On Monday I had the good fortune to attend the LIANZA awards.
New Zealand librarians chose the best books published for children in the past year.
Congratulations to the winners! Among the established high profile awards given were new awards in sub categories for books published in Te Reo Maori. As more people are becoming literate in the Maori Language there is a need for books to become more sophisticated. A lot of what has been published in Maori are children’s readers and non fiction. This is now beginning to change as children fluent in te reo age. I was happy to see that a novel based around science fiction including elements of myths and world building was the inaugural winner in the young adult section of the Te Reo awards. When you can have this kind of sophisticated plot, playing with futurist ideas, you know that the Maori language is alive and flourishing.
Dinner out after with some of the brightest talents in Children’s Writing and Illustration in this country was the icing on the cake...and the jump start to my night....(Thanks for the help and the laughter, Children’s Writers and Illustrators are the best!)
WriteOnCon has finished and the children’s literature world is digesting the insights gained. So if you have been studying hard after reading the SCBWI blog (which I urged you to do two weeks ago...) here is this weeks study homework.
Adventures in Publishing have gathered together a conference round up for each day of the WriteOnCon
Miriam Forster has put the two videos by Shelli Johannes-Wells on author branding from the conference on her website so hop on over and have a look.
If you want more information on author branding, The Book Designer has a comprehensive article on the subject. Everything you wanted to know...don’t forget that author branding equals business branding.
The Great Jane has interviewed Johanna Harness about the twitter phenomenon that is the #amwriting group. This is an interesting project by an unpublished writer using social media to get known. With over 2000 people participating in the project and an Amazon store and CafePress merchandise site you have to ask yourself is this the way of the future? (If you have a book coming out with a great theme check out your contract...if it doesn't specifically say anything about merch maybe you need to look into it...a range of interesting quotes from the books and the book cover could make a nice tee shirt (thinking a certain Shakespear sequel here))
It is an interesting interview. Being interviewed on the No Rules blog jumped her stats over 1000%
Dean Wesley Smith has written an interesting overview of what he thinks is happening in publishing. He equates publishers as huge ships that take a long time to change course. The winners are the small press and indie publishers. They can move faster and ride the wave better. Authors who have a long backlist can profit also from the e-publishing phenomenon.
On Craicerplus (My Amplify Page) There are links to articles on
Swords Dominate 2009 Fantasy Cover Art...
The Ultimate Checklist Before Submitting Your Novel.(this is brilliant!)
How To Ensure 75% of Agents Will Request Your Material.(required reading)
Dean Wesley Smith- Killing The Sacred Cows of Publishing...thought provoking article by Dean with an Agent Responding...
10 Things To Do To Become A Better Writer In 10 Days
Self Publishing? A look At Lightening Source.
Finally
In the News -UK Penguin are opening their inboxes for a limited time to unsolicited manuscript submissions...very brave of them...
And
Some very funny responses...give everyone donuts...yep after my day today....
Enjoy...off to find a donut
maureen
Image is from the very funny website Better Book Titles- The Titles They Should Have Used.
Yes - It is For Frankenstein!
(check out the rest!)
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