Content Collaboration

I’ve been thinking about content lately. 

Content is the new word for story. Container is the new word for form that the story comes in. It could be digital or print or images or audio or interactive game… 

A creative project I’m involved in is creating a found artifact which takes the form of a journal. This is to be part of a larger art project looking at different ways artists and writers collaborate together. I seem to be coming across content collaboration everywhere.

Porter Anderson reports on an opening keynote speaker at the recent Publishers Forum held in Berlin. Author Kathrin Passig gently told the publishers that they were using outmoded technology when they worked with authors. Had they ever heard of collaboration?

Joe Wikert has been thinking about content too. Specifically how he thinks publishers could improve the e-book sample and be better at converting samplers into buyers by working with authors.

Joanna Campbell Slan talks about serialising a novel on her website and what she has learned. Is this controlling your content or letting it go? I know of other authors who do this in other canny ways.  (If you can’t wait for the next installment you can go buy the whole book...)

The latest Author Earnings snapshot is out. You may have heard that e-book sales are declining. Author Earnings gurus Hugh and Data Guy have discovered that this is happening only to Trad publishers who raised their prices after negotiating new deals with Amazon. Check out the Author Earnings website for other interesting news from the 6th snapshot.

Joel Friedlander has an interesting guest post up. Short is the new black- your shrinking reader attention span. This is spinning your content in another way.

Mandy Hager recently had to give a lecture on Dystopian Fiction so she posted it on her blog. What does an author have to think about when constructing a dystopian world.

With the suspension of NZ Book Month... A group of writers have taken to Twitter to promote NZ Books. #NZBookMonthMay A lot of us are posting a NZ book a day so check in for your next great read.

Tinderbox 2015 has a website. We are getting ready to post delicious tidbits about the conference.

In the Craft Section,

Is your prologue destroying your subtext? K M Weiland

7 secrets of highly persistent writers

2 great posts from the Emotion Thesaurus team. Moving Beyond 

the Face to Show Emotion and Key elements to help you evolve as 

a writer.

Screenwriting tricks has a story elements checklist.

Tips for novelising true events.

Why you should put your book on Wattpad (this is a quick intro to Wattpad.)

In the Marketing Section,

Making a living from your writing – Joanna Penn (Bookmark)

7 email marketing secrets for Fiction Authors

Spine out - Design tips for your Book Spine.

Good Font choices for books (Bookmark)

Preparing your Author Business for Failure.

Kameron Hurley (popular sci fi author) has posted an in depth article on why Patreon is better than Kickstarter for writers. If you are interested in crowd funding this is a must read!

Helen Sedwick has crunched the numbers on the cost of Author copies 

Website of the Week

Last week I linked to Dave Gaughran talking about Author Solutions. Indie Publishing Magazine has a link to the class action depositions (testimony from the other side) and what I read had my eyebrows achieving liftoff. I am honestly amazed that Random Penguin would be associated with this outfit.

SFWA, who sponsor Author Beware, have a link to the list of DISREPUTABLE publishers out there.

To Finish,

Brian Pickings always has interesting long form articles. This week they look at Delacroix’s journal notes about the need for writing in solitude. If you had to go away to collaborate on content, how about going to a castle which is a dedicated library and hotel...

maureen

Pic from Flickr/ Creative Commons- Butch Delisay

The Cost Of Writing

What are the odds that a reclusive writer who wrote one book that has topped best seller lists for nearly 60 years would suddenly decide that the time is right at age 88 with severe medical issues (deaf and nearly blind) to bring out the first book she ever wrote.  (insert dead fish smell here.) 

This has been the main topic of conversation this week in the publishing blogosphere.

Once the usual literary crowd finished celebrating that Harper Lee was releasing a sequel to To Kill A Mockingbird then saner heads started asking why and the story becomes increasingly unlikely. Is it a rights grab by a lawyer who took over Harper’s sister, Alice's, law firm after her death a few months ago. Is HarperCollins behaving ethically in this whole affair? Is the lawyer to be trusted or have they played a very long game? There are lots of questions around this. Where is Atticus Finch when his creator needs him?

