Competition

I have been thinking about all the predictions made last year as to what the big changes will be in publishing. Remember how Audio was predicted to be the next big mover. Last month Draft2Digital introduced a partnership with Findaway voices and today Kobo launched their audio selling arm. This is competition for Audible, an Amazon company, because Kobo audio monthly subscriptions are very cheap.

While you are looking at Kobo check out their writing life podcast. This is a podcast specifically for authors by authors on what’s working or not, like this one- Five strategies for free.

Publishing Perspectives are always interesting to dip into. There are interesting articles that look at publishing as a whole. One article recently caught my eye- Richard Charkin on how the publishing industry has become overcomplicated. Richard makes some good points on region copyright and then he raises the idea that publishing doesn’t need Barnes and Noble.

Another article from Publishing Perspectives has Porter Anderson interviewing Gabriella Page-Fort, recently named a Publishers Weekly ‘Superstar.’ Gabriella heads up Amazon Crossing, which has become the biggest producer of translated material in the US. So what’s happening in the translation market? Gabriella sees lots of opportunities.

This week a plaintive post from a creative about his bank struck a chord with a lot of people. If you run your business online have you thought what would happen if the bank pulled your account over an error. Banks can be over zealous with online business’ and one creative got caught. I’m highlighting this as many writers have an online business. If you think it won’t affect you... I hope you don’t have monthly subscriptions for websites or get paid directly into your bank account...

Do you call yourself a writer? When did you finally admit to yourself that YES you are a writer. One writer made the leap and noticed five things happened that she wasn’t expecting.

David Gaughran is a crusader for writers. He’s like the squeaky wheel that points out the scammers and the less than great service form the big publishing companies. After all they are competing with each other, you want great service. (Honestly Amazon, put the guy on retainer to clean up your click farm scammers.**) Here he takes a cool look at the new hot author tool-Amazon ads. Can they be done differently?

Dean Wesley Smith had an interesting blog post today on the value of the paper-back. I bet you are all nodding and saying yes. But Dean is talking about the second hand book market. (Bet you didn’t see that coming!)

Anne R Allen has a great post on 7 new writer mistakes and it’s not just new writers that make them. Check out the list and be warned.

In The Craft Section,

Boba Fetts guide to writing cool characters- Dave Chesson

6 tips for taking inspiration from history- Mythcreants- Bookmark

When you hate to outline- try doing a date line- Barbara Petoskey

The reason why you aren’t happy with your novel – Daniel Nathan

Using a novel journal- James Scott Bell - Bookmark

Story conflict- Janice Hardy -Bookmark

Writing secondary characters- Jane Friedman – Bookmark

13 writing lessons from 13 reasons why- Jennie Nash

In The Marketing Section,

How authors can use Instagram- Joanna Penn - Bookmark

Book marketingbasics- Molly Greene- Bookmark

How to set up anauthor exhibition stand- Bookmark

10 low budget ways to market- Draft2Digital

Opt in gifts and lead magnets- Bookmark

Book Cover templates- Canva

How to title your non fiction book- Jody Rein & Michael Larson

5 steps to buildinga winning email list

Quick guide to launching your next release- Penny Sansevieri

To Finish,

As you can see the blog has had a few tweaks. I have also been playing around with another test site to try things out on. Chic Geek put together 25 great Branding and Design tools you must really check out. It’s spring... time to spring clean your websites.

** And in news just to hand: Amazon are taking some people to court! YAY

Maureen

@craicer

In my monthly newsletter I round up the best of the bookmarked craft and marketing links as well as some other bits and pieces. When you subscribe you will also get my nifty book crammed full with marketing notes.

Pic: Flickr Creative Commons/ Stephen Bowler

Is The Sun Shining?

This week the sun disappeared in North America.

In olden times... (pick your century) an eclipse was a portent of disaster or great change.

Some might have decided that the eclipse came seven months too late. If you are an indie author publishing some romance fiction on Nook it came right on time. With no warning to the authors involved accounts have been closed. This is a great reminder about spreading your eggs among many baskets.

Kris Rusch wrote about the eclipse in a different way. Her little town prepared for an influx of visitors... and they didn’t come. Kris compares this to the book publishing industry. What happens to publishing if all the marketing goes on the books with the highest advance and they don’t sell?

Porter Anderson recently talked with Sophie de Closets, the CEO of French publishing house Fayard, about women in publishing. Sophie talked about what it was like as a young CEO walking in to manage such a venerablehouse but then she added something startling. Where are all the men in publishing? This potentially is a huge problem for identifying readers.

