Defending Literature Around The Globe.

In Publishing News this week,

 

Copyright received another blow in the United Kingdom this week, when the amended law supported by the Upper house was defeated again in the Lower house. That meant that the new bill will not have any transparency compliance from tech companies. Publishing Perspectives covers the implications and what publishing companies can hope for in the near future.

 

Canadian authors alerted the writing community to an AI scam that is happening on Amazon. Take a hot new title… change the cover a little bit with AI. Change the author name a little bit. Scrape the insides… and take advantage of the original books marketing push to make bucks. This kind of dupe gives authors a bad name and it’s not their fault! 

 

International tax and legal services firm, PWC has released a report on the impact of AI in the workforce. It’s surprisingly positive with employees who can use AI being valued more. Mark Williams looks at the report findings for the publishing community.

 

Meanwhile, Jane Friedman has written an article about What AI can’t steal from you which is your unique voice and perspective. 

 

Ingram Content Group has integrated AI tools into its marketing platform, Ingram iD. The tools will write blurbs and run campaigns across social media according to Publishers Weekly.

 

The Toronto Comics festival just wrapped up and the big talking points were how much the cross border attendance had taken a hit because of fear of gender challenges at the border. The festival has been a safe space for people from marginalized communities. Although comics are in good heart the people reading them may not be so confident.

 

The International Publishers Association’s World Expressions Forum (WEXFO) has just finished meeting in Lillehammer. The clarion call from the forum was the threat to Democracy from disinformation and censorship. They have released a report exhorting members to resist this. “World Expression Forum calls for resistance against authoritarian forces that undermine democracy and freedom of expression. Democracy is continuously under threat, and we (the undersigned) promise to strengthen our battle against disinformation, censorship and polarization–and improve literacy in our societies.”

Over in the middle east the Shajah Publishing Sustainability Fund has just helped 12 publishers to scale up their business and use new tools to make their publishing sustainable. They get so many business development goodies they must be the envy of publishers worldwide. Mark Williams dives into what is on offer for the lucky selected publishers. This is possible because of the countries commitment to literacy and education. 

 

Seth Harwood writes on Jane Friedman’s blog about the perils of Diminishing Returns in Revision. Do you know when it is time to let go. This is one of my biggest problems…if only I had another five minutes to put in that comma and take it out again four times before I’m finished… .

 

The fantastic Jami Gold is back with an excellent post on writing stand alones in a series. Yes, you can do it. It takes some creativity but we’re writer’s aren’t we? Jami has some great tips for thinking outside the series box.

  

In The Craft Section,

3 act analysis of Star Wars- Gabriele Pereira

Chekhov’s Gun- Anne R Allen- Bookmark

When the 2^nd draft feels like a step back- Janice Hardy- Bookmark

Different character arcs for the same character-K M Weiland- Bookmark

Dual Protagonists- Terry Odell- Bookmark

 

In the Marketing Section,

Conquering limiting beliefs- Kimberly Grabas- Bookmark

10 Free Book Promo ideas- Sandra Beckwith

Monitoring your author brand- Dave Chesson – Bookmark

21 marketing tips- Writing Oasis

How to define a strong marketing brand- Jenny Hansen- Bookmark

 

To Finish

It’s halfway through the year and my thoughts turn to the current novel and if I will ever wrangle it into submission. It didn’t help that I wrote out of sequence. Jenny Hansen has an excellent article on the non linear writing process. Some writers work best when the manuscript looks like a mess. 

How often do you start a writing project knowing who the audience for it is? Liz Alterman has an article on The Dynamic duo’s website about pitching the concept to yourself before you write the book. I can’t help thinking that if we did more of this we wouldn’t have half-finished novels in the bottom drawer.

 

Maureen

@craicer

 

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Fishhooks and Bouquets

 

In Publishing News this week.

In headlines around the world, Taylor Swift bought back her original master recordings of her first six albums. Why have I put this news in my weekly blog? It all has to do with copyright and the value of that copyright. If you read the saga which starts when 14 year old Taylor signed her first 6 albums away to the record company in perpetuity, there is a moment where the writer winces with recognition of a contract that takes all rights. A trail blazing young icon like Taylor is letting the music industry know that copyright matters. In return I hear that music contracts are now being tweaked to include percentages of ticket sales and merchandise which was the only way artists could make a living if they were owned by a record company.

