Standing Up For Your Rights

 

In Publishing News This Week

 

The Judge handed down a ruling on the Internet Archive Library copyright case which has annoyed the plaintiffs, (AKA some of the biggest publishers.) The judge is trying to steer a middle course by allowing the Internet Archive to stick with making eBooks of print books that don’t already have an eBook format. This stops the publishers or the authors who have reclaimed their rights doing their own eBook version. Publishing eBooks for in-print books is not fair use. Appeals to the ready. 

 

With the ever louder clamour to ban books… various library organisations have banded together to promote the banned books. Penguin Random House has joined the party by making a whole lot of resources and books available to kids. Let Kids Read. I was nonplussed to read the opening remark in this news article. How can teachers think AI would tell them what books to ban?

 

Last week I reported on Jane Friedman’s woes with AI scraped books that had her name, and by extension reputation, plastered all over them. The story went viral and was reported on many international news sites, including our national radio programme. Jane has published an article on what to do if you are in a similar situation. Based on many writers testimony all over the internet- this is going to become more likely. One pundit stated that keeping a strict eye on your Amazon Author page where these books are likely to show up is essential. Amazon won’t do anything until you tell them to.

 

Wired has a story on the Prosecraft AI backlash- Why the great AI backlash came for a tiny startup you’ve probably never heard of. Are they just the convenient low hanging victim for scared people or is there some deeper motive in the AI backlash against them.

 

Writers in Kindle Unlimited were dismayed when the latest pages reads compensation got down to .0004 cents a page. Many writers publicly stated this was the end for them being in the KU program. Craig Martell of 20 Books fame devoted a 5 minute focus chat on this topic. If you are wondering what you should do check out the wise words of the 20 books captain. 

 

Joanna Penn has an interesting interview with Steph Pajonas on using AI tools to help writers with disabilities. Some of the tools can be very useful.

 

Literary Agent Janet Reid explains why selling YA is so hard now. This is a good exploration of why some books can be the next hot thing until they aren’t.

 

Are you being eco friendly in your publishing? The Alliance of Independent Authors has an interesting article about how you can up your sustainability practice.

 

Chuck Wendig has an interesting post on why he is focussing on standalone books instead of series. It all has to do with rights. There are potentially more exploitable rights in standalones. An interesting perspective when everyone in the Indie world is paddling the other way.

 

Roz Morris has a great article on story telling details she now does on auto pilot. It all goes back to great editing teaching her a few tricks.

 

In The Craft Section,

What are pinch points and where do they go- Sue Coletta

How to determine the age of your target reader- C S Lakin- Bookmark

How to find the narrators voice- Michelle Barker- Bookmark

What are plot devices and why you should be cautious- K M Weiland- Bookmark

The basic formula of fiction- James Scott Bell- Bookmark

 

In The Marketing Section,

How to write a newsletter people will actually share- Lisa Norman- Bookmark

Best practices for selling books- Elizabeth Craig

Crafting an irresistible book pitch- Penny Sansevieri- Bookmark

The business of writing- Angela Ackerman

Author websites- Goodstory Company- Bookmark

 

To Finish,

How many times have you come up against the myth of the solitary writer? It has a certain romance to it. Left alone the writer will be most productive and their genius will flower naturally in a series of stunning books. 

Yeah about that. The reality is a lot different. Writers need a community says Elizabeth Craig.

A few decades back there were writers who couldn’t deal with the world so needed the dutiful wife to do everything. This article looks at the wives who put up with a lot from their tortured genius writer spouses. 

I would be reaching for the frying pan and not in a good way if I was shackled to these writers. 

 

Maureen

@craicer

 

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Pic Getty Image from Latest WGA strike news

When Whack-A-Mole Feels Like The Only Game In Town

 

 

In Publishing News this week…

The news that Simon and Shuster has been sold echoed around the publishing blogosphere like a thunderclap. The buyer KKR is an investment fund. The news has split the publishing world into two camps, This is a good thing for publishing and The sky is about to fall in.