Amazon is on track to open their tenth brick and mortar bookstore this year.  Their bookstores are small with books facing out and highly curated. Are they on to a sure thing? Their emphasis on data and buying habits suggest they are.

So is it the right time to be buying a bookstore? Dean Wesley Smith thinks so because he just bought one. However Dean has data of his own and lays out what a modern bookstore should be doing.

Hugh Howey is sailing the Pacific living the life on the boat his books bought. (Not jealous... really...) He finds time to write in between swimming with turtles and whales (not jealous....) Recently he wrote two really good posts on becoming a writer. ( and Part Two)

They are thoughtful and insightful and a great pick me up when you are staring at your MS thinking about sailing in the pacific with turtles... on a dream boat.... (OK Jealous!)

A few years ago now a bunch of crazy writers got together to write a serial story for kids. It was hard work but creatively inspiring. The crazy writers are still writing for kids but we aren’t doing serials. Every now and then I read an interesting article on Serial Writing and think ... hmm Crazy Fun. This article looks at 13 reasons why writing a serial is better than writing a book.

In The Craft Section.

How to hook a reader- Mary Kole- Bookmark

The ingredients of great series characters- James Scott Bell- Bookmark

3 tips for using Scrivener corkboard

3 reasons you don’t need a character arc- Janice Hardy

2 great articles from Now Novel- 7 examples of great plot twists and How famous characters teach characterisation. Bookmark

Zero Draft Thirty is the screenwriters NaNoWriMo It kicks off in September.

In The Marketing Section,

The reason book marketing is exhausting- Rachel Thompson- Bookmark

9 tips to clarify your target market- Lisa Tener

Using Canva for book marketing- Bookmark

How to promote yourself as an author

Mailchimp alternatives- Ricardo Fayet - Bookmark

28 book marketing tips

Book launch timeline- Shelley Hitz- Bookmark!

To Finish,

The New Yorker, venerable institution of prose and social comment has an article on.... Fan Fiction? Yes you did read that sentence right. It’s a good article too. Go on... dip your toe in....

Maureen

@craicer

Pic: Flickr Creative Commons Andrew Napier

I round up the best of the bookmarked craft and marketing links as well as some other bits and pieces in my monthly newsletter. When you subscribe you will also get a nifty book crammed full with marketing notes. (Hi New Subscribers!) THANKS to everyone who hit the coffee button this week.
 

Ch Ch Change

Changes are afoot.

Those three words can encourage anticipation or dread depending on your past experience with change.

The publishing industry has been on a roller coaster ride since 2007 and the introduction of the Kindle, the marker for huge change in the industry.

Among the changes being rolled out this week are changes to the Kindle Unlimited page read payout. Check out the new version 3.0 rules.

Facebook is turning their attention to Groups. If you are still annoyed by the changes to Author pages... be prepared. This doesn’t bode well. Groups are popular among authors for fan communities and networking groups. Boosted posts in groups will not be welcomed.

An interesting piece of news caught my eye from Harper Collins. They are actively seeking out young writers on Wattpad and offering them print deals.

This week I’ve read two publishing commentators on the death of the Traditional or Legacy midlist publishing career. Publishers are throwing money at the big writers or the debut writers. The pressure is on debut writers to have a hit right out of the box and they have no say in their contract terms. I’m hoping that the HC/Wattpad deal protects these young authors.

Passive Guy takes a look at a recent Mike Shatzkin post on the future of Barnes and Nobel, the largest book retail chain in USA. It is looking shaky with shareholders calling for it to be sold. What does it have to do to survive? Is the future bookstore Amazon showrooms?

U K Society of Authors president, Phillip Pullman called this week for a return to fixed prices for books. This took publishing people by surprise. Can you really turn back the clock?

Kris Rusch has another fantastic blog post on Branding. Expanding your audience with slow growth. After you read her very wise words jump on over to Joanna Penn’s interview with Dean Wesley Smith on understanding copyright, intellectual property and how to license it. Dean and Kris are mentors to a whole lot of high flying authors. They are the best teachers of the business of writing around.

Ruth Harris has a brilliant post on the writers discomfort zone and how to survive and thrive in it. How do you turn anxiety into creativity?

Jane Friedman has a great post on using Amazon Ads and Joanna Penn has another standout chapter from her new Marketing Book. If you are thinking about publishing these are must read articles!

