Showing posts with label hot button. Show all posts
Showing posts with label hot button. Show all posts

Thursday, April 4, 2013

Hot Button Writing



Just before I took a holiday from the Internet for Easter... the news came in that Amazon was acquiring Goodreads.
In the fast world of Publishing Now, you know the news is big when a week after the announcement the fur... feathers...hair...are still flying around the blogosphere.
Those that hate all things Amazon are cursing. Those that love all things Amazon are trying to be calm....

Hugh Howey jumped first with an interesting blog post, which canny Amazon immediately updated their press release to include. This is a good thing says Howey. He makes a compelling argument for the merger. (Buy Buttons on Goodreads)

 Others are not so sure. 
Amazon, with its review problems, (sock puppetry) became only a buy platform after readers found trustworthy reviews on Goodreads. So will Goodreads recommendations count for anything in the future?

Laura Hazard Owen of Paid Content put some compelling questions to Otis Chandler of Goodreads and Russ Grandinetti of Amazon. First Do No Harm....
If you look at the comments... people are still asking the questions...


AmazonGoodreads will be the hot topic for a while...

Last week I mentioned another hot button topic, which is still simmering away underneath the AmazonGoodreads marriage, Barnes and Noble dropping Simon and Schuster books. S&S weren’t going to pay the new fees B&N wanted from publishers to display their books in stores.

As more information filters out it is becoming clear that B&N changed their pricing to publishers to reflect the fact that they are being seen as a showroom.
Go to B&N. Look at the latest book by your favourite author. Jump onto wifi. Buy it, at a better price, from somewhere else.

This is the reality now...and how do bookstores compete with this?  And what happens to the author whose publisher won’t take part in the game? VQR has a great article on what S&S authors are doing and what authors and publishers should do when they find themselves in the same situation.

In New Zealand the Hot Button topic is who made it onto the New Zealand Post Children’s Book Awards. Who didn’t and should have been. And do we really agree with the Judges comment that there are no feisty girl heroines?

 Neal Pollack was riding a one way trip to Stardom when he got derailed by Hollywood. He talks about reinventing himself using Kindle serials.


In Craft,
Writer Unboxed have posted their 90 writing tools in a single post.


KillZone 8 ways to edit suspense and pace into your MS. (craftbook in a single post)

In Marketing,
Lindsay Buroker has been a canny marketer in the past on Amazon and as the algorithms change she has changed her marketing plans...to what works now.

To finish,
Following on from the Random House eBook contract debacle of early March, Dean Wesley Smith wrote one of the most definitive posts on rights reversal clauses in publishing contracts that I have seen. This is a must read. The comments are a must read. This post is being shared all around the place.

Writing, Publishing Contracts, Bookstores, Reviews, Marketing, Awards. All Hot Button issues. Wear gloves. Read at your own risk.

maureen

pic from
http://www.flickr.com/photos/matthieu-aubry/239197990/sizes/m/in/photostream/
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