Content Collaboration

I’ve been thinking about content lately. 

Content is the new word for story. Container is the new word for form that the story comes in. It could be digital or print or images or audio or interactive game… 

A creative project I’m involved in is creating a found artifact which takes the form of a journal. This is to be part of a larger art project looking at different ways artists and writers collaborate together. I seem to be coming across content collaboration everywhere.

Porter Anderson reports on an opening keynote speaker at the recent Publishers Forum held in Berlin. Author Kathrin Passig gently told the publishers that they were using outmoded technology when they worked with authors. Had they ever heard of collaboration?

Joe Wikert has been thinking about content too. Specifically how he thinks publishers could improve the e-book sample and be better at converting samplers into buyers by working with authors.

Joanna Campbell Slan talks about serialising a novel on her website and what she has learned. Is this controlling your content or letting it go? I know of other authors who do this in other canny ways.  (If you can’t wait for the next installment you can go buy the whole book...)

The latest Author Earnings snapshot is out. You may have heard that e-book sales are declining. Author Earnings gurus Hugh and Data Guy have discovered that this is happening only to Trad publishers who raised their prices after negotiating new deals with Amazon. Check out the Author Earnings website for other interesting news from the 6th snapshot.

Joel Friedlander has an interesting guest post up. Short is the new black- your shrinking reader attention span. This is spinning your content in another way.

Mandy Hager recently had to give a lecture on Dystopian Fiction so she posted it on her blog. What does an author have to think about when constructing a dystopian world.

With the suspension of NZ Book Month... A group of writers have taken to Twitter to promote NZ Books. #NZBookMonthMay A lot of us are posting a NZ book a day so check in for your next great read.

Tinderbox 2015 has a website. We are getting ready to post delicious tidbits about the conference.

In the Craft Section,

Is your prologue destroying your subtext? K M Weiland

7 secrets of highly persistent writers

2 great posts from the Emotion Thesaurus team. Moving Beyond 

the Face to Show Emotion and Key elements to help you evolve as 

a writer.

Screenwriting tricks has a story elements checklist.

Tips for novelising true events.

Why you should put your book on Wattpad (this is a quick intro to Wattpad.)

In the Marketing Section,

Making a living from your writing – Joanna Penn (Bookmark)

7 email marketing secrets for Fiction Authors

Spine out - Design tips for your Book Spine.

Good Font choices for books (Bookmark)

Preparing your Author Business for Failure.

Kameron Hurley (popular sci fi author) has posted an in depth article on why Patreon is better than Kickstarter for writers. If you are interested in crowd funding this is a must read!

Helen Sedwick has crunched the numbers on the cost of Author copies 

Website of the Week

Last week I linked to Dave Gaughran talking about Author Solutions. Indie Publishing Magazine has a link to the class action depositions (testimony from the other side) and what I read had my eyebrows achieving liftoff. I am honestly amazed that Random Penguin would be associated with this outfit.

SFWA, who sponsor Author Beware, have a link to the list of DISREPUTABLE publishers out there.

To Finish,

Brian Pickings always has interesting long form articles. This week they look at Delacroix’s journal notes about the need for writing in solitude. If you had to go away to collaborate on content, how about going to a castle which is a dedicated library and hotel...

maureen

Pic from Flickr/ Creative Commons- Butch Delisay

Disruptors

Comparing yourself to others can suck joy out of creating. Find your own pace, savor the journey. pic.twitter.com/Xvxoq9autp
— Debbie Ridpath Ohi (@inkyelbows) April 29, 2015

Digesting the London Book Fair and Indie ReCon generally takes a good month. So much information about writing and publishing  in big bites means you can quickly get full of rich information. Sometimes that means putting nice links aside to digest later.

Createspace has a quick overview on what were some good takeaways from London Book Fair and Young Adult author, SK Holder also has a list of great info learned at the Author HQ Hub. (This is a new venture for London, actually encouraging Authors to the Fair.)

Indie ReCon has posted the panel video How Self Publishing Is Changing Traditional Publishing, held on the last day of their conference. This is a fascinating look at the industry in the middle of change. Well worth grabbing a coffee and taking time to watch.

Publishing Perspectives has a model they suggest publishers should be looking at. Louis CK.

But he’s a comedian I hear you say. Yes but he has taken control of his own content and is using it in new ways. Now if Publishing Perspectives is urging publishers to look at this model...what about writers?