Staying with things legal... Tess Gerritson talks about what is happening with her landmark legal battle with Warner Brothers who bought out New Line who had the option on her book Gravity 15 years ago... and it makes for some nervous reading for writers selling film options.

So the first two items this week are after the book has been written, Chuck Wendig looks at the emotional rollercoaster of writing the book with his handy guide.

Susan Kaye Quinn talks about the need to create... and how that jumbly mixed up feeling is telling you something important.

That something important could be the startling finding from last weeks author earnings report about that 30% of books being published without ISBN’s. Here in NZ we are in a relatively fortunate position of getting free ISBN’s. But in the rest of the world it is a different story. It is a real cost. Porter looks at the issues raised by the author earnings report and then discussion over ISBN’s and their value get a hammering in the comments.

If you have a toe in the academic publishing world these five predictions for 2015 are for you.

Seth Godin amplifies his call to publishers that if you aren’t selling direct to consumer you are....

In the Craft Section,

Kristen Nelson on what is uneven writing

21 fast hacks on fueling the suspense

K M Weiland on writing backstory

Susan Kaye Quinn on not rushing to publish

3 most effective types of inner torture for your characters

Writing exercises - changing the tail.

In the Marketing Section,

The big story this week is Bookbaby beginning Print On Demand. This is big news for those who don’t want all their stuff in the Amazon basket. Canny marketers have also discovered how you can play both sides...

Jody Hedlund on whether you really need social media

Jami Gold on branding 101

Self promotion for horrible people

Odd Stuff

Buzzfeeds collection of coffee mugs for book nerds

Jeff Sanders on why you need to track every little accomplishment.

To Finish

It is possible that Harper Lee stared at each of the 5 reasons why writers avoid writing in the face and took them on board or she didn’t know how to follow up the first book (first book syndrome) or, as everybody suspects, the phenomenal success frightened her to reclusiveness. But if this is a rights grab... it will be a landmark in publishing... as the day when some publishers lost all moral credibility.

Ranting On

This week I have been working hard on a funding application for our national conference to our national arts funder, Creative New Zealand.

When you work on a funding application, it gets you thinking about what you really really wish for and how limited the funds actually are out there in the arts world.

While I was finalising the last bit of number crunching our Man Booker winner Eleanor Catton was being interviewed live on Indian TV. She was voicing some of my thoughts about arts funding... we could do with more of it here. Unfortunately her comments annoyed a talkback radio host here and suddenly he was off on a rant calling her a traitor... to New Zealand. 

I found this very hard to swallow coming less than two weeks after the Paris attacks on free speech. Yes I disagreed with a lot of the religious attacks in the Charlie Hebdo comics but we live in a free speech democracy. The radio host has his right to free speech too. But can’t we be grown up and debate the issue of whether our arts funding is adequate. Of course, we in the arts community will say it isn’t. It would be nice to have the forum where we could show the rest of New Zealand exactly why we think it isn’t adequate and not be penalised for speaking our minds. We need to have a healthy forum for debate instead of having the whole thing reduced to competing soundbytes, as our NZ Society of Authors president Kyle Mewburn so ably said this morning on Breakfast TV.

The cartoonists have had a great time this morning illustrating the backlash.

Due to my week being spent crunching numbers... I haven’t got my usual 30ish links or so.

This morning Author Earnings released another report... and it makes interesting reading. Passive Guy highlights main points but a stunning revelation is the high percentage of books that don’t have ISBNs. These ‘shadow’ books aren’t counted in any official book statistics.

Jane Friedman comments on stats from DBW conference (which may be in doubt now that the new Author Earnings report is out) and she lists the best bits of Seth Godin’s session. This makes interesting reading for authors about where you should be aiming for in marketing.

