Harvard’s Nieman Foundation Offers Free E-book on “Writing the Book”

By Edward Nawotka

Dovetailing nicely with our story today about a publisher which re-puroposes journalists’ blogs into books, the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University has published a free report entitled “Writing the Book” (PDF download), which offers more than 30 essays that examine different aspects of e-publishing. The publication, which is aimed primarily at journalists looking to convert their work into book-length manuscripts, offers more than 30 essays on a wide range of topics, including:

• Compelling Story, Unflappable Belief, and Digital Teamwork By Gayle Tzemach Lemmon
• Feeling It’s a Book, Then Pausing to Wonder If It Is By Mitchell Zuckoff
• On the Road to Writing Books: Blazing New Trails By William Wheeler
• Brief Story, Book Proposal, a Longer Feature, Then a Book By Amy Ellis Nutt
• Writing a Life, Living a Writer’s Life By Gaiutra Bahadur
• A Year of Reinvention By Alfredo Corchado
• Starting as a Journalist, Ending as a Memoirist By Lucette Lagnado
• Journalists and Memoir: Reporting + Memory By Michele Weldon
• Tips for Journalists Writing Memoirs By Michele Weldon
• Newsroom to Classroom: Books as a Thread of Connection By Brooke Kroeger
• Narrative Writing: Craft to Ethics, Theme to Characters By Beth Macy
• A Literary Exploration of How Power Corrupts By Thrity Umrigar
• Novels Win Out Over Journalism By William Dietrich
• Will I Ever Write the Book? Why Not? By Bret Schulte
• Leapfrogging the Book: A Newspaper Story Jumps to Film By Paul Lieberman
• Dealing With Hollywood By Paul Lieberman
• Journalism: Done The Atavist Way By David Wolman
• It’s a Long Article. It’s a Short Book. No, It’s a Byliner E-Book. By John Tayman
• The Writing Life: Examined in a Digital Minibook E-Book Excerpt by Ann Patchett
• Transformation in Publishing and Optimism About Books Conversation with Peter Osnos
• Sooner Sounds Better By Philip Meyer
• Telling Political Stories in Closer to Real-Time Books By John F. Harris
• E-Books as a Business Strategy By Federica Cocco
• Visual Intensity of Words By Len Edgerly
• Out of Print, a Book Reappears—And Earns Its Author Money By Dan Kennedy
• Journalist to Marketer—With a Book In-Between By Rochelle Lefkowitz
• Making a Book—Digital and Print—From Scratch By Elizabeth Castro
• Learning the Inner Workings of an E-Book File By Elizabeth Castro
• Powerful People and a Book They Almost Stopped By Marites Dañguilan Vitug
• Books Take Over Where Daily Journalism Can’t Go By Andrew Meldrum
• Transit: An Assignment and an Idea—Now a Book, Exhibit and Website
• An Essay in Words and Photographs by Espen Rasmussen
• A Photography Book—Absorbed in Print and on the iPad By Boris Muñoz

It’s downloadable as a free PDF here.