In The Craft Section,

3 ways to show not tell- Darcy Pattison

What is the theme of the book- Reedsy

Story Tropes – Lazy or helpful- Jami Gold- Bookmark

Rules for Self Editing- Bookmark

Writing cliff hangers- Now Novel - Bookmark

Character motivation- Angela Ackerman- Bookmark

Two rules to write by- Print Posse

The Blueprint for writing a novel- Martina Boone- Bookmark!!! (print out)

In The Marketing Section,

Building relationships with readers- Rachel Thompson - Bookmark

Choose the right stock image

Email marketing for Authors

Book Cover Design fundamentals- Joanna Penn- Bookmark

7 Book Expo marketing takeaways

How to make a perennial bestseller

What your local librarian can do for authors- Mythic Scribes

The importance of categories and keywords- Indies Unlimited- Bookmark

10 tips on working with illustrators- Kelly Mc Morris-Bookmark

To Finish,

If you are a long time reader of the blog you will know that I believe that authors need to work together collaboratively. It’s good for moral. It’s good for marketing. It’s good for accountability. It’s just good. Angela Ackerman has another six ways that working collaboratively eases the load and helps you weather the publishing changes.

Maureen

@craicer

It’s nearly time for my monthly newsletter. I round up the best of the bookmarked craft and marketing links as well as some other bits and pieces. When you subscribe you will also get a nifty book crammed full with marketing notes. This blog runs on coffee fumes. If you want to shout me a coffee, hit the green Kofi button in the sidebar. Thanks.

Pic; Flickr/Creative Commons- Pearly 85

Good Villains

Ssssh You can’t tell anyone but someone with your name left a large amount of cash in a bank account and died with no heirs....

Straight away I knew the letter was a fake.

Several things tipped me off. No letterhead. The appeals to greed, tastefully alluded to, inside the letter. Some of the sentence structure was clunky. (Barclays Bank can afford to hire people who can write.) And my mother rung me up to say she had received a letter just like it earlier this week.

Can you always spot the scammers though? I have been watching Victoria Strauss (@victoriastrauss), co founder of Writer Beware pointing out  a series of questionable practices to a small publisher on Twitter. The publisher feels that they should be treated like a plumber and get paid by the writer to publish the work. (Hint: they have a license to publish your work under strict conditions... that’s only for fixing the leak... not the house and contents.)

After reading Kris Rusch’s latest blog post on dealing with editors who want to be paid to pass on information to the writer. Along with writers who don’t know what rights they have given up so are missing out on reprint rights because their agents can’t be bothered or don’t know what rights they sold either... I’m not surprised that Kris had a melt down. Know your business! Everybody should read this blog post and be educated.

Jami Gold has an excellent series of blog posts on Indie Publishing that I am working my way through. Her post on long term goals got me thinking. Do you have a master plan? (For world domination...)

Two weeks ago I linked to two important blogs discussing whether author newsletters were a good idea. (Anne R Allen’s blog post and Kris Rusch’s.) This topic has caused quite a stir in the online publishing world. Kris wrote a new blog post refining her thoughts on this. Anne’s blog post had 125 comments.

Writers Digest recently had a blog post about the importance of finding your tribe. That’s all your writing friends... and then Writer Unboxed had an interesting guest post from Kate Brandes about what a debut writers collective did for each other... (I keep saying this is the way of the future...)

Nate Hoffelder writes that Audible are dropping their credit gifting to the dismay of their fans.

Dean Wesley Smith has an interesting post on how to make money from short fiction pieces.

John Doppler has a must read post on the Alli blog about visualising the best sellers. Just how many Indies are in the top 100 by category.

Lit Reactor has a great article on 13 ways to support an author without spending a cent. (Spread the word and be a hero!)

Roz Morris has a fascinating blog post about opening up Book Reviewers to Indie published books. The discussion from book reviewers in the comments is well worth a read.

The fabulous K M Weiland has gathered up her recent series of blog posts based on Marvel movies. The Do’s and Don’ts of Storytelling according to Marvel. This is an excellent resource for every writer. (Her latest book on characterisation is amazing as well!) I Have been obsessively watching Avengers Civil War and seeing all the plot points!

