Thursday, August 7, 2014

Looking Ahead



This week the winners of the LIANZA’S (Librarian and Information Association of New Zealand Aotearoa) were announced at lovely event in Wellington. I spoke to one of the judges at the event and we talked about the depth of books on offer this year. The judge said that they could have picked another 5 in each category, so I raised the issue that maybe they need a long list. After all The ManBooker has one. One of the important things about a long list is it raises the profile of up and coming authors. This is really important in a small country with a shrinking publishing market. Sales into libraries and schools make all the difference in our small publishing world. A good long list can become a first port of call for school book buyers. (here’s hoping they take it on board!)



The Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators 2014 annual conference wound up in LA this week. Over 1300 kids lit people in one space...WOW. This conference is usually a sellout every year. Some great keynotes and panels were on offer. Fix your self a long drink and scroll down the conference blog where they had notes on all the events.

If you are feeling in need of a conference the ever popular WriteOnCon is back in a couple of weeks. This is a free online conference over two days for Kids Lit writers. It is worth dropping into... getting up early and attending.

This week the stoush between Hachette and Amazon hits the 4th month and the online letter to Amazon from concerned writers hit 900 signatories.

Also in the news is the opening up of the Authors Guild (finally) to Indie writers. This has been loudly applauded... and the appointment of best selling Indie C J Lyon’s to the board has the blogosphere jumping with excitement. First up she called for ways to make the guild better. Joe Konrath produced a 12 point plan that was a masterpiece. Every writers organization should be taking a look at it. The discussion has been wide ranging and is still on going.

The LA Times has been talking ebook numbers...and the sometimes skewed reporting around them.

The Huffington Post has an article on how Barbara Freethy became a best seller...(Interesting post)

Eileen Goudge is a traditional best seller and she is looking at her first foray into self publishing because her publisher no longer felt she was a hot property... after 13 NYT best sellers...

In the Craft Section,

In the Marketing Section,
Lessons from 2014 RWA –tips for marketing success – Jami Gold

Social Media Platform infographic (this is a printout post!)

To Finish,

Jane Friedman has an interesting guest post about an Appcalled Episode. It allows writers to post up chapters with animation or comic book styles and have reader interaction. Perfect place to play with characters etc and the whole thing is specifically designed for mobile reading... A sign post for the future.

maureen

Friday, August 1, 2014

Up and Down


This week in the publishing blogosphere...it’s all about Amazon going public about their dispute with Hachette. Of course then the second guessing fills social media sites and news sites as everyone tries to find an angle… because contract negotiations between mega corporations don’t get boiled down to a couple of explanatory paragraphs… do they? Bloomberg News took the objective angle. 

Mike Shatzkin looks at digitizing back lists and what publishers should be doing. This is an important post by Mike who is calling publishers to up their game.

Futurebook examines subscription services with a warning to publishers.

Writer Beware looks at some sticky agent contracts…can they take a piece of future writing if you self publish?

Huffington Post has an interesting article on whether having books free is damaging to the writer.

Jane Friedman hosts Angela Ackerman talking about writer business plans. This is a great post.

The Big Bigger Biggest Children’s writing conference kicks off this weekend in LA (SCBWI,LA14) Check in to their blog…(on the right in my blog list) which runs all weekend for a virtual taste of what’s on offer.

In the Craft Section,












In the Marketing Section,






To Finish,
Two years ago Jane Friedman addressed a conference where she outlined what she saw coming and what publishers needed to do about it. She has just made that presentation available...How close was she to what we have today...

maureen 



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