Sat., May 21, 2016 • 2–3:30pm • Writers Panel • New York City
American Society of Journalists & Authors  (ASJA)
45 East 45th Street at Madison Avenue

Transit: 7, F or M7 bus 

The Latest Social Media Tricks: What Works, What’s a Turnoff

Our panel of editors and social media experts will teach you what works and what doesn’t. There’s never enough time in a writer’s life. It can be overwhelming without tips and tricks for efficiency. Don’t waste valuable hours. We’ll cover ways to maximize your efforts with titles, tags, topics, keywords, SEO, naming images and how Google rankings work. Editors will tell you how and what to pitch.
HERE’S HOW TO REGISTER FOR #ASJA2016
Speakers
Sacha Scoblic Zimmerman, senior editor at The Atlantic and author of the memoir UNWASTED: MY LUSH SOBRIETY. Her work has appeared in The New Republic, The Fix, The Guardian, Reader’s Digest, and The New York Times, where she penned essays for the Times blog “PROOF: Alcohol and American Life.”
Marcelle Soviero, editor-in-chief for the award-winning Brain, Child: The Magazine for Thinking Mothers which publishes 20-plus essays per month at competitive rates. She’s the author of AN IRIDESCENT LIFE. She has published essays in The New York Times, Salon and more. Soviero is also a writing coach who teaches how to get published.

Estelle Sobel Erasmus, an award-winning journalist, author, editing/writing coach, and former magazine editor-in-chief of five publications. She’s worked as top editor at American Woman and beauty editor at Woman’s World magazine. Her work appears in Salon, Newsweek, Redbook, Washington Post and Marie Claire and she’s a 3-time BlogHer Voice of the Year.

Russell D. Bernstein is an author who expertly utilizes social media to expand his fan base and maintain a successful website at www.bullytalks.com. His mastery of social media has increased his sales tremendously and rocketed his books to bestseller status. His social media tips will include the powers of multi-tasking and pursuing your dreams.

And me: Dorri Olds, a freelance writer, webmaster, and social media expert, who has been published in The New York Times, The Fix, The Forward, Book Anthologies and more. Check out my social media stats!
• YouTube 736K views
• Twitter 35K
• Facebook 5K
… and interviewed on Dr. Drew, NY1, and 7 On Your Side

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CLICK TO REGISTER

ASJA 2015 Conference: Connect for Success at the Roosevelt Hotel (map)
May 1, 2015 • 11AM – 12:15PM

Use Social Media to Land Writing Gigs and Make Money (session: F06)

Most  hard-working professionals feel like there’s never enough time in a day. Between deadlines, creative pursuits, and trying to have a life, who has time to blog, update their website and keep up with social media?

In this session you will learn how to use your time efficiently to get the best results. You will be given tips and tricks based on hard-won experience. We’ll talk about the best tools to use for your specific goals and how to stand out online amidst worldwide competition.

You’ll learn about improving your website, blogs, and social media accounts. Find out the different language and etiquette for Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Tumblr, Instagram, Reddit, Google+ and YouTube. And, most importantly, you’ll learn how to use social media to make more money.

Dorri Olds, panel organizer, speaker and ASJA member • www.DorriOlds.com • @DorriOlds

Here are some of my social media stats (as of April 10, 2015): YouTube: 470,000 views (yes, that’s almost half a million!); Twitter: 33,5 followers; Facebook: 4,000 (likes and followers). My areas of expertise include freelance writing, social media marketing, web design and WordPress. I will discuss:

• Social Media Etiquette and the differences across platforms (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube).
  Yes, there is a difference.
• Tips and Tricks: How to use your time efficiently and get the best results. Groups, hashtags, comments, blogging, linking, networking and the way money streams come my way all the time.
• How I’ve landed writing gigs through social media
• What to do and what NOT to do

Most Important Rule: Do not scream, “Look at me! Look at me!” Instead, pay attention to the people you want to connect with. Most editors are writers too. Google them, read some of their articles, compliment them. Share their posts and tag them, retweet their tweets, leave comments on their LinkedIn posts. That is the best way to introduce yourself. One of the biggest mistakes I see writers make is to contact me on Facebook or Twitter and tell me what book they wrote and to please like their page. It’s annoying that they introduced themselves by asking me to take time out of my swamped schedule to do something for them. Why would anybody want to stop what they’re doing for a complete stranger? But! If they’ve commented on my articles or shared my Facebook posts and retweeted my tweets, I will notice them and there’s an excellent chance that I’ll remember them and want to respond. That is how the best connections begin.

