Conference Challenges

Conferences have been in my mind lately, specifically Book Expo America (BEA) and Golden Yarns (GY) here in New Zealand. 

BEA brings people from all over the publishing spectrum together for a packed 3 day conference. This is where new research is shared, trends predicted and deals are made. It isn’t much about the writers of the content but more about how the content is managed, packaged, delivered and distributed to the global marketplace. 

Golden Yarns was the latest conference for the Children’s Literature community in New Zealand. This community has now had 3 stellar conferences two years apart. The Golden Yarns conference focussed on best practice writing and illustration workshops with keynotes being delivered by leaders in the NZ Children’s Literature field on their personal heroes. There were many opportunities for the group to share ideas, hash out issues and drink wine. (The wine bill paid for by a NZ Children’s Writing Icon...gob smacking and a lovely gesture as she wasn’t there to drink it.)

Two very different conferences in focus but both valuable to the writing and illustration practitioner.

Breaking down B.E.A.

Bob Mayer gives an entertaining overview of what was going down in old New York Town. His main concern the lack of digital focus by the organisers (who seemed to believe the talk from publishers that ebooks sales have plateaued....) A report to show this was released at BEA.

Sam Missingham examined that report on ebook sales facts and figures, and blew that idea out of the water. Sam $40% BEA 0

Publishing Perspectives took a punt at what they think will be future trends in publishing....hmmm more amalgamations?

Shelf Awareness took a look at a BEA first, Power Readers, who were invited to participate at BEA. Who are they and Why do they matter... they also checked out Neil Gaimen’s talk on why fiction is dangerous.

Inspiring and Challenging

Here in New Zealand everyone who attended GY is coming down off their high. Melinda Szymanik has written an overview of the first part of the weekend.

Over in the UK the Children’s Laureate, Julia Donaldson stepped down after her two year stint with a great broadside at the lack of reviews for children’s books. The wonderful Malorie Blackman takes over.... 

This sparked a debate in NZ within the KidLit community for our own Children’s Laureate...after all we have a Poet Laureate. If you would like to add your voice to this and are on Facebook, check out this page.

Chuck Wendig has written another 25 things post.... this time on YA Lit. Be entertained...BeWare...it’s Chuck.

Jane Friedman has another of her Best Business Advice List For Writers

In Craft,

Jami Gold on Can ThisStory Be Saved...how to figure out what’s wrong. and What Soap Opera’s CanTeach You...

Janice Hardy on Handling Scene Transitions with Multiple POVs

Chuck Wendig on Ten Stupid Writer Tricks That Might Actually Work (they do!)

Writer’s Digest- Stormwriting- What it is and How To Do It

In Marketing,

Ways for writers to use Pinterest

4 best strategies for savvy self publishers

7 tips for choosing your book cover

PR and Marketing for Self Publishing Do’s and Don’ts

The Book Designer has a great blog and his guest blogger Joan Stewart has a take note article on Business Opportunities That Even Savvy Writers Are Missing Out On.

 To Finish,

 A good conference should allow time to network with your peers, should inspire you, educate you and give you tools to move forward in the ever changing world of publishing.

Suw Charman Anderson has written a Forbes article on what she thinks needs to happen next. Why Publishers Should Invest In Authors Not In Books.... could this be the model for the future?

Below the animation announcing Malorie Blackmans appointment...and no that rap was not written for the announcement it’s been out for a few years now.

(Such street cred with her readers!)

 

maureen 

pic from Flickr/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/ncvophotos

Burning Up The Charts

Nothing happens quickly in publishing.... This used to be the mantra. Today the Department of Justice released some of their documents from the Agency Pricing lawsuit against Trad Publishers. An economics  professor did some helpful charts. My Goodness the publishers involved moved at the speed of light!

Across the blogosphere and looking at another lawsuit...Porter Anderson takes a close look at the reporting around the Author Solutions lawsuit...or lack of it. In a case where the number of authors who may have been burnt by the various imprints of this *helpful* publishing company run up past 150,000 how is it that this case is not being widely reported in mainstream media or even in some specialist publishing journals.

Interestingly the same judge is presiding over both cases...wonder if she’ll write a book about her experiences.

What saddens me is how little research is done by potential authors to find out the state of play in publishing right now. 

1. It’s hard to get a traditional deal. 

2. Agents are becoming de facto publishers. 

3. Authors are having some success in self publishing. 

4. Self publishing is a lot of work and you need to know what you are doing. 

5. You will not get rich as a writer.

This is reality. 

