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Title:
Super Searcher, Author, Scribe: Successful Writers Share Their Internet Research Secrets
Review:
Writers can be super searchers too and have a wealth of tips and
tricks to share, according to this book by Loraine Page.
Like other titles in this Super Searchers series, the book takes the
form of interviews - a format which works well, making the material
easy to read and absorb. Page has chosen writers with a diverse range
of backgrounds, including a romance writer, a non-fiction specialist,
a crime writer, and a medical writer. However, bear in mind that this
book has been written primarily for the American market, so some of
the writers interviewed will not be familiar to non-US readers. In
fact, the only one I recognized was Elmore Leonard and that's because
last week I saw his most recent book advertised in an in-flight
magazine.
Writers use the Internet for many reasons, such as finding people to
interview, marketing their work, keeping in touch with colleagues and
editors, finding literary agents, carrying out background research,
getting visual information, finding inspiration, submitting chapters
by email, participating in newsgroups and building relationships with
their readers. David Fryxell, a writer with an interest in genealogy,
is of the opinion that the Internet has even contributed to writers'
"cycle time reduction", enabling many writers to produce better
articles in a shorter amount of time.
The Internet has given writers easier access to much more material and
many more potential contacts. Novelist Jodi Picoult tells how she used
the Internet to post a query on a message board regarding the Amish,
while researching her book "Plain Truth" and ended up going to stay a
week with an Amish family. And then there's Gregg Sutter, Elmore
Leonard's researcher. He once needed some anecdotal material on Harlan
in the state of Kentucky and by surfing the Internet found Kentucky
recipes for Baked Possum and Fried Squirrel - perhaps not the sort of
thing that immediately springs to mind when you're looking for useful
anecdotal information, but that's why the Internet can be such a great
tool - it can lead you to things you'd never thought of and spark off
your imagination.
Through the interviews you'll find out about the writers' preferred
search engines, their sources for newspapers and magazines, their
views on newsgroups and e-publishing, how they approach their research
and their advice for other writers, as well as their attitude to more
traditional information resources such as print, libraries and
commercial online databases.
To sum up, much of the information in this book will already be
familiar to many Internet researchers, so if you're a savvy
researcher, this probably isn't a book for you. If you're a writer,
however, it's definitely worth a read, if only to benchmark your
Internet skills against those of the writers profiled here.
Free Pint Reviewer:
Helen Clegg is Marketing Analyst with RR Donnelley Europe, based in
Amsterdam. She holds a B.A. Hons in French & German and an M.Sc. in
Library and Information Studies from Loughborough University. Helen
is a Board Member of the European Chapter of the Special Libraries
Association of America. Helen can be contacted at Helen.Clegg@rrd.com
She writes here in a personal capacity.
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