MEET MY WONDERFUL SPEAKERS:

Kirsten Koza, author, humorist, journalist and editor www.kirstenkoza.com • @KirstenKoza

Kirsten says: I will discuss Facebook Pages and how to target the right followers and attract publishers. Attend this panel discussion and you could win a waterproof, shockproof Nikon camera and memory card as part of a demonstration on how to quickly grow a Facebook Page of ideal followers using simple techniques such as raffles.

This editor admits it: I just finished reading thousands of stories to make my selection of 30 for a Travelers’ Tales anthology, and at times the writer’s social networking reach was a factor in my decision making process. Of course the story still has to be great, but if it comes down to a tie breaker and one writer has an audience of followers through social networking and I know they’re going to promote their work, then that will sway my choice. Publishers want their stories to be read. The writer is part of that process.

Hot Tips:

1. Facebook Pages have improved how you can target followers. But you still need to avoid click farms.
   See this video re click farms which are sometimes called the sweatshops of social media: www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVfHeWTKjag.Avoiding fake accounts LIKING your page can be done easily by selecting the countries you target. You can also select specific interests and hobbies when attracting new followers, or when promoting a story or book.
2. If someone follows your page and you suspect they are a fake account, delete them. Facebook sends your posts out to a certain percentage of your followers and you want those followers to be real.
3. Keep your page interesting and alive. Find your angle. Share material that benefits not just you but your followers.
4. Be generous to other writers on your Page and they’ll promote you on theirs.
5. You don’t know when a story is going to go viral but you can help spread it with a catchy teaser and social networking. And, yes, it is possible to be your own pimp without looking like one by following step 3.

I have 8,600 targeted followers on my Writers’ Expeditions Facebook Page. They consist of travelers, writers, editors and photographers. Through these 8,600 I can reach 100,000. I look forward to sharing what I’ve learned with you.

Tom Miller, Literary Agent, Greenburger • @ThomasWMiller

As an agent, I particularly look for writers who have substantial presences on Twitter and LinkedIn. If an author has 5,000 or more Twitter followers, and if he or she tweets interesting and on-point tweets 2–3 times a day, I take notice. So do publishers — believe me! I also notice an author who has a well-populated and impressive LinkedIn page. I’m not particularly impressed when an author says, “I have 1,000+ Facebook friends” about her or his FB personal page (nor are publishers), but I do notice when an author has an active and well-populated FB fan page with a lot of interactivity on it.

• Join Twitter and tweet about your writing 2–3 times a day. Follow writers you admire and retweet salient tweets from them. Use hashtags judiciously and strategically.
• Start a Facebook fan page for your writing. Invite the friends you think will respond and who can share your posts to their friends and contacts. It’s a matter of getting as many people engaged about your writing as possible.
• On LinkedIn, it’s actually OK to send LinkedIn invitations to people you want to connect with even if you don’t know them personally. Just don’t hound those people relentlessly or send them inappropriate messages. Upgrade to LinkedIn Premium if you want extra benefits.

Nikki M. Mascali, Editor in Chief, TheBlot Magazine • @NikkiMMascali

My areas of expertise are editing, writing, setting editorial calendars and hiring and working with freelancers. I’ll focus on:

• Branding yourself as a journalist
  You could have the perfect pitch that leads to the perfect story, but does any of it matter if no one sees it? Social media gives writers the tools they need to freely reach out to people with similar interests in an effort to self-promote their work and those at their respective outlets.
• Does the initial size of your social reach matter?
  Not necessarily. Sure, I want a writer that has tens of thousands of followers because, let’s face it, we’re all gunning for clicks, but one of the main things I look for as an editor is diligence in cultivating a social presence. As a writer’s body of work grows, so will their following across social media platforms — so long as they continue to seek out new ways to gain valued viewership.
• The king of self promotion for writers
  Twitter, by far, is the most valuable tool, especially for digital edition stories. Its forced use of the 140-character format is helping to establish a new breed of headline writers looking to instantly capture an audience. In fact, I credit my Twitter activity in the site’s early days for helping me become a more concise writer and editor.
• The worldwide pitch generator
  With so many voices spanning the web, digital media is not only a prominent way to promote your work, but to expand on it as well. Use social media as a springboard for story ideas by following subjects that you are interested in. Although most of your legwork will consist of fact checking, there is no other time in history that news can break faster than today’s digital age. I love getting a pitch from someone minutes after I saw that topic trending on social media.
• Reaching Sources
  Now that you have an idea on how to find, write and promote your story through social media outlets, you can start on expanding those articles using the same media. Sure you may have to still deal with publicists and agents, both of which could put speed bumps on the completion of your projects, but people of interest are commonly reachable through their social media channels. Don’t hesitate to reach out to potential sources directly — it may be the difference between your latest scoop and yesterday’s news.

Jason Gross, Social Media Manager, TheBlot Magazine, journalist and author • @jgrossnas

My area of expertise is marketing, promotion and branding. The points I will focus on are:

• Remember that social media platforms have a long memory and that employers (including publishing companies, agents) might search your accounts to see what kind of things you post there. What you say there can stay there, even if you delete it. The rule of thumb is: “Don’t say anything there you wouldn’t say in front of your mom.”
• Choose the social media platforms that are right for your needs and don’t over-extend yourself there. Usually good to pick 3–4 places to concentrate on.
• Arguments and disagreements on social media are fine. Flame wars are bad because they make you look bad even if you’re right.
• You don’t have to be a social media expert but it helps to keep up on the newest features on SM platforms so you can use them to your advantage. Some good sources for this are Mediabistro Social Media Newsfeed, Mashable’s Apps/Software and Adweek’s Social Times

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The text, written in Arabic and accompanied by an illustration of Dorsey’s face with crosshairs superimposed on it, said, “Your virtual war on us will cause a real war on you.” It was a reference to Twitter shutting down and/or suspending 2,000 ISIS accounts last week. The ISIS post also said, “We told you from the beginning it’s not your war, but you didn’t get it and kept closing our accounts on Twitter, but we always come back.”

Twitter, of course, had every right to shut the accounts down — they were in direct violation of the social media site’s terms of agreement banning threats of violence and using the social network “for any unlawful purposes or in furtherance of illegal activities.”

The company has been trying to keep up with removing execution videos and all other offensive posts, but it doesn’t monitor accounts for terrorist behavior. It only reviews posts and accounts that have been flagged as inappropriate by Twitter users. Yahoo News reported in February thatTwitter officials said, “Like our peer companies, we do not proactively monitor content. Users report potential rules violations to us, we review their reports and take action if the content violates our rules.”

As more and more pressure was applied, Twitter spokesman Jim Prosser told BuzzFeed, “Our security team is investigating the veracity of these threats with relevant law enforcement officials.”

THINGS JUST KEEP GETTING WEIRDER AND WEIRDER …

According to The Associated Press, on Sunday the sadists of ISIS released 19 Christians from a group of 220 Assyrian Christians they’d captured last week; nobody seems to have any idea why the 19 were released. The former captives were from a village named Tal Ghoran in the northern Syria province of al-Hasakah and have now returned home.

There are conflicting reports on the number of hostages freed. On Tuesday, March 3, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) said that a Syria watchdog group reported that 21 of the kidnapped Christians have been released.

SOHR has reported chilling stats of ISIS executions from Jan. 28 to Feb. 28:

• 1,238 civilians, including 6 children and 8 women. They were executed by beheading, shooting or stoning in the provinces of Deir Ezzor, al-Raqqa, al-Hasakah, Aleppo, Homs and Hama. 930 out of 1,175 are from al- Shaitaat tribe in the eastern countryside of Deir Ezzor.
• 95 fighters of the Nusra Front, rebel and Islamic battalions. IS executed them after arresting them either in clashes between the mentioned battalions and IS or on IS- checkpoint.
• Islamic State also executed 125 of its own members for “exceeding the limits in religion;” most of them executed after arresting them during their attempt to come back home.
• 511 officers and soldiers of the regime forces. They were arrested during clashes between IS and the regime forces.

