KD Rouse/Internet Publishing Exploration Preparation...continued

To review: I am a graduate student of Library and Information Science at University of North Carolina entering my second year. I am preparing to lauch an exploration of internet publishing and promotion opportunities using my collection of original works as potential items to publish. My professor mentor is Dr. Julia Hersberger, LIS UNC-G.

I want to find out what opportunities there are for publishing and promotion on the internet. I want to know if different genres of writing should be placed in subject-specific sites or is using one main site to publish is better. I want to know about e-books and how to promote should I choose to publish through one of these sites.

I am also curious about the current publishing industry. Is it crumbling? I would like to interview a book agent and hear his or her opinion on the future of the book agent and publishing empires. Because I feel that I am a publish-able author, I would like her to explain what she can do that I can't do for myself through the tools available to anyone on the net. Are book agents and publisher middle-men that can be bypassed by an author?

My experience with internet publishing thus far: I have self published two books through Cafe Press and Lulu. I was able to hold my own book in my hand for about $7.00. I never promoted and never sold any except to myself. The first book, in 2005, contains the first nine stories of 'The Saga of Gypsy Nurse.' It merely says 'Printed by Cafe Press,' which indicates to me that I can do with it what I want.

The other book, which I self-published in 2009,  'Hip and Broke: A Songwriter's Journey' is a bit more complicated. It is published by Lulu, who provided me an ISBN# and a bar code for free. That implies rights to Lulu which I need to understand better. Am I free to publish that same work with any other site. If not, how can I promote my existing book that has thus far been isolated in cyber-space?

My previous posts have helped me prepare for an exploration of my options in internet publishing and promotion because:
1) Reviewing the steps preceding my upcoming 'first step' in the exploration of internet publishing has allowed my Inner Librarian to organise, catagorize, and make sense of my journey thus far.
2) For a successful journey,  the traveler is purposeful, knowing where they go and why, taking only what they need with them.

This is important to me, as my biggest wish is to be a successful author who occassionally plays shows in mid-size venues and huge outdoor festivals and I think I can do it.

I have been the tortoise watching the hares run by and by and by.

But...."The time has come, the Walrus said...."
                        Lewis Carroll

This Future Librarian's Not To Miss List

Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There, Lewis Carroll. 1872.

The Tortoise and the Hare, one of Aesop's Fables.

One-Legged Larry & Leery of the Library

One-legged Larry loved Leons. He sat at the end of the bar night after night drinking beer after beer, Miller Lites, loving and living the life. So what if he borrowed $40,000. or so for the privelage? He went to the North Carolina School of the Arts for screenwriting, and Hollywood was going to snap up his jewels as soon as he could get over his writer's block.

His bald head shone in the bar light as he shook his head slowly back and forth and told his tales ceaselessly as we scurried elegantly in and out,  fetching fine wine and Dom for our Filet-Mignon-garganzola-dripping, calamrari-eating patrons. We smile and bob and banter with one-legged Larry while we play mental chess and make it look like a dance. We help one-legged Larry to the taxi night after night, clap him on the back, laughing dilagently at his inanities.
Larry loved us. We were the nicest, most beautiful people in the world, so wonderful he wanted to cross the bar and be one of us.
We tried to dissuade him. Larry didn't see the hustle in our bustle. He didn't play chess, mental or otherwise.
It was a disaster that shattered all Larry's illusions of Leons. Behind the scenes he is hurried, and scurried, bossed, scolded, and cussed to keep up as he sweats and crumbles, dragging his fake leg behind him. He was "one of us" for maybe an hour.

One-Legged Larry made me leery of working in the library. It is risky working in your favorite place. The curtain may fall away and your haven be lost. (We never saw Larry again.) 

Maya Angelou Is Another Inspiration. Gracious & Regal. (I used to wait on her at the Downtown Underground Bistro)

Each of us has the right and the responsibility to assess the roads which lie ahead, and those over which we have traveled, and if the future road looms ominous or unpromising, and the roads back uninviting, then we need to gather our resolve and, carrying only the necessary baggage, step off that road into another direction. If the new choice is also unpalatable, without embarrassment, we must be ready to change that one as well.

                                                                         – Maya Angelou
                                                           Wouldn't Take Nothing for My Journey Now

This allowed me not to feel like a fool when I made the abrupt changes so characteristic of my life. I call these changes 'The About-Face,' an occurance that no one seems to understand but me. Why would a very educated college graduate wait tables and scrub floors after graduation instead of teach? Why would a mother of three sign over the house to the abusive husband and get an apartment for herself and three children, 2, 6 and 8? Why suddenly move and break all ties, over and over again. I have reasons for each game of About-Face, and Maya made it easier.
Here is a link to Maya Angelou's website.
http://mayaangelou.com/
Love, love, love.