In all of the above a publishing firm that tells you that they can dissolve all those barriers... just hand over your credit card...is one to run away from! So many people go into this with their eyes shut...following the dream...which can turn into an ugly nightmare.

Elisabeth Naughton has written about her publishing journey from Trad to Indie and it makes interesting reading. It is a very honest and reflective piece, which mirrors the journey that publishing itself has taken in the last five years.

In April, just before the London Book Fair, the Guardian published an opinion piece on how the rise of self publishing has changed the book world and the implications for traditional publishers.

Russel Blake (suspense writer) has written the definitive post on How To Sell Loads Of Books.

In one post he sets out a career plan and an implementation schedule. (must read post)

Aussie writer Scott Gardner talks about finding an international voice if you live in far flung countries. Interesting comments on this guest piece for Publishing Perspectives.

In Craft,

Elisabeth Spann Craig on the What If method of generating ideas...(this is my preferred method)

Ava Jae on writing inmultiple POVs (Very good advice!)

Darcy Pattison on 7 reasons your manuscript might be rejected.

Angela Ackerman talks about Donald Maass (uber agent) and his ideas on cultivating the reader...its all about emotional layering....

Layering information in your story...Info with Attitude from the Killzone team.

In Marketing,

Livehacked has got The Marketing Plan...This is long, so set aside some time for this one. It is the guide to marketing self published books.

17 Steps To A Reader Grabbing Title.

13 Timeless Lessons On Marketing from the father of advertising, David Ogilvy. You will never look at an ad the same way again.

To Finish,

Neil Gaimen’s Make Great Art, book of the sensational speech from last year, is out and I have held one in my hands. It is a thing of beauty. Brainpickings has Neil's 8 Rules for Writing, which you can follow and have chart topping success like Neil.

To write...

you 

have

to

put

one

word

after

another.

maureen 

Pic fromFlickr/Jorel....so geeky.  (hehehehe... a pie chart)

Decorative Links

Holidays, the chance to go away from your usual busy life, explore new country, meet new people and try out new things.

Coming back through the front door always triggers the best moments of the holiday for me.... It is my last ditch effort to hold holiday mode around me as I stare at the mess left and the long list of catch up jobs, mail and end of the school year craziness. This morning, five minutes before leaving for school, one child announced they needed cardboard tube inners, wrapping paper and lollies...for making crackers.

Last week on Blog day I was traveling down the middle of the South Island staring at the back country and alpine scenery and pointing out likely film spots from the Lord Of The Rings. It helped that we knew The Hobbit was being filmed on location in some of the places we were going through. New Zealand=Middle Earth.

Holiday memories are getting squished to the back of my mind as this is the week before Christmas...a time that heralds that frantically busy period when you realise you have not sorted out the Christmas day menu or the in law presents or even found the Christmas tree decorations...

However I have a box of Blog Christmas tree decorations...

50 blinking lights....or 50 simple ways to build your platform in 5 minutes a day.

12 Great Big Golden Baubles....or 7 Lessons about Self publishing I learnt in 7th Grade and (from the wonderful Catherine Ryan Howard) 5 things I am always telling self publishers.  

Every tree needs special ornaments that trigger great memories. Here is a nice idea from the Teaching Authors Blog.

In the pretty ornament category we have three really sweet posts.

A new Y A Publisher in Australia from Publishing Perspectives.

How to get your writing ready to win a Pulitzer....

A great craft check list on characterisation that will save you a few years of hard slog to learn.

There are always a couple of ornaments that you know you have to put on the tree but are always challenging as to where they go....

Amazon has brought out a Children's Publishing Imprint, what impact will this have...

An Australian Agent talks about why they are so different from U.S. Agents and why....

In the new ornament category check out this pretty nifty advice from Lisa Schroeder...Let Good Reads Ads be your friend. (This one should be in the middle at eye level!)

Find the Christmas Star or Angel of your fulfilled writing resolutions....(ok still making mine...) and stick it on the top.

Next week you may even get a present to stick under the tree....

maureen


pic from here

Game Changing and Piracy

On the side of my blog I have a list of must read blogs. One of those is Jane Friedman’s There Are No Rules. 

Jane is one of the touchstones in the blogosphere on publishing and change. She has been a keynote speaker at many big conferences on publishing and will be speaking at SXSW soon. Jane has a round up every week of what she thinks are among the best articles of the week (often I have already filed some of them for you) but I always pay attention to her list.  This week Jane highlighted a critical must read article by Kristine Rusch and yes I think that it deserves that status.

