Publisher Richard Nash is trying to turn the traditional publishing model inside out. Through his start up publishing company Cursor and its new imprint Red Lemonade, he aims to bring community to the forefront of publishing.

Red Lemonade, whose first three titles launched this spring, has a new community sourced literary website that lets writers submit manuscripts for both fiction and non-fiction work. This work is then reviewed by the community of readers. According to the site, “Readers write. Writers read.” The idea is for writers to get feedback from a good community of literary folks and give Red Lemonade exposure to potentially good work to publish.

The Red Lemonade approach stems from the historical publishing business –printing and bookselling– but is centered in the digital world. In a blog post today Nash wrote: “So the seeming radicalism of the Cursor project, as expressed here at Red Lemonade, is not contrary to the historical spirit of publishing but consonant with it. Being opposed to technology is profoundly at odds with the book business because what is the book but technology, technology that has been smoothed and sanded by repeated contact with human society into the most comfortable technology we have, as taken for granted as our clothes, product of the looms.”

Book Expo is around the corner and amid the hubbub of major book publishers announcing deals and celebrity presenters, it looks like it is going to be a good event for indie publishers. May 21^st, the Saturday before the main Expo, successful indie publishers are going to share their secrets at a DIY event.

The day has attracted a lot of talent in the indie arena including Amazon’s CreateSpace and Kindle Direct Publishing authors Ray Sabini (Sweet Farts) and B.V. Larson (The Vampire’s Image), as well as publisher Richard Nash (Cursor Publishing) and retailer Julia Coblentz (Senior Manager of PubIt!, Barnes and Noble’s self-publishing tool). The content looks very promising for smaller publishers and authors.

For example, a session called “Priced to sell,” a presentation by a Lulu.com exec. Here is the description: “How can self-published authors maximize sales and profits? How did two competing pricing models emerge and what do they mean for the industry as a whole and DIY publishing in particular? In this session we’ll take a look at some pitfalls to avoid and tips you should know about when pricing and distributing your book through the different platforms available.”

For more information on the DIY Authors Conference, follow this link.

Writing a pitch to describe a book is similar to creating an online dating profile, said Richard Nash, founder of Cursor, at the eBook Summit today.

In a panel called, “How to Get Published: Interactive Pitch Slam,” Nash said that the challenge is that you have to convince a reader to take the time to read a book. “The power and challenge of a book is that it typically takes ten to fifteen hours to consume, which is five times longer than a movie,” he said. “There is a real burden on the consumer to figure out if you want to spend ten to fifteen hours of your life with that authors voice in your head.”

Jason Ashlock, principal at Movable Type Literary Group, recommends that authors get to know their genre before crafting their pitch. “Authors should read in their category and genre to understand where their book fits in,” he said. “You should become a voracious reader, particularly in the category of which you are hoping to enter. Our jobs are made easier if you can clearly articulate to us where your book fits into a person’s library.”

Kate McKean, literary agent at the Howard Morhaim Literary Agency recommends that writers stay on topic. She said that writers shouldn’t come to the table saying how they are not going to be the next best thing and making comparisons, but rather should say what their book is about. “The number one thing I see not happening in pitches is not telling me about your book,” she said. She also reminds writers who are pitching, to “remember that you are talking to a person,” she said. “You should also be a person when you do that.”

SXSW has revealed a partial list of its panel lineup for the interactive component of its upcoming show in March and there are a couple of digital publishing related sessions. We have listed a couple below, but follow this link to read the entire program.

1. “What Comic Books Can Teach Mobile Application Designers” organized by Anjuan Simmons, Adverlyze
Description: “The comic book medium offers many design standards that mobile application developers can use to improve the effectiveness of their graphical user interface designs. Comic books have evolved through the years to maximize their ability to tell a story while confined to two dimensional static images. Comic book legend Will Eisner published “Comics and Sequential Art” in 1985 in order to document his mastery of using graphics to tell a story. This presentation will explore the design principles Eisner shared in his landmark book and specifically apply them to mobile application design.”

2. “Nothing is True, Everything is Permitted. Not!” organized by Richard Nash, Cursor
Description: “For the future of both, it is imperative that technology and culture learn from one another. Doing more with less is a philosophy that has animated both, especially in recent times with the notion of the minimum viable product, and the injunction against feature creep. But art and culture have always understood the concept of “less is more” even if it took till the 20th century of that to be coined so neatly. For art to be possible, rules are necessary. In the Assassin’s Code, the death of God makes everything possible. Many believe that the network makes everything possible. But if everything is possible, how does anything matter? In art, what is left out is as important as what is included. Can the rules of making art help us make more useful technology? Can such concepts as the minimum viable product help us do a better job of writing, editing, designing, and disseminating novels, films, music. This high interdisciplinary panel will help illuminate how the eternal verities of art and science, when properly framed, can help us be better movers of the hearts and minds of men and women…”
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Last night we held our first annual eBook Summit book pitch party. At the event, ten finalists gave their two-minute book pitches to a room full of publishing folks and our distinguished judges.

The pitch party winners were: The Robin Hood of Harlem: The Complex Criminal Life of Ellsworth “Bumpy” Johnson, a biography by Margaret Johnson and Leonard J. Greene; No More Tears: A Mom’s Guide to 50 Fabulous Trips, a travel guide by Anne Uglum; and The Speed At Which I Travel, an earthbound sci-fi novel by Chris Cole. Meet the other finalists below. Follow this link to read more about the other seven finalists.

These three writers won tickets to our eBook Summit on December 15th. Judges of the contest — literary agent Kate McKean, Movable Type Literary Group founder Jason Allen Ashlock, and Cursor founder Richard Nash– will share book proposal advice for all writers in a panel discussion at the event.

The one-day summit will feature practical case studies from a range of publishers:  Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Mischief and Mayhem, Open Road Media, and HarperCollins. The program also includes digital survival tips from writers Douglas Rushkoff and Ken Auletta. For more information on the eBook Summit, follow this link.