Thursday, January 31, 2013

Burning Up



New Zealand is experiencing a heat wave. We are flocking to beaches...diving for water bottles or staring stupidly into the sky and saying what is that yellow thing?

Over in the publishing blogoshere there is disquiet...Sony has a nice little promo going on with the 20p (38cNZ) ebook and Amazon matched it coz that’s what they do and Sony doesn’t look like stopping this anytime soon....Ummm. This could have a major effect on everyone’s bottom line. FutureBook looks at the race to the bottom and the millons being squandered/earned/ redistributed...amongst the publishers who signed up for this promo.


Burning up Twitter this week is the news that Barne’s and Noble, America’s largest book chain is beginning to close stores and tightening their bricks and mortar footprint. By the end of the decade they will have slimmed down by a third. Mike Shatzkin takes a look at the implications.

In Amazon’s latest earning figures they forgot to put in the figures that everyone wants to know. Ebook sales means how many units over/under print ? and What about the bite Apple is taking in illustrated books because everyone really wants an iPad for kids books? and What does this all mean for hardware...and content providers. PaidContent check out the answers to these burning questions.

If you sign up for anything Amazon writer related...be aware The Amazon orb can burn you if you are not careful. This is a post about one writers baaad journey with Amazon and the lessons learned.

Mark Laurance was faced with a difficult situation on Reddit earlier today when he explained exactly what lowly income a writer gets and was told by several readers that they were now going to buy one of his books after discovering him through pirated books. Check out this fascinating stream of comments where readers defend piracy and Marks response.

Agent Rachelle Gardner looks at the tricky topic of story vs craft in her latest blog post which has racked up nearly 100 comments within 24 hours. Acquiring editors are all over the place with whether they want a great story and hang the writing craft or whether the craft has to be just as tight as the story before they will look at it.

Jody Hedlund looks back at life when she had one book published....and life now (5 books) and What She Wished She Knew Then.

If you could, would you distribute your books through the largest UK book distributor? Did you know it is now McDonalds? Publishing Perspectives  takes a look at McDonalds UK move. Could we do it here and who would lose out?

Joanna Penn is back in love with print! She tells why she came back to it and why for her it makes financial sense.

IndieReCon has released their schedule for the free online conference happening from 19th Feb. Everything you wanted to know about independent publishing...three days... 39 speakers....Inspired by WriteOnCon...


In Craft,
Raising the stakes in your novel in the first 50 pages... When you get into the planning stages you need to have a good handle on complications. A good post on what you should be looking for.

Adding complexity to your characters...Why do your villains act the way they do...

Tracking time in your novel...If you don’t do it you can come to a very sticky situation...Here are some tips to keep up to speed.

How is your voice? This great post looks at refining your writing voice. Some great exercises here.

Karen Woodward is taking a close look at the StarBurst way of writing...In this post she tackles the classic heroes journey and the significance of Obi Wan Kenobi.

In Marketing,
How do you discover your books brand? And then what do you do....

The Market Within is a nice blog post for Children’s Writers to contemplate...after all their target market doesn’t buy the books so how do you engage with the buying wallets....

How do you know when you are a success? Angela Ackerman of the Bookshelf Muse has a great post detailing the signs...You could be a success and you don’t even know it...

Futurebook has a nice post on ways to optimise and monetise your social strategy in 2013. It sounds dire but if you have a business then this is very much worth a look. Immediately applicable to writers....

To finish,
11 ways to support a fellow writers book...I’m proud to be guilty of a few of these. Last week I was in a big chain bookstore carefully looking for fellow writers books so I could turn them...and found some other writer must have got there before me....They were all shining, face out, to the buying public.

Check out this interview with short story writer George Saunders on the Colbert Report...why short? Doesn't America only want Big Stuff? Gotta laugh!

maureen

pic: Fire  / Ben Watts  Flickr


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