Vote for...

Dropping into the Twitter and Facebook publishing world conversations provided a welcome relief from the Election fever which is gripping two nations. 

The worry over the vote and who is voting and who is skewing the vote can get overwhelming and put people off voting.

Things that caught my eye this week.

Clay Shirkey’s post... All the big guns are weighing in on whether Clay is right about Amazon and the future of publishing.

Brian O’Leary has some good things to say, which are backed up by a who’s who of publishing pundits in the comments.

If you are inside the big five camp.... poor us. Amazon is the bad guy. We had to collude on pricing to compete with them. We are the best arbiters of taste for the public.

Amazon on the outside… Why do higher ebook prices have to subsidise hardcovers. Lack of access to physical bookstores made us big. Publishers gave Amazon digital rights 7 years ago and never thought about the impact...

Reader’s voting with their feet.

Hugh Howey on DRM Is it dumb or brilliant? (When the argument flags pull out DRM)

Agent Chip MacGregor and his new trends in publishing post. This is nice roundup and one for writers to think about.

Writer’s vote with their M.S.

How can writers face their fear...

Chuck’s ten things you should never say to a writer

Vote for Chuck!

In the Craft Section,

How to find your characters breaking point – Janice Hardy

Top apps for writers

The biggest mistake new writers make – Anne R Allen

How do I revise my novel- the plot whisperer.

5 techniques to get objectivity – Jami Gold

Getting your character to change – K M Weiland

Editing- behind the scenes

In the Marketing Section,

Using Calibre to get a quick digital copy of your book.

13 great truths about making a living writing

Quality not Quantity

Publishing Middle Grade how one writer is doing it.

To Finish,

If you are needing to escape from all the voting madness and give yourself some writing time here is a list of the worlds best writing retreats for you.

It is New Zealand's Sufferage day where women campaigned and got the vote 121 years ago (first country in the world!) On the eve of the general election…

"Do not think your single vote does not matter much. The rain that refreshes the parched ground is made up of single drops" - Kate Sheppard. 

Sorry this blog is late again...

maureen

Pic from flickr.com/photos/alancleaver  The green tick is not an endorsement of any political party. 

Just get out and VOTE!

Knee Jerks

The New Zealand Post Children’s Book Awards are usually news for a few hours in the morning after the award ceremony. The only people who seem to care are Booksellers, Librarians and the Kid Lit community here in NZ. Not So This Year.

This year the Public have been warned that the winner of Book Of The Year and Senior Fiction (that’s Young Adult) is a smutty book with naughty language and deviant drug behaviour not to mention (gasp) the sex.

The media frenzy over a bookseller refusing to stock it, a conservative political party denouncing it, and an editorial in a major Sunday paper declaring it a waste of space is really sad. In the quotes and comments that the journalists chose to focus on, it was clear that the people doing the loudest complaining hadn’t even read the book but picked up that it might be ‘questionable.’

As one children’s writer commented...’have they forgotten that the Children’s Book Awards cover Young Adult fiction and this book is aimed at 15+

Into The River, by Ted Dawe, is a hard hitting book. It is aimed unapologetically at the hardest to reach demographic in our society. It shines a spotlight on something the wider public would rather not acknowledge...the disenfranchisement of young Maori men. 

Bernard Beckett, The chief judge of these awards has finally been asked why it was chosen and he makes a clear case for the importance of this book.

Emma Neale one of the early editors also makes an impassioned plea for the book. They are two who have read it and thought about the issues and so they have some authority to judge. 

Reporting knee-jerk reactionary comments from people who have not read the book is sloppy journalism.

The rest of the Kid Lit community here can’t believe Ted’s luck. All this publicity means the book should be flying out book sellers doors. Add in that it was self published and the world definitely changed in New Zealand’s Publishing landscape last week.

Across the world the rumbling of disquiet over Barnes and Nobles decision to stop making the Nook e-reader had pundits scrambling to explain what it would mean.

Publerati came out to say this is what happened to the photographic industry...and offered advice to Barnes and Noble.

Digital Book World has taken the demise of the Nook and focused on where digital content may be heading...along the way they take a look at the children’s book industry.  

Futurebook looked at the rise and rise of Book Apps and mobile media and wondered why Apple was not connecting the dots on this in their digital publishingmarketplace. 

This all makes interesting reading about publishing futures when you add in Amazon’s latest news the patenting of e-book extras...or enhanced e-books.

