AuthorViews Video Podcast

Todays feature is the only AuthorView video we shot in Seattle, Washington, on the summer 2005 tour. It features bestselling author Jennie Shortridge with a 2-minute riff on her new book, Eating Heaven, from NAL/Penguin. Jennies first book, Riding With the Queen, was a semi-autobiographical road trip story about pursuing your dreams and the challenges of mental illness. Her new book, Eating Heaven, is a different kind of trip, through the territory of dieting, food, writing, and relationships. Caution: This video will make you hungry -- watch before lunch!

Happy Friday! Today we are pleased to present media trainer to the stars, Susan Harrow, in a 2-minute video clip talking about her new book, Get a 6 Figure Book Advance. Let me tell you a little about Susan Harrow. She is a walking contradiction. Most of her books are about making it big -- such as todays featured title and another book we have here at AuthorViews, The Ultimate Guide to Getting Booked on Oprah. These books cost a lot of money. And then theres Susan Harrow, the author of Sell Yourself Without Selling Your Soul, from HarperCollins. Susan has a deep spiritual side thats not just for show. During the AuthorViews Summer Tour 2005, it was Susan Harrow who lined up many of the top authors we filmed in San Francisco, Santa Fe, and Los Angeles. She opened her Rolodex, used her newsletter to spread the word, and sat down with us for a precious interview with awesome hair. Check it out.

Today is the beginning of Heart Month here in the U.S.A. as well as in Canada and the U.K. Its appropriate, then, that todays 2-minute video is for the new book, The Open Heart Companion, by longtime publishing coach Maggie Lichtenberg. Maggie opens her heart to us in this brief clip, explaining how she learned she would need open heart surgery, then learned how badly prepared she was for the recovery process. Maggie saw a need for a companion to guide you through recovery, and she created that companion in the form of this book. If you are with the media, you should consider writing about Maggie Lichtenberg or having her as your guest this month. Those in your audience who are diagnosed with heart trouble, or are facing surgery, or are in recovery, will really appreciate hearing Maggies tips for handling the psychological barriers to full recovery.

AuthorViews is very pleased to have Carol Adrienne in the house! Adrienne is co-author, with James Redfield, of The Celestine Prophecy: An Experiential Guide. The book she shows us today is The Purpose of Your Life, published by HarperCollins. You might recognize Adrienne from her appearance on The Oprah Winfrey Show talking about The Purpose of Your Life. In her 2-minute AuthorViews video, Adrienne says that the purpose of your life is not something you figure out, but something you tune into. Its an interesting distinction. Wont you take a look?

Todays video is another first for AuthorViews. Johanna Vondeling is our first video of an editorial director talking about her publishing houses line. Instead of pitching a book, Vondeling is pitching Berrett-Koehler Publishers out of San Francisco, California. Notice how quickly this simple, 2-minute video communicates the publishers mission: positive change agent. In the process, Johanna highlights two big books for the new season, from bestselling authors Ray Bourhis and David C. Korten. AuthorViews are terrific for presenting a spring or fall line to employees, sales rep, booksellers, the media, and other trade contacts. You should let us shoot your season preview video at Book Expo America 2006 or one of other AuthorViews tour stops.

Todays author has one of the most remarkable faces you will see in a video: round, animated, sincere, it is impossible to turn away from Jerry Sears. We filmed this interview in Boulder, Colorado, last summer. After filming for over an hour, the tape ran out. I asked my cameraman, Jesse Vohs, to put another tape in and he looked at me like I was crazy. Surely we had enough film in the can for a two-minute video. The entire two minutes you see here came from that last piece of film. Almost uncut, it is one of the loviest videos I have ever made. Jerrys book, Generating Trust, is about rainmaking -- the salesman kind, not the shaman kind -- though by the end of the video you might not be so sure.

Todays video is for a book so new, not even Amazon has it yet. Lawrence Wright is a screenwriter (The Siege) and a columnist for The New Yorker. The Looming Tower, a book about the Saudi bin Laden family and the history of the Al Qaeda movement, is sure to cause a stir this fall when it is released for the five year anniversary of September 11, 2001. This interview was recorded in Austin, Texas, on the AuthorViews 2005 summer tour. We were lucky to catch Larry Wright in town; he has made dozens of trips to the middle east over the last five years doing research for this book. When we interviewed him, he was still assembling and fact-checking the final manuscript. Of the books title, Wright says it refers to a verse from the Koran that Bin Laden used often: Death will find you even in the looming tower. The verse was also found on the computer of one of the members of the Al Qaeda cell in Hamburg and it appears to be a code used by the 9-11 hijackers.

Carly Newfeld is a longtime member of the Findhorn Community in Scotland. Findhorn is famous as a spiritual center and as a major force in the natural living movement. In todays video, Carly talks about The Findhorn Book of Guidance and Intuition. Intuition is something we all have, but we dont always use it or trust it. Carly talks about the role intuition plays in her life. She also provides some background about Findhorn for those -- like me -- curious about this special community I have heard so much about.