This leads in to the wonderful Roz Morris and some very important words of wisdom for the Author publishing in 2015. (BOOKMARK)

Dario Cirello opens a little can of wriggly things when he did a guest post about crowd funding and patronage. Do you agree or disagree with using crowd funding for your writing project or are you skeptical? The conversation is in the comments so make sure you read them.

Mike Shatzkin takes a look at the next Amazon contract negotiation with the last of the big 5 publishers. It will be the meeting of the behemoths of publishing. Who will blink first? How will it change the industry as a whole? A lot of jobs will be on the line when RandomPenguin and Amazon sit down to parley.

In breaking news, Booktrack (that little Kiwi startup from a few years ago) has some nice big news for authors. (Yes, someone wants to pay us.)

In the Craft Section,

Janice Hardy talks about creating depth with mini arcs. (great post)

Elizabeth Spann Craig’s handy checklist - Is your book ready for publishing.

Bob Mayer has a no holds barred post on traits you must cultivate to be a successful writer.

Chuck Wendig also has THE post on stupid writer tricks. (BOOKMARK)

Jody Hedlund has a great post on using your setting effectively. (BOOKMARK)

5 mistakes to avoid with personal pronouns.

Here is a little challenge for you. Describe your current MS in 10 syllables. Make it a DEKAAZ poem. Circus Mystery: Clowning around with codes. (Yes I cheated. It’s all in the pronunciation.)

In the Marketing Section,

Molly Greene has 5 Self Publishing lessons (and a great comment stream.)

Publishers Weekly has the Google Ads 101 guide.

Joanna Penn has a huge post on why she has just changed book titles and covers. (BOOKMARK)

Creative Indie has 7 Design Tips for Book Covers.

The Book Designer has 7 tips for effective Metadata (BOOKMARK)

Tim Grahl has THE Book Marketing Check List.

Social Media Dashboards for Authors.

Marketing tips using Pinterest.

3 secrets to school visit success.

How to partner with your local bookstore- Do you know what it is like on the other side of the counter. (Interesting Read)

Website Of The Week

David Gaughran, besides being a digital publishing guru, has made it his mission to educate writers about the horrible traps out there for newbie writers. Especially those publishing packaging companies that promise you everything... just sign over your first born child. His article, this week, on the many faces of Author Solutions makes sobering reading and is a must read. (Even if you know about them, you will still be surprised at how far their tentacles spread in the publishing world.)

To Finish,

We all love a good infographic and Jane Friedman has put together  a great one on the various ways we can publish now.

After 100 years of business as usual we are now living in a constant state of disruption in the publishing landscape. We must be making up for lost time.

maureen
@craicer

Standing Up for Conferences

This week I’m still digesting the mega online Indie publishing conference Indie ReCon. I still haven’t caught up with all of the online content, but I’m happy it will stay there for a while. There is so much juicy information there. A big cheer to the behind the scenes team for putting it all together. More than 25,000 people dropped into Indie ReCon last year. I would say that was surpassed this year, hugely!

Porter Anderson, spent some time at the London Book Fair and dropped into The Indie ReCon meet-up at Foyles in London.

Two interesting developments have caught the eye of The Passive Guy this week. The rise of digital reading in China, over 50% of adults are reading online.

And a new bookselling venture in Florida. This one caught my attention as it seems to be taking the showroom bookstore model and tweaking it for Indie Authors. There are lots of comments about how successful this model might be.

I am seeing more Indie authors grouping together to share resources and publish collectively. I’ve been saying this is the way to go for years - this  bookstore selling model seems to take it all a step further.

Authors rarely talk about the hazards of their profession but with J K Rowling tweeting this morning about writers back... (too long sitting in one position,) attention is back on stand-up writing desks. Michael Hyatt blogged about his desk this week and then Nicola Morgan decided to share how she improved her health dramatically in the last month. I’m eyeing up my desk... if I can get to it. It seems to be the repository of the families clutter.

Author websites have been the focus of Joanna Penn’s blog this week. This is an ultra comprehensive post on the subject. You will find yourself coming back again to it. Don’t get overwhelmed as she says... small tweaks.

Joanna has also interviewed Tim Grahl about book titles, productivity, marketing and other stuff.  It’s a wide ranging interview and full of tips.

Last week I linked to Delilah Dawson’s plea about Self Promotion and Social Media. This week staying with this topic Rachel Thompson gives some tips to deal with this stress and not become a spam monster.