 

Contracts are very much on the mind of the writers caught up in the Unbound Bankruptcy scandal. Many writers discovered that even though they were owed royalties,(thousands of $$) they were unsecured creditors in the case of a bankruptcy, while their books were seen as assets to be sold on under bankruptcy legislation. This is exactly what happened to the assets of Unbound. What stings is that some of the original principals of Unbound rebranded themselves as Boundless and bought the assets. You can imagine how this has been seen. Most of their staff has walked out the door in protest. Bankruptcy law trumps contracts unless you have a clause saying that if the publisher goes bankrupt you get your rights back immediately. This clause needs to be inserted in the contract by the writer. A publisher will never put that clause in by themselves.

 

Booktok has been questioning inequality in publishing. This week an Australian rugby star and new social media user suddenly got a book publishing deal on basically nothing but looks and potential. Whether they can write is another question altogether.

 

Recently Publishers Weekly hosted a day long US Book Show. Big topics for attending publishers were how to navigate the political landscape to keep publishing books.

Also in the news was the rise of dark romance sales in the US and another survey about how the world seems to be embracing audiobooks. The sales are now almost neck and neck with print. 

 

Kathleen Schmidt has a post about how toxic Threads has become for the book community. It seems that pile on behaviour and bad mouthing each other is still with us, even though the book community left Twitter because of it. Rule: Don’t engage the trolls.

 

If you read the above paragraph and thought ‘it was probably AI bots’ you might need a lie down after reading Dan Holloways post on how AI was taught to interact with Reddit users, and also to recreate Agatha Christie into a writing teacher. Dan also looks at the Bookbub survey on how many writers are using AI in their work. The answers may surprise you.

 

Sean Kernan has an excellent article on how you can tell when ChatGPT is used to write something. This may be of use to writing competitions to weed out the bad apples.

Or as one kindle reviewer put it in a 1 star review, ‘I thought it was bad and then I found the pasted in prompt from Chat GPT in the middle of the paragraph asking for the novel to be written in the style of another writer.’

 

Mark Williams offers his own acerbic take on how publishers should be using AI licensing deals. The genie is out of the bottle- figure out a way to use it for the benefit of the writers.

Anne R Allen writes that Book Scammers are out there still with a quick roundup of some new twists on old scams. Yes of course, it’s easy to buy a slot on the New York Times Billboard in Times square. Just put your money into a Nigerian prince’s bank account.

The New Zealand Book Awards for Children and Young Adults shortlist is out. This year the list embraces our place in the Pacific with a record number of pacific themed books in the shortlist. Congratulations to all the shortlisted authors and illustrators. It is super hard to judge these awards, I know because I have judged them. There will have been many books that will have nearly made it. If they published a long list like the adult book awards we wouldn’t be asking every year why some brilliant book hasn’t made the list. The number of entries must be nearly the same by now.

 

If you are wondering how to get started with your latest novel idea why don’t you try a Dear Reader letter to yourself. Tara Alemany writes the questions you should be asking the reader about what they want to read. Doing this exercise has a two fold benefit, it focuses your mind on the story you want to tell and it gives you some ideas for marketing it after you’ve written it. 

 

In The Craft Section,

Plan like a pro Write like a rebel- Tammy Burke

The 3 act structure- Gabriela Pereira- Bookmark

Creating escalating complications- Lisa Poisso- Bookmark

Overexplaining in dialogue- K M Weiland- Bookmark

When the good guys must die-P J Parrish- Bookmark

 

In The Marketing Section,

Author Automations Start small layer with purpose - Chelle Honniker- Bookmark

10 ways to boost sales with Google Play-Indie author magazine- Bookmark

How to market your audiobook- Rachel Thompson- Bookmark

How to get more media- Penny Sansevieri

Launching your book successfully with preorders- Draft2Digital- Bookmark

Book Marketing with 10 AI prompts- Fazia Burke

 

To Finish

If you haven’t checked out Storybundle yet, you should. It is a collection of writing craft books by great authors. You get a great collection, the writers get the money, and you get to support a great charity. It’s a total win win win! It is only available for another week and then it’s gone. 

Give it to yourself for making it half way through the year. 

 

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 Substack version.

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

 

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