Which camp you are in seems to be whether you are a student of financial history or whether you think that publishing needs to change the way it does business.

Mark Williams looks at it as a beacon of hope, an interesting take on how he sees the future playing out.

Cory Doctorow sees the sale as another nail in the coffin. Cory has been writing excellent articles recently about tech business issues and this sale fits right into some of his core concerns.

KKR have got a great deal- cheaper than PRH was offering. Simon and Schuster are an IP prize and their sales have been very good lately although they do have a Trump court case looming. (The winners will always be the lawyers.) 

 

In other court case news, Amazon and the FTC. The case of breaking up Amazon got a little closer recently. Will there be a future without Amazon? Don’t count on it coming soon. This case is going slowly. Meanwhile, although the judge threw out the colluding eBook prices with the big 5 publishers court case she did find that Amazon needs to front up over its monopolistic practices.

 

Jane Friedman is spitting mad and no one can blame her. If you are a popular and trusted name in the publishing world and some unscrupulous person decides to capitalise on your name recognition by publishing AI scraped books with your name on it, you would be too. However, when the websites hosting these bogus books then turn around and say so what, you haven’t trademarked your name, you reach Defcon 1 in mad. The post went viral and some backtracking was soon evident. But will this happen to others? Constant Vigilance.

 

Meanwhile, in other AI scraping news, The website Prosecraft which was set up to help authors refine their writing was closed by its owner when news broke that to make the site work they had been scraping popular authors work without permission. When you unleash the AI, letting it roam through 24,000 authors books isn’t a good idea.

 

Kathleen Schmidt a publishing industry blogger looks at the latest problems besetting the publishing industry and asks if publishing is now broken. 

 

Even though Jane Friedman is wrestling with AI trolls she still finds the time to have brilliant guest posters on her popular site. This week Matt Holmes has a very interesting study on Facebook ads and how he is using the FB algorithms to do something completely different which is also making him money.

 

Tonight I had the privilege of being at The New Zealand Book Awards for Children and Young Adults. It was great to see many friends in the industry and to celebrate the finalists and the winners. I have judged the awards and it is always a nerve wracking time for everybody. You feel the weight of your choices and wish that you could give everyone a prize for just getting to the finals because of the tremendous amount of work, sweat, tears, and years of the author and illustrators lives wrapped up in the pages. 

 

If you are wondering about this writing gig and feeling down about your work… read this great article by Kathleen McCleary on Writer Unboxed on Forward Motion.

 

 

In The Craft Section,

The secret to writing your first book faster- Suzy Vadori

Vulnerability -the key to compelling relationships- Angela Ackerman

Do you have too much dialogue- Janice Hardy- Bookmark

Two tricks to build suspense- K M Weiland- Bookmark

Multiple points of view – Anne R Allen- Bookmark

How to write middle grade fiction- Stephanie Willing

 

In The Marketing Section,

Book Marketing Buzzwords- A good index from Sandra Beckwith

Why writers shouldn’t care about the numbers of Social Media followers- Colleen Story- Bookmark

70 tips to sell books – Kindlepreneur

The Marketing Mind Shift- Joanna Penn with Ricci Wolman of Written Word Media podcast/transcript- 

Bookmark 

How to make the new Author pages on Amazon work for you- Penny Sansevieri- Bookmark

 

To Finish,

It’s been a while since I linked to a post from Chuck Wendig. He is still around, still doing his wild crazy thing but this week’s post Forgive The Writers Because We Are So Tired resonated with me as I was researching the blog. Publishing, and Discoverability problems, and Book Banning, and AI scraping, and Scammers and… and…. 

It often feels like we are playing whack-a-mole with the problems of being a writer in this current age. Everything around you conspires to take away your joy in the process, and the imagination, and the dream. But there is joy in the well-crafted story and that somewhere in the midst of the doom and gloom there is a new reader just waiting to escape into your imagination. 

