Telling A Story For Eleven Years

Eleven years ago... Amazon released their first Kindle for general release. (Their first attempt sold out in 5 hours and they took 6 months to get over it.) They needed content to put on their Kindles... and so the miniscule ebook market got an Amazon rocket and the only direction was up. 
I was a debut author wondering all about the publishing industry. 
My fabulous friend, Fifi Colston, this years Otago University Children’s Writer in Residence, said start a blog. I decided that I would find out as much as I could about what was happening overseas and share it every week to my fellow writers. So much has happened in eleven years. 
Along the way the blog has morphed into a curated news collection, has been syndicated and shared around the world and provided a reference resource for conference planners. It provides a rhythm to my working week and an excuse to noodle around on social media. (And I was hugely honoured to be the recipient of the Betty Gilderdale Award for outstanding service to the children’s literature community in part due to blogging weekly for over ten years.)

Lessons learned. 
Always keep a word doc open for snippets for the blog.
It is ok to not make your deadline of 11.59 pm. (I write this at 10.30pm.)
You never know who is reading the blog so don’t assume they know as much as you do.
The world is smaller. Eleven years ago it took eighteen months for changes in the publishing industry to filter down to New Zealand. Now it is less than six months. 
We still need to work on our author collectives to truly make an impact here and overseas.
Side Note: FABO is back for another year. See sidebar for details.

Thoughts for the future... I’ll keep learning and writing the blog and I hope you always get at least one nugget of rich learning every week. Thank you for the odd cup of coffee or email of encouragement. It does mean a lot to me. 

Now back to the reason you are here - Things that caught my eye this week.

Do you remember Dungeons and Dragons? Hands up if you played it... hmmm. Writers Digest has a great guest article on how Dungeons and Dragons can make you a better writer.

Bologna... Bologna... Attendance was up... exhibitors were everywhere and children’s books were celebrated. Porter has the rundown on all things Bologna – The worlds biggest children’s book fair. (Shoutout to two kiwi children's book writers who are about to live the dream as guests at the Dubai Book Fair.)

Bookworks has an interesting roundup of online book creation tools... write and produce your book in the cloud. Pie in the sky thinking?

Rachel Thompson always has an interesting blog of super strategies for authors. This week she wrote about her pre-launch strategies for authors. 

Kris Rusch has a great post that resonated with me on writing for fun. Sometimes we can get so caught up in the publishing world and our personal goals that the fun goes out of the writing. She looks at her long career and talks about what happened when she wrote just for herself. (After having publishers sit on my writing submissions for YEARS before making decisions, I completely agree with her.) 


In The Craft Section,
First Pages and character emotion- Becca Puglisi- Bookmark

16 Villain Archetypes- Tami Cowden- Bookmark

Writing a novel – How to hook your readers- Robyn Murphy

Storyteller Rule Book- Have at least 6  painful decisions- Secrets of Story

7 things to try when writing is hard- K M Weiland- Bookmark

Bonding the character and reader- James Scott Bell- Bookmark

In The Marketing Section,
5 steps to a social media strategy in 2019

5 facebook ad mistakes- Social Media Examiner

2 great posts from the Alli Blog -Narrating your audiobook and Automated Emails for reader magnets- Bookmark both.

Trends- What Bookbub readers are buying- Bookbub blog

How to increase your mailing list- Indies Unlimited - Bookmark

To Finish,
A story popped up on my Facebook feed about a town called Story, that is for sale. A whole town for sale? My imagination went wild. What could you do with a little town... Writers this could be your chance. Wouldn’t it make a fabulous writer’s colony... only $3 million. (Maybe in my next eleven years... LOL)

Maureen
@craicer

In my monthly newsletter, I round up the best of the bookmarked craft and marketing links as well as some other bits and pieces. When you subscribe you will also get a nifty book crammed full with marketing notes. I appreciate virtual coffee love so if you like the blog, hit the coffee button up top. Thanks.

