Making Like A Professional...

Tonight I had the privilege of being in a room full of children’s authors at a function hosted by The Children’s Book Shop and the Wellington Children’s Book Association. 

Christmas Book Buying Night, where the authors are on hand to talk about their books and sign them along with wine and nibbles and a 10% discount. 

A glass of wine helps any author to stand up and talk about their books and, for those of us there, the questions were really interesting. We talked about the publication process, the waiting for acceptance, the make or breaks for a book, and our current projects. 

One author showed off her book which has been made into an iPad application. For some guests it was the first time they had seen an iPad let alone a children’s book that could be played with, coloured in,  record your own voice reading the story.....

With new technology there are so many ways to get your message across.

Joel Friedlander of The Book Designer blog has listed 17 ways for writers to publish content. The comments on this article list a few more to think about especially repackaging content.

James Scott Bell has a great article over on Killzone. If you want to be a professional writer, start acting like one now. He has five marks of a professional and I saw all five in action tonight.

The writing blogosphere has been up in arms this week over a publisher who has been targeting MFA programmes to find young and hungry writers who know nothing about the industry and signing them up to punishing contracts which take away all their future earnings....  

John Scalzi has published an open letter to MFA programmes urging them to make available classes in publishing business practice and telling them they have a duty after taking all that money to make sure that their students don’t get caught in some very bad situations like this one...because students who think that having an MFA from a respected institution will protect them because they 'know all about the industry'...are being sucked in... 

If you haven’t heard about this (scam) Please take the time to read John's Letter and tell others to read it as well. We should all be aware that if it looks to good to be true...Read and Understand the Fine Print... (It is part of being professional!)

If you are thinking about reading some more industry blogs (in the spirit of being a professional) pop over to Writetodone. Leo Babauta, one of the top bloggers in the entire blogosphere, is hosting the 5th annual top ten blogs for writers contest. Already nominated are many of the blogs I refer to or have referenced in my blog over the last two years. But don’t take my word for it, go and have a look at what other bloggers are saying about the best blogs out there for writers.

Among the best blogs for writers out there is Angela Ackerman’s fabulous Bookshelf Muse. Angela’s project to compile thesaurus for writers on Emotions, Settings, Symbolism etc. Debbie Maxwell Allen has given a quick run down of Angela’s site...if you can’t take it all in at once, it is such a huge project! 

Congratulations Angela on making 300.000 hits to the site. Yes it really is worth a look! (I first referenced Angela back in May and look where the blog is now-talk about growth!)

Over on Craicerplus (My Amplify Page) I have links to Articles on

What Happened To Down Time- The Extinction Of Deep Thinking And Sacred Space. (This is one of those thought provoking articles that change your life)

Should I Tweet?- An Agents Perspective On Marketing...(This article has made best of the week lists all over 

the writing blogosphere.)

Kristin Lambs 3rd structure article- (Really good stuff!)

Is Contemporary YA A Difficult Market?...(comments on facebook and twitter about this one...)

A New Imprint Is Launched -YaYa- teen authors writing for teens.....

Deescribe has a great guest post on marketing by Aussie Tania McCartney. Tania has self published a series of popular books and she shares tips on how to market. This is comprehensive and full of good advice. After all that is what tonight was all about we were marketing....and we were having a great time doing it too.

FaBo is winding to a triumphant conclusion. The team has had a ball. The kids writing into us have stretched us and challenged us and astounded us with their brilliance. It has been a fabulous ride. Go over and check out the penultimate chapter....

enjoy,

maureen

pic is the cover of the movie.....yup that's us... children's writers....maybe the Fabo team....hehehehehehe

Going Up...

This week the country waited with baited breath to find out if The Hobbit will be filmed here. 

YES IT WILL. 

Wellington is a small city chock full of creative people. Everybody knows somebody who worked on Lord Of The Rings...or a Peter Jackson movie, or a WETA production so the uncertainty has had Wellington particularly on a knife edge lately. Wellington is a happier place this morning.

With the speed of time, (why does it always feel faster as we get towards the end of the year) November is just around the corner and for those of you who are thinking about NaNoWriMo (writing a novel in a month) and throwing up your hands...here is a link to writing a novel in three days. The secret is all in the planning.

Publishing Perspectives has an article up on Online Writing Communities. Chris Vannozzi has co founded a website that puts you in touch with other writers to form critique groups etc. Chris thinks this model is much better than going back to Uni and doing a creative writing programme...Have a read and tell me what you think....