It is a bonus if your peers think that your work stands up and adds to the taonga/treasure of your country. The sweat and tears are worth it.

 

Maureen

@craicer

 

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Pic Photo by Tingey Injury Law Firm on Unsplash

Standing Up

 

 

In Publishing News this week,

The death of the Ukranian writer Victoria Amelina stopped the publishing world for a moment. Everyone reflected on the life of courage and commitment to the truth this writer embodied in her professional life. Victoria had just come back from Norway where she had accepted an award on behalf of another friend, children’s author Volodymyr Vakulenko, tortured and killed by the Russians occupiers. Victoria was using her writing skills to document war crimes. She had just finished a day of presenting at the Kiev Bookfair when the restaurant she was meeting other writers in suffered a missile attack. R.I.P.

 

Publishing Perspectives reports on the opening keynote by Hugo Setzer at the Contec Mexico publishing conference. This conference is dedicated to sustainability, translation, and audio publishing. There were some heated challenges to the wider publishing industry about the need to walk the talk on sustainability practice in publishing.

 

AI is back in the dock again this week with the news of a class action against Open AI from authors whose work was recognisably scraped by AI. 

Mark Williams from The New Publishing Standard looks at the arguments in this case and draws some pithy conclusions. Is the demise of the author a valid argument in this case?

 

While the courts are looking at AI- news is breaking that Amazon is using AI to summarise product reviews. So far this hasn’t extended to book reviews but it can only be a matter of time. Will you be able to trust a book review in future?

Meanwhile, Amazon is going to have to do something about the proliferation of AI written books in the bestseller lists. Somehow the bots got in and gamed the system. Amazon did crack down, but not fast enough. To add to their woes Amazon is in court for unfair practice surrounding their Prime subscription model. Their defence lawyers will have to do an amazing job as their client even named their dubious practice after the story of the trojan horse.

 

Joanna Penn revisited AI and the Author in another great podcast session with Nick Thacker this week. This is a great discussion on using AI as a marketing tool. Nick and Joanna talk about how important it is to have a human be the creative brain behind the words.

 

The Alliance of Independent Authors has a deep dive into the seven processes of publishing. This week they are looking at marketing. This is a comprehensive article about mindset and the differences between promotion and marketing books.

 

Kris Rusch continues her excellent series on Niche Marketing. This week she examines what niche really means to the writer and how you can benefit from it.

 

Lithub traces the evolution of the celebrity memoir. 

Now Novel has a great article on using story planners to get the bones of your story down. 

Kathy Steinemann has a nifty redundancy quiz- Can you identify the redundant words in the sentences? A good craft quiz for warm ups.

 

Donald Maass has another cracker of an article on Writer Unboxed. What are your promise words? He takes a dive into the words used in the opening chapter that should signal what the story is promising the reader.

 

 

In The Craft Section,

2 Great posts from K M Weiland How to trim your word count and

Think about the lie your character believes- Bookmark

Turn the tables on popular tropes in fiction- Liz Kerin - Bookmark

A guide to writing Romance- Now Novel-Comprehensive!

Subterfuge in dialogue- Becca Puglisi

Can a novelist write like a screenwriter- Anne R Allen- Bookmark

 

 

In The Marketing Section,

How to write a good book description- IngramSpark

2 interesting posts from Penny Sansevieri- Quiz your book marketing knowledge and How the current tsunami of books reshapes book publicity- Bookmark

10 tips to get a Bookbub featured deal- Draft2Digital- Bookmark

Author newsletter data- Bookbub- Bookmark

 

To Finish,

Recently the BBC publicised another author getting a first publishing deal in her 70’s. What is interesting is this author has been signed for a 5 book deal and she is 77. Writing is for every age group and it is never too late to start. The only pre-requisite is that you have an entertaining story to tell.

 

Maureen

@craicer

 

It’s nearly time for my monthly newsletter. If you want the best of my bookmarked links you can subscribe here to join our happy band.

