Category Archives: our blog

February 03, 2015   mhoogland   about us, blog chat, chat, critique, dialogue, feedback, interaction, Mike H, opinion, our blog, our website, suggestions, websites  
7

Tell us how we’re doing

A while back (a year, maybe more—my conception of time is shockingly horrible, bordering on nonexistent), Sharon did a blog post asking for feedback from our readers. What we heard was eye-opening to say the least.

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All of it was informative and very helpful—and I believe it led to a better year in blogging for DGLM and our readers. So I will do so again here. Let’s call it our year-end review.

What do you guys enjoy about our blog? What keeps bringing you back for more? What would you like to see us do differently, do better?

This is your chance for some input. Our readers are important to us, and we want to blog about what you want to read about. So please, don’t hold back. What’s on your mind?

May 23, 2013   Michael   culture, media, Michael, our blog, relationships, social networking, Twitter  
7

Writer’s block

I’ve been bad. About blogging. I haven’t blogged in quite some time. I don’t want to say how long, because it’s embarrassing, even to me. I could blame computer woes–it’s been fun! Or the fact that I’ve been really busy with work work. I could pretend I’ve made up for it by being very active on Twitter, but you’d find me out. So what gives?
I would blame writer’s block, but it’s not something I believe in. Because the truth is, it’s not that I can’t write about things. It’s that I don’t want to write about things. Call it a crisis of confidence if you will, but I can’t imagine there’s anything left to blog  about that either 1) I haven’t already blogged about or 2) someone hasn’t said better than I ever could.
I’ve been feeling pretty overwhelmed lately, but not by work–busy though that has been. I’m feeling overwhelmed by the constant stream of information: the RSS feeds, the news, TV, texts, movies, IMs, music, Twitter. It’s a cacophony, and I’ve been feeling especially mindful of my part in it. Am I just adding to the noise? Does what I say actually benefit anyone or add to their existence/knowledge/growth? Am I listening and learning? Why am I blogging and tweeting? Am I carrying on a meaningful conversation?
I’m not sure I have the answers. Sometimes I feel like I’m talking into the wind, and there’s no point in that. Other times, I feel like I’m making a real human connection, and I cherish the contacts I’ve made through social media (many of whom are now people I know in real life).
I hope my quietness or silence isn’t misinterpreted. I want to connect. I want to learn. I want to grow. But I also want to make sure that what I’m putting out there isn’t just for the sake of putting something out there. Bear with me?
January 10, 2011   DG&B   about us, advice, calendar, changes at DGLM, conferences, DGLM Recommends, Facebook, feedback, fun, Jane, Jessica, Jim, John, Lauren, Michael, Miriam, opinion, our blog, our clients, our website, Rachel S., Stacey, Stephanie, technical help, Twitter, what we're looking for, What's New at DGLM  
9

Welcome to the new DGLM blog and website!

Welcome to our shiny new home, blog readers!  For the new year, we bring you a new DGLM site, a merger of our website and blog.  Thanks to everyone who made suggestions a couple months ago on features and tech questions—where possible we’ve incorporated your feedback, and other things we’re keeping in mind in case we can implement them in future.

We’ll be blogging as usual over here at www.dystel.com now instead of at Blogger, and there are also some other things for you to explore over to the right (unless you’re not currently reading this on the site itself, in which case you might want to just poke your head in and take a look!).  You might be interested in learning more about us and our clients.  If you’re an author looking for representation, perhaps you’ll want to peruse our FAQ, Submission Requirements, Who We Are and What We’re Looking For, and Nonfiction Proposal Guidelines.  Need something new to read?  Check out our Staff Recommendations, Recent and Forthcoming Titles, and What We’re Reading in the column on the right. Maybe you want to know where we’ll be?  We’ve got a calendar with our upcoming conferences and events in that sidebar as well!  Of course, if you’d like, please feel free to use the links over there to Subscribe, Follow, or Like us and share our site with others!  The new blog should start feeding into our Twitter and Facebook accounts today, so if you’re already following us there, you don’t need to do anything.  If you’re reading us in a blog reader, please subscribe to the new RSS feed.

