Productive Creativity

 

 In Publishing News This Week

 

The power of unions to advocate for their members is a benefit that the publishing workforce is seeing. Penguin Random House has raised base salaries. Where they lead others, hopefully, will follow, reports Publishers Weekly.

 

This week international booksellers and publishers are loud in their dismay over the arrest of two booksellers in Hong Kong. Freedom to read is often taken for granted, but there are some places where it can be a risky business.

 

Earlier this year we were lamenting the demise of the mass market paperback. Simon and Schuster have pivoted their Pocketbook, (mass market) brand to be the acquiring home of bestselling indie authors.

 

Publishers Weekly profiled a reading social platform for kids. This is a social media platform only for readers, aimed at school children, curated by their schools, but with world wide reach. Sounds amazing. Is there a catch?

 

Publishing Perspective has been following the Bologna Children’s Bookfair outreach programme. They have been building cross media partnerships everywhere. Expect animation to be a bigger part of the fair, after their recent trip to the International Animation festival.

 

The UK Publishers Licensing Service has been working with the Copyright Licensing Agency to make a collective agreement for licensing content for AI. This means publishers can get money. Over 250 publishers have signed up apparently. If you are a UK author, you can sign up too.

 

Written Word Media have the results of their mid-year author survey. They break down the results across all the author tiers, and it makes interesting reading. What works, what doesn’t, and what everyone should be doing.

 

Writer Beware has an informative article on scam email addresses. There are quick ways you can check if the email is legit. The scammers are sneaky and Victoria outlines how to spot them just in their email address. Reversed letters caught me by surprise in this comprehensive article, which is a must read!

 

I read this essay by Jaime Buckley- The Real Reason You’re Afraid To Publish and felt seen. This is one of those essays that nail the nagging feeling you have that something is wrong, but you don’t know what. 

 

Ines Johnson writes great articles on the Indie writer life. This week she is tackling the back list. Should you Update Your Backlist For Amazon’s A11 Changes? Yes… the Zon is changing again, so rumour has it. 

 

There is a great essay on Jane Friedman’s blog – Your Creative Team Wants You To Stop Formatting And Just Write The Darn Book. The authors, Sandra Wendel and Paul Nylander are speaking every typesetters pain here. Staying with writing software- Julie Artz has a great primer on Scrivener. Authors who try Scrivener quickly become evangelists for the software. Take a look at Julies article if you want to know why people rave about it.

 

Where does your creative flow come from? Gabriela Pereira has a great article on the four pillars of creative flow. How is your balance of mind work cycle, skill based learning, practice, and community? Do you need to rebalance your creativity?

 

In The Craft Section,

2 Great posts from Janice Hardy 5 ways to make your character hate you and Describing character emotions in first person –- Bookmark- Both

Write strong plots for character driven stories- September Fawkes- Bookmark

Twisting the office romance conflict- Angela Ackerman- Bookmark

Sustainable writing routine- Brian Hicks- Bookmark

 

In The Marketing Section,

Launching a book with confidence- Rachel Warmath- Bookmark

Manage your expectations- Sandra Beckwith

Broad vs Niche keywords- Kindlepreneur- Bookmark

Seven promotional steps- Alliance of Independent Authors- Bookmark

What’s working in podcast publicity- Jane Friedman – Bookmark

 

To Finish

All the horror writers I know are fantastic humans. Mark Leslie Lefebvre is one of those people. He is so supportive of the publishing industry and has done practically every job in it. He’s now working with Draft2Digital but he has a great blog on writing and creativity that always has a fresh perspective on writing. This week’s essay, The Trees and I,The Rooted, Yet Restless Writer just resonated on all levels. Take a moment to stop and read the essay and maybe make a date with your favourite nature view.

Creativity and a writing boost awaits.

 

Maureen

@craicer

 

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

If you want the weekly blog in your inbox subscribe to the free Substack version.

If you like the blog and want to buy me a coffee, I appreciate the virtual coffee love. Thanks.

 

Photo by Bree S on Unsplash

Flagging The Craft

When I sat down to review the list of links I have made for your perusal this week I found that there is a strong craft element showing through. This is probably unconscious on my part as I have been back in the Martian landscape trying to move my characters from their unintentional holiday spot.... 

I own some great craft books on writing and I find myself obsessively reading them when I need to tackle my manuscript...this flows into my internet reading. Hence the collection of good links for you along with my usual foray into current trending topics, springing up from BEA and enlightened or thought provoking comments from writers in the trenches.

In the New Zealand blogosphere this week the comment has been all about The Frankfurt Book Fair. With New Zealand being a Guest of Honour and Children’s Literature being the focus genre, Kidlit writers here had high hopes. Unfortunately our government saw a Book Trade Fair as a place to promote New Zealand tourism...food and wine and forgot about waving the flag for the BOOK aspect. We waited with bated breath to see who was on the list and now the kidlit community feels badly let down. They are worthy people but there aren’t many writers in the total group of 160 going. Melinda sums up what we are all feeling...and talking about.

Mike Shatzkin, publishing futurist, rounds up what he learned at Book Expo America this year and as usual it makes interesting reading. He flags MetaData Mess, Digital Rights Databases and the slow down of ebooks as the main concerns going forward. Picture Books will stay printed...but what about enhanced books?

The Gurdian highlights some research showing that enhanced ebooks actually harm children’s reading ability.

For those of us who dream about going to BEA... Publishers Launch has made available 5 keynote slideshow presentations...however they stress if you have limited time check out the presentation by Bowker on Global Sales...of course to us in the Southern Hemisphere we are firmly fixed on global but it does highlight what formats are doing well in what countries.

Goodreads has published an interesting article where they flagged what makes a book take off. There are some interesting comparisons and author agility is a must.

Joel has a nifty article about what should be in a book design contract.

Writer Unboxed has a guest blog from the writer of Scrivener for Dummies. If you haven’t checked out Scrivener...read this post...Many writers say they will never go back to word processing software again. Scrivener is especially targeted at writers.

Kristine Rusch and Dean Wesley Smith are great at putting the finger on the pulse of changing attitudes in publishing and these posts are no exception.

Dean talks about just realising that books he was paid for but were never published can have a whole new life...

Kristine has been looking at the whole Indie vs Trad publishing debate and she has an interesting article on the long tail of each of these ways to publish...add to this 77 thoughtful comments. You need to take some time out to digest this great article and ongoing conversation.

This great article on how to do an author interview can be flipped on its head for authors...and if you add in this Fabulous post from the Midgrade writers site The Mixed Up Files Of... on tips to help create a memorable author visit to schools then you are on to some marketing gold.

In the craft section,

From The YAMuses...how to push through the soggy middle of your MS

From Kidlit.com... guiding the readers emotions, you are the puppet master.

From the incomparable Larry Brooks...when you get told that your structure is off and what does that mean...just brilliant.

From K M Weiland, 25 ways to blow your book.

How to find weak verbs...just change your tense.

In the US, Print On Demand Book Espresso Machines seem to be taking off...Check out how authors are using this creatively and Joanna Penn has a list of 7 networking ideas for authors.

It is tax time here in NZ and I must really get down and carve out some time to get this in....

This TIMELY and INFORMATIVE Article from Nick Dawes deals with how you get one of those US tax numbers if you live outside the US but you publish on Amazon...BOOKMARK IT.

This week this post, responding to a letter about how downloading pirated music is ok, went viral...I flagged it on FB expecting to see comments and got zilch...maybe writers are too busy or have their head in the sand thinking that this attitude will never happen to books...As someone commented on the original article...it happens to all artists. I’d be interested in your thoughts...