maureen
Thursday, May 27, 2010
Author Websites and the Personal Brand....
maureen
Friday, March 19, 2010
The Best and the Worst...
Writers and readers week has finished and I made it to two events... The publishing in the 21st Century panel and the wonderful incomparable Neil Gaiman.
On refection, I had high hopes for the publishing in the 21st Century panel. I have been reading a lot of websites and blogs looking at industry comment from around the world, following discussions about the impact of the iPad. At the end of the session I looked at my friend and said “I’ve got more interesting and relevant comment on my blog than I just heard from these industry leaders,”(...which included a New York editor, an English agent and one overseas owner publisher and the commissioning editor of a literary houses here in NZ.)
It could have been so much more but no one was willing to stick their neck out except to assure the audience that there would be a golden future ahead and that publishing will always need filters like themselves to tell you what was worth reading.
Yes, we need filters but how many of us have read a book which finalled or won an award and wondered what the fuss was about? Sometimes their filters don’t work for us.
(Is anyone filtering the cell phone novel craze in Japan...the twitter novel craze...)
Neil Gaiman was amazing and wonderful and....Kate De Goldi was a wonderful interviewer (we are so lucky to have her.) Neil read three of his epic poems and had the whole sold out auditorium spell bound and silent for the entire time and then signed for three and half hours afterwards.
I wrote up my notes for Maria Gill and have since passed them on to people in Wellington who didn’t get the chance to see and experience God Gaiman. I am so lucky. (Let me know if you want a copy.)
Mary McCallum has blogged about the event and as she is more literary than I, has managed to do him justice and she has a dishy photo of him as well. IF you haven’t read any of his work go out and read The Graveyard Book (no you can’t borrow mine with the cartoon and personal message from Neil...sigh) It is wonderful writing. Or find Odd and the Frost Giants a little book he wrote for charity this year. (fabulous)
As the International Arts festival is finishing here, in Austin Texas they are being wowed by the South by South West conference and Festival. It is primarily known as a music and film festival but they have an Interactive arm and this has been providing some very interesting comment on changing times in publishing. Galleycat has collected comments on this years publishers panel on the brave new future which has links to some great notes, written and pictorial. Good thought provoking stuff.
DK publishers have released an inhouse video on The Future of Publishing which is doing the rounds (it’s a bit of a riff on the new generation video that had such an impact last year among teenagers.) However it is still very good. (watch right until the end)
And lastly a competition you might like to enter. Come up with the worst hook for very bad book. Chuck Sambuchino from Guide to Literary Agents is running the third worst storyline ever contest.
A past winner was this gem
"A man's lifelong plan to dress up like Jabba the Hutt and star in a new line of workout tapes finally comes to fruition, but everything goes horribly awry when the man gets ink poisoning, lead poisoning and mercury poisoning all at once."
Enjoy
maureen
Thursday, February 11, 2010
Who are you?
This week I have been thinking about the author presence and the fundamental who-ness of public and private life.
Who are you,
on facebook?
on twitter?
on your blog?
on your website?
in the bookstore?
in person?
to your fans?
Are any of these seperate whos, the same person? Are you such a split personality that you need therapy?
I have been talking with friends about the public private life of the author...much like teachers...when their students discover them in the supermarket. (OMG Miss Crisp eats the same apples I do...or she’s seen me being whiney, now I know she will hate me...)
Since I started blogging on author marketing and other musings...learning in public about this tricky promotional world... I have seen the internet face of people change, about as fast as some publishing houses....From a few years ago when people put their whole lives out there, to now, where suddenly the public private balance is swinging more to private. (it’s about time.)
If you want to live your life in public, fine, but remember the people who live with you might not want to have public lives.
I admire the third child of Sharon and Ozzy Osbourne who refused to have any part of the publicity show that her mother cooked up to revive Ozzys career. (What? You didn’t know there was a third child?) That is a brave stand to take and I hope that aspiring authors are keeping an eye on their families reaction to publicity. Is it fair to the kids or is it emotional exploitation that will come back to haunt you....
People occasionally ask my advice on website content...the first thing I tell them is to decide who YOU want to be in public. This colours everything you do online. Because once you click that post button it is out there for the world to see...and even if you remove it later... it will remain search viable in archived threads. Ouch.
