Showing posts with label New Adult. Show all posts
Showing posts with label New Adult. Show all posts

Friday, May 3, 2013

Passionate about Data...




Today I popped into The Children’s Bookshop and noticed a new series being promoted...what was so interesting to me was this contemporary thriller Y A series had photos of all the books in the series on the inside cover and when they were coming out... 2 months apart! The whole 6 book series in a year. This year Indie Authors have been talking about publishing two or more books in a series in a year to capture readers...and feeling quite happy that they weren’t being restricted to one book contracts from traditional publishing houses. This is the first time I have seen a traditional publishing house run with this idea.
There are so many risks to writing a full series when you don’t know if there will be an audience for it. A respected Editor looked at my Book One of a series and said...make it bigger...The first book has to sell the whole series. For a publisher to commit to a full year publishing schedule of six books is taking a punt on the reader when they don’t know if the book will take off. So how do you find these readers...how do you know what they want and what they will buy? It is all in the DATA.

Cory Doctorow has been stirring the pot this week with his article on the importance of metadata andhow publishers don’t actually know who their readers are...and they definitely aren’t telling the writers. So who does know? Cory has the answer and he has a warning that this is going to be a very important issue for publishing in the future.

But what metadata are Readers concerned with? Front matter and End matter and Authors had better have a handle on all of this.

Of all the data coming out, authors do like to keep an eye on trends and what editors might be looking for. Publishers Weekly report of a panel discussion with children’s editorstalking about exactly this is required reading.

James Patterson (mega author) is passionate about children reading and wants America to wake up to the demise of the publishing industry and libraries...So this week he took out front page ads in The New York Times to tell everyone of his concerns. He wanted to plant the issue right in front of Readers...reaction to his ads have been mixed from the literary community.

Kickstarter looks likeit could be replacing the publishing community...an interesting article for mid career writers to chew over.

Rachelle Gardner had the horrible experience of nursing a writer through a complete computer meltdown just before the MS was due at the publishers. She talks about all the different ways you should be ensuring this does not happen to you.

Author Solutions is off to court. http://publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/digital/content-and-e-books/article/57046-authors-sue-self-publishing-service-author-solutions.html
A class action is being taken against them. When you read Dave Gaughren’s article about how many publishers are involved in some way or other with Author Solutions, this court case looks very serious for everyone. Reputations...and profits...all on the line.http://davidgaughran.wordpress.com/2013/02/19/penguins-solution-for-authors-one-racket-to-rule-them-all/

Today a twitter discussion between agents about New Adult became a blog post on how agents should treat each other and what to be aware of in their public pronouncements. Do you really want an agent who doesn’t know anything about your genre?


In Craft,

For those writers wrestling with screenplays...Tell the story in visual beats.

In Marketing,


To Finish,
Concert Pianist James Rhodes has written in the Guardian a thought provoking post on creative passion. Find what you love and let it kill you.... Read it and see whether you agree with him...How passionate are you to get that novel written? What are you doing about it?

Sorry about the huge URL's that appear this week. Bloggers highlight link broke in the middle of preparing this post.

maureen
PIC from

http://www.flickr.com/photos/tensafefrogs/3649985674/
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