In further news, on Tuesday, The Telegraph reported that Jassem Emwazi, the father of ISIS executioner “Jihadi John” — recently outed as Mohammed Emwazi — described his son as a “dog” and a “terrorist” and said he hopes his son will die. But, as of Wednesday, March 4, The Guardianreported that the father said that was a “lie, lie, lie.” He also insisted there is no proof that his son was the ISIS executioner.

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In 1980, he founded Olmos Productions and has produced a number of feature films and documentaries. Olmos was asked to produce the crime drama “Water & Power,” which premiered in May at CineLatino Film Festival. He’s been happy to do it but, surprisingly, he said, “We don’t need a Hispanic Heritage Month, and we need to eliminate Latino film festivals.”

When I asked, “Why?” he replied, “Because there is only one race, and that’s the human race.”

Is he active on social media? “Yeah, but I don’t really converse that way. I just post about things happening like I do on Facebook about my concern for our waterways and beaches. Once in a while I’ll be reading something and respond, but people freak out if I befriend them,” he said with a laugh.

His Twitter bio reads, “Had I followed my first love, I’d have been a professional baseball player, but a friend told me someone with a flair for the dramatic, should consider acting.”

I’d like to thank that friend of his. Olmos has entertained me since I was a kid via TV shows like “Hill Street Blues” and “Miami Vice” and later, “Battlestar Galactica.” And I gobbled him up as the insane Professor Gellar on the 2011 season of “Dexter.” He’s great at doing creepy.

But this is a man who has also dedicated his life to a number of causes including UNICEF, Juvenile Diabetes Foundation and children’s hospitals in Miami and L.A. He is an activist and advocate for Latino culture, and it was an honor to sit down to talk with this icon.

Dorri Olds: I loved seeing you in “Go For Sisters.”

Edward James Olmos: That was probably one of the greatest movies I’ve ever made in my life. John Sayles did a fantastic job.

I met with him for an interview when it came out.

Did he like “Go For Sisters?”

Yes! He was very proud of it. Where do you find the scripts for Olmos Productions?

Different places. Through friends. I do a lot of the writing, too. I produced a lot of my own pieces like “American Me” and “Walkout.” Also “Stand and Deliver” and “Selena,” “Mi Familia” and “Zoot Suit.”

What was it specifically about the writing in “Water & Power” that touched you?

The intellectual stimulus of words. The way they are put together. “Water & Power” was a play, so the language is different. It captures you. It’s the story of two brothers nicknamed “Water” and “Power” told like a poem, and it’s a tragic tale with comedy and drama. It has all of the ingredients that make people feel. This is a very powerful piece whether you saw it on the big screen or you see it digitally. It comes out Jan. 20 online. I’ve got to tell you, man, a lot of people are going to watch it. It’s not your normal filmmaking. It’s very Richard Montoya culture-wise. He’s part of a group called Culture Clash.

What’s Culture Clash?

It was founded on Cinco de Mayo [May 5] in 1984. It’s a Mexican-American performance troupe. It’s great. You’ve got to go online and check it out!

What are some of your favorite movies?

“Nothing But a Man” with Ivan Dixon, which was produced by Robert M. Young in 1964. It was the first African-American film ever made where an African-American man and woman were just normal human beings. They weren’t slaves or being abused; they were just regular people. I also really appreciate David Eick’s work and Robert M. Young’s “Saving Grace” and “Caught.” Young is the father of independent films in America. He invented documentary filmmaking in the ’50s. He was one of the first men to ever go underwater with a camera. Also, David Lean who did “Doctor Zhivago,” “The Bridge on the River Kwai” and “Lawrence of Arabia.” These were all master storytellers.

Are you working on any new documentary projects?