Kristine Rusch is a bestselling, award winning, romance, mystery and science fiction writer. She has been writing a series of articles on change in the publishing world. This week she has seen such a significant game change in self publishing that against all her previous advice she now believes that beginning writers should look seriously at self publishing...and not only them.

Bob Mayer was one of the first to comment (no surprise he agreed with what she said.) This week, on his own blog, Bob has an article about what he has learned in his writing life.  And it is a good read too. Bob breaks down the lessons he has learned since writing his first book...as he says... the more you consciously know about writing-the harder it gets!

However, to help you in this difficult creative endeavour is Mike Fleming and Elisabeth S Craig. Together they have sorted out a solution for storing all those links on writing... The Writers Knowledge Base.

This week Agent Mary Kole answered the tricky question...Would you turn down a book you loved but you knew you couldn’t sell? This is a good look at what agents are faced with...

Last week I asked the question, Who will be the digital ebook reviewers we trust?

I pointed you to Kristen Lambs blog post...this week also answering this question is Morris Rosenthal of Foner Books. Morris reckons that groups of writers will band together and become the new gate keepers...and then turn into writers guilds with too much power etcetcetc (check out the comments)

The Huffington Post has an interview with Annik LaFarge on effective author websites this is so full of information that you will probably need to set aside a long coffee break to take it in.

Over on Craicerplus (My Amplify Page) I have links to articles on

Writer Envy...The Rejectionist- Dear Superior Person

The Rules of Sci Fi...(don’t spare the red shirt guy)

The Best Writing Mistakes and How To Make Them

The Espresso Book Machine...This is a book printing robot in a NY book store which prints books 

immediately....Go and take a look at the video!...opens up a whole new world....

To Finish

Upstart Crow have a great archived article on Mid Grade and Y A differences and where you draw the line and 

The best article on story structure I have seen from the formidable Larry Brooks over on Storyfix, How to Learn Story Structure in Two Minutes or Less.

I leave you with Neil Gaimen talking on how Piracy helped him...

enjoy,

maureen

P.S The Jane Friedman that Kristine Rusch refers to is not the Jane Friedman of There Are No Rules. There are two Jane Friedman's in the publishing world.

Quick...It's Thursday...

The day started with the realization that it was Thursday. I’m still on holiday, now in another city from last week. Things are much busier here, more distractions. Then I also realized that I had not touched a computer since I got here.

What was the blog post going to be about? Still being on holiday? How wrinkly a child can get when water sliding? The Tennis on TV?

So a quick look into Twitter…to look for items of interest.

Rachelle has tale of woe about what happens when a publisher has a preconceived notion of a book and before reading it plans the marketing of it.

If you are looking for a chewy article to help you understand new media and how our habits are changing around the web and what it means to you, the author, read this article, The Web Is A Customer Service Medium.

Bookbuzzr is posting a great series of articles about book marketing mistakes. This one is on Tag lines. This is a very good article.

Publishers Weekly has an article up on whether We Have Reached The Tipping Point Where Self Publishing Is Better Than A Book Deal.

Still on this topic….

Richard Curtis has been looking at Whether Authors Make Good Publishers…

Richard and JA Konrath are going head to head over this…go on be a spectator and read the comments on this article. This is probably going to be a big issue of 2011. Publish yourself or stay with the traditional model…..

If you are thinking about book trailers this year here is a YouTube resource list for you.

I'll be back home next week...Keep an eye on Craicerplus (My Amplify Page) for new content.

Off to watch the Tennis....
maureen

Studying To Suceed

On Monday I had the good fortune to attend the LIANZA awards. 

New Zealand librarians chose the best books published for children in the past year. 

Congratulations to the winners! Among the established high profile awards given were new awards in sub categories for books published in Te Reo Maori. As more people are becoming literate in the Maori Language there is a need for books to become more sophisticated. A lot of what has been published in Maori are children’s readers and non fiction. This is now beginning to change as children fluent in te reo age. I was happy to see that a novel based around science fiction including elements of myths and world building was the inaugural winner in the young adult section of the Te Reo awards. When you can have this kind of sophisticated plot, playing with futurist ideas, you know that the Maori language is alive and flourishing.  

Dinner out after with some of the brightest talents in Children’s Writing and Illustration in this country was the icing on the cake...and the jump start to my night....(Thanks for the help and the laughter, Children’s Writers and Illustrators are the best!)

WriteOnCon  has finished and the children’s literature world is digesting the insights gained.  So if you have been studying hard after reading the SCBWI blog (which I urged you to do two weeks ago...) here is this weeks study homework.

