Earlier this month we talked about Travelfish, a company specializing in producing low-cost guidebooks to Southeast Asia that can be downloaded as PDFs for just a few dollars.

The PamphletGuys are a couple of people from the publishing industry (Adam Bellow and David S. Bernstein) who also are bringing out a series of low-cost books, pamphlets, that are sold over the net. You’ll get sent a printed pamphlet but, as soon as you buy, you’ll also receive a link to download an electronic version of the pamphlet.

I think that it’s a really interesting concept. Most of the pamphlets are short in length, 50 – 60 pages, but that’s a good amount of reading for just 4 dollars.

The pamphlets are based on material from blogs. The Columbia Journalism Review has a very good interview with Pamphlet Guy Adam Bellow:

… my audience is really twofold. First there is the universe of blogs itself, which is a narrow market but a global one. But beyond that I find that there are many, many people who have become aware that the blogosphere exists and that it is powerful and influential but being busy people with a lot of demands on their time, they haven’t got the faintest idea of how to get acquainted with it and find the stuff that would interest them.

Yesterday we talked about why literary agents should blog. So, why should literary agents not just use Blogger, TypePad or LiveJournal or one of many other free blogging platforms?

Those blogging services are good if you’re 14 or writing about your family’s vacation to Peru or if you want to maintain anonymity like Miss Snark. But if you’re blogging professionally then you should give your blog a professional appearance.

If you already have a domain name and a hosting plan, then you already have the capability to have your very own blog. WordPress is the best platform for blogging and it’s free. Sure, the installation of WordPress is rather difficult for a non-techy but there are plenty of ways to get installation assistance. In fact, if you’re an author, a literary agent, or a small publisher who needs assistance installing WordPress then drop us an e-mail here at sorodesign.com and I will help you with that installation – free!

Once installed, WordPress has an easy interface and there are plenty of free themes that you can download to change the appearance of your site. And, of course, we here at sorodesign can provide you with a customized theme. Ideally, you want your blog to appear with the same design or closely related to that of your Web site.

And if you don’t have a domain name or a hosting plan, then you should go ahead and do so. Domain names are very inexpensive. There are a variety of hosting plans out there and we can recommend an excellent Web hosting plan that is only $5 a month.

If authors should be blogging in order to promote their books and their brand name as authors, then literary agents should also be blogging to promote their authors, their clients.

There are a number of literary agents who do blog. The most notable was Miss Snark, who recently retired from blogging to marry George Clooney. (Ok, you have had to read Miss Snark regularly to understand that). Miss Snark gave great advice to writers seeking to land a contract with a literary agent.

And there are a number of other literary agents with good blogs that address how to get an agent and the business side of publishing, working with agents, editors, book touring, etc. Some of the literary agent blogs in my bloglines are Lit Agent X (a great blog), Pub Rants (another nice blog with daily updates as to why agent Kristen is listening to on her iPod), and BookEnds (also with good info for those seeking an agent).

Don’t get me wrong…these literary agent blogs are very good but all literary agencies also can benefit from blogs that are geared towards promoting the books by their clients. I think that literary agents know that but they’re just not yet that hooked into this whole Web 2.0 environment. Almost every literary agency Web site has cover images of books by their authors. But blogs are even better at communicating the accomplishments of an agency and its authors.

There are a lot of things that literary agencies do with blogs:

• post about signing new authors
• post about new deals
• post about upcoming release dates for books
• post previews of upcoming or newly released books, include cover art so that potential buyers will recognize the book in the stores
• post about your authors, link to their Web sites and blogs
• post about your authors’ book tours
• post links to reviews of your authors’ books
• post whenever one of your authors has an interview
• post about the softcover release of a book
• brag about authors who receive awards
• post about how often a title has been reprinted
• and remember to post about titles from previous years by authors who are still clients

And that’s just a few suggestions from the top of my head. Any links to literary agents who are now blogging in this manner?

Literary agents are always talking about the importance of platform for authors. Well, a literary agency’s own blog can be a crucial part of marketing and promoting its writers. A blog is an excellent way for a literary agency to show that they believe in their own writers.

This takes too much time!

Yes, I know, literary agents are very, very busy. A blog is a great idea but there’s no time for all that. Good point. While it’s best if the literary agency blog is written by an actual literary agent or an assistant, the writing of a corporate blog is often outsourced.

The rates for freelance blogging of this type is very reasonable. And, heaven knows, there are a gazillion MFA graduates floating around who would eagerly take on this type of work, particularly if they thought their sterling prose for an agent’s blog might help land a contract for that eventual novel.

And if you can’t afford someone in North America, there are plenty of expats around the world with degrees in English who work for a very low rate since their costs-of-living are so low. I could easily find a dozen articulate expats here in Buenos Aires that eagerly would do this type of work. Writing for a blog does not require that the blogger work on-site in the literary agency; e-mail, chat, and Skype provide enough tools for an agent and blogger to communicate in order produce a successful blog.

Better Blogs & Better Web Sites for Literary Agents

So, how can we help?

In a couple of weeks we at sorodesign will be announcing a special package developed specifically for literary agents. This special package will include a customized Web site design and an integrated blog.

Be watching this blog for that announcement!

Ceci teaches in the Typography II course at the University of Buenos Aires. The course covers editorial design, which is book and magazine design, cover art, page layout. Students start the course generally without any experience with page layout software (e.g., Quark, InDesign). So, Ceci prepared this short (10 page) guide to InDesign as a beginning tutorial for the students.

Currently, the guide is only in Spanish but we’re going to be doing an English translation of it soon and making it available. Also, we will be posting more InDesign tips and tutorials to this blog in the future.

For the students one of the benefits of this guide is that Spanish-language books about design and computing are not as common as English-language titles. Even in Buenos Aires, which has a ton of bookstores, it’s not easy to find good books on technology in Spanish. That’s quite frustrating for the people who live and work here, particularly since Buenos Aires is a fairly high-tech community (as much as any large North American city).

So, here’s the link: Introductory Guide to InDesign (Spanish) [PDF].

In the Author Websites category, one of the techniques to produce more blog postings during the week without spending everyday writing on your blog is to use the Future Posts feature of WordPress.