Rachelle Gardner has a plea to writers to understand their business...that writing is a business and she has a list of books in her article to help you with this notion. As always I urge you to read the comments...because there are some additions to her list and some good advice in there.

Justine Musk has written the second part of her series on multiple revenue streams for writers. This is a comprehensive article on where writers can develop their niche expertise and also how writers can think outside of the small box. It is a good jumping off point to think about who you are, who does your audience perceive you as and how can you help your audience to fund you directly...(a nice little lead in to...)

Mike Shatzkin.

By now regular readers will know that I am very interested in where publishing is going in the future and what the impact will be for writers. Mike is a publishing futurist. He also has the publishing street cred and his last years predictions for publishing into the future are coming true...The speed of change is almost at lightspeed. Today Mike is commenting on the pick up by Hollywood of vertical  publishing. Mike was warning publishers at the beginning of the year that they would have to look at moving towards vertical publishing.

For the average writer tho, a look at this article on 6 Things Your Website Should Tell Book Reviewers About You And Your Book is a timely link to vertical publishing individually. (add a cafe press store for merchandise and ebooks and you are there really...)  

Over On CraicerPlus ( My Amplify Page) I have links to articles on

Plagiarism...Writer Beware

Kindle Singles...Short fiction for ebooks

Top 5 Free ebooks For Writers (Check this out...some of these writers I have referred to in this blog they are 

GOOD.)

Mashing Up Children’s Books With Monsters (Dick and Jane and the Vampire....)

How To Write One Page Per Day

The Ultimate Retro Laptop

Five Ways To Make Your Novel Inescapable...(the great Victoria strikes again)

On Launching an Online Community and Micro Publisher from Scratch...(and the lessons herein)

This week Janet Reid posted a screenshot of a 1925 movie companies 17 reasons why a screenplay was not accepted...imagine getting this in the post.

Of course you have to write something....

 (guilty)
enjoy,
maureen

pic is from popupcity

Classic Thoughts

At our Wellington Children’s Book Association club night this week we looked at classic books, specifically our favourite all time book. 

As we all have a passion for children’s books none of us could stop at one. The two I picked I couldn’t bring to the meeting because various small members of my family wouldn’t let me borrow them for the night.... So I grabbed some others. 

I was interested to find that, for most of us there, our classic book was the first book we read on our own that made an impact in our young lives...generally at age seven. It seemed to be a recurring theme. The classic book was the first book where we, as children reading, wanted to climb inside the book and totally live in that world.

Oh to write such inspiring words for young readers. (yup...maybe one day)

This thought has been encouraging me all week as I take myself back to Mars and think about character motivation...Getting inside some of my characters heads is hard work...it doesn’t help when it’s forty below and there is a solar flare about to fry everybody....

Today I read a great blog post tackling the question If Your Life Is Boring, Can Your Novel Be Great? This fits my mood of persevere...it will work out.

Greg Rucka has an interesting essay on how he researches his books. How to research a novel -Hardcore advice. Read a snippet here on Media Bistro. I use the internet and the library a lot! I’ve never thought about YouTube tho.

Mary from Kidlit.com was on a publishing trends panel recently and the talk quickly turned to the future of publishing. This is an informative blog post. One, because Mary (agent) was on it as well as Meg Cabot and Two because Lisa Holton of Fourth Story media (Amanda Project) was on it. Oh and publishing trends...if you could predict them you would be rich! (zombie fairies in a dystopian world?)

Richard Curtis, one of the leading agents in the world, has an extremely good article on his blog about timing. When is the right time to go to a bigger publisher...a bigger agent...and why sometimes the writer gets it wrong.

Jeff Sexton has written a compelling blog post about the Psychological Principles Behind A Marketing Success In A Networked World. Do not let the title put you off. This is a very good look at a sleeper hit...and how it happens...(this post has appeared on best of the week lists all over the place.)

Kristen Lamb of Warrior Writers has written a reassuring post to authors about Social Media and why you don’t have to slavishly be on everything. After all you want to write don’t you? She does point out what you should be concentrating on tho.

Over on Craicerplus (my Amplify Page) I have links to Articles on

To Smashwords or Not to Smashwords (this is interesting if you are thinking of POD)

15 Amazing Literary Tattoo’s

The Only ‘How To Write’ Lesson you Will Ever Need. (lots of interest in this one)

Writing Rules are Just Tools...(this is a timely post for those of us staring at the edit!)