Inspiration from Martha Graham & Max Ehrmann

I come from a long line of published authors.
I thought my Fairy Godmother had forgotten to give me gifts to be one of them, but I wrote in secret the things I could never say.
It used to be I would scold myself if I thought something three times and didn't write it down. I trained myself to write when I first thought of them, because a) you think you will remember but you don't
b) Thinking the same thing over and over requires head space. It drives me mad when my thoughts go round and round like clothes in a dryer. Writing makes it stop, and c) requires a quote from Martha Graham, one that when I read when I worked at Mindy's Music Store, opting to clean the grand piano and dust the bannisters instead of teach songwriting. I wrote songs, but they just come to me. I didn't know what or how to begin to teach it, plus it felt wrong to pressure my musical passion with dissemination. I lost my religion that way.
To get back to the quote that allowed me to create unabashedly, where as before I thought: Who would even care? Wasn't there a frivolity and presumption about writing or performing on stage as if anything I could do or say would make one whit of difference? But Martha set me free.

"There is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost."
— Martha Graham
For more inspirational and quotable quotes by Martha Graham, here is one site to get you started:
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/m/martha_graham.html

I was 12 when I stumbled upon Desiderata, the prose poem written by American writer Max Ehrmann (1872-1945) in 1927. Here is an excerpt:

You are a child of the universe,
no less than the trees and the stars;
you have a right to be here.
And whether or not it is clear to you,
no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.
Therefore be at peace with God,
whatever you conceive Him to be,
and whatever your labors and aspirations,
in the noisy confusion of life keep peace with your soul.
                                                         Max Ehrmann
You can find Desiderata in its entirety at this site:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desiderata
It will calm your soul, and no matter how many times you read it, it still speaks to you.

My Journey Almost Begins

Like I said before, I am in Library School at University of North Carolina at Greensboro. The preceeding posts are written to provide context as to who I am and why I am embarking on a quest to study internet publishing.
I have one more task before my exploration begins.
I need to take inventory and decide what I consider ready to publish.  

Source and Context/Pre-Exploration of Internet Publishing

As a former student of St. John's College in Annapolis, Maryland, and now as a graduate student in Library and Information Studies, I value knowledge of both the source and context of the written word. St. John's used the original source in lieu of textbooks with interpretations of the source material,  and in Library School at UNC-G, we constantly evaluate sources and context for a variety of reasons.
Information must be organized for efficient retrieval because documents and information, like possessions, are useless if they cannot be found.
Information must be searchable through a variety of keywords, including author, title, or subject.
While librarians are avidly against book banning, we also have a responsibility to supply the most pertinent, accurate, reliable sources to library patrons. We don't want a Google-like approach, supplying jillions of matches to a search.
We seek, not the most, but the best sources for those who seek information.
This is primarily done with information gathering. We identify who wrote the work, or "who to blame," as my cataloging professor Dr. Shiflett would say. We identify any other works the author, authors, or corporate bodies have created, and whether they have any pseudonyms. We note where and when a work is created, what sort of document it is, whether the document is deemed credible by professional peers in the field, how many times it is used as a citation in other works and so on.
Gathering and grouping information creates an invisible net of cross-referencing with the goal of accurate, specific information retrieval, the net tightening until we've caught the butterfly and pinned it to the wall. 

Library and Information Science at University of North Carolina at Greensboro

I thought I chose Library School, but as I learn I have more the sense that it chose me. Until my children were grown, I wrote songs and stories on the sidelines. My children were the center of my world, and my 'Check and Balance.'
Songwriting, and eventually performing were my little hobby, and when too much music swirled in my head, I would paint.
I have amassed a collection of unpublished works by me, KD Rouse.
I have spent countless hours organizing, filing, alphabetizing, and digitizing the collected works of KD Rouse. I have craved order and meaning and ways to communicate with myself and the world. A song doesn't feel like a song unless it is heard; A story not a story...
Anyway, it turns out Library School is all about creating order within chaos. It is about freedom, and equality, the right to learn and being GateKeepers to information.
Bingo.
After Dr. Hersberger nudged my accepted reality, I decided that Library School called to me from my desperate WallyWood world to teach me the skills I need to harvest my years of creation.

Mike Mulligan & His Steamshovel by Virginia Lee Burton

Determination allowed Mike Mulligan to fufill his promise to his town: that he and his steamshovel, Mary Anne, could dig the foundation for the new Town Hall in just one day, something even the new, fancy, diesel-powered machines could not do!

My  'Just One Day!' lasted seven years or so, when I wrote hundreds of songs, dozens of stories, one musical, two books with soundtracks, a few novelettes, painted and sketched---so, so prolific.

