In Publishing News this week
Publishers Weekly had a story about Bookshop.org beginning to sell eBooks in the UK. If you haven’t heard of Bookshop.org they are an independent online book seller that sells into the US and UK. They donate their profits to your local independent bookseller. Their catalogue is from Ingram. With eBooks being added to the stores that’s another win for independent booksellers. In NZ we have BookHub, an online book site linking to independent booksellers throughout the country. It’s a great tool to quickly research and buy books from your local bookseller.
Porter Anderson reports that the judge has approved the settlement of the Anthropic case but as anyone in publishing knows what about the fact that AI companies all scraped their information from pirate book sites. Porter talks to some of the plaintiffs about that big problem that wasn’t addressed in the settlement.
PEN America reports on the latest round of book censorship taking place across the US.
Banned Books week is next week and sadly there is an increase in book censorship in American schools. It’s got to the point where they are just reporting on new books that are being banned, not all books that have come under censorship.
With a child studying the publishing industry here in NZ, I am interested in what publishing courses around the world are teaching. Publishing Perspectives has a run down on what New Yorks Advanced Publishing Institutes week long conference will be covering. Their hot topics are very familiar to anyone in the indie publishing world. Newsletters, YouTube, AI, Audio, and Direct Selling.
There has been a lot of comments in Social Media about an article published by The Walrus – Publishing has a Gambling Problem. Some commenters agree that the system could be broken, others defend it. At issue is how publishers’ actions can screw up a writers career. Nowadays the success of their first book dictates whether they have a career at all. Kathleen Schmidt has an interesting take on this from the publicist’s point of view. And riffing on a theme, An independent bookshop book buyer also weighed in how difficult it was from the bookshop side to even choose books from a catalogue. Suffice to say that if you see a book being featured in a window it has already gone through many battles to get there.
In a potential new book alert- The Dream Team of Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi have a new thesaurus in the works – The Coping Mechanism Thesaurus. They like to test out ideas with writers so have a great article on what coping mechanisms are and how you can use them in your character development.
It is nearly time for the Frankfurt book fair and happening at the same time is The Alliance of Independent Authors 24 hour online conference. The conference is free and available for everyone. This year’s theme is New Trends. They have their usual fantastic lineup of speakers. Sign up and get all the talks for two days before they go behind a paywall.
Dave Chesson has pulled together a list of the best book marketing books in his opinion.
Liz Michalski has an interesting article on Writer Unboxed – How First Drafts Are Like Cauliflower. She has a list of hints that can make the process of revision so much better.
I’m currently working through one of her hints in my own work. It’s tough but it is worthwhile.
Katie Weiland has a quick post on single vs multiple narrators in your novel. What are the pros and cons of each style of writing? I’m wrestling with a multiple POV book, and it is tricky. Huge learning but hard work.
In The Craft Section,
How to find your characters voice- Becca Puglisi- Bookmark
Craft a Raptor Hero-Sue Coletta- Bookmark
Picturing your characters- James Scott Bell
Can setup and backstory work in chapter one- Donald Maass- Bookmark
Writing friends becoming co-authors- Julie Glover
In The Marketing Section
How to get reader reviews- Sandra Beckwith
5 mistakes authors make running eBook promos-Written Word Media- Bookmark
How authors can ask smarter questions- Brian Jud- Bookmark
Global Translation tips- Kelly McDaniel
15 rules for advertising books- David Gaughran- Bookmark
To Finish,
It’s the last quarter of the year and that’s a panic time for authors. The Christmas book sales rush – will my book sell? The end of year, I still haven’t finished my manuscript, worry. Advertising budgets go up. Aaargh Money! Not Enough Time -Aaargh! That treadmill of productivity starts to run faster.
How do we counter this?
Meet someone to talk about books.
Electric Lit has an article on what they think is the next big past time, Book Readings. Have a session at a bar and read each other’s books… or just your favourite book. Hang out at a bookstore event- or start a weekly reading drop in. Book readings where you can ‘meet cute’ or just meet someone new and buy a book as well. It might be just what you need.
Maureen
@craicer
It’s nearly time for my monthly newsletter of the best of my bookmarked links.
You can subscribe here to join our happy band.
If you want the weekly blog in your inbox subscribe to the free Substack version.
If you like the blog and want to buy me a coffee, I appreciate the virtual coffee love. Thanks.
Pic Photo by Steven Wright on Unsplash
No comments:
Post a Comment