Yes, if you go online at Latino Public Broadcasting, you’ll see the amount of work that I’m doing now. I created Latino Public Broadcasting back in 1998. We create public television programming that focuses on issues affecting Hispanics to give diverse perspectives in public television. “Exile Nation: The Plastic People” is a film that just became available. It’s about what happens to people that are deported from the United States and sent back to Mexico, and they’re left out on the border. Oh my god. It will shock you.

You do so much for others. Do you ever try to recruit other celebrities to use their fame for good?

No, I lead by example, but there are a lot of us working for the betterment of humanity, like Sean Penn, Angelina Jolie and all of the celebrities who give great support to UNICEF.

Is there anything I haven’t asked you that you want people to know about?

No! I think you’ve done the best job of anyone in a long time. [Laughs]

Watch “Exile Nation: The Plastic People” trailer:

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This all-day workshop will help you develop the connections, skills and strategies you need to build a successful freelance career. Hear from other freelancers about how they’ve made it work. Meet top editors from the New York Times, Working Mother, Vogue, Quartz, Fortune and more and learn about the pitches they like to receive.

• Where: City University of New York, 219 W 40th St New York, NY 10018
• When: 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.

Course Outline

• Session 1: Marketing 101 for the Independent Journalist: As an independent journalist, it’s up to you to pitch and market yourself. Get tips on pitching, negotiating and marketing yourself through social media and an online portfolio of your work.
• Session 2: The Major Leagues of Print: Editors from the New York Times and Working Mother dissect the best stories they’ve published from freelancers. Learn the do’s and don’ts of pitching these major publications.
• Networking Lunch Join us for a networking lunch. Here’s your chance to connect with fellow freelancers as we break up into small groups by interests and specialties. Share tips, contacts and ideas. Finish up with dessert and maybe even a lead on a new gig.
• Session 3: Pursuing Digital Fame: Media companies are rolling out new online publications and increasingly seeking more online-only stories. Hear from online editors about the stories they’re looking for, how they’re  different from traditional print pieces and how to come up with that story that gets shared across Facebook and Twitter.
• Session 4: Your Business Model: Get to the next level of freelance writing. Develop revenue and business goals, hone your niche and adopt other strategies that can help boost your career.

Speakers and Trainers

Pradnya (P.J.) Joshi
News Editor/DealBook, The New York Times
Pradnya (P.J.) Joshi is news editor for DealBook, a section devoted to the coverage of finance and markets at The New York Times. She joined The Times as a staff editor on the metro copy desk in 2006 after working more than 13 years as a business reporter at various publications including Newsday and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. She has covered various business and metro beats including corporate fraud, economic development and telecommunications.

Mitra Kalita
Ideas Editor, Quartz
Mitra Kalita is the ideas editor at Quartz, an online global business publication launched in 2012 by Atlantic Media. She worked previously at The Wall Street Journal, where she edited coverage of the Great Recession, launched a local news section for New York City and, most recently, reported on the housing crisis. She also launched Mint, a business paper in New Delhi, and has previously worked for The Washington Post, Newsday and the Associated Press. She is the author of three books.

Thessaly La Force
Culture Editor for Vogue.com
Thessaly La Force is the culture editor for Vogue.com. She is a recent graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she was Meta Rosenberg Fellow and the recipient of the Friedman Prize for Excellence in Fiction. Prior to Iowa, she worked at The Paris Review, The New Yorker, and The New York Public Library. She now lives in New York City.

Katherine Reynolds Lewis

Independent Journalist
Katherine Lewis is a Harvard-educated journalist with nearly 20 years’ experience writing for magazines, newspapers and online. A regular contributor to About.com and Fortune magazine online, her expertise is money, work and family. Her freelance articles have appeared in Bloomberg Businessweek, Money, The New York Times, Parade, MSN Money, Slate, USA Today’s magazines, Washington Post Magazine and Working Mother. Previously she was a national correspondent for Newhouse News Service.

Dorri Olds
Writer, Social Media Consultant and Web Designer
Dorri Olds is an award-winning writer, social media consultant, and web designer. As an online marketing expert, she
teaches clients how to stand out online. Olds writes A-List celebrity interviews, movie and book reviews, and all things dog. Her YouTube channel boasts 168,000 views. Her work has appeared in book anthologies and many publications including The New York Times. Visit her at DorriOlds.com or on Twitter @DorriOlds and Facebook.