My seventh day has lasted nearly five years now.

The last time I was on stage, Sam and I were opening for Sister Hazel at Ziggy's in Winston-Salem, in March of 2007. Our band, The Sams, had laid down most of the tracks for our first album.
Sam killed himself in May.

I went into a tailspin, and had my third major breakdown.

I believe in the power of the mind, but clinical depression is not something you can will away. Purists can disagree with me all they want, but there are some of us who are short on joy juice and wouldn't be alive except for meds. I have fought hard to be here, and I am convinced that Depression is an adversary that cannot be vanquished alone.

I found myself working in the photo lab at Wally-World for three years. I met some of my favorite people in the world in my co-workers, like Miss Doris, Jerry, Parnell, Edmund, & Gene. I also learned about working for an anti-union, militaristic, greedy, lying Big-Brother corporation in the land of big butts and crying babies, bings and bongs, the same commercials booming, or the same Christmas songs blaring over, and over, and over, again and again. 
Later when I studied carnivorous plants, it reminded me the importantance of environment. The Venus Flytrap, indigenous only to a roughly 60 mile radius around Wilmington, NC,  adapted to nitrogen-poor bogs by becoming carnivorous. I searched Wally World for my fly but with Miss Doris out with pneumonia, the fly had flown. I, too, fled to school and bed.

This Future Librarian's 'Not to Miss List'

Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel (ISBN 0-590-75803-9) is a classic children's book by Caldecott Medal-winning author and illustrator, Virginia Lee Burton, published in 1939. The steamshovel's name, "Mary Anne"  is based on Marion Steam Shovels.

My advisor is Dr. Julie Hersberger-Professor of Library and Information Studies at UNC-G

Taking Dr. Hersberger's 'Introduction to Library and Information Studies' in the fall of 2010 was like falling down the rabbit hole. She made sparks fly through my brain. She shook me up from my Tin Man slumber; applied smelling salts to my brain. She's a Johnny Appleseed who plants wonder, and questions, and ideas that tickle, nag and speak later when she's long gone on her next undertaking.
So while I was an awkward student in Dr. Hersberger's class, and couldn't even think of a thing to say to her when I had a chance at our end-of-the-semester party, I still remembered things she said that came floating out of nowhere; One of these things was something like "If anyone needs help publishing, talk to me." She also told us that we could actually design up to two courses of our own, LIS690. All we needed was an area of interest and a professor to sponsor us. Of course I wanted Dr. H.
While my ears perked up about publishing, I dismissed it at the time because I figured she meant academic publishing, and not the kind of things I've written. But I kept hearing her say it in my head, so I ventured out with an email. The upshot is that Dr. H. is my advisor and I am setting out on a quest to find out what publishing opportunies exist on the internet, and try to get myself published while earning credits towards my Master's degree. Win. Win. Win.
Slick.

I am keeping this blog as an account of my findings in the world of internet publishing. I also want to know if agents and the big book publishers are becoming unnecessary, and how to promote published works via the web.

This Future Librarian's 'Not to Miss List'

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (commonly shortened to Alice in Wonderland) by Charles Lutwidge Dodgson under the pseudonym Lewis Carroll. 1865.

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum; illustrated by W. W. Denslow. Chicago: George M. Hill Company, 1900.

Or read about historical figure, Johnny Appleseed (1774 – 1845), born John Chapman, an American pioneer nurseryman who introduced apple trees to large parts of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. He became an American legend while still alive, because of his kind and generous ways, his leadership in conservation, and the symbolic importance he attributed to apples.

My name is KD Rouse

I've worn many hats: crybaby, goat-milking granola girl, tinkerbell, nothing girl, naughty Johnnie, shotgun bride, Devoted Mother Lioness Forever, cookie baking church girl, Room-mother, pummeled wife, shivering-shaking waitress, Captain of the Ship/Keeper of the Flame/Pied Piper Mother,  PTA Infiltrating Imposter, lumbering amoeba, Teacher who can't teach, chained rat, Rainbow girl, Inner Jokester, guru waitress, rollercoaster Rocker, Mad Scientist, Gypsy Nurse, whirling dervish, Blues-Approved, punk-rock princess, computer nerd, soggy rock, Empty-Nester, Wally-world escapee...

which pretty much brings us to the present, where I am currently attending graduate school at University of North Carolina. I just finished my first year in Library and Information Studies.

A Journey Begins...

'A Journey Begins With a Single Step' but every journey has a back-story.
As a graduate student of Library and Information Studies, I value the understanding of source and context. Thus, I begin this particular journey with an introduction of myself and an accounting of the pertinent knowledge I have gleaned from the many steps before this one.