From The Book To The Merch Empire

 

 

In Publishing News this week,

 

The Australian government is about to introduce legislation that would change the copyright law to allow AI companies to use any authors work without a license to train AI models anywhere in the world. The Authors Guild is promoting a global effort to stop this legislation.

 

Audiobooks are still continuing to do well in sales. Storytel, the Swedish competitor to Spotify has posted a strong third quarter of sales according to Publishing Perspectives. It seems that their Europe base is not succumbing to Spotify. Meanwhile, Spotify is allowing authors up to 1000 free codes per audio book to use as giveaway promotions. 

 

Victoria Strauss has an up to date article on the Anthropic court cases and how other AI companies are using what they have learned to limit their own court cases exposure.

 

Publishers Weekly has an article on Apateon Press who are helping authors who have regained their rights to out of print books and don’t know how to navigate the self publishing system to keep their books in print.

 

There are literary prizes and then there is the new literary prize for an AI co written book. The Prix Pascal de Littérature IA is open for submission is French. The Guardian reports on how this prize came to be.

 

If you follow the Romantasy genre you will be aware that Sarah J Maass has released another hotly anticipated book. Publishers Weekly takes a look at Sarah J Maass Inc. How has one author gone from being an indie creator merch darling into a behemoth  merch franchise entity.

 

Creating a global empire from your writing could be a writers dream but how to make it a reality. What does Hollywood actually want? Publishing Perspectives has the latest report from Rightscenter; Book to Screen Marketplace Insights highlighting all the trends that are hot right now.

 

Meanwhile Kristine Rusch has an interesting essay on navigating the complex issues of rights deals and options with Hollywood agents. This area is ripe with scammers so she has a detailed breakdown of what to look for and beware of.

 

Dale Roberts writes about the recent scare that Amazon put some authors through when they refused to price match books. Apparently, this is all fixed now. Dale talks about the uses of the perma-free model in marketing. 

 

Indie Author Mag has an interview with Evan Gow of Story Origin. The company started as a way of managing all the marketing outreach to readers. He has worked on his newsletter strategy and gives some great tips for connecting with newsletter readers.

 

Darcy Pattison is writing a series of articles on business plans for publishing children’s books. This week she tackles the marketing problem. She know her books aren’t written for general sale so she has a focus on schools and libraries where the marketing is very different.

 

As Novel November is about to start don’t forget to drop into Storybundle for a great package of craft books. Good luck to all who are giving thios a go. Remember even if you don’t hit the target you can still get words down and challenge yourself. Also short stories and other writing counts to the 50,000 word total. You might just surprise yourself.

 

In The Craft Section,

Keeping track of your characters- Craig Martelle- Bookmark

Checking your point of view- Janice Hardy

7 main types of character conflicts- Ellen Buikema- Bookmark

How to write subplots- K M Weiland- Bookmark

Crafting nuanced emotional states- Kim Bullock

 

In The Marketing Section,

The Book Launch planner- Ines Johnson

Amazon A+ Content- Sandra Beckwith

One chapter six mirrors of marketing- R J Redden- Bookmark

Crafting great Book ads- Bookbub- Bookmark

How writers can embrace video- Dan Blank

 

To Finish

 

When you tell people that you have a book out, one of the first things they will do when they get home is do a search on you and your book. Do you have anything for them to find? Rachel Thompson has a great article on what every author should understand, that Book PR and Social Media are different beasts and they should be treated in different ways. If you can get all the component parts working together your book marketing will be easier and opportunities to expand your franchise empire may just fall into your lap.

 

Maureen

@craicer

 

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