In The Craft Section,

Five Failed Character Arcs- Mythcreants

Checklist to improve your writing- Writers Write- Bookmark

How to Refine your novel- Martha Alderson

How to end books in a series- Bookmark

Creating your remarkable villain- David Villalva- Bookmark

10 signs of underdeveloped characters- Emily Morgan

How to use writers intuition- Colleen M Story- Bookmark

5 qualities of a brilliant story- Roz Morris- Bookmark

5 examples of characterisation- Now Novel

In The Marketing Section,

Ultimate guide to creating Author Bio’s- Chris Well- Bookmark

Grow your Google page

Creating an irresistible series- WriteToDone

How to encourage readers to leave reviews- Bookmark

Marketing a new book in a series- Julianne MacLean - Bookmark

Endorsement quotes, Do you need them?- Debbie Young

Avoid looking like an amateur author

International author central on Amazon- Penny Sansevieri- Bookmark

To Finish,

Ricardo Fayet of Reedsy knows that I am a sucker for a fabulous infographic so he takes the time to email me and send their latest one. Everything you wanted to know about dynamic characters... in a handy chart!

Sara Letourneau has been taking a break from blogging recently. Here she explains why in a great article, Seven Steps to Honoring Your Reality. This is how you become a writing hero...

Maureen

@craicer

I have a monthly newsletter. It is a collection of the best of my bookmarked links plus other news about my writing and what I am personally learning about book marketing and publishing. I don’t spam or push any products. You can virtually meet me for coffee every month if you subscribe. (Thanks to everyone who has bought me a coffee by hitting the Kofi button.)

The Writers Enemy

This week I have been noticing the adult takeover of the children’s book world. First it was colouring in books – for adults and now book publisher Workman is following this up with sticker books and other childhood past times aimed at adults. Is this a blurring of the ages or a cynical ploy to keep publishers afloat? Children’s books have not taken the print hit that adult books have taken. Hodder must be rubbing its hands at the foresight to trademark Enid Blyton’s name as Joanna Penn mentions in this great article on intellectual property. How many adults will be receiving a new Enid Blyton book for Christmas this year?

Children’s writers have been discussing ways they can help children come to terms with the next four years in US politics. As other writers have pointed out now is the time to write inspirational stories to foster hope. 18 children’s writers look at writing girl characters.

Anne R Allen has written a cracker of a post on writer’s enemies. You know the ones who slyly put you down or criticize you. Sometimes they can be in your own head. Anne gives advice on how to recognise them and deal with them.

December is when your thoughts turn to the big edit of your NaNoWriMo novel. Roz Morris suggests putting it away until after Christmas... for very good reasons.

Dean Wesley Smith has a great article on writing for yourself- Artistic choice and making money.

Donald Maass is a contributor to Writer Unboxed as well as being a respected agent and writing coach. This week he wrote about aiming to answer the big questions in your writing. Putting your purpose on the page is one of those stand out posts that make you reframe your thinking around writing. A must read. (As are the comments.)

In The Craft Section,

How to punch up your action scenes- Janice Hardy- Bookmark

How to avoid the sagging middle- Jami Gold- Bookmark

11 ways to find and use slang and jargon words- Ruth Harris- Bookmark

Your never ending writing improvement program- James Scott Bell- Bookmark ( I have this writing book and it is a little gem!)

5 quick questions to help write awesome characters – Angela Ackerman – Bookmark

Understanding the first draft- Now Novel

8 steps for writing the perfect scene- C S Lakin- Bookmark

25 Holy Grail resources for writers

In The Marketing Section,

Best Book Cover design

The missing contact information that is killing your sales

Amazon’s new preorder policies-Must Read

Print pricing piracy- The Book Designer-Must Read

What is a hybrid publisher- Jane Friedman-Bookmark

Improving book discoverability

To Finish,

It wouldn’t be December without a host of ideas for writerly gifts. I spent a long time in front of journal and pen displays today before finding a great writerly gift for my Christmas draw. So if you need some inspiration check out this list from Ava Jae and if the writer has everything... this list from Bookriot.

The last Writers Island podcast is up for the year. Click on the pic in the sidebar.

The last newsletter for the year will be going out this weekend. My To Do list is getting long. Ahh the joys of Christmas, the end of the school year and summer in the Southern Hemisphere.

Maureen

@craicer

If you want to catch up on the best of my bookmarked links every month make sure you subscribe to my newsletter.

Planning For Chocolate

Last week my theme was contingency planning... and knowing where the chocolate is. This week planning is still a hot topic.

Jane Friedman has a great article on checklists for authors... it’s comprehensive and covers everything you can think of and a few things you may not have thought of. Jane also has a great article on editorial control. Who has it (at what stage) and How to keep it.

Kristen Lamb has also been thinking about planning but in a different way. Do you protect yourself as a writer? She has an excellent post on ways to protect your muse and it starts by getting rid of toxic time wasters...(sometimes known as relations.)