Pic: Flickr Creative Commons – Ian Bruce

Trudging Forward

It’s April already?
How did that happen? 
I feel like I’m sludging through treacle at the moment. One foot in front of the other battling forward on the twisty road to getting another book out. If you battle imposter syndrome... read this timely post. 

I’m finally catching up with the fabulous content from the Alli 24 hour conference. Check out Adam Croft’s video on spreadsheets or just trawl around the conference blog and dip into great things.

Mark Williams from The New Publishing Standard has an interesting post this week on where China sits in the overall publishing world... This makes fascinating reading.

The Guardian published a plaintive piece about Aussie publishing professionals being paid poorly. It wouldn’t happen here... ( of course not... never crossed my mind... oh look a flying pig...)

Bookbaby has a post on 8 ways to reach readers through mobile marketing this week. Some cool resources in here including a free app builder.

Lit Reactor is singing the praises of Bookstagrammers and Writer Unboxed is examining which features you really need in Scrivener.  William Hahn has a great guest post on Anne R Allen's blog on sneaky world building in your manuscript.

Joanna Penn recently had a great podcast with Damon Suede about jazzing up your words. It’s an instant injection of word energy. 

In The Craft Section,

Pulling weeds from the writer garden- Laura Zimmerman

How to write a book in 8 steps- Leigh Shulman

Character vs Plot -Drive vs Focus- Jami Gold- Bookmark

What does your hero want- Michael Hauge- Bookmark

How do you show age?- Janice Hardy

5 ways to use theme to create character arc- K M Weiland- Bookmark

In The Marketing Section,

Author brand protection- Bookworks

Use book excerpts to promote your book- Bookbaby

Content themes for blogging- Blogging wizard- Bookmark

10 ways to get reviews for your book- Joanna Penn- Bookmark

Bookmarketing – The five foundations- Alli Conference video-Bookmark

To Finish,

Kris Rusch has an interesting post on outrage fatigue. Another day, another instance of clueless writers being scammed. This time it’s Indie Press dubious practice. Write for us (flat fee paid- lose your IP.) This is especially horrible when it’s your world creation you are giving up. If you are contemplating a ghostwriting deal be very clear on what and why you are doing it.

Maureen
@craicer

In my monthly newsletter, which is really late… I have a story to tell tho… I round up the best of the bookmarked craft and marketing links as well as some other bits and pieces. When you subscribe you will also get a nifty book crammed full with marketing notes. I appreciate virtual coffee love so if you like the blog hit the coffee button up top. Thanks.

Pic: Flickr Creative Commons – Goproo3

The All You Can Eat Buffet

In the publishing blogosphere this week...

Mark Coker had an interesting article in Publishers Weekly about the commodification of books and how publishers must fight the dragging down of book prices.

Patreon has changed the way artists get paid. It is crowdsourcing funding directly to the artist, like the art patrons of old. Patreon has increased its fees but not by much. They have some other irons in the fire that will be interesting for artists.

The EU has passed new copyright rules. Essentially you now have to vouch for all the content on your website. Academics have not been happy with the proposed law with many signing open letters of complaint that it will hurt authors.

Apple is getting into subscription-based content starting with the news. They had their big announcement this week. The question is are they going to take on the Zon subscription service and extend it to books...

Writers can suffer from extreme loneliness. Stuck in a room all day crouched over a computer never seeing the sun... The Guardian recently had an article looking at the home office work lifestyle and made some practical suggestions for a healthy balance.

Jane Friedman recently had a guest post with four Kidslit authors who related their experiences of straddling a trad published and indie published life. Go in with your eyes open.

Staying with Kidlit. Mary Kole has an interesting article on how to get literary themes into your writing for children.

Kris Rusch has an excellent post on grammar. Kris explains how your use of punctuation directly feeds into your author voice. This is a fascinating deep dive into just what constitutes author voice.

Middle Grade Ninja has a great post on how to write fantasy quickly and Anne R Allen has a fabulous post on using Mary Sue’s or Gary Stu’s. If you don’t know what either of these terms mean you MUST read the post. Your readers will thank you.