Scott Olster
Editor, Fortune.com
Scott is an editor at Fortune.com, where he oversees the leadership, management, and careers coverage. He holds a master’s degree from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. @ScottOlster

Bao Ong
Food and Travel Writer

Jennifer Owens
Editorial Director, Working Mother Media
Jennifer Owens is editorial director of Working Mother magazine & director of the Working Mother Research Institute. As editorial director, Jennifer leads the editorial mission of Working Mother Media’s three brands — Working Mother, the National Association for Female Executives and Diversity Best Practices — through their print, online, social and digital channels, reaching more than 2 million readers nationwide.

Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan
Author
Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan is a New York-based journalist and author of “A Tiger In The Kitchen: A Memoir of Food & Family” (Hyperion, 2011). She is the editor of the fiction anthology “Singapore Noir,” which Akashic Books will publish in April 2014, and is currently working on her first novel. She was a staff writer at the Wall Street Journal, In Style magazine and the Baltimore Sun. Her stories have also appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Food & Wine, Marie Claire, Bloomberg Businessweek, Martha Stewart Weddings, Chicago Tribune, The (Portland) Oregonian, The (Topeka) Capital-Journal and The (Singapore) Straits Times among other places.

Shane Snow
Co-founder, Contently
Shane Snow is a New York City-based technology writer, infographicker, and co-founder of Contently.com, a new media company that empowers journalists and brand publishers. Shane has written for Wired, Fast Company, Mashable, Poynter, Gizmodo, and many others.

Scott Veale
Newsroom Editor for the Sunday Review section and former Arts and Leisure Editor, The New York Times

More speakers coming soon.

• What attendees will take away: Attendees will connect with fellow freelancers and editors. They will fine tune their story ideas and hone their pitches. They will learn about new opportunities and places to find gigs, and receive tips on how to market themselves and stand out online with a digital portfolio. They will improve their negotiating skills and develop a set of revenue and business goals that will focus their freelance practice.
• What attendees should bring: Story ideas and pitches for editors, portfolio, notebook, business cards and lots of questions.
• See the latest panel news at aajafreelancewriting.tumblr.com

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* * *

“Reasons to Re-Joyce” is an appealing essay written by Darin Strauss (Sunday Book Review, The New York Times, December 9, 2012). Not only did Strauss mock the hand-wringing world of whiners moaning about the death of literary fiction, he states, “The naysaying misses the fact that this has been a wildly good book year.” Oh, and by the way, you can trust Strauss has his finger on the right pulse — his most recent book, a memoir titled Half a Life, won the National Book Critics Circle Award. The title of this essay is a reference to Ulysses by James Joyce. Strauss claims the novel is still relevant and a strong influence on what he calls a recent slew of “legitimate masterpieces.” Strauss also makes an excellent point that many of the doom and gloom analyses of the so-called downturn in book sales is not based on actual numbers: “It would be one thing if the naysayers were talking about a crash dive of sales figures. Sales figures carry the inarguability of math.” Instead, he argues, the public is under a barrage of nothing more than negative uniformed opinions from glass half empty talking heads. So, rejoice writers and keep writing your books. Readers are still reading.

* * *

“A Strong Author Platform Translates into Book Sales” reports DBW (Digital Book Wire, December 6, 2012). This is an article promoting the Digital Book World Conference & Expo in New York that is taking place January 15–17, 2013. No doubt the recap will offer sound advice for and analyses of the current state of digital book sales. This conference offers trade publishers hard data on today’s and tomorrow’s book biz. The conference refers to itself as “the single largest gathering of senior-level digital publishing execs anywhere.” It promises attendees access to presidents, CEOs, editors, marketers, large and small publishers, agents, authors, booksellers, librarians and techies — in other words, everyone you need to know to manage your success in the digital publishing world. Topics will include the power of social media and how to determine your best strategy from a dizzying array of platforms including Twitter, Facebook, blogs, Pinterest and YouTube. Speakers will cover how to generate media buzz, how to use search engine optimization (SEO) to rise to higher heights in Google searches and the necessity of 365-day marketing strategies to measure the success of your efforts. So, if you are one of those writers who has been reluctant to spruce up your website or blog, and take the plunge into social media conversations on Twitter and Facebook, there is so much more you can be doing to create your own writing success. Run, don’t walk, to social media marketing.

