In The CON Zone.

I’m just popping up from the world of virtual conferences to write this blog post.

Conferences have been the main topic of the week for me. It started earlier in the week when I had a book association meeting and on the agenda (officially) was conference 2015. Yes I know that is next year...yes I know that it is probably last third of next year... Yes I know that is 18 months away. But when we planned the last National Conference of Children’s Writer’s and Illustrators we started 18 months out. You have to if you want a good Keynote speaker... and other great faculty presenters. You have to if you want a good venue... You also have to find out from your potential attendee’s what they want to learn about. **

Twitter was full of NY2014 SCBWI chat about how awesome it is and was. The great thing about the NY and LA Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators is the live blogging that goes on at these events (great for us writers on the other side of the world.) So instead of feeling envious of Kyle (pres of NZSA) getting to go (his choice, he paid for it, he deserved it) you can live vicariously and go visit the blog and scroll down on the right, dropping into those presentations that interest you. (Alternatively you can buy Kyle a couple of beers and pick his brains next time you see him.)

IndieReCon is happening now. 3 days of awesome virtual conference which is free. There are quite a few kids writers on the faculty of this conference which is Genre Writing orientated and very practical for writers looking into Indie publishing. There is lots of info on marketing, book production, agents etc. I started, yesterday, listening to a webinar on Fear and Writing with the Awesome Susan Kaye Quinn. I had already bookmarked her Marketing Indie Mid Grade books post to share here...(Read It!)

In the story that doesn’t die...more commentary on the Author Earnings site and the talking/hand wringing that is going on.

Brian O’Leary on The Empire Strikes Back – if Trad publishers would get past the handwringing and realize the game has irrevocably changed and what they can do about it.

Eoin Purcell on understanding the technology shift where writers have moved quicker than publishers.

Passive Guy (who is also presenting at Indie ReCon) on Mark Coker’s, guest column in Publishers Weekly (subscribers only) this week, reaction to the Author Earnings reports...yes I know that was long winded... (badly worded, it’s late..) just read the link...Passive Guy quotes extensively from the article.

In the Website of the Week

I want to highlight two.

Writer Unboxed is a website that has a large list of contributors. It is like a classy magazine with long form essays exploring some aspect of writing or publishing. The contributors are publishing and writing veterans. Jane Friedman contributed a long form essay from her new magazine Scratch on serial or episodic writing which is fast becoming a reader favourite. This is an examination of what it is and how to do it and who is doing it and why.

Today was #MSWL day on Twitter. Manuscript Wish List. If you type #MSWL into the search bar all the tweets from editors and agents come up of what they want to see. If you have a story that fits that criteria...when you query, following their individual website guidelines, you must put #MSWL in the query. It makes for interesting reading.

In the Craft section,

What is magic realism?

Jody Hedlund on writing scenes- a quick 5 point checklist.

Jami Gold on How to skip the boring parts

Screenwriting – the 3 act structure and how to break it.

Susan Kaye Quinn on tools for helping you write faster.

Larry Brooks on The Bermuda Triangle of Storytelling (Bookmark this!)

In the Marketing section

Bibliocrunch has a list of book sites that do bookpromotion.

Check out IndieReCon....

To Finish,

The Daily Dot has an article looking at the restarting of an authors career in Kindle Worlds...The Kindle Fan Fiction site...ho hum you might think until you find out that the author is L J Smith who was the original writer of Vampire Diaries who found her rights to her own work cut out from under her when she was fired from the TV show of her own creation...

**If you have any ideas for topics to learn about or conference wants... either comment here, on Facebook, or through email. We are preparing a short survey which is coming soon.

To finally finish....Hank Green, Brother of John (half of the Vlog brothers) posted a great Video today on books...its a rant really but entertaining...as only the vlog brothers can be...

maureen

Creating Plan B

Last week the blogosphere was filled with reaction to Hugh Howey’s new website in aid of authors. Hugh got what he wanted, lots of dialogue...lots and lots of dialogue.

Discussion was everywhere. Porter Anderson took a look at what was being said... all sides of the report are being debated (tho interestingly very few traditionally published authors are saying anything at all.)