In The Craft Section,
4 pacing tricks- K M Weiland- Bookmark

6 mistakes that can kill a great plot- Mythcreants- Bookmark

British vs American English- dictionary- Bookmark

When should I enter or exit a scene- Seth Myers- 

Creating Compelling Cadence- Writersinthestorm- Bookmark


In The Marketing Section,
Using video marketing- Frances Caballo

Using exclusive content to market- Bookfunnel- Bookmark

Using map artists- Alli blog

13 copywriting tips to help write a better novel- Writers Digest

Self Publishing Formula podcast- The necessity of mailing lists- Excellent show!

To Finish,
Janice Hardy has rounded up all the story archetypes in one big master plot article. This is where you decide if you are writing a quest plot with a revenge motif using a golden fleece style adventure. If you have been wondering about where your story fits read this. 

Maureen 
@craicer

Yes, I’m really late with my monthly newsletter. I round up the best of the bookmarked craft and marketing links as well as some other bits and pieces. When you subscribe you will also get a nifty book crammed full with marketing notes. I promise I will get it done soon because I want to share some interesting projects with you. If you want to shout me a coffee hit the button up top. Thanks 

Pic: Flickr Creative Commons - A canvas of Light

Literary Citizens - Thinking Beyond Borders

This has been a terrible week. 
For my international readers, NZ had a terrorist attack perpetrated by a white supremacist from another country. 50 citizens and visitors to our country were killed along with 50 wounded. For a country of nearly 5 million people, with about 2 degrees of separation, the scale of the tragedy is like 4000 people killed in the United States of America. Today our government made it illegal to own a semi-automatic military-style weapon or magazine, effective immediately.

As a nation, we have been forced to look at ourselves in the mirror. Could we have done more to call out hate speech and racism? As we all reflect on some harsh truths, our leaders have been quick to act, to demand that we not say the name of the attacker or anything he espoused. To make funds available for flights and funeral costs to victims families. To extend visas to people caught up in the tragedy of Christchurch. As messages poured in from around the world we were reminded that the world is smaller due to Social Media. 

Social Media brought out the best of our global citizenry with donations, food, flights, and vigils all being quickly organised. But Social Media companies were shown to be the worst global citizens when they failed to stop the hate message video that was live streamed by the terrorist despite trumpeting how good they were at policing their sites.
Many NZ companies have withdrawn advertising from the big social media accounts who failed us on Friday. Many Kiwi’s are closing their FB accounts disgusted with the non-appearance of Mark Zuckerberg to explain why FB failed to stop the video being shared around the world. 

I have been thinking about Global Citizenry a lot this week. In the publishing blogosphere, we can become very Western focussed in our publishing thinking. There is a huge market of readers out there in the rest of the world. I follow The New Publishing Standard and Mark Williams, the editor, recently got in touch to comment on my blog post of two weeks ago with some updated figures which he graciously said I could put in todays blog post.

"In fact our StreetLib author & publisher portal roll-out is at 75 countries this week and will top 100 in April. We hope to have the entire world enfranchised with a publishing portal later this year.’ 
(The underline is mine.) Mark went on to add...

"Globally there are over 4 billion people online but only 11% of them are in the US and UK. The global book market is worth over $143 billion and 70% of that is outside the USA. The global book markets are incredibly exciting right now, and growing fast. By one estimate that $143 billion valuation for 2017 could be $356 billion by 2022.

Globally TNPS tracked over 50 million people attending book fairs last year outside the US/UK, and came nowhere near covering all.

This past week the Big Bad Wolf book sale ended in Jakarta, Indonesia. It's the world's biggest book sale. 5.5 million books on sale 24/7 for eleven days. I don't have this year's final numbers yet but in 2018 750,000 visitors crammed in to buy books. 4.5 million of those 5.5 million books were in English. Such was the demand that BBW had to make two more trips to Indonesia in 2018.
Big Bad Wolf last year shipped over 30 million English language books to countries like Thailand, Sri  Lanka, Taiwan, Dubai, Indonesia, Philippines and this year is aiming at 60 million. Earlier this year BBW took 1 million English-language books to Myanmar (Burma)."

