etc. on http://www.libboo.com. Libboo is 100% free and fun!  Be sure to follow us on www.facebook.com/libboo and on www.twitter.com/libboo

LIBBOO ANNOUNCES OUR FIRST BOUNTY WINNERS!

Once again, our algorithms have been put to the task. After an exciting month of reading awesome short fiction entries for Libboo Bounty, we are pleased to announce the top 5 winners from our first Bounty:

ZOMBIES, VAMPIRES & WEREWOLVES

The winning short stories and soon-to-be-published in ONE great book are:

THE FAMILIAR by David Palmer

HERE AND NOW by Sara Adams

SING FOR YOUR LIFE by Nick Zaino

WRATH TO THE LEAST by Joseph Mazzola

SOUTH OF THE WOLLOOMSAC by Alexis Lykanos

Congratulations to our winners! They each receive a $100 cash award. Libboo is now assembling their stories into a collection of short fiction that will sell online via Barnes & Noble, Amazon and iBooks. The winners will share 50% of the royalties from the sale of the book and the ‘kudos’ for being the first Bounty winners, interviews and exposure.

We will announce the release of the book, with guest illustration done by Amanda Brack!

They got it written and published on Libboo and so can you!

-Team Libboo

Don’t forget to follow our weekly blog and visit us on facebook and twitter to find out the latest news and content to help you – GET IT WRITTEN on Libboo

Our first bounty is now officially over, and while some of you are anxiously awaiting the results, others are quite busy with NaNoWriMo. So for those of you brave enough to tackle NaNoWriMo, here are two sites to help you reach your daily  word count goals:

Write or Die

Dr. Wicked’s Write or Die is a web application that punishes you if you stop writing. If you are easily distracted or tend to procrastinate, this is a great NaNoWriMo tool for you. After setting a word goal and a time limit, you must choose a consequence mode. The modes are:

Gentle: Some time after you stop writing, a box will pop up, reminding you to continue writing.

Normal: A certain amount of time after you start writing, “a most unpleasant sound” will be played, which will only stop if you continue to write. (When I tried it, Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up” would play every time I stopped writing.)

Kamikaze: This is Write or Die’s most extreme punishment. If you stop writing, your work will erase itself.

Written? Kitten!

If you are more responsive to positive reinforcement, then this is the tool for you. Written? Kitten! works much like Write or Die, only it uses rewards instead of punishments. After reaching a specified word count, you get a picture of a cute kitten. You can choose if you want a new picture of a kitten every 100, 200, 500 or 1,000 words.

Even if you’re not doing NaNoWriMo these are great tools to help you reach your writing deadlines, and to get you to stop being procrastinating and just write!

-Team Libboo

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Remember to follow us on twitter and “like” us on Facebook for more Libboo news and updates!