Nathan Bransford introduced a new client of his this week by having a guest post from him. This was a really good idea for lots of reasons. Nathan has a huge readership, so instant success there. Jim Duncan talked about all the crap queries he did before he got picked up. And in honour of this and his new blog, he has a contest to write a rejection letter response to the query rejection.

I missed out on the deadline for subbing mine but if you want to read some side splitting responses check it out.

My response is below...

Dear (insert name here)

Thankyou for your query response on (insert date).

We are currently oversubscribed with offers on our (select appropriate or all... romance, crime, urban fantasy, science fiction, hero quest, paranormal, horror, erotica, western) manuscript.

Please keep us in mind with any further offers you may make. Don’t forget to read our website blog for updates about what we like...our fascination for the colour orange for example is always a  good start in understanding why we might be (select one, unwilling, unable, unnerved)  about accepting your submitted response.

All good wishes for the future,

(insert current pseudonym)

enjoy,

maureen

pic is my classic book...

It's A Dirty Job But Someone Has To Do It...

This week I have been contemplating promotion. 

Not for myself, but as an idea. It didn’t matter what I was doing, sooner or later some aspect of promotion ideology flitted through my brain because of a comment or an article or a question...It was everywhere.

The launch of the Fabo Story project...How do we promote it to kids?

The Wellington Children’s Book Association  AGM and panel event on Heroes...How do we promote it to the public?

Every good twitter link coming at me seemed to be on Promotion.

Then I got an email implying that we must have has PR and promotion experience to put on our very successful conference for children’s writers and Illustrators last year.

Actually No, however I did check out every book in the library to do with planning events and business management. This was an attempt to learn as much as I could about how we could get the word out and give the best conference we could, to people who were trusting us with their hard earned cash.

Promotion is part of being in business and business is what you are in if you are a writer.

Promotion is not a dirty word. It is a necessary word. 

You want an editor to look at your work so you must promote yourself as being professional, by writing the best story, presenting it well...clean pages, typeset, spell checked...

You want people to read your book...Telling readers about it, getting your name known, your author visits etc are all promotion for you.

Yvonne Perry of Online Promotion Made Easy has a good article to help you get started with building an author platform including a great set of links to overview articles.

Joanna Penn of The Creative Penn site has pulled together all the articles she has done over the year into one comprehensive links page on marketing. She covers everything from platform to podcasting.  She is a one woman university on the subject.

The Intern has five thoughts on book promotion, after her experience on a book tour. She is funny, ascerbic and thoughtful.  Her commentators agree that she is driving them crazy staying anonymous when she has a book to promote...Which does seem like the opposite of what she should be doing but you need to check out the blog to find out why....

Ali Hale has written one of the inspiring posts of the year with her article on writing bravely.

Has anyone recently told you how brave you are?

Probably not. The writing life doesn’t come off as requiring courage. In a normal day’s work, the worst danger you’re likely to face is a paper cut.

But if you’re a writer – if you’re taking ideas out of your head and turning them into words – then you’re sure as hell brave. Don’t forget that. Never let anyone convince you that what you do is easy or not a real job or even safe.

And that is just the beginning....

Elana Johnson stopped by on the blog this morning to comment on my shout out to the WriteOnCon team. I am in awe of their vision to create a conference for Children’s Writers around the world to participate in for free. What she didn’t know was that I planned to link to an interview with her fellow team member Jamie Harrington about how the conference came about. 

As you can stay at home and attend this awesome conference it is timely to look at the whole working from home thing. The workawesome site has 16 tips to boost your productivity if you work from home.

Over on Craicerplus (my Amplify page) I have articles on

5 Book Marketing Do’s and Don’ts

7 Reasons Why You Are Time Poor...(mea culpa)

How To Self Publish An E Book (This is so comprehensive....print it out)

5 Rules For Writing Y A

A brilliant article from Nathan Bransford on The One Question Writers Should Never Ask Themselves

How One Author Is Using Scribd To Find Readers

As an extra....Mike Shatzkin is on fire. This week he takes the publishers to task on ebook royalties. It’s a comprehensive article...be warned.

I noticed a few weeks ago that I had a large spike in my readers...when I did some investigation I found my blog had been mentioned by a family member on a discussion board for young mothers.  