Mark sent me many more facts and figures and they make eye-popping reading. But to give you a hint check out one of his latest articles on what Streelib is doing in Africa.

For those people wondering about where Big Bad Wolf sources their books... they are remaindered copies onsold by the publisher. If you are a Trad published writer this will leave a bitter taste in your mouth as authors receive no money for remaindered books. 

As I am a children’s book writer I’m always interested in what trends are on the watch list at Bologna Children’s Book Fair in Italy. 

Jane Friedman has an interesting post on Beta Readers. They come in all shapes and sizes.

In The Craft Section,

Writing the first draft- Go Into The Story

Goal oriented storytelling- Chris Winkle- Bookmark

Pet the dog signpost scene- DIYMFA- Bookmark

Finding the perfect title for your book- Alli Blog- Bookmark

Coming up with Scene ideas

In The Marketing Section,

Book Marketing assets and processes- Orna Ross

4 Facebook ad techniques- Luke Heinecke

Book sales description- Joanna Penn- Bookmark

Successful Self-publishing- Creatif writing- Bookmark

Social Media Hashtags for Authors

A few things to know about blurbs- Pub Crawl

To Finish,

Michael Seidlinger from Melville House wrote in a blog post this week about literary citizenship and giving back to the literary community. One of our exemplary literary citizens is Joanna Penn. She has just celebrated ten years of podcasting. This is a phenomenal achievement. Her anniversary podcast is great listening and she announces that she is adding a new podcast on The Creative Penn on books and travel. Congratulations Joanna!! 

Maureen
@craicer

In my monthly newsletter, due this weekend,  I round up the best of the bookmarked craft and marketing links as well as some other bits and pieces. When you subscribe you will also get a nifty book crammed full with marketing notes. If you want to shout me a coffee hit the Kofi button up top. Thanks. I appreciate virtual coffee love.

Pic: The NZ iconic silver fern, which is a real plant, was redrawn this week by Pat Cambell in the Canberra Times as Muslims going to prayer. (Heart Broken.)

Crowd Success

Today I received the writing craft book I ordered (see my blog two weeks ago) and it was a bittersweet moment. The book looks fabulous, Writing Deep Scenes by Martha Alderson and Jordan Rosenfeld, but the bittersweet moment was the realisation that it was published by F&W Media. This week F&W Media filed for bankruptcy. Their most recognisable brand is Writers Digest which they have been publishing for nearly 100 years. They publish writing craft books, magazines, and Writers Market yearbooks. They hold popular conferences and run courses in writing. Hopefully, they can work through this.

Crowdfunding seems to be the answer to lots of publishing questions. There is crowdfunding when you directly fuel a creative project and there is crowdfunding... where it’s a little bit murkier. Writer Beware shines a spotlight on a crowdfunding option for pitching manuscripts... authors enter their MS into the crowdfunding site. If they get over 250 pledges the MS gets looked at by lower-tier agents and publishers. Over 500 and a higher tier of agents and publishers look at it, except that the agents and publishers all have open submission anyway and the publishers have red flags often against their names. Sounds Legit?

In crowdfunding of a different sort... publishers are getting together at the London Book Fair and one of the initiatives is the Book Aid charity. This year they are helping to get Mosul University Library back on its feet after they were largely destroyed by ISIS. 

Slightly digressing I was pleased to see that a local group of authors had got together and started a little venture called The Underground Bookshop. They have committed to having a stall at a local market every week. Good things happen when writers get together. 

The Digital Reader always has his digit on the pulse of what is happening in publishing. This week he reported that Amazon has set up a new ebook quality control feature in author dashboards. While Amazon is tweaking their digital store... they are pulling out of all their pop up stores.

Have you ever spent a long time hunting for a writing file you know you put somewhere in your computer? Editor Lisa Poisso has the article just for you (and me) how to name your files correctly so you don’t lose them.

How to survive rejection. Even the great writers struggled with this bane of the writer life. Lit Hub details how poet W B Yeats coped with rejection. It is a great essay. If you have been struggling lately John Kerr has a great practical piece on ways to survive the rejection blues.