The wonderful Kris Rusch was interviewed on her new book –Discoverability, This is all about passive marketing which authors need to understand. Worth taking the time to listen!

In the Craft Section,

Ava Jae on finding critique partners

What kinds of basic story plots are there

Janice Hardy on avoiding unnecessary internal question in 3rd person.

In the Marketing section,

Making free 3D book covers

Daily Dahlia has a post on Agent red flags... with examples... must read if you are looking for one.

Jane Friedman on platform building for authors. This one is a must read/listen. I am always saying that groups of authors getting together to market themselves, and talk about writing, is the way forward. And here Jane is saying the same. Can’t argue with that!

To Finish,

One of my illustrator friends commented that she was sick of ignorant writers thinking that illustrators would illustrate their manuscripts for royalty splits when they hadn’t even got a publishing contract. Illustrators have to pay mortgages too. Picture Book illustrations can take up to a years full time work. Publishers pick the illustrators and most are paid flat fee and/or royalty. Please share this information around with your writing friends or you might encounter illustrators going off in Wendig inspired rants.

and on another note...

Terri Ponce has a nice little article on success and failure... worth printing and sticking above your writing desk  (especially this week...)

Maureen

P.S. When I have more details to share with you about the National Conference of Children’s Writers and Illustrators (A.K.A Tinderbox 2015 - Wellington October 2-5) I will share them.

(hugs self and chuckles gleefully)

pic from Todays New Zealand Herald

Observing the Battlefield

This week the publishing blogosphere has been full of Hachette vs Amazon...and the fall out on authors which doesn't look like ending very soon. 

Everyone has an opinion. 

In the last two days Amazon released a statement, encouraging readers who wanted a Hachette book to buy from other suppliers and (in a cunning move) offering to partner with Hachette in an author’s fund to compensate the authors on lost earnings.  This morning Hachette released a statement in reply...It’s not our fault that Amazon sees the book as just another commodity and when we solve this we’ll think about that author fund.

In the mean time... Opinions are flying thick and fast around the blogosphere helped along with a new Author Earnings report and this week the analysis on Traditional Authors income vs Debut Authors Income from Hugh Howey.

Passive Guy puts his lawyers hat on and gives a succinct overview of the impact of Hugh’s report on Authors, especially Hachette Authors, who may well be contemplating making some changes in their future...

Dave Gaughran observes that the whole thing may just be a PR exercise for hearts and minds.

Mark Coker urges all authors to pay attention because after the Hachette negotiations with Amazon are over, the rest of the big 5 will be going through the same negotiations. Indie authors had better be spreading the risk.

Bob Mayer reminds Authors that this whole mess is about Rights and who has them and how they use them and what they should be doing about it.

Careers are on the line here. This dispute could be the tipping point for a lot of authors to start the move towards a more hybrid career with a mix of Traditional and Indie publishing.

If you aren’t a publishing accountants dream 6 figure deal... then you may as well band together with some like minded author friends and set up your own publishing house. You will have just the same opportunities as any of the big 5... according to Hugh.

In the Craft Section,

The 12 Stages of Physical Intimacy to build tension. (pretty comprehensive post!)

Staying in the Writing Groove

How to write Dialect – Ava Jae

Important notes about Dialogue

How to save on Editing (Killzone blog.)

When the author and the editor disagree...Rachel Gardner

A writers enemy- feeling like a fraud.

What readers really want to see in a series - Elisabeth S Craig.

In the Marketing Section,

All about Author Platform

Self Publishing vs Traditional (podcast)

Kickstarter lessons...with Sean Platt (honest assessment)

15 things you should know about Book Events

Joanna Penn on Evaluating the Market

CreateSpace vs Ingram comparison. (Handy info for outside US authors.)

10 truths about Self Publishing

To Finish,

Jane Friedman, all round publishing blogosphere goddess, has an in depth look at 3 Insights that lead to a Successful Writing Career.  (Stephen Pressfield book, The War of Art is a must read!)

maureen