Porter Anderson exhorts writers to think of the pain readers are in and to commit to telling great stories for them. In times of great trouble and upheaval writers can touch others by their words and ideas.

Jan O’Hara talks about exploiting your own vulnerabilities to complete your book by viewing your strengths and weakness’ in a different way. It is a shift in perception that opens up a new way of working.  A very interesting article.

Joanna Penn has a fabulous interview with Gabriela Pereira of DIYMA. This is a MUST watch/ Listen/ Read on creating your own course of study to up-skill your writing. (Your own M.A. in writing.) Gabriela has a huge library of articles and ideas as well as a very involved community.

Continuing our education up-skilling, Lindsay Buroker and the chaps at SFF Marketing podcast were talking to Tom Corson-Knowles about Amazon Ad marketing, email campaigns and effective social media. This is a masters level course in targeted marketing. Absolutely riveting stuff and a Must Watch also.

The Alliance of Independent Authors has some great resources and recently they had two standout posts.  A Kiwi author talks about marketing using Instafreebie  and the other post is on the right combination of CreateSpace and Ingram for Print On Demand books.

About five years ago I talked about Book Espresso machines. This is a book printer machine that sits inside a bookshop. Publishers Weekly recently took a look at what bookshops are doing with them. From becoming publishers to vital links in the community.

Forming communities of like minded writing buddies and doing something wonderful has long been a hobbyhorse of mine. Whether it’s to exploit Instafreebie or growing your email list or group marketing your books or producing an Annual. There is  power in harnessing collective creative brains.

In The Craft Section,

30 Minutes 30 Days- The WriteLife- Bookmark

Middle of NANO pep talk from Maggie Stiefvater

Stupid Writing Rules- Anne R Allen- Bookmark

5 keys to write 50k

3rd person omniscient and deep POV- Reedsy- Bookmark

How to write Story Descriptions- Karen Woodward- Bookmark

How to write backstory- NowNovel- Bookmark

Tension – Make it worse- Zoe McCarthy

In The Marketing Section,

Master your Amazon Keywords- Bibliocrunch

5 Bookbinding styles- The Book Designer

Do This Not That- Book Promotion (November Edition)- The Book Designer

9 ways to help you find readers- Sacha Black

3 Marketing Strategies

Blogging got you down? Try this- Frances Caballo - Bookmark

12 Book Discovery tools - Bookmark

To Finish,

Dean Wesley Smith and Kristine Rusch are a powerhouse couple for clear eyed advice in publishing. There is nothing that they have not done in their publishing lives. This week Dean talks about writing what you want to write and how to look at the long game in publishing. Kris talks about running a writing business in a time of uncertainty and how to plan for this.

We are still getting after shocks from last weeks earthquake. Every day brings news of another building being evacuated. We sat down and did some planning and now our Go Bag is packed by the door. I know where I’ve stashed a supply of chocolate.... 

Maureen

@craicer

Subscribe to my monthly newsletter for a collection of the best of my bookmarked links and extra's (Christmas Draw coming up.)

Pic : Flickr Creative Commons- Thechiaroscuro

Looking for Jam

The Australian government is proposing some radical changes to their copyright laws and the writers have come out to protest. There have been open letters from Booker prize winners and other luminaries in the media over the last week. The Canadian Copyright centre has some warnings for Australia not to go down that twisted path based from bitter experience.

Victoria Strauss from Writer Beware has some warnings about the way spammers are targeting authors. I got one this week which I promptly ignored. (Legit publishers don’t contact randomly through Twitter offering to publish.) However Victoria is noticing how many spammers are using writing contests.

Dave Gaughran has been taking Amazon to task over the scammers that have taken over some bestseller categories. This week Amazon finally decided to do something about it. But it relies on you the author/reader too.

Amy from The Book Designer has an article on the new marketing tricks being offered to authors on Amazon beginning this month. This is like lifting the lid on your quiet runabout car and finding a sports car engine... but to use it might cost you the price of the sports car.

Joanna Penn has another great podcast this week on audiobooks and what she is doing. She is such a great resource. If you have been thinking about audio book narration you should check this out.

Dean Wesley Smith is a creative powerhouse. He runs popular courses on writing as well as his maintaining his busy writing career, monthly magazine, popular blog etc etc. This month he is putting some of his popular writing courses on YouTube... because.