Joel Friedlander has written a great post on tips for the work at home writer. This is a must-read. By the way, Joel has just launched a new book template – Gourmet. This is especially for all those people who have dreamed of writing a cookbook. 

In The Craft Section,

Six subplots that add style to your story-Writers write- Bookmark

Why lack of structure is killing your characters-Bang 2 Write- Bookmark

Beginnings and Backstory- James Scott Bell- Bookmark

Stuck in the middle- Margot Kinberg

Writing Backstory through Dialogue- Becca Puglisi

Imagery description overkill- Mary Kole

In The Marketing Section,

Spotify now has ads... John Kremer

5 great ways to get readers engaged- Penny Sansevieri- Bookmark

7 ways to use Instagram- Frances Caballo- Bookmark

Getting your rights back- Elizabeth Spann Craig- Bookmark

Set up local book links for ebooks- Alli Blog- BOOKMARK

To Finish,

I have been wrestling with carpal tunnel effects all week and it is annoying. Aside from the tingling in my left hand, I have been keeping reasonably good health. However, that is not the case for other writers. I am in admiration of those writers who have a severe chronic illness and still manage to write new words.  Kris Rusch has a short excerpt from her upcoming book – writing with chronic illness. Kris talks about celebrating achievements even if they are small. This week I have been thinking about that and a day with new words is a good day.

Maureen 
@craicer

In my monthly newsletter, I round up the best of the bookmarked craft and marketing links as well as some other bits and pieces. When you subscribe you will also get a nifty book crammed full with marketing notes. If you like the blog and want to shout me a coffee, just hit the coffee button up top.  I appreciate the virtual coffee love. Thanks.

Pic Flickr Creative Commons - James Cridland

Go Global - Resistance Is Futile

It’s March and that means the publishing industry wakes up and announces new things…

Streetlib the Italian based digital book provider has expanded again
and is now in every country in Africa and enabling authors to publish in their own languages.
They have also expanded down under, this month opening up in Samoa. (last month it was NZ and Fiji)
They are on a super roll to enable authors to publish globally in their own languages. This is a big thing
in terms of readers.
Did you know there are more people online in Nigeria than in the UK? Think of the new readers…

Bookbub decided that as Audio is the big thing they better get involved and so they have launched
a new service called Chirp with Findaway voices. Where they showcase featured audio… for very CHEEP.

Recently the Guardian wrote about the world of academic publishing. That is where the author
of the article has to pay a huge sum of money to the journal to publish their academic findings.
Then the journal goes on to charge huge sums to the university libraries for subscription fees
to read the article… after the university paid for the research in the first place.
Someone is making heaps of money.
However Cengage an academic subscription service for students have quietly been circumventing
huge textbook fees and have just enrolled their 1,000,000 subscriber.

StoryTel, an online everything entertainment subscription service, have also been expanding.
They have opened up in Poland and they write about how subscription to an all in one service works…
Instead of spreading your love between Netflix, Itunes, Amazon, Spotify…. Get it all in one handy package.
This is the future… and books, newspapers, journals, etc are write in amongst it...    

The world is available to you in 24 time zones… which is a good thing because it doesn’t matter where you are
in the world you can attend the London Book Fair Alliance of Independent Authors conference
which is 24 hours of amazing goodies for authors and all FREE.
Conference organiser Sacha Black was just interviewed on The Creative Penn on Villains and Heroes
and it is a craft must listen.

Meanwhile another week another predator… Mark Coker, CEO and founder of Smashwords, found it
an interesting experience when he was contacted out of the blue by a publishing company that wanted
to make him a household name…. Hmmm.

Last year I reported the author disquiet around the handling of Harper Lee’s estate.
Now there are problems with all the theatre productions of To Kill A Mockingbird.
How to kill a golden mockingbird….