Make yourselves at home!

As always, we want to hear from you!  What do you think of the new digs?  Any suggestions for improvement?  Glitches we may not have caught?  (We hope not, but let us know if so!)  New features that you’d like us to consider?  We can’t always implement everything recommended to us, but we’re always open to hearing your ideas.

December 23, 2010   DG&B   holidays, Michael, our blog  
4

Happy holidays and see you in 2011!

by Michael

All of us at DGLM wish you, our loyal blog readers, the happiest of holidays. We’re stepping away from the office till the new year and the blog until January 10th, so it’s going to be quiet around here until then. But we have some exciting things in store when we return, and I think it’s safe to say that 2011 is going to be our best year of blogging yet. Thanks so much for all your comments, questions and support, and we’ll see you again in the new year!

November 19, 2010   DG&B   about us, advice, feedback, fun, Lauren, opinion, our blog  
7

What do you want?

by Lauren

Thanks to everyone who joined Jim yesterday for our first DGLM blog chat! If you missed it, check out the entry from yesterday to replay it and read the answers to all the great questions he got. Lots of good query information in there, especially. We’re going to be doing more of these, so if you have any suggestions for topics, please let us know in the comments!

More excitement that’s coming your way, dear blog readers, is a revamp and relaunch of our blog and website. Primarily we’re going to be combining the two into a single site, but we’d love to add some interesting and helpful new features in the process. That’s where you fine folks come in. What would you like to see? We’ve gotten some fantastic tips from all of you in the past, and we’d love to hear what more we could do that you’d find useful. As much as possible, we’d love to work the things that you want into our design!

Once the blog is moved, we’re also going to look to better integrate our blog and Facebook page (Related: do you like us, but not yet “like” us? If so, follow us here!), so if anyone has any thoughts or tips on that, we’d love to hear them.

Part of the revamp means a move to WordPress, because we wanted to be able to host our website and blog as one. I know we had some readers who hoped we’d stay on Blogger when we first suggested it (and that’s why we didn’t move then just to get more bells & whistles) so I’m wondering what we can do to make the transition easy. I suspect most of you can just as easily follow us on WordPress, but I think the problem will come for Google devotees who don’t use a Google Reader. Have things changed on this front in the last year? Anyone know of a way we can keep things simple for the Blogger fans?

Let us know your thoughts below!

And on a final note, with Thanksgiving coming up next week, it’s a perfect time to say thanks to all of you for making our first year of blogging in earnest such a fun one! We’re so grateful for all the feedback we’ve gotten: from technical help, to reading suggestions, to your thoughts on the issues of the day. Thanks to you all for joining the conversation and for forming a little community for us to take part in! It’s not always easy to find time or a subject, but you do make it a pleasure!

November 08, 2010   DG&B   advice, blog chat, fun, Jim, opinion, our blog  
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Blog chat live!

by Jim

Next week, you’ll all have the opportunity to join the agency’s first live chat. Yours truly will be available for an hour from 3:00-4:00 Eastern on Thursday the 18th to answer any questions you might have about pretty much anything—how to write a query letter, the state of the marketplace, what we’re looking for, what makes us run away screaming, and pretty much anything you can come up with. The one thing it won’t be is a place to pitch your book—that’s what email’s for.

This is going to be a test run for the chat system. We’re not really sure how many of you will be able to make it, so we’re going to keep it general and see how it goes. If it’s a hit, we’ll be looking to do it regularly and maybe add more specifically themed chats in the future. (If you have requests for particular themed chats, please let us know below!) So be sure to stop by and make me feel popular!

The chat will be live right here, and if you want to sign up now for a reminder, you can do so in the box below!