If you like the blog and want to shout me a coffee, hit the coffee button up top or here. I appreciate the virtual coffee love. Thanks.

 

Pic: The poster for the Kyiv Book Fair

 

As The World Turns

In Publishing News this week,

 

Last week I wrote that Storytel is partnering with Eleven Labs, an AI audio specialist for audiobook dubbing in different languages. This week Goodereader has an interesting article on Eleven labs and just what they are capable of- including voice cloning. You give them a sample of your voice, they clone it and then your voice clone reads the audiobook. I had a play with their regular AI voices and it’s amazing.

So if you clone your voice is it still really you or an AI? The benefits are no more voice strain when you are recording your books- also no more studio fees or production costs.

 

For the first time since 2019, Beijing has held their International Bookfair. Attendance was good and there were over 2500 exhibitors.

 

Pundits are still talking about Elizabeth Gilbert’s decision to pull her book because of Ukrainian backlash. Is it a publicity stunt or a genuine reason. Is it all politics?

 

Publishing Perspectives has an article by Richard Charkin on the megatrends in international marketing. He asked Chatgpt for help and then he corrected the resulting article.

 

Publishers Weekly takes a deep dive into the shifting Middle Grade market. Once it held up the book sales stats but lately it’s been falling. How can writers stay relevant in this important market.

 

Darcy Pattison has a great article on getting photo permissions. There are different levels of copyrights with photos so do your homework if you are using them in your work.

 

Draft2Digital has an interesting article on how to stay productive and using time management skills to keep your writing on track.

 

Do you need an author assistant? What do they do? If you have wondered whether you need to get help in your author business, this article is for you.

 

Colleen Story has a great article on the 5 things a writer can’t control- This is a good pointer for what to let go of for your mental health.

 

Sue Coletta has written about how she parted ways with her Traditional publisher and why. This is a story I have heard from other authors. It starts off well and then production values drop, editors stop editing and then the relationship fails.

 

Kris Rusch has a new series looking at niche marketing. Do you know your niche market? (Do you know how to pronounce the word niche properly?*) Many writers are still following old publishing ways of throwing everything at the wall and seeing what sticks. Sometimes a smaller focussed approach is better. 

 

Tiffany Yates Martin explores whether writing in deep 3^rd person is actually a point of view or just really layered writing. Do you even know when you are writing in it?

 

In The Craft Section,

Using crisis to reveal character- September Fawkes- Bookmark

How good is your writing-Allison Williams- Bookmark

How to hurt your characters- Liz Generally

Coming up with the perfect character name- Emmanuel Natif

How you can be a better author with the snowflake method- Written Word Media- Bookmark

 

In The Marketing Section,

How to talk publicly about writing- James Preston- Bookmark

Do pre orders affect release day sales?- Jackie Karneth

Using blogger book reviews- Sandra Beckwith- Bookmark

Creative ideas for book events- Penny Sansevieri

How authors can use Bookfunnel- Joanna Penn Interview with Damon Courtney- Bookmark

 

To Finish,

The Winter/Summer Solstice is this week and many traditions use this time to reflect and plan or celebrate the turning of the seasons. If you want to give yourself a gift over Solstice check out these two amazing bundles of writing craft goodies.

The Info Stack of writing resources has a super abundance of high quality courses with lifetime access’, books, K-lytics reports etc for a one time fee of $49-Limited time only.

 

The Storybundle of writing craft books, available for two weeks with a great selection of books on writing, productivity, short stories… curated by Kris Rusch. These bundles are always great value.

 

Happy Solstice.

 

Maureen

@craicer

 

If you want the best of my bookmarked links in a monthly newsletter you can subscribe here to join our happy band.

If you like the blog and want to shout me a coffee, hit the coffee button up top or here. I appreciate the virtual coffee love. Thanks.

 

Pic Photo by Selvan B on Unsplash

 

(* There are two different ways to say it depending on where you come from.)

Garbage In. Garbage Out.