Last week Hugh’s first report looked at the top selling genre’s. This weeks report he takes a whopping 54,000 sample snapshot and looks at the other genres including childrens books (not YA)

Ebooks are not big in the children’s publishing world, compared to the numbers you see out there for adult genre titles, so it is interesting to get a little look into what might be around the corner.

This week, a friend who teaches in a not very affluent school, down the road, noted that all her kids had ipads and she was looking for good reading apps to download onto them. I would be very interested in seeing the numbers of Educational and Story Apps out there... and I wonder if Transmedia is where children’s publishing may be heading rather than an ebook take up.

Print is still king in the children’s publishing world despite what Hugh says. 

Interesting times...

Among the debates around the reports are the increasing recognition that Hybrid authors (who straddle Trad and Indie) are doing OK. Jami Gold takes a look at this in a very interesting post on hybrid authors and small publishers. 

Julie Muesil guest, Alex Cavanaugh looks at the small publisher side of the equation.

Yahoo Finance blog also weighs in with a publishing is not dying post.

Writer Unboxed has a must read post on Plan B when the career/contract/book dream seems over.

Chuck has written his final post on the subject of selfpublishing... and the report. (usual warnings) He has a great conclusion  ‘We should demand the best and most beautiful of one another. Not encourage the worst and ugliest.’

Passive Guy took some time out to look at a contract story that had the publisher say to the negotiator – You don’t like the contract –self publish...in other words, I aint gonna change it. This brings up all sorts of issues- Take a look.

In Craft,

Elisabeth S Craig looks at the pro’s and con’s of outlining. (I agree with her)

K M Weiland looks at the Antagonist needing a mushy moment...(say what?)

Janice Hardy Looks at what a good proof reader can do for you...(yes yes yes)

Archetypes Vs Stereotypes and Do you know the difference???

5 Voice Tools to help you write without a keyboard...(I’m trying out Evernote)

In Marketing,

One comprehensive post... Seven strategies and over 100 links to find readers and reviewers

The incomparable Kris Rusch (who’s Retrieval Agent story I just raced through) has Part 9 on her 

Discoverability series of marketing blogposts and it is a bookmark read...as is all the others in her series.

Janet Reid Lit Agent explains (begs) how to do a book comparison in a query properly.

Website: The 2nd Indie ReCon Free Online Conference is on next week. 10,000 people dropped in last year... and it was an amazing line up. Check out this years line up and try to catch it. Everything Indie.

To Finish,

Creativity is the one thing we fall back on in our writing... we need to be creative.

Here are two posts on Creativity - 3 Career Investments Every Creative Should Be Making and The Seven Stages Of Creativity -a new perspective on writing a book.

maureen

Pic from Flickr Creative Commons /Evelyn Giggles

Hugh and Cry Revolt

Last week, buried in the middle of my blog post were these lines.

Yesterday Icelandic author Baldur Bjarnason wrote a great piece on ethics in publishing. This is a great observation on what a lot of commentators are seeing as the great divide between the two different publishing communities.

Hands up those people who can tell me what the two communities are....hmmmm.

Today, in a breaking news bombshell, those communities just got wider with a new website launched and funded by Hugh Howey looking specifically at crunching the data on publishing stats and earnings for Self Publishing and Hybrid authors. 

For those of you who don’t understand what this means...

If you have a Traditional publishing contract. Your book gets published...you may get an advance. You may get up to 10% net of print price or up to 25% ebook price. You may get a quarterly statement on how sales are going but no other information. The marketing window for your book is usually 6 months...that’s 2 months before publication and 4 months after. After that the publisher is onto the next book and any blip in sales comes from author promotion. In the fine print of your book contract there may be a non-compete clause, you can’t publish with anyone else or anything else except the publisher. Your rights may be held in perpetuity (US law is the lifetime of the author plus 70 years) with no rights reversal clauses.

If you choose to self publish you may get up to 70% of ebook price with Amazon and whatever you set the profit of the book, after your costs have been taken out, on print. You do all the marketing work for as long as you want to.

In both models the author doesn’t really know what they are doing right or wrong with marketing. Data on what works and how different publishing models are successful is very thin on the ground.

From time to time surveys come out with data that says how well self publishing is doing against traditional publishing. I have linked to a few over the last few years in my blog. 

The ebook market where most authors self publish has been on the up. 