In the Craft Section,

Tips for developing Story Ideas

Roz Morris on tips for writing when time is scarce (which also has a link to her indie Recon video)

All about Pacing. This is a great post on that tricky craft subject.

Improving your character action beats- great post from K M Weiland

Editing – craft tips

Picking the right editor for each stage of writing.

Real rules for writing magic

The ultimate guide to what to do about the boring bitsbetween scenes. Bookmark

In the Marketing Section,

Using Pinterest to connect with your cover designer

Book design tip- include reviews

Author Newsletters- Bookmark this

7 reasons people unsubscribe from email lists...(Great read)

How to cross promote your books in back matter

Website of the Week

Dropping back into The Book Designer for a guest post on time saving tools for writers

To Finish,

This is one writer’s experience of attending Indie ReCon. I would agree with her. It is always good to meet up with other authors somewhere just to reassure yourself that you are not alone in this writing gig. Although Indie ReCon was amazing, checking in face to face at an author event is also important. We can spend too much time sitting in front of a screen. Tinderbox 2015 is gathering steam... the timetable is becoming a juggernaut with lots more cool stuff being added. (We’ve got to stop tweaking it!)

I’m off to re-jig the Tinderbox2015 timetable, again, and play around with my writing desk.

Maureen

@craicer

Pic is from a review of Standing Desks… this one goes up and down at the push of a button.

Having Words!

Seven years ago I published my first blog post. It was a couple of paragraphs. I was learning how to get to grips with blogging technology. I didn’t know anything. (How do you do a hyperlink?) 

Each week I would educate myself a little more about the publishing industry and what was happening overseas. 

Things really changed for me a year later when I was part of a team putting together the first big National Conference of Children’s Writers and Illustrators. I discovered that some of our speakers (industry professionals) didn’t know what was happening overseas and how it might impact us here in NZ. (I was shocked to find I knew more than they did.) 

I increased the amount of publishing news and began to comment on a new type of publishing called e-books. Since then the publishing world has changed drastically. DBW has an opinion piece, looking back on a decade of change.

I’m heading up the planning team for the fourth National Conference (Oct 2-5). From seven legacy publishers of children’s books represented in the first conference only two remain.  The rise of small press and author publishers in NZ has become a real force because of necessity.

Right Now The Indie ReCon Conference Is On. (Free online. 3 days of awesome info.) The speakers are excellent. (A total dream team for a conference planner.) I’m heartened that a lot of the topics being touched upon will also be themes of focus at Tinderbox2015.

Jane Friedman  (a speaker at Indie ReCon) has posted a great conversation with two agents on Self Publishing children’s books. Don’t forget to read the comments.)

In other conference news WorldCon, which awards the Hugo’s each year, is on. And the news is not good. A cabal have block voted and are holding the Hugo’s to ransom. The Hugo’s are Sci Fi  fans biggest awards. It is not pretty. A Grand Master speaks out about the damage to the genre with these tactics. (breaking news; two authors have withdrawn their books from the awards.)

Jo Castle Millar wrote an interesting piece on Jon Ronson’s book, So You Have Been Publically Shamed. Jon’s book ARC went out for comment and two lines were taken out of context. The most dangerous job in the world… having an opinion.

The full Author Say survey results are out. They make interesting reading.  Authors are nodding their heads saying yep... all true. Everyone is interested in the publishers reaction. It is pretty damning. Will we finally see a change in how they treat authors?(Not holding my breath.)

Delilah Dawson, has a new book out (HIT) and I’m seeing the amazing cover everywhere. She also has an interesting blog post which has struck a chord with authors. Social Media and promotion.  Publishers see it as an author necessity. Engage with your public. But what is good engagement and what about if you just don’t want to.  

In the Craft Section,

James Scott Bell on Writing Smarter

Using Scrivener to outline novels

Editing behind the scenes – The Book Designer

Do you have a compelling novel concept- Jane Friedman

Viewpoint changes and what to do about it

Fleshing out your characters- Janice Hardy

11 Writers share their writing inspiration.

In the Marketing Section,

3 ways to use Pinterest to promote your book.- Jill Bennet

Visual ideas for Social Engagement.

6 tips for effective online book promotion.- Molly Greene

How to take an Author Photo.

Indie Authors- Are you making these mistakes in your print book.- Roz Morris

Formatting your Ebook.