 

In Publishing News this week,

Around the world governments are trying to get to grips with laws that will regulate AI. The European Union is trying to draft a law reported by the New York Times as being the most far reaching attempt to regulate AI. The EU is particularly concerned over data that is being used to train AI and the intrusive nature of facial recognition software.

Meanwhile, in Japan they have stated that AI can only be used for educational purposes. No commercial use is allowed. At a recent copyright workshop I attended, New Zealand’s position is if you prompted the AI in some way to produce the work you may copyright it. 

 

Media Voices has a new report on Practical AI for publishers- They recently published an extract on how to get started with AI. Their advice is to start small and automate one thing at a time. 

 

Storytel, the Scandinavian audiobook company which has been expanding through Europe  and the rest of the world in the last few years has partnered with an AI voices lab specialising in multinational audio dubbing. Choose an audiobook in English and then ask the AI to read it to you in another language using the original voice. No problem.

 

In the courts it is déjà vu time. Amazon and the big five publishers are back in court over price fixing. A decade ago this was a hot topic and the publishers lost. Why did they think they could do it all again?

 

Germany is rolling out it Kulturpass card to eighteen year olds. They get 200 euro to spend and booksellers are lining up to take their money.

 

School Librarians in the US are sick of the book banning culture they have to navigate. Their national organisations are now forming rapid response strike teams to support beleaguered librarians. Among the most challenged books are graphic novels- it only takes one drawn panel and one overzealous parent to ban the book. Apparently the librarians specialist degree in the field has to give way to uninformed opinion.

 

Joanna Penn has a great interview with Thomas Umstattd on novel marketing and Christian publishing.

Kris Rusch explores the history of discoverability in publishing and how it's changing now.

 

Jane Friedman has a great guest column from an editor showing the reasons why a manuscript which has been edited and workshopped by professionals still can’t get picked up.

Some hard but necessary lessons to learn here.

 

The Alliance of Independent Authors has a deep dive article on using calls to action in the backs of books on website in emails…. This is a must read article for marketing.

 

Two great articles from Writer Unboxed caught my eye this week- Kathryn Craft on how cliché’s can help your writing and from Densie Webb to agent or not to agent – that is the question.

 

In The Craft Section,

2 great posts from September Fawkes- How to write strong characters and 100 questions to help evaluate your story- Bookmark Both

Eight ways not to start a novel- Anne R Allen – Bookmark

Know your 5w’s and 1H- Jami Gold – Bookmark

8 laws for foreshadowing- NowNovel- Bookmark

 

In The Marketing Section,

Business cards and Job titles- John Gilstrap

The latest changes to book categories- Penny Sansevieri- Bookmark

Promoting a new book- Bookbub- Bookmark

Creative and cost effective marketing for authors- Indiereader

3 Amazon review reader myths- Sandra Beckwith

Selling books- a booksellers perspective- Bookbaby - Bookmark 

 

To Finish,

If you are a content writer you may be sympathetic with Litreactor’s latest column ChatGPT is a menace. They take issue with the amount of people that think getting ChatGPT to write a children’s story is the holy grail to earning passive income. As a children’s writer it shrivels my soul. Why does everybody think that writing a children’s book is so easy any celebrity can do it or just get an AI to write something – the kids will never know? 

We take pride in our work and we work hard at it. An adult reader will let you have a couple of pages of story introduction, a child maybe one paragraph, two at most, and it had better be using the child’s worldview and entertaining. The shorter the story the more important every word is. The younger the reader the more important the story craft is. 

AI is a tool that you can use but it is not human and can never replace human wisdom and experience. It can only regurgitate the data it has scraped. 

Garbage in. Garbage Out 

 

Maureen

@craicer

 

If you want the best of my bookmarked links in a monthly newsletter you can subscribe here to join our happy band.

If you like the blog and want to shout me a coffee, hit the coffee button up top or here. I appreciate the virtual coffee love. Thanks.

 

Pic: Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

Where Will You Find Your Next Read?

