Thursday, July 9, 2015

Hailstorm


I’m sitting in a warm house listening to classic jazz and being completely distracted by the hail hitting the windows. I am supposed to be on a writing retreat. That’s where you run away to a distraction free zone and wrestle with your manuscript. As I write this Stormy Weather is playing on the stereo… and out the window. Honestly you would think I was writing fiction.

It has been a little bit stormy out in the publishing blogosphere this week.

There have been storms of internet bad behaviour over at Goodreads… which follows the Twitter storm over E L James last week.
Anne R Allen has a great blog piece where she talks about the rise of the bullying culture among readers, authors and reviewers and what we can do about it. She quotes Anne Rice, who this week declared she ‘was fed up with censorship by troll.’

The Alliance of Independent Authors is promoting their ethical author manifesto and it has a clause about not engaging in troll behaviour along with other good acts of authorship.

Writer Beware has an interesting post on Amazon reviews. Amazon has been tightening up the reviews it posts because of sock puppetry and one star bullying behaviour but they may have gone too far in the zealousness. It all hinges on their data mining… and boy do they know a lot about you.

(Sorry just had to take a break to dance around to Louis Armstrong’s Aint Misbehaving.)  

Mike Shatzkin takes a pot shot at the WSJ and the Guardian. This week they will both be publishing the first chapter from Harper Lee’s new book, Go Set A Watchman. Aside from the 1950’s era of journalism involved, Mike thinks they and Lee’s publishers have completely missed the point in getting readers for this book.

Nathan Hull of The Bookseller is lamenting the way the rest of the world is looking to the US subscription model woes as a reason not to go the subscription way. Subscriptions can work for authors and publishers if they realise that Europe is not the US which is still operating on a paper and print mentality.

Jane Friedman  always has interesting things to say. Here she looks at the P and L sheet publishers have to fill in before they decide to publish. Authors should also be aware of the Profit and Loss Sheet and how it impacts them.

In the Craft Section,







In the Marketing Section,
If you are thinking about audiobooks in your writing future check out this interview by Joanna Penn with Jeffrey Kafer.

If you are interested in the latest cover designs, Shelftalker has rounded up this year’s trends in Y A. Hands are in…

For the design types… a discussion on the latest typography offerings for digital books.

Molly Greene on the 99c ebook sale.

How authors can use Mailchimp and the best ways to use Goodreads.

When your cover gets copied – what you can do about it. (Writers helping Writers)

Website of the Week.
Bob Mayer always has interesting things to say. This week he has a great post on outlining your novel. And for those people thinking about going to a conference in the near future here is his slideshow on how to get the most out of a conference.

To Finish,

Wimbledon is on this week. They are sweltering in the heat. Publishing Perspectives has an entertaining look at what it might be like if publishing was like Wimbledon.  

Back to wrestling with the manuscript...
Maureen
@craicer

Thursday, July 2, 2015

Flagging Down Karma




This week the power of group/mob behaviour was in full view around the blogosphere.
And it wasn’t pretty!

E L James had a torrid time on an ‘Ask E L James’ Twitter chat that her PR people should never have enabled. Mob behaviour was in evidence when she was publically vilified at a live event. You can hate the stories... just don’t read them, but don’t attack the author. They are a human being. Porter reports on the fallout and how Chuck Wendig coped with it.
For the anonymous haters who hide behind computer screens and avatars to say hate speech- there will be KARMA.

This week Apple’s appeal against their sentence of collusion with the big publishers got thrown out. (See Karma...) Fortune magazine details just our cozy the deals Apple and the publishers made. It is not pretty reading.

Scribd, the ebook subscription company, has come up against the voracious romance reader and decided that limiting their subscription is the way to go. There are howls of protest from readers who are instantly penalised for reading too much and from writers who find their books have just disappeared. The Bookseller looks at the issue and what might be a solution.

Writers trying to get their head around the new Amazon subscription service pay per page read would do well to check out Susan Kaye Quinn’s comparison breakdown. Susan’s straight forward analysis clearly shows the writer just what a pay per page means as opposed to a borrow. Math wins and so do some writers.

Fake online reviews are still happening and some authors are being burned by negative review campaigns. Amazon is rolling out some new algorithms to clean this up. Porter talks about what can be done, should be done, is being done about sock puppetry.

In the Craft Section,

The writers skill- Stephen Pressfield

Truth and Fiction- Girl Cliques- Becca Puglisi (Bookmark)

In the Marketing Section,

Book marketing checklist –Tim Grahl (Comprehensive)

Book marketing plans – (Bookmark)

Book Market results- Nicholas Rossis (Fascinating! Bookmark)

Website of the Week
Grammar – You can’t ignore it. There are some great websites out there to help you write more better (spot the deliberate grammar mangling.) Check out the Grammarly blog for nifty tips and great articles.

To Finish,
Jane Friedman has an interview with Nathan Bransford on her blog. Nathan has been it all... an agent, a writer, a reviewer.... He is in a unique position to comment on today’s publishing industry.

maureen
@craicer


Pic: From Grammarly blog on writing retreats.
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