Promoting your book on Facebook. –Romance University

Website of the Week

Indie ReCon.org 

Get thee to a quiet room and soak up the awesomeness! ( It’s free and mostly recorded so even tho we are in the Southern Hemisphere we can still attend!) Absolutely Bookmark!

To Finish,

If anything demonstrates how much this industry we are in has changed it is this blog post, written for The Bookseller today on the London Book Fair (on now.) For the newbies reading this... All the advice at the bottom is essential!

For the old hands... an author at a book fair? Yes, Times Have Changed!

 Maureen

@craicer

Pic Flickr /Creative Commons – Stephan Mosel

The Visibility Fog

As I write this I am sitting in a car looking out on Cook Strait. On a good day you can see the South Island. Today I just see an empty expanse of white coming down on the rolling sea about 500 meters away. Visibility limited.

Somewhere out in the white are big inter–island ferries coming through the strait, along with smaller fishing boats and huge cargo ships. Modern boats have radar so there won’t be collisions.

Book visibility seems to be a theme running through my roundup today. Somewhere in the white noise of Amazon your book is floundering around. How can you make the book visible so it has less chance of sinking without a trace.

Book Radar

Your Cover. 

The Book Designer (AKA Joel Friedlander) has a good post on what a cover should have. Alan Rinzler also has talked to one of the best cover artists in the business about what is iconic and important.

Metadata. 

This is how your book is described on any digital platform. Penny Sansevieri describes in detail how to do this for Amazon. You will learn things about search that will blow your mind.

Getting Endorsements and Reviews.

All book marketing comes down to word of mouth in the end. Either the book is being hand sold in the bookstore, Indie bookstores do this amazingly well, or you found a great book because someone told you about it.

Writer platform goes into fine detail about how to target and get reviews. Training Authors has an interesting post on getting endorsements. These are cover pull quotes.

Joanna Penn talks about little tweaks that increase your email subscriber list which increases your reader reach and your visibility.

Small publishers are just as keen on visibility. BAP books is shaking things up with a pay what you want publishing model for a poetry book. They have had great success. It is daring... innovative... would it work for any book? Not sure... but I’m talking about it on my blog at the bottom of the Southern Hemisphere so it’s definitely visible.

In The Craft Section,

Writing with all five senses.

Writing to gaming music. (This is really interesting.)

Deepen your conflict by forcing your hero to embrace the grey of morality - Angela Ackerman

How do you know if your concept is right? Larry Brooks with two video tutorials on nailing your concept. (Bookmark)

How to use lyrics without paying a fortune.

In The Marketing Section,

10 questions to ask when researching your competition.

Plan your marketing with the power of story.

How to get your readers to do the marketing for you.

The evolution of the author website.

Book Marketing truths few experts will admit.

Marketing your series- Lindsay Buroker (bookmark)

Website of the Week

Actually it is a roundup of websites… on self publishing some of which will be familiar. But you may find a new one to try out.

To Finish,

Ryan Holiday has an interesting article on Growth Hacking for Creatives... This is thinking outside the box for visibility.

Maureen

@craicer

Pic: Cook Strait... what you see on a good day.

Deja Vu.

This morning the word went out HarperCollins is the next big publisher to fight with Amazon. 

So will 2015 have the flavour of 2014 with the virtual book lockouts, impassioned pleas for support and authors being left the worse for wear in the battle of the publishing behemoths? One of the sobering takeouts for anyone watching is that it is not the publishers bank accounts that get hammered. It is the authors and their careers. For authors to have a book not visible online hurts sales... which means their next book becomes a harder sell, (despite what the publisher might say to the contrary.) This hurts their future earnings/career.

In the children’s publishing world Bologna is the rally cry. The biggest children’s book rights fair in the world and the news is all gelato and where the agents missing bathrooms are on Twitter.  Despite Bathroomgate, everyone is upbeat. The world wants middle grade. Yay. Even middle grade space! I have a drawer full of manuscripts...

Another class action suit has been registered against Author Solutions, which is OWNED by Penguin Random House. And still there is a deafening silence by publishing journalists to expose this company. Could it be that every big publisher has their fingers in this pie...

For the last three years I have been noticing the claim that Book Apps are just around the corner... not the next corner, the one after that. Here it gets stated again in several places this week. (Must be the Bologna effect.) If only we had partnerships... author/ illustrator/ app designer. Maybe the time has come.