In Craft,

Jody Hedlund looks at making swoon worthy heroes.

Writeitsideways has 6 ways to hook readers on the first line.

Shortstorywritinggroup has this week’s story writing exercises

Badlanguage looks at research tips

Chip McGregor checks out whether you should write a series

Are there rules to writing seat of the pants style.

In Marketing,

Joanna Penn has a new marketing book to check out

Kris Rusch talks about word of mouth and how to get it.

Roz Morris investigates changing Book Covers for results

Bestsellerlabs has a look at the marketing maze and how to navigate it.

To Finish,

John Scalzi has laid down the law on his future appearances at Sci Fi Cons. As he is a draw card and attendance at Cons is built into Sci Fi publishing contracts...this is putting a firm stake in the ground on the side of anti harassment of his female colleagues. Of course he is getting dissed for it.

The Bookselfmuse has a great guest post on weathering reviews and taking criticism, something that might come in handy if you’ve had a week like Ted’s.

Rants and Research

The holidays are fast disappearing and my To Do list stays the same. This week has had some highs tho.

My family managed to all go to the movies together. It may not sound like a big deal to you but it is to me. With so many things pulling at each one of us, we can only usually manage to eat together once a week. Family events of more than the fifteen minutes to eat dinner take major planning.  We saw The Sorcerer’s Apprentice...and we all enjoyed it for various reasons...How they managed to cleverly mix physics and magic, the mop scene from the old Disney version, Nicolas Cage, and the Harry Potter trailer....

Straight after the movie I raced into The Children’s Bookshop for Diana Menefy’s little soiree to celebrate her book, The Shadow of the Boyd. This ripping yarn’s journey to publication has been long in the making. Diana has been researching this piece of tragic New Zealand History for about a decade. She has cleverly woven in many facts about shipboard life in the early 1800’s but not at the expense of a great story of tragedy and survival against the odds. When I got home after dinner out with some great writers...I started the book and kept going...finishing it in one bite. Shadow of the Boyd is the last book picked up by a publisher from the pitch session at Spinning Gold to be published and I was delighted to be able to celebrate this with Diana and some of the Spinning Gold team.

I haven’t been doing much researching on the net this week so this morning I took a look at what has caught peoples attention that might be of interest to you.

Lynn Price, Editorial Director Of Behler Publications has ripped into Christopher Pike for not only NOT researching properly but for then trying to defend the resulting mess. She does not spare the editors of his publishing house either who did such a sloppy job that they didn’t catch obvious errors which ruin the whole foundation of the story....You may think she is a bit harsh...but I don’t. Diana Menefy spent ten years getting the history right, the life and times, the names of the characters and the language right for Shadow of The Boyd. It is children’s novel but it has been meticulously done. I know how much time I spend researching...writer friends have called me on it...(stop and just write the damn book...) We have a duty to our readers after all to write a good story. Our readers are not dumb and treating them as such shows an amazing arrogance which will fast lose you credibility and readers.

While I am ranting (but not half as well as Lynn Price) Suzannah of Write It Sideways has a minor rant on her blog about being plagiarized. Suzannah has discovered that whole articles have been copied and pasted, cut up and attributed to other bloggers. She is trying to get a perspective on it that doesn’t involve wasted energy...and negative thoughts. Suzannah has posted a short list of rules for new bloggers to understand about linking to others work, and commenter’s have linked to some great sites for copyright protection.

Off on a different tack Victoria Moxon has another very fine article on How To Make Your Novel Hopelessly Addictive and Nicola Morgan has one on Dialogue Techniques. Both of these bloggers are a valuable resource if you are looking for writing help.

Chip MacGregor has posted an exhaustive list of things a good agent needs to know. As Chip is the owner of a successful literary agency he is well qualified to speak. As always I urge you read the comments of the articles I link to because they often have some great extras to add to the discussion.

Over on Craicerplus my Amplify page I have links to articles on

7 Factors For Success In Finding An Agent

Earth Like Planet Can Sustain Life (geeking no apologies)

9 Ways To Prepare For NaNoWriMo

A Writers Guide To A Successful Interview (how to use an interview to get your message across)

Writing Series-Thoughts and Resources (this is great if you find your story going on longer than one book)

Kindle Self Publishing (writers can now self publish on Kindles....)