For myself I try to keep my family hidden from view (mostly because I can’t remember their names and it’s embarrassing to say thingumie in public) and myself too. (coz I hate pictures of me)
I am on twitter purely to keep up with blog posts...twitter is great for this. I use a feed that posts my blog titles to my twitter followers and receive tweets of blogs that I follow. I also use Alltop which creates a virtual magazine of up to the minute content drawn only from blogs and websites that interest me...astronomy, space tech, gadget tech, children’s publishing, marketing, commentators that I like...great for researching.
I blog, so that my name is searchable and that any kids who stumble across my book and do an internet search can find me and get to the Bones book website if they want. And for anyone else out there who stumbles across me, I hope that they find something interesting and relevant on author marketing to think about.(waving to my hidden followers....)
I privately email and play on a wordpress site...that one day may morph into a public website (or not...depending on whether any publishers pick up any of my novels currently languishing on their desks...)
Nathan Bransford has bogged on author privacy recently here. A great post as ever...there is a comment on Neil Gaiman’s fiancĂ© Amanda Palmer who lives her life on line purely for marketing purposes as a musician....as Neil blogs and tweets obsessively I guess he is fine with it...although he has kids....(hmmm one of my novels deals with the fall out of a parents famous public life on a child...)
The great Jane has blogged on two wonderful posts I recommend you read on writing, for the money? Jennifer Topper on why she has a free ebook novel...and Mark Barrett has a fabulous post on a new interpretation of Yogs law - that money should flow to the writer not away from the writer. It has a whole new perspective on the changing face of the middlemen in publishing...ie how content gets to readers...Go read and ponder...
To answer my own question at the beginning...
It’s a wysiwyg. (what you see is what you get)
I don’t think I’m any different on line.....hahahahahahahahahaha. ducking now.....
maureen
PS Alice Pope Of CWIM fame posted this video on her blog...take it away Erin.....
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Warning! Links can be addictive....
In my quest to find interesting materiel for my blog...I follow links on others blogs...I’m thinking of you that’s why I do it. (yeah right) and tripping over to Tania Hutleys blog, I was caught by a link and followed it to the Book Publicity Blog.
When to schedule a bookstore event and when not to...and this blog was written with the help of tweeps ...people on twitter who post one line comments back. to the blogger. There were some good points to consider but lovers of Neil Gaiman will appreciate the comment on this post about an event he has just appeared at in Dublin’s Chapters Bookstore.
One of the first things that struck me after I read the good post on book store events was the huge list of book related blogs that Yodiwan has linked to on their own site. Bookgasm, bookninja, books and booze, books and you name it the list goes on and on and on.
Johanna Knox is about to start another blog as if the three she has got going isn’t enough. This one,tho, will be about books. She is already lining up guest bloggers....good marketing Johanna....(thanks for asking me....shameless self promotion.)
There have been various attempts to use the internet and writing in real time in creative ways.
Some writers are posting chapters on line and building up an audience for their work...One author I have heard of (not children’s) in NZ is having fans pay her to write the next thrilling instalment....
Publishers are starting to ask for extra content especially in the YA market. This sort of thing is becoming more prevalent in contracts overseas. The publisher writes a clause into the contract about adding content on their websites in character voices....or supporting full blogs in character voices....
Imagine the take up if you had to write a blog for Edward Cullen from the tween community....I note that P J Hoover has got lots of comments after she posted on the ages reading the Twilight books and they are young (about 9 and 10 yrs old) which is quite scary...because they often still believe that the fantasy world is real...
That book is finished but what about book blogs from writers who are still writing...
The lovely Tania Roxborough is getting quite a lot of interest in her book blog and the book isn’t even published yet.
Banquo’s Son is a sequel to Macbeth....and who better to write it than Tania or TK Roxborough. How she fits it in with full time teaching secondary English as well as a full on family life is amazing!
Check out her blog and the cool template for it and read some of the juicy excerpts in what I know will be a great book.
and lastly tho not quite on the book blogs topic....Tim Jones has the press release up for
The Cuba Street Garret writers colony.....
If you are in Wellington looking for writing space....this could be for you. Doug Wilkins (on the NZSA Wgtn committee) has previously set one up in San Francisco and there could be a chance for a writers exchange.
Go have a look!
Warning! Following links can be addictive. Where have you been taken to lately...?
Chain link pic is from http://www.author-promotion.com/ (Spot the new links in my sidebar)