Today Hugh Howey’s report was released looking at raw data that crunched the numbers of the biggest selling genres (romance, sci-fi/fantasy and thriller/suspense) on Amazon on one day. 92% of the top 100 genre bestsellers were ebooks. Indie authors were outselling Traditional Big 5 authors in these categories. 

There are many bombs in this report. Porter Anderson does a good job of looking at them and extrapolating ideas but you should read the report for yourself. Hugh is the leading voice in the Indie author community at the moment. He is advocating a change to fairer contracts for authors and a partnership model with publishers. Below is his mission statement for the AuthorEarnings website.

Welcome to AuthorEarnings, where our purpose is to gather and share information so that writers can make informed decisions. Our secondary mission is to call for change within the publishing community for better pay and fairer terms in all contracts. This is a website by authors and for authors.

Two weeks ago he made it very clear just exactly what he thinks author contracts should consist of and what he thinks author societies should be advocating.

So after a few hours digesting The Report, Digital BookWorld weighed in with their analysis and they took issue with the one day data and the extrapolation thereof... however they also agreed that there was something rotten in the state of ....

Now Hugh is the first to say that this is one day...on Amazon... in January... and he is keen to have that dialogue from other authors on their experiences (see the website for ways to contribute to the discussion.) Steve Moseby takes up the challenge, he looks at the figures from The Report and wonders whether they are true based on his UK print figures and annual income after only one days data.

In Other News

Passive Guy sends out a warning over a contractual clause where any future law changes in any territory in the world will be the problem of the author. This, after an author was accused of blasphemy, following the passing of a law in India after her book was published. It all hinges on the word ‘will.’ He follows that up with another post on contracts. (As he is a lawyer he doth know what he speaks of.)

Cassandra Clare is tired of the constant carping of some who keep asking why she is still writing her book series ... she notes that male authors don’t get asked this. A thoughtful restrained response from a YA author.

In the Craft Section,

LiveWriteThrive on compelling novels centering on the goalof the protagonist.

Victoria Mixon on 3 tricks to increase tension.

How many characters should a book have?

What is more important Plot or Character Development?

KillZone Authors on pumping up your creativity.

5 big screenwriting mistakes and 5 fixes...(this is a bookmark post!)

How to organise writing ideas.

In the Marketing Section,

Jami Gold - A newbies guide to self publishing.

Goodreads strategies to increase sales.

K M Weiland - Story Cartel...how she got 50 + positive reviews (great review site)

Joanna Penn- On creating stronger bonds with readers.

Julie Musil - On connecting charities with books...this is a great post!

CreativeIndie on 300 cool fonts to use on book covers.

To Finish,

Hugh Howey again... He responds to a writer who has decided not to be tainted with self publishing because the goal is to emulate his heroes and publish the same way. A very interesting read and response by Hugh.

maureen

 Pic is from Passive Voices new range of tee shirts...check them out and chuckle... and maybe buy one or two.

After NaNo, The Choices Writers Make.

NaNoWriMo has finished and editors are bracing for the onslaught of manuscripts. December is Editing Month... or it should be. There are always ‘authors’ who just skip that process and upload their manuscripts straight onto the Amazon platform. And then there are some truly sharp operators out there who have an elaborate plan to defraud the reading and writing public. 
What is the hottest genre to read right now? Let’s go and create a persona and upload some books...(that we found on the internet.) AND MAKE $$$$$$. (CMOT Dibbler)*

In case you missed it, this is the plagiarizing author…”her” photo was stolen from a Revlon ad. pic.twitter.com/xyFuhuLkta
— Evil Wylie (@EvilWylie) December 4, 2013

This guy also registered a domain for selling “Kindle marketing tips.” His big tip? PLAGIARIZE YOUR BOOKS! pic.twitter.com/FQGfYUMGG4
— Evil Wylie (@EvilWylie) December 4, 2013

It is Illegal and Unethical and Scuzzball Low to plagiarise.

(Romance author’s you need to check to see if these are any of your books uplifted by this lowlife.)

In other news this week Amazon announced a new delivery service... Prime Air - delivery by drone. The internet was bursting with drone jokes. Jeff Bezos made the announcement on a CBS special which Porter Anderson covered as part of his weekly look at all things publishing. Jeff has messages for the publishing/retail community including ‘Complaining is not a strategy.’