Roz Morris has been writing her blog for ten years. That’s a lot of content. She reflects on how she got
started and what she has learned along the way.  Anne R Allen has a great post this week on
how to write web content. Something I struggle with…

In The Craft Section,

12 signs it’s time to say goodbye to your writing project- Meg Dowell

How to write humour- WritePractice-

Effortless writing- Copyblogger

Should you give non humans marginalized traits- Mythcreants- Bookmark

Unsnagging your plot- James Scott Bell- Bookmark

How to avoid repetitive sentences- Janice Hardy - Bookmark

In The Marketing Section,

10 mistakes authors make in their online presence- Anne R Allen- Bookmark

Email newsletter examples- Hubspot- Bookmark

2019 Literary Calendar- Build Book Buzz- Bookmark

8 marketing tips- Writer Unboxed

5 reasons author tribes will make you a better writer- Dr J

To Finish,

Creative resistance is a thing. It is the nagging little voice that tells you all the words you’ve just written are awful
and you may as well give up. There are some great books out there to help.
The War of Art- Steven Pressfield is a great book or you can read Chuck Wendig’s latest blog on Self Rejection

Maureen

@craicer

In my monthly newsletter, I round up the best of the bookmarked craft and marketing links as well as some other bits and pieces. When you subscribe you will also get a nifty book crammed full with marketing notes. If you like the blog and want to shout me a coffee- hit the coffee button up top. Thanks.

Pic Flickr Creative Commons- Kevin Gill. What the world would look like if the polar ice sheets melted.

Need Chocolate- STAT

This week around the publishing blogosphere seemed to be filled with stories about how to manage
creativity during stressful times. If you have been following social media I guess you
would be feeling overwhelmed at the relentless negativity on display.

So here are a few posts designed to help you put everything into perspective.

Joanna Penn has a great post on Imposter syndrome…. We all suffer from it…

Ruth Harris has an outstanding post on decision fatigue. You might not even know you are suffering
from this in your writing life until you run down Ruth’s list.

September Fawkes has a great post on taking risks as part of the creative process.
No this doesn’t mean dodging traffic… but how often are you talked out of doing something by the
voices in your head telling you not to take the risk…

Kris Rusch puts the writing life into perspective as she examines priorities.
What is your number one priority… hint it shouldn’t be your writing.

Last week I mentioned the big scandal that has the hashtag #copypastecris  
Mixed up in that mess were Ghostwriters. There are legitimate Ghostwriters out there and it is a writing job.
Shiloh Walker talks about how writers choose to be ghostwriters.

Have you thought about the emotional journey that you take when you are writing your book?
I didn’t until I read this interesting post on the emotional journey of writing fantasy by Rachel Hartman.  

Every year/book project I challenge myself to do a deep dive into an aspect of the writing craft.
This year it is scene construction. I was fascinated to read this great post (several times)
on crafting a scene by Suzanne Lakin (C S Lakin)
This is a BOOKMARK post and I’ve ordered Martha’s book as well.

In The Craft Section,

Beginning from the middle- Writer’s Digest- Bookmark

Test your story concept- Scott Myers

Writing Action- Mythic Scribes - Bookmark

Don’t let those ideas get away

Story midpoint- using the heroes emotions to transform- Angela Ackerman - Bookmark

Does your novel have too many characters- Janice Hardy

What Things are your characters hiding- K M Weiland- Bookmark

In The Marketing Section,

Smashwords introduces Global Coupons!- Bookmark

Author Super Powers with Street Teams - Angela Ackerman- Bookmark

Three things to consider designing book covers

9 tips to help you build a great website

How to win at Book Marketing- Charli Mills

To Finish,

Sometimes all you want to do is get away from the world and retreat to a happy place
where it is just you and your writing project. A writing retreat…
If you find yourself day- dreaming about writing cruises or holidays… and you know it will never happen…
STOP.
This post is for you! How to plan the DIY Writing Retreat.   (Don’t forget to take chocolate.)

Maureen
@craicer

In my monthly newsletter, coming soon, I round up the best of the bookmarked craft and marketing links as well as some other bits and pieces. When you subscribe you will also get a nifty book crammed full with marketing notes. If you like the blog and want to shout me a coffee- hit the coffee button up top. Thanks.

Pic: Flickr Creative Commons- Andrew Writer