Penny Sansevieri has put together a list of top resources for indie publishers- This is one of those bookmark lists to keep coming back to and Derek Murphy has his list of 10 things Indies are doing wrong and what they are doing right.

In the Craft Section,

Writing a page turner

5 ways perfectionism kills creativity

Organising the rough draft

When is a story not about plot -Jami Gold- Bookmark

The pre proofing checklist- Wiseink- Bookmark

The 5 biggest writing mistakes- James Scott Bell- Bookmark

7 great ways to end a story

When you are writing major character deaths- Ava Jae- Bookmark

In the Marketing Section,

Susan Spann on crafting the elevator pitch- Bookmark

Rachelle Gardner on effective queries

Using pre orders effectively

Why your author blog may be stuck- Kristen Lamb

10 tips for guest posts- Anne R Allen- Bookmark (I wish my guest post spammers would read this!)

6 ways to build a nonfiction email list.

The basics of book promotion- Janice Hardy- Bookmark

Website of the Week

I have featured Writers helping Writers before because of the fabulous work on the writing thesauri that Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi put together. They have two new books on Setting coming out that you might like to check out. For Marketing they usually do some cool pay it forward marketing thing which as a side effect gets their book noticed. They are looking for people to spread the word. However with just this wee taster I can see that these writing craft books will be snapped up!

To Finish,

Today I mucked around with resurrecting quince jam which had turned to toffee, while I was doing this I listened to this podcast on creativity and the art of asking and motherhood etc etc. This interview with Amanda Palmer was really interesting and a good way of getting your brain thinking while the toffee turns to syrup.

Maureen

@craicer

Pic from Flickr/ Creative Commons- Julie

Taking The Long View

In the children’s publishing world Bologna Children’s Book Fair is the big date on the annual calendar. It is just finishing as I write so all the commentaries about the fair will be out during the week. However Publishers Weekly has a day one impressions piece. In other Children’s Book News, today the brilliant  Meg Rosoff  won the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award  for her career achievements. 

This week Hugh Howey gave an interview for DBW where he set out in his forthright way what the publishers should be doing now and into the future.

Mike Shatzkin, who programmes the DBW conference, then replied in his forthright way where he thought Hugh was right and where he thought Hugh was completely wrong.

Both of these articles are good reads. As always read the comments where you get a fuller sense of the conversations around both points of view.

Two people who have much to say on publishing and writing are Kristine Kathryn Rusch and Dean Wesley Smith. They both keep a sharp eye on the industry and have tremendous business smarts.

Kris is starting a new Business Musings series on Contracts and specifically deal breakers in contracts. Kris starts out by saying she was hoping that contracts would have improved in the three years since she wrote her book on Contracts but sadly they haven’t. With Author Societies calling for fairer contracts in the US and UK, writers need to keep these posts in their must read list.

Dean has a tremendous work ethic and works hard at explaining the writing business. He doesn’t suffer fools and has nothing to prove to anyone. This week he was a little taken aback when he was accused of devaluing the novel art-form because he wrote a novel in a week. Riiiiight.

Joel Friedlander is another publishing practitioner who has a must read blog. This week he looks at what Self Publishers can do when they find their books have been pirated.

Nathan Bransford still has interesting things to say about the publishing business. This week he comments on a New York Times article about focus groups being asked to read unpublished novels and mark where they stopped reading so the publishers can figure out how much money to spend on marketing.

In the Craft Section,

Making your plot less episodic- The Editors Blog-Bookmark

Making a series outline- Better Novel Project-Bookmark

Storyboarding your novel

Dramatic momentum or End of Chapter buttons-Writers in the 

Storm-Bookmark

Beginning your story with setting

Crafting a compelling story

How to write an epilogue that works- KM Weiland

5 steps to take before you start your next story

In the Marketing Section,

Joanna Penn on changing book titles and covers.- Bookmark

Lindsay Buroker on finding more categories for your keywords

How to pitch non fiction influencers to get your book noticed

Promote a new release by marketing a series-Megg Jensen -

Bookmark

Things to think about before publishing.

BadRedheadMarketing AKA Rachel Thompson on her top author marketing tips

To Finish,

This coming week Beverley Cleary turns 100 years old. Her books have touched the lives of millions of children around the world. We all love Henry and Ribsy, Beezus and Ramona and a whole cast of characters from neighbourhoods just like ours. She has had a remarkable publishing career which started when one little boy marched up to her library desk and asked 'where are the stories about kids like me.'

Maureen

@craicer

Pic: Beverley Cleary Born 12 April 1916