June 09, 2010   DG&B   advice, Lauren, our blog, technical help  
8

Technical difficulties

by Lauren

Hello there, blog readers!  I’ve recently been alerted to a couple technological snafus related to our blog.   Fortunately, you guys have been super helpful in the past, so I’m coming back for more.  In the eternal tech conundrum, it’s near impossible to troubleshoot a problem you can’t replicate, so naturally both these things don’t appear to be an issue on our end (and we haven’t changed any settings recently, related or otherwise).

First DGLM client Joelle Anthony let us know that sometime in April or so, she stopped being able to comment on our blog.  Here’s what she says:

“Just so you know, what happens is I click comment, the window opens, I type my comment, I choose my name and URL (I’ve also tried anonymous) and then when I hit post, instead of word verification coming up like it used to, everything just disappears and I’m back reading the comments that are already there.”

She can comment on blogs where comments are formatted like this: http://anthonysundaysoup.blogspot.com/ but not on blogs where comments are formatted like ours: http://ramblingsofadevotedbookworm.blogspot.com/.

And second we heard via Facebook from reader Mark Janousek that lately our blog entries don’t show up in his Facebook news feed.  I suspect Facebook’s the culprit here, with their constant setting switches and such, but I don’t see a way to change those settings. 

I still get the blog feed on my Facebook and have no problem commenting on our blog.

So for both questions: a) does anyone know why that happens?, b) does it happen to anyone else?, c) has anyone narrowed down the circumstances under which it happens to a narrower set?, and/or d) does anyone know what settings I need to tweak?

If you can’t comment, please feel free to email me at labramo@dystel.com with any answers to the above!

Thanks in advance, guys, and thanks especially to Joelle and Mark for giving us the heads up!

May 11, 2010   DG&B   advice, Chasya, marketing/publicity, our blog, social networking  
8

Cash for pageviews

by Chasya

These days we often advise our clients to get out there and build a presence on the internet. We may sound all broken–recordish on this issue, but the free publicity an author can get simply by engaging in social media is becoming more and more necessary and invaluable! And, of course, we’ve been practicing what we preach right here on our blog and by spending time reading and boning up on social media ourselves. Which is why this great piece from The Awl caught my attention. Looks like the New York Observer is offering cash prizes for certain achievements made by their staff on the interwebs! Authors, take note, because the tips they offer to achieve these goals are fantastic and can be used to boost your own web presence. Check out their advice on how engaging readers in discussion and offering commentary on buzz-worthy topics can get your name out there.

Any other helpful tips you’ve come across in your own quest for internet domination?

May 03, 2010   DG&B   about us, our blog  
8

We’d like to thank the academy….

by DGLM

Thank you very much to Chuck Sambuchino at the Guide to Literary Agents Editor’s Blog for naming the DGLM blog one of the five Best Agent Blogs for 2010! Now, with more than half of 2010 still ahead of us, we’re going to have to figure out how to live up to it!

April 28, 2010   DG&B   marketing/publicity, Miriam, opinion, our blog, social networking, writing  
27

Is blogging killing writing?

by Miriam

Being the chatty bunch we are here at DGLM, we spend almost as much time talking about whether we should be blogging as we spend actually blogging. For us, the issue is the time it takes to come up with a blog topic on our allotted blogging day each week, the time it takes to find an interesting story to comment on, the time it takes to write our post, the time it takes to read the ensuing comments and respond, if appropriate or necessary…. In short, all of us are conflicted about how much time away from our always reproducing piles of work blogging demands. And, yet, we do it because you can’t be a forward thinking outfit in this day and age without a blog presence (secretly, some of us even enjoy the interaction with our readers and followers).

This piece in the Daily Beast is interesting in that it raises another topic. Is blogging making writers less able to write anything with more substance than a People magazine article? Is it imperiling long, satisfying narratives, replacing them with the literary equivalent of gossipy chit chat?

Obviously a lot of people are worried about the fate of the publishing business. But what about the fate of literary works and the actual craft of writing?

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