Jane Friedman hosted Angela Ackerman on her site this week. Angela was talking about business plans for writers, which has had a lot of positive press.

In another twist Jane Friedman was interviewed by ALLi The Alliance of Independent Authors on The Business of Making Money from Writingand Publishing. This is one of those Get a coffee, close the door and upskill for an hour of awesomeness. Widely talked about on Twitter yesterday.

Passive Guy this week had two call to arms posts.

One was on the unprofessional behaviour of some editors and agents participating in the Twitter hashtag  #queryfail.

Detailing misdemeanors just makes you look unprofessional. The comments on his post make insightful reading.

The other was Author Websites and the Ten Mistakes to Avoid. This was a very informative piece as over 70 comments with tips to add or avoid attested.

The FutureBook conference continues to create talking points around the web... including this article from Publishing Perspectives on the big ideas to come out of the conference. Rebecca Smart’s address on Publishing -why are we so bloody slow and what can be done about it?

Digital Book World continues their self publishing dialogue series with this sadly telling infographic on writers take home pay.

Bob Mayer continues to fly the flag for Indie Publishing... with his article - Writer’s Create Product, Reader’s Consume Product, Everybody in Between Must Provide Long Term Value.

In the Craft Section,

After NaNo ... how to use Beat Sheets. Awesome advice from Jami Gold

The Romance Hero/ Heroine’s journey.

Roz Morris on Subtext in Dialogue...bookmark this!

5 Rules for Conquering Writer Chaos.

Susan Kaye Quinn – Do You Know Your Characters?

In the Marketing Section,

8 Marketing Exercises for Introverted Writers

Joanna Penn on Book Description SEO Bookmark this!

4 Ways To Find Readers Who Love Your Work
5 Things You Don't Know About Publishing

To Finish,

Local author, D C Grant (awesome children’s writer) participated in NaNoWriMo this year and chronicles her journey in a nifty post each line showing how her word count ebbed and flowed. Congratulations to all participants!

maureen

Pic from http://imgur.com/1OVaAQ0

* Those who read Discworld will get the reference... those who don't should!

Not A Bear Market

This week the news in the publishing blogosphere is... FRANKFURT.

This German Book Fair is amongst the biggest in the world and it was a big deal when New Zealand went as Guest Of Honour last year. This is where foreign rights deals are made so it is big business and fueling this big business is ebooks.

Every year the continuing growth of self publishing gets talked about at the big book fairs...which are required attendance for agents and publishers. This year, in a Frankfurt debut, CONTEC an industry forum to specifically discuss Digital Publishing was launched and started making waves. The news right off the bat... 60% of Self Published authors would not take a Trad deal if it was offered to them. Publishing professionals were asked how this would impact the industry...

Jane Friedman takes a close look at all that was said and unsaid on this panel that has everyone talking.

In an off the wall moment a respected agent demanded that all publishers pull their books from Amazon...annoying Penguin Random House in the process. The Passive Guy looks at the fall out.

Discussions about Author Collectives are everywhere I look as more writers find this is a model that makes sense to help them cope with the fast changing world of Publishing Now. From small press collectives to nationwide collectives for small countries... Catherine Stine looks at starting an Indie Collective.

The wonderful Anne R Allen has a brilliant blog and this week she lays out the rules of the Amazon Jungle...This is all about the changing nature of reviewing...a must read.

In the Craft Section,

Online tools to boost your creativity

How to nail NaNoWriMo

Editing long sentences

Paying attention to the characters life journey with Kristen Lamb

Janice Hardy doing a diagnostic on opening sentences with back story.

In Marketing,

Formatting tips.

Jane’s Friedman’s best business advice wrap up

Book Trailers...Do’s and Don’ts

The Jungle Red Writers collective look at what makes them stop reading.

Ebooks - Think Globally... another must read.

Writers and Artists interview with Karen Inglis a children’sbook author self publishing with POD illustrated books...

Website to check out,

K M Weiland has a new website and it is beautiful...check it out and her latest post on when characters lack solid story goals.

To Finish,

Over the last few years there have been rumblings of discontent in the text book world. First from the students...the high prices...then from the professors who have to pay for their work to be published in journals...as the text book publishers have a cash cow... but check out this latest from Harvard Business School....and read the comments!

Enough to make me reach for a ....