This Week In Publishing News,

 

Authors behaving badly can be a career killer. This week an author called out a reviewer for only giving her 4 stars. The backlash over the author's vitriolic comments to a hapless newbie reviewer had a slew of 1 stars being attached to the book. Then the publisher dropped her.

Note to all authors- Never comment on reviews. It’s the safer way. Read Anne R Allen’s excellent article from a few years back for a refresher on not taking reviews personally.

Anne’s latest post is on readers pet peeves- They are not the same as writers pet peeves. You shouldn’t ignore them.

 

Publishing Perspectives had an exclusive article this week. Elsevier’s director of sustainability, Rachel Martin, recently spoke at an international congress on sustainability and announced that within a few years all mainstream printed books would be displaying labels specifying their environmental credentials. 

 

The Audio Publishers Association in America reported that their annual earnings were up by 10% to $1.8 Billion. More than half of the population had listened to an audiobook. 

This fits in well with the report from Publishers Weekly over the latest trends in children’s publishing. Audio is the hot trend across all age groups. Paper is driving midgrade and everyone is looking for graphic novels and Webtoon stories.

 

Business Insider reports that tropes are where its at if you want to go viral on TikTok. This speaks to the importance of knowing and using tropes in your books. (It’s how you use or twist the tropes that make you stand out.)

 

Grace Bialecki has a guest post on Jane Friedman’s site about when an author needs a website. These days a website can be many different things and on many different platforms.

 

Two big AI articles came out this week.

Publishers Weekly had a widely read post on how AI is about to turn the publishing world upside down. This huge post from Thad McIlroy talks about whose jobs are under threat.  Thad also takes a positive view that being human will be the biggest advantage. 

“You can only understand the perils surrounding a new technology after you fully appreciate the opportunities that it affords.”

 

The other big AI article comes from Peter Houston and the way AI search is set to upend online publishers who rely on ad sales on their websites to generate income. AI is just going to scrape the content and not refer the user to a website. This could be problematic if you rely on your website to sell books.

 

Katie Weiland is always a must read for me. She usually puts her finger on what might be troubling me writing craft wise. This week however she took a different tack and looked at Imposter Syndrome. This is a stand out post on how writers can deal with that inner critic. A must read.

 

Joanna Penn recently Interviewed John Fox on crafting the linchpin moments of your novel. This is a deep dive into why we need these plot points to work and how to strengthen scenes.

 

In the Craft Section,

2 Great posts from Sue Coletta- How critical distance improves writing and Why readers love anti-heroes. Bookmark Both

The nemesis as the protagonists shadow- Scott Myers – Bookmark

Connection Love Loss Hope- Donald Maass- Bookmark

7 ways to ensure you reach your writing goals- Jordan Kantey

 

In The Marketing Section,

Choosing a title that hooks your reader- Draft2Digital- Bookmark

8 ways to market your book- Brian Feinblum

Using drip marketing- Thomas Umstattd- Bookmark

Working effectively with your book designer- Andrea Reider- Bookmark

5 things I tell authors that really annoy them- Sandra Beckwith

Successful self promotion- Penny Sansevieri

 

To Finish,

This week Kris Rusch talks about curation and how over the years the places and people you used to be able to rely upon to tell you what to read or listen to have changed. Combined with this recent article from the UK Booktrust on how many parents feel they lack the skill to help their children to read, I asked my teen how she discovers books and music. Spotify was her answer to the music one but she surprised me when she said the School Library. With all the published angst about book influencers on TikTok – the humble school library is still in there. This makes the survival of the school library so important. They are shaping readers of today and tomorrow- if we don’t support them we won’t have a publishing industry.

 

Maureen

@craicer

 

If you want the best of my bookmarked links in a monthly newsletter you can subscribe here to join our happy band.

If you like the blog and want to shout me a coffee, hit the coffee button up top or here. I appreciate the virtual coffee love. Thanks.

 

Pic:

Photo by Shunya Koide on Unsplash