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In this first graph, the circle represents where the eye first goes and then it tracks the way the eye scans the rest of the page and the arrow is where the eye ends up last on their first view.

This graph from Google shows how the eye travels. The colors are “heat spots” — i.e. the most intense and darkest color in this image is where the eye is drawn to the fastest and has the strongest pull. The lightest shade of color represents the worst “real estate” of the page.

The next graph shows the visitor’s eye beginning at the top left of the page, then scanning across the top, where the navigation links are usually placed on websites then the eyes move down. This is basically the way an eye moves as you read a book: left to right, down, left to right, down, etc. The pattern looks like an “F.”

The bottom graph is the same pattern you would use when writing the letter “Z.”

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“I wanted to play a villain but couldn’t convince an American director,” Albert Brooks told an audience January 8, his curly hair framing a gentle cherubic face. The Film Society at Lincoln Center was honoring Brooks for his career, including his recent role as a psychopathic Jewish mafioso in the 2011 movie “Drive.” Given his work as writer, director and star in comedies like “Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World” and “Lost in America,” he knew it would be a challenge.

Brooks met with Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn, hoping to secure the part. “Before I left our meeting, I pinned him against the wall, grabbed his collar and choked him,” Brooks said. “Then very quietly I said, ‘I’m physically a very strong man.’ Danes are white to begin with, but he turned clear.”

That bold move earned Brooks the part of Bernie Rose, making him a sure bet for this year’s Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor. Perhaps more noteworthy, but less commonly known, is the 2011 release of Brooks’s first novel, “2030: The Real Story of What Happens to America.”

The main character of the story is Matthew Bernstein, the country’s first half-Jewish president. The sort-of sci-fi story depicts a time when cancer has been cured but debt is killing the country. Oh, and Los Angeles is practically leveled by an earthquake. It’s riveting, but surprisingly heavy stuff coming from a man who made a living off of comedy for the past four decades.

photo courtesy of Film District
Brooks, born Albert Lawrence Einstein, never wanted to be a comedian. “My advice is if you want your kid to get into comedy name him Albert Einstein,” he joked. His father was a radio entertainer who went by the name Parkyakarkus.

“When I grew up,” Brooks said, “a comedian was still the guy in Las Vegas. I wanted to be an actor.” But at 20, after spending years in summer stock theater, Brooks couldn’t get an acting gig. “Richard Dreyfuss was getting all the parts for 20-year-olds.”

Brooks’s first television role was on a religious show. “When they told me I was to play a priest who worshipped Christ, I said, ‘Great!’ I was so thrilled to be on the show.”

photo courtesy of Film DistrictMartin Scorsese’s 1976 movie “Taxi Driver” gave Brooks his breakout role. “I played Tom who worked in a campaign office with Cybill Shepherd. I liked her, she didn’t like me — a recurring theme for the rest of my life.”

About working with Robert De Niro, Brooks said, “He was at the height of his method at that time. His character didn’t like mine so he wouldn’t speak to me. At the wrap party he still didn’t speak to me. Six years later he wouldn’t speak to me.”

Brooks went on to star in movies such as, “Mother,” “Out of Sight,” and was a scene-stealer as Marlin, the overprotective clownfish father in “Finding Nemo.” His upcoming movie is “This is 40?”

“I play Paul Rudd’s father,” Brooks explained. “It was the most difficult part I’ve ever played because I just didn’t think of myself as having a 40-year-old child. My children are younger. I kept saying to Judd [Apatow] ‘Should I age? What about a cane?’ but he said, ‘Nyah, I think you’re okay.’ Finally he humored me and let me wear a gray wig.”

Brooks has won a handful of awards already for “Drive” and his novel “2030” is a New York Times bestseller. “Writing this book was a huge creative departure and good experience but I better see if there are any interesting acting parts now,” Brooks said. “If I wait too long there won’t be anything left but playing a great grandfather.”

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