Maureen

* High Five to anyone who gets the reference in the title...

pic from Flickr /Creative Commons/Tim Pearce

A Two Day Package Of Awesome

Around the blogosphere this week...WriteOnCon.

 The seriously brilliant initiative of some savvy KidLit authors is in its 4^th year of awesomeness. A free online conference for Kid Lit authors who can’t get to a conference...and believe me when you are on the other side of the world, in a small country, you salivate at the conference schedules. WriteOnCon has just wrapped up and you can go onto the site and see some of the keynotes and videos. I got lost today in watching the live pitch hangout, which wasn’t live for me but had heaps of information in it. I will be dipping into all the archived sessions for the next few weeks and I confidently predict that the keynotes will continue to be blogged about all year, like last years WriteOnCon.

While I was otherwise focused...Mike Shatzkin was pointing out Losing Bookstores is a Big Problem for Publishers. Now you might be thinking, duh heard it all before, but Mike highlights some important points for publishers of children’s books and books that are outside the straight fiction narrative.

Porter Anderson covers the other top watercooler topic...The Bowker Annual Report just out and if you want the complete report which many publishers subscribe to, hand over $799 or take a look at the articles Porter highlights, where they break down and explain the significance of the figures.  In-store awareness is slowly giving way to increased importance of author Web sites, product placement on a e-reader or tablet app and review and recommendations.

Who is buying what, and this may surprise you, men bought more hardback format last year. Porter gives a comprehensive run down on all the discussions happening as a result of the report.

Kristine Rusch, as usual, delivers a comprehensive article on the publishing industry now. This week she looks at markers of success for writers. Kris has a wealth of experience and lays it out for writers...and then she talks about Indie publishing and how success markers here may be quite different.

Passive Guy has a great article on protecting your film rights and Victoria Mixon on 21 things writers know that non writers don’t.

Elisabeth S Craig has been writing about her journey to hybrid author and she shares some home truths about juggling the two strands ofher career.

In Craft,

The 35 questions Proust asked his characters.

Killzone on how to write a novel readers won’t put down.

Jody Hedlund on when to show character emotions.

The Bookshelf Muse on writing an authentic fight scene. (My Dad commented a couple of days ago to me about a fight scene written by a women that was really bad. ‘Men don’t stop and analyse what the next punch will be...’)

10 tips from Billy Wilder on how to write a good screenplay...useful for novels.

Why every writer needs to hire an editor.

In Marketing,

Joel Friedlander on book layouts and page margins.

What literary agents want to see when they Google your name and they do Google it.

Passive Guy links to 5 successful marketing strategies.

To Finish,

Chuck has a guest post on his blog. 25 steps to being a traditionally published author –lazy bastard edition. You will laugh... you will wince... Yes, other people write in Chucks style...be warned and entertained.

I'm off to drop back into WriteOnCon...

maureen

. 

When The Game Gets Broken

The big storm rolled on through the country. Everyone put on thermals, hunkered down and suffered through the storm. And now we are in clean up mode with rail links being repaired along with the sea walls around the harbour. Landslips are being cleared away so roads can be reopened through the South Island.

In the publishing blogosphere the talk has been around the examination of eBook royalty numbers and how the 25% net is a losing deal for authors. Passive Guy looks at the Futurebook article Get your Geiger counter out -It's Toxic. Here is an excerpt.

 So, in other words, at these average price points, every time a hardcover sale is replaced by an e-book sale, the publisher makes $2.20 more per copy and the author makes $1.58 less. If the author made the same $4.20 royalty on the e-book sale as he/she would have on a hardcover, the publisher would STILL be making an improved profit of $6.28.

The comments are coming thick and fast on this topic.

Mike Shatzkin, Publishing Futurist, has taken a look at this topic as well, with his long view on where publishers should be concentrating and that is out of the royalty percentages game and going to flat fee per copy. However he also shines a spotlight on how the BIG authors negotiate their contracts and it has nothing to do with royalties.

Porter Anderson writing on Writer Unboxed takes it further...The thought shift happens when you realise that Trad Publishing only favours the bestseller. The tier under is moving away from Trad. What are the consequences?

Last year it was felt within the self-publishing community that when some of the big bestsellers started looking at the numbers...they might not be so quick to sign to a Trad deal. Agent Orange who blogs anonymously is starting to wonder if the Trad publishers have woken up to the fact that with the new options available, a traditional publishing deal is now just another option for authors and not the only game in town. 

