Writing, Publishing, Storytelling: Links of the Day

Enjoy these Writing, Publishing, and Storytelling (WPS) links for the day.

First, many of you probably saw these new images last week, but I had to post them. I am big fan of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit and these early shots are too cool not to share. The image below is of Dori, Nori, and Ori, three dwarves from the Peter Jackson helmed two-part Hobbit movie (part one of which will release in 2012):

If you want to see more Hobbit news, check out the Hobbit movie web site, where there are more images of some of the other characters, including Bilbo, Gandalf, and a couple behind the scenes videos as well.

In other book news, last week USA Today launched a book dedicated site where you can find book reviews, interviews, bestseller's lists and more in a multitude of genres and categories. The site also allows readers to preview book and buy them through links to online retailers. Great news, considering that print reviews are dwindling.

There's an interesting excerpt from an interview with Lee Goldberg over at GalleyCat where he advises against making a book trailer to advertise your book, generally because the quality is often so bad. I agree that if your book trailer is BAD, you might as well have saved your money (author or publisher). However, should we write off all book trailers, just like that? Can this marketing idea help a book?

Finally, there's a fantastic list called "The Laws of Future Publishing" over at Thad McIlroy's blog The Future of Publishing that is worth checking out for any author, publisher, book editor, or otherwise interested party. This list may be old news to some of you, but it's so-called laws are great fodder for conversation as the digital publishing transition continues.

Enjoy!