Authors Access » Poetry

Janet Grace Riehl – Do-it-Yourself Audiobook Production

Victor Volkman — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 12:13:47 +0000

On April 15th, 2010 Irene Watson and Victor R. Volkman interviewed poet, author, and performance artist Janet Grace Riehl about recording, producing, and marketing audiobook versions of eBooks and print publications. Her book Sightlines: A Poet’s Diary, told in story poems, was recently made into an audio book Sightlines: A Family Love Story in Poetry and Music. Twice selected as finalist for Poet Laureate of Lake County, California and a member of Authors Guild, her poems, stories and essays are published in national literary magazines and several anthologies.

Janet broke it all down for us on audiobooks into easy-to-understand steps

Creative;
technical (editing, mastering, disc numbering);
legal (licenses and copyrights);
production;
distribution and marketing; and,
Big Celebration.

Resources mentioned on this podcast

Janet’s appearance on Blogging Authors which has more detail on the 6 steps
podiobooks.com – where authors can upload self-recorded chapters serially
audible.com – world’s largest seller of audiobooks (follow this link for a FREE audiobook!)

Janet Grace Riehl is an award-winning author, artist, performer, community mentor, and creative collaborator. Her poems, stories, and essays have been widely published in national literary magazines such as “Harvard Review” and the anthologies “Stories to Live By: Wisdom to Help You Make the Most of Every Day” and “Hot Flashes 2″.

Her life moves between the big city in St. Louis in the Central West End to the family home place on the bluffs above the Mississippi River in Southwestern Illinois where she collaborates on creative projects with her 90-something father. Feel free to contact her by email at janet.riehl@gmail.com.

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Kate Harper – Getting Into the Greeting Card Market

Victor Volkman — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 14:18:41 +0000

On October 15th, 2009 Irene Watson and Victor R. Volkman spoke with greeting card and gift industry maven Kate Harper. Kate Harper started her line of humorous greeting card from a hobby of making greeting cards for friends as gifts. Over the next 15 years, Kate’s turned her hobby into a business, manufacturing and shipping cards to over 2,000 stores, including Barnes & Noble, Whole Foods Markets and the Papyrus chain. She informed us on key areas of getting started as a writer or self-publisher of greeting cards, including:

Card terends: research, seasonal cards, occasional cards, and publishers
What subject areas and categories to focus on, how to stay organized
Test marketing your cards and card verse.
Seven most common mistake card writers will make
Why competition in the card business is vastly over-estimated

Two years ago, she transitioned out of manufacturing and into licensing, where she now designs cards for Recycled Paper Greetings (a subsidiary of American Greetings Corporation) and gift items for seven other companies.

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Beverly Matherne – Writing and Publishing Poetry

Victor Volkman — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 21:31:11 +0000

On Thurdsday, November 29th, Victor R. Volkman and Tyler Tichelaar spoke with author, poet, and educator Beverly Matherne. She is a professor in the Department of English at Northern Michigan University and a former director of its Master of Fine Arts Program in Creative Writing. Beverly has published two chapbooks and two full-length books of poetry in facing pages of French and English, including The Blues Crying, a collection of blues poetry. The work is available in both book and CD format, the latter featuring Beverly’s performance of the poems to slide guitar and fiddle. Beverly addressed key questions in learning to write poetry and the process of getting published including: what is poetry, wh
ere does poetry come from, how do you become a poet, and how to approach publishers about getting in print.

Beverly’s poetry is also the subject of a dissertation on bilingual writers, also including Samual Beckett, by a student at the Sorbonne in Paris. While on sabbatical last year, she completed a third full-length book, a bilingual collection of linked prose poetry about the founder of Detriot, titled Lamonthe-Cadillac: His Early Days in France. This book, which required a residency and field research in southern France, as well as Blind River, another collection of prose poetry, are forthcoming in 2008. Beverly’s work is widely received. She has published in many English-language publications, including Great River Review, Runes, and Verse. French publications include Eloizes, Feux chalins, and Langage et Créativité. Her poetry appears in many anthologies including, most recently, French Connections: A Gathering of Franco-American Poets, published by Louisiana Literature Press, in 2007. She also has a short, short story in ="_blank" href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/0807012416/ccusersgroup">Resurrecting Grace: Remembering Catholic Childhoods, from Beacon Press in Boston.Also a poet translator, Beverly did the French translations of a bilingual portfolio of poetry by former U.S. Poet Laureate Stanley Kunitz. The portfolio, featuring original lithographs by Bulgarian artist Stoyan Tchoukanov, is now on exhibit in the Huron Mountain Club Art Gallery in Peter White Library. In addition, Beverly won the “Best of Submission” award for her translation of a long prose poem by Charles Baudelaire, in Sojourn, a journal published at the University of North Texas.Beverly did an hour-long interview on National Public Radio with Grace Cavalieri on her show “The Poet and the Poem” and has performed three times in French on CBC Radio Canada Internationale. From Tulane University in New Orleans to the United Nations in New York to venues in Canada, France, Belgium, and Germany, she has done over 145 poetry readings in English and/or Fr
ench. Most recently, in May of 2007, she read and performed at the Dylan Thomas Centre in Swansea, Wales.

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