On a slightly different facet of the writing life...Alexis Grant has a good article on Writer’s Colonies. These are amazing residential places that writers can go and just write. Someone else takes care of all the other details...food, laundry etc etc. Some colonies will pay you to go there...It is to dream...

Guy Le Charles Gonzales has been doing a bit of that lately and has re mixed his ideas on 21st Century Publishing. Traditional print plus fan sites plus book cafe sites plus on demand printing equals a very interesting publishing model for writers.

For those of you interested in the 1000 fans idea, my friend Justin sent me a link to a photographer who is experimenting with the concept and has chronicled his two year journey...(yes he is making money...and he doesn’t have 1000 fans...)

enjoy,
maureen


Pic is the cover of The Shadow of The Boyd and below a little clip (you can find anything on YouTube)

Forgiveness and Group Branding

I am guilty.

I am guilty of not having a set routine, of not setting goals to check off, of procrastination...which is why this blog post is late.

Forgive me.

So what have I found to get you thinking for the next week.

The Author as Publisher...this thought was revolving around my head as I hung up the washing on the first sunny day here in two weeks. The Wall Street Journal has a good overview of what is happening with Amazon moving into the publishing market. They use several author experiences as case studies. In particular the royalty amount Amazon is paying (70%) which makes it worthwhile to look at what they are offering to authors and how this changes the publishing landscape.

With all these possibilities in mind Tony Eldridge retweeted a blog post from October last year on marketing plans with a multiple pronged attack. This is a handy list and as he says you don’t have to do all of it. One of his bullet points is joint ventures. Tony had already posted an excellent article on the synergy of working with other authors on a joint venture. Each week as I research my blog post I am finding more of these author collective initiatives. They are a very good idea.

Create a Group Presence

If you are finding the whole author online presence very daunting, get together with a few friends and create a group presence. This divides up the work each author has to do online. It promotes collective branding as a group. It can give you wider exposure.

A while ago I talked with Stacy Nyikos about the class of 2k8 and how that was set up and how it operates. It is such a good idea that it has morphed branding on its own with 2k9, and 2k10....

In a collective author venture everybody has input into the brand. The brand promotes itself collectively and individually. The brand provides speakers to events, a fan club to promote them, a built in author blog tour....

You can be as big a presence as you want and can cope with, from Readergirlz with their video TV channel to PBJunkies, writers with its focus on parent events.

(Note: As I was loading up the links to the blog I found this one for dystopian writers, courtesy of P J Hoover of Spectacle writers....)

In Facebook land I am part of a collective of writers experimenting with writing a group book. We are still developing the story but alongside we are brainstorming ways that we can bring children along for the ride online. We are going to have to think seriously about collective and individual branding the project. This all seems like adult work...when at the moment the collective energy and camaderie has us feeling like the kids at the back of the class having a secret plan and executing it while the teacher (publisher) is not looking. When we grow up and put the whole project on a more serious footing, it is still going to be fun given the personalities involved....

So having confessed I spend too much time researching social networking...Chip McGregor of McGregor Literary has a timely reminder with a guest post by Rob Eagar of what an author should be doing with the 10 plus hours they spend online.

Following on from this is a good post by Mike Duran on routine and how this can benefit an author’s career. He makes the point that he never understood why his agents asked him how fast he wrote a novel...and why that fact is important to know.

This month is SoCNoC. (Southern Cross Novel Challenge)Yes, here in the Southern Hemisphere we have our own NaNoWrMo (National Novel Writing Month) in a winter month. Kiwiwriters.org are organising it and people from all around the world are taking part which goes to show that authors like a goal and need a whip cracking challenge to apply butt in chair.

I attended Ruth Paul’s Two Little Pirates Book launch last night, at The Children’s Bookshop. The publishers representative commented in her speech that so proud are they of this book they had ordered 19,000 copies to be printed and distributed in Australia and Canada as well as here in New Zealand. This is a well deserved accolade for one of our best writer illustrators. Two Little Pirates is gorgeous!

Over on Craicerplus (my amplify page)

Marketing Tips for Authors 10 Tips on Preparing A Speech

The Number One Habit of Highly Creative People

The Three Best Takeaways from Book Expo America (this is a must read on copyright and royalty changes)

Author Marketing Experts inc.Free Toys and Downloads for Authors

Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize longlist...great lit for under 10s

Enjoy

maureen

Pic is the cover of Two Little Pirates