Laura Resnick has a great post on how Traditionally Published Authors can use SelfPublishing to their advantage.

Orna Ross - taking a look at why you might have to self publish...and what you should be thinking about. And Writers Digest asks how can the average writer make money with eBooks?

The Guardian has interviewed Kristine Rusch about what happened when her Smokey Dalton series got picked up by a Trad publisher. Smokey Dalton is a black PI. Kris is white.... How racist is the publishing industry? I’ve always wondered this myself.

In Craft,

The fabulous K M Weiland strikes again- On Tightening Dialog.

Bookshelf Muse has 10 things you don’t want in your novel.

Do Page Counts Matter in eBooks?

Fast Writing...and how you can do it?

Novelicious has another post in their 5 tips for writing, series

Developing An Idea

In Marketing,

How to use Google +

Back Cover Copy...how to make it sell your book.

7 Secrets to Loving Book Promotion

Susan Kaye Quin revisits Setting up yourIndie Business

Blog Post Blunders

20 insights into successful Agent/Client relationships.

To Finish,

Have you noticed that English is changing? MentalFloss looks at 4 changes in the language that have slid by virtually unnoticed.

This could break your love affair with word games....

maureen 

Pic is from Stuff- The day after... not far from where I live...

Who Are You Really?

 ????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

Last week I linked to Chuck Wendig’s series of blog post on sexism and misogyny in The SFF and gamer community. It was hard hitting and an important wake up call to the writing community on what is appropriate behaviour in the 21^st century. (we can hope) The discussion is ongoing and Chuck turned his blog over to another Sci fi writer for her view on the topic. 

Writers are what they read became a theme and a separate blog post from Chuck. If your book shelves are full of dead white dudes...will your characters be authentic if they are different race, gender....

Another writer up against it this week has been Libba Bray. She has written a blog post that sears the soul on what it is like to have a novel not work...and how many different ways she has tried to make it work. Libba is a successful YA writer and this post is not for the writing faint of heart. It is gritty and realistic...I felt like reaching for the ‘juice box’ after reading it.

Another artist examining the soul this week was Amanda Palmer. On Twitter there’s a lot of comment from people who got ARC’s of Neil Gaimen’s latest book who think this book has shifted his writing into another gear. Amanda’s post on what it is like to see this creative process and the cost to your relationship gives you an appreciation of the joys and the pains of Art. Eyes wide open.

Beta readers are the subject of Porter Anderson’s Ether for Authors...kicking off with Hugh Howey suggesting that giving $10 each to five people to read your MS and tell you when they stopped and why this is better and cheaper than paying an editor first. Some interesting viewpoints in this one.

Writer Beware talks about shonky contracts being put out by a reputable publisher on an ebook romance imprint. The fine print is very fine... and dubious. Read and Be Aware!

Dean Wesley Smith has written a thought provoking blog post on writer self respect, contracts and genre publishing...publish... learn... publish... learn... and Trad will come calling.

Jami Gold looks at using Createspace as a learning experience.

Publisher's Weekly have a post on starting a new online journal for Librarians. With the success of Huff Post and other literary journals is the time right for an online Library Journal? 

In Craft,

Mary Kole urges you to pick the right time in writing dialogue...

Jordan McCollum spills the beans on Elisabeth Craig’s secrets to subplotting

Larry Brooks has a great post on story physics...Narrative Strategy.

Quick and Dirty Grammar...has the run down on comma errors...which one should you use?

Project Mayham has a great post on analysing the first 50 pages in midgrade.

What other writing can you do when you can’t write....nifty little post.

In Marketing,

Go straight to Indie Recon...their weeks focus on marketing blog posts are up.

The Book Designer has the run down on the copyright page.

Catherine Ryan Howard has the checklist for Self Publishing.

Indie Unlimited looks at getting the most out of Smashwords

Writer Unboxed has Do’s and Don’ts for Self Publishing.

The Creative Penn has a list of advice on why your books aren’t selling

To Finish,

If it all gets too much, change your name. The Passive Guy links to a site which explores pen names and why writers became someone else.

The weather is one of the wilder nights in the city known for wild weather... so I’m signing off before the power goes out. 

maureen