The promotion was nice and unexpected and as I have tried to reward my blog promoters with a video just for them... I racked my brains to come up with something suitable....

And in shameless self promotion I entered myself in the Net Guide Web Awards for best New Zealand blog on a topic...so that’s one vote....as voting closes tomorrow (Friday 30th) I am expecting that there will only be one vote....snigger.... 

maureen

Memorable ideas

We came back from holiday late on Tuesday and I opened my in box on Wednesday and it spilleth over with emails...

It is funny when you take a break from the internet. You might be going through minor withdrawal symptoms...but it is not! Working my way through the inbox has taken a few hours and I don’t get anywhere near the amount my husband gets at work on a daily basis. Needless to say he is not looking forward to opening up his inbox when he gets back.

The holiday had some memorable moments...

The major car breakdown on the way up the country. Ending up in a motel which did not have chocolates on the pillows...(Mum! Fifi Colston said in her book, Glory, that motels have chocolates on the pillows...Thanks Fi! Beer and chips are Taihape’s chocolates...not the same!)

Seeing the whole family altogether (first time in 6 years and very new niece)

Having coffee with Melinda Szymanik. This was interesting as Melinda and I know each other primarily through blogging. At Spinning Gold I talked with her for about 30 seconds and wished ever after that I had had more time...(actually I wished that all the time at Spinning Gold, not enough hours in the day...) Melinda is as engaging in person as she is on her blog.

The snowball fight on the desert road on the way back down country. The impossible perfectness of the weather and the scenery, blue, blue sky, warm sun and snow right to the bottom of Ruapehu.

Enough rambling, onto the blog post for the week.

Last night I had the privilege of attending the Fifth birthday of Gecko Press. Julia Marshall has done wonders with her crazy idea of starting a publishing company with no money and one book about two geriatric donkeys with relationship problems written in German. John McIntyre beautifully illustrated his speech about Gecko’s five years in successful business with the plot lines of Julia’s publishing triumphs.

A couple of times I have linked to posts by Mike Shatzkin on where he feels the future of publishing lies. As a publishing futurist who doesn’t pull his punches, Mike is a widely followed commentator on the industry. His message of niche will survive over chain is an important one in children’s publishing.  Children’s publishers and the independent children’s bookstores are the best placed to follow up on his advice. John and Ruth McIntyre of The Children’s Bookshop and Julia Marshall of Gecko Press are doing all the right things according to Mike.

This week Mike posted an article on the future of the brick and mortar store as it applies to ebooks, which has had over a hundred comments, including many from children’s bookstore owners and publishers. It is well worth a read.

Stroppy Author has a no nonsense article up on her blog today. The publishing world has changed...get over it!

The L A Times has posted a fabulous article about Janet Fitches 10 Rules for writers. This is great advice. 10 pithy rules that will sharpen up your writing and your attitude, (I like number 10 even tho I have a hard time doing it...I may be too nice....)

 On Marketing

Hope Clarke has reprinted Chris Brogan’s should do social media list if you are an author. It is good to have a look down it and see how you are doing and maybe jog some ideas loose about things you could do.

Harold Underdown one of the leading lights in American Children’s publishing is doing something new in Social Media. He is tweeting parts of the 3rd Edition of his book The Complete Idiots Guide to Publishing Children’s Books. Greg Pincus interviews Harold about the ongoing project.

Often I come across marketing strategies that are just perfect for the non fiction writer. Some can be adapted for the fiction writer, even fewer for the children’s writer. Today I found a great article on what one fiction writer did to market her book by Author Marketing Experts, who have some great ideas about getting noticed.

Our FaBo project is also getting noticed which is gratifying. The general comments from teachers seem to be 'what a great idea...'

It all starts next week...We’re nearly ready! We have some great prizes and giveaways lined up....oooooooooh.

Over on Craicerplus (my Amplify page) I have articles on

The Art Of Query Wars...(the rules of engagement)

Nathan Bransford - You Tell Me Why Is It So Hard To Tell If Our Writing Is Any Good?

Rachelle Gardener-How Do Agents And Publishers Make Decisions (what you always wanted to know)

Twitters #dearpublisher  hashtag takes off...(a very interesting idea)

 I am a sucker for creativity sites and I found one today listing five sites that are tops in sparking creativity. After all I have to get in training for the FaBo project. Only 1 week to go....

 enjoy,

maureen


P.S
Gecko Press have put together a cute little video about themselves...