Adventures in Publishing have gathered together a conference round up for each day of the WriteOnCon

Day One and Day Two and Day Three and boy there is some great information tucked away in here.

Miriam Forster has put the two videos by Shelli Johannes-Wells on author branding from the conference on her website so hop on over and have a look.

If you want more information on author branding, The Book Designer has a comprehensive article on the subject. Everything you wanted to know...don’t forget that author branding equals business branding.

The Great Jane has interviewed Johanna Harness about the twitter phenomenon that is the #amwriting group. This is an interesting project by an unpublished writer using social media to get known. With over 2000 people participating in the project and an Amazon store and CafePress merchandise site you have to ask yourself  is this the way of the future? (If you have a book coming out with a great theme check out your contract...if it doesn't specifically say anything about merch maybe you need to look into it...a range of interesting quotes from the books and the book cover could make a nice tee shirt (thinking a certain Shakespear sequel here))

It is an interesting interview. Being interviewed on the No Rules blog jumped her stats over 1000%

Dean Wesley Smith has written an interesting overview of what he thinks is happening in publishing. He equates publishers as huge ships that take a long time to change course. The winners are the small press and indie publishers. They can move faster and ride the wave better. Authors who have a long backlist can profit also from the e-publishing phenomenon.

On Craicerplus (My Amplify Page) There are links to articles on

Swords Dominate 2009 Fantasy Cover Art...

The Ultimate Checklist Before Submitting Your Novel.(this is brilliant!)

How To Ensure 75% of Agents Will Request Your Material.(required reading)

Dean Wesley Smith- Killing The Sacred Cows of Publishing...thought provoking article by Dean with an Agent Responding...

10 Things To Do To Become A Better Writer In 10 Days

Self Publishing? A look At Lightening Source.

Finally

In the News -UK Penguin are opening their inboxes for a limited time to unsolicited manuscript submissions...very brave of them...

And

Nathan Bransford asks the question -If You Were King or Queen Of The Publishing Industry What Would Be Your First Order of Business?

Some very funny responses...give everyone donuts...yep after my day today....

Enjoy...off to find a donut

maureen

Image is from the very funny website Better Book Titles- The Titles They Should Have Used.

Yes - It is For Frankenstein!

(check out the rest!)

Vanity Fair?

This week the big news in publishing is Harlequin. If you are a Harlequin author or know one then the amount of emails in your inbox this week about the future of publishing, Harlequin style, will probably have topped 500.

Every major blogger in the industry has commented on the situation and every one of them has had record comments wading into the fray. (Read Jane Friedman for an objective overview)

Harlequin is a HUGE publishing company. Last week it launched an e-publishing arm Carina Press.

One of the first of the big publishers to do so...showing they were forward thinking etc etc (Harlequin have always been innovative and the Romance authors are amongst the most business savvy writers you will ever meet.)

This week however Harlequin stuffed up. They launched Harlequin Horizons...their vanity publishing arm.

So if we are looking at purely business, they have the staff, they have the resources, why should they select the best manuscripts...why not just charge the writers fees to publish their book and split the royalties....

The backlash from the authors and writers associations has been huge with Harlequin changing their Harlequin Horizons website hourly and today abandoning it altogether for a different name. They are definitely trying to distance themselves from their vanity publishing mistake...unfortunately...the mud is sticking.

If your manuscript gets rejected by Harlequins regular imprint you have the chance to still get published provided you pay for everything up front.

Now if you self publish you are in total control of the whole process. You own everything.

If you vanity publish, someone else takes control over the process because you don’t have the time or the will to do it yourself. You pay all the bills but you don’t fully own the finished product as the publisher takes a cut of the royalties.

So if your book takes off (a rare thing with vanity publishing as the publisher has no incentive to market your book because they have already been paid their fee upfront, so it’s all down to author marketing making the difference) the vanity publisher then takes the credit and a chunk of the royalties...and you paid all the bills....

You have to go into this with your eyes wide open and that is the Harlequin authors concern, along with the devaluing of the Harlequin brand. (After all they have standards don’t they?)

The authors (and agents) are right to be mad...(actually mad is rather mild for what is happening out there.)

At the beginning of this week Harlequins new imprint Horizons was promising that the books would look the same and be bought everywhere that you could buy a Harlequin book. There would be no difference... now they are trying to drop Harlequin altogether from the imprint...aware that they have blundered.

And while everyone is feeling sorry for the Harlequin writers out there...the Christian writers got caught as well in the same sort of horror story....who will be next?

maureen

pic is a pair of vanity shoes......you could kick with them, throw them, see if they fit, choose one over the other...lots of associations with the post...