While we have promised new video every day, I am going to take a pause from our releasing schedule and show an older video to honor my former boss, Michael Hoy, proprietor of Loompanics Unlimited, publisher and seller of the worlds most controversial and unusual books. Mike was the guest of honor at the 2004 New Orleans Bookfair where we made todays AuthorViews video. In the video, he says Ive been doing this for approximately thirty years and, the good lord willing, Ill be doing it for another thirty. Apparently, the good lord has other plans; Loompanics announced this week they are going out of business. I spoke with Hoy two days ago and Im happy to report that its not ill health or some lawsuit that is responsible for closing Loompanics; rather, it is fatigue with slowly declining sales. Most books in Loompanics legendary catalog -- which Hoy proudly displays during his AuthorViews video -- can not be found in even the largest bookstore; now, however, theyre available online from stores such as Amazon.com that sell virtually every book. Loompanics will be greatly missed as the problem child of American publishing -- a living symbol of freedom of the press. You will find many places that sell unusual books but almost no one anymore with the courage to publish them: books that every government wants destroyed and most parents wants prohibited. (See yesterdays blog entry for some of my favorite Loompanics titles.) In the coalmine of book publishing our canary just croaked. Book publishing will be so much more boring without Loompanics.

This 2-minute video is a first for AuthorViews: the first time we have launched a pre-release video. Stephen Harrigans new novel, Challenger Park, wont be released by Knopf until April 4. We have the video for the book here, today, now. Challenger Park, promises to deliver the lives of astronauts in a way no other book has. In his AuthorViews video, Harrigan talks about the dozens of trips he made to Houston, Texas, during the writing of this book to interview astronauts and NASA staff. Challenger Park, follows on the heels of Harrigans best-selling book, The Gate of the Alamo.

Im very pleased to present the first installment from our Santa Fe excursion last summer. We begin with Sandra Ingerman, an important force in reviving shamanism in the United States. Ingerman has a degree in biology and has harbored a lifelong concern for the environment. Medicine for the Earth is based on many years of cross-cultural explorations into the science of transmutation -- in particular, religious practices involving neutralizing poisons or cleaning the energy in a house or community. Patron Saint Productions is doing a campaign for Medicine for the Earth, and so we have the benefit of an excerpt along with Sandys 2-minute video. Well be doing a campaign this spring for Sandys book, Soul Retrieval, which has achieved near cult status among spiritualists.

I know jonl@well.com from way back before the Web, but we never met in person until I filmed this interview in Austin, Texas, last June. Jon and I recorded for an hour and a half; the video here is 2-minutes. We left out most of what we talked about, including the origins of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Wired, HotWired, Mondo2000, bOING bOING, FringeWare, Salon, The WELL, and the battle to bring free WiFi to Austin. What remains is Extreme Democracy, a new collection of essays on how technology is changing the way politics is played. The video is long enough for a brief reflection on how the Howard Dean campaign used the net -- thats the origin of this book. The destination? The Internet has become the volunteer coordinater and cash machine fueling modern political campaigns. Will we soon have Internet voting? The Mayor of New Orleans proposed to make this city the first to hold Internet elections, but the state government shot that down. Internet voting is coming, and Extreme Democracy is a timely look at what form it will likely take. Youll also find Jon Lebkowsky hanging out at his own blog, Weblogsky, or the consulting firm he runs, Polycot.

Todays new video features AuthorViews consultant Gary Michael Smith. Gary teaches writing and publishing classes at the University of New Orleans. He also operates Chatgris Press, a book publisher with a dozen titles in print. Gary is the author of Publishing for Small Press Runs, the best book I have seen on Print on Demand (P.O.D.) publishing. Theres a video for that book here on AuthorViews that was shot way back in 2003 (but is now iPod ready). Movie Extra 101: Your Shortcut to Stardom resulted from the booming motion picture business here in New Orleans. Prior to Katrina, tax incentives brought big and small movie productions to town, and Gary got small parts in several films. Its all about your dimensions, he says in this video which, like Tripp Friedlers, is another example of selling a book without hyping it. Gary spends a good part of his 2 minutes telling you what the book isnt.

When we interviewed Josh Peter in June of 2005, he was a sports writer for New Orleans daily newspaper, The Times Picayune. But as of August 29, when Hurricane Katrina roared ashore, Josh and every other reporter at the paper got a new assignment: Katrina coverage. Josh Peter has his old beat back now, but its different. Will New Orleans professional football team, The Saints, come back home? Will they play in the now-infamous Louisiana Superdome? Will the professional basketball franchise, The Hornets, be sold? What will happen to all the displaced high school and college athletes? So many questions in the wake of the storm. Joshs video is for the book with the longest title in our archives: Fried Twinkies, Buckle Bunnies Bull Riders: A Year Inside the Professional Bull Riders Tour. In our 2-minute video, Josh goes behind the chutes to get the inside story on an emerging sport. It captures this award-winning sportswriter at a time of innocence, what we call Pre-K down here.

Our video today is one of my favorites of the 100 or so we have shot. The author is Tripp Friedler, a restless entrepreneur who gets paid to help people find an intelligent path to their dream life. His company -- and his book -- is called Free Gulliver. Its one of my favorite videos because he doesnt say one good thing about his book and when hes done you want to buy it. We made this video at the Bywater Tech Center in New Orleans last June. Weve also got a nice excerpt from Free Gulliver about retirement -- or the lack thereof. Tripp is all about making your work something you love and would never want to retire from. Tripps 2-minute video has been on the site for awhile, but is released today with a new edit and formatted for download into iTunes: just right-click to download, drag it into iTunes, drop it on your iPod, and share it with an impoverished dreamer you love.