The time has come to move on for self publishers says Porter Anderson. In his usual thought provoking way Porter looks at all the arguments around self publishing and how the mindset holds back the author. 

Inspirational as ever, Hugh Howey also checks in with his take on being a SP chump.  

Elizabeth Spann Craig finds out her traditionally published series is at an end. When you know it is time to move on... whole new publishing life coming right up. Take some time to read the comments on these articles. There is lots of extra insight into how these decisions get made.

A couple of years ago... I talked in my blog about an interesting marketing concept; Downloadable e-books on those plastic gift cards as a point of sale display, just right for the impulse purchase at the bookstore counter.  There were several companies looking into producing nifty stands of these for publishers. Another company has joined in making this a marketing reality but with short run cards that will appeal to authors.  

In the Craft Section, (all of these are bookmark worthy)

7 habits of highly successful writers

6 monstrous ways to turn a so so story into a great one

Your books inciting incident may not be what you think it is

4 tricks to give your hero an upgrade

7 rules of picking character names

7 qualities of high concept stories

How to trademark your writing style.

In the Marketing Section, (Every one of these a book mark post)

Sam Messingham has the article on using Twitter effectively.

Marketing 101- Creating a strategy –Jami Gold

Things all author websites need to have.

Crowdfunded publishing- Jane Friedman

Author and book marketing starts with you –Joel Friedlander

Website of the Week

Not really a website more like a phenomenon!

The Creative Penn or Joanna Penn has made such an impact on sharing her journey in real time as she negotiates new publishing landscapes that it is hard to imagine the blogosphere without her. Her website is packed full of information. She has a popular podcast and her books are best sellers.

Bibliocrunch caught up with her to ask the five important questions  about her publishing journey. And if you check out her latest podcast interview she is talking with an audio marketing expert. It is, as usual, packed full of information and as Joanna acknowledges this is a must for writers to look at with so many car makers enabling in-car podcast radio as their latest feature. 

Bet you didn’t see that coming.

To Finish,

Getting books in libraries is a big thing for Authors. It means visibility, more people reading your work and sales down the track. Now authors are being encouraged to make their Indie e-books available to libraries. Check out the nifty infographic.

Maureen

@craicer

Pic from Flickr Creative Commons/ Robert Couse Baker

Messy Details

Twitter is always interesting for the pithy quote on a current news situation.

Clarkson and One Direction: two devastating blows to publishing in the same day
— Philip Jones (@philipdsjones) March 25, 2015

This Tweet comes from the Editor of the UK based Bookseller magazine. On one hand it acknowledges the celebrity nature of publishing current trends, (this enables those other books to be published.) On the other it shows when events/people get messy in public, sales of books plummet.

In other messy publishing news, my Twitter feed is filling with comments about the new censorship app, Cleanreader, which you may download to your reader of choice and run those pesky books through. It will take out and replace all those horrible naughty words that authors unwisely decided to use in their stories.

Joanne Harris (Chocolat) takes issue with the extreme nature of the ‘clean’ being perpetrated and the complete lack of understanding by the App developers of the authors position. (You can imagine Chucks Wendig’s reaction.)

Equally messy is the position of a large Book Festival who have trade space being used by a predator concierge company owned by Penguin Random House. The festival report that they can’t get out of it because then PRH may withdraw their support. It is not a new position in publishing as Dave Gaughran points out.

Publishing is always looking for what the next big trend is, so one eye is always being kept on the tech sector. This week, Joanna Penn gave a guest article on Virtual Reality becoming the next big thing in publishing. Heady stuff. 
As I was trying to imagine it, up popped these two articles. Picture Book Apps and the vanishing author... with some timely comment and then Publishers Weekly highlighted what Mary Hoffman (author of Stravaganza series) is doing with a multiplatform VR App for kids. Definitely a trend to watch.

Jane Friedman has a guest post from an author who has partnered with a small press. He extols the virtues of working this way.

Bob Mayer looks at the basics for being a successful author now.

Mike Shatzkin has some starter thoughts for publishers to be thinking about on their author websites. (Authors might be thinking somewhat differently tho.)

In the Craft Section,

Smart tactics for describing a character in 1st person POV.

What does your character want? (Great post)

A first chapter checklist

Using growth hacking to write faster.

Building your own world.

Character Talents and Skills (from the Angela and Becca’s new Thesaurus)

The five best online tools for outlining your novel.

How to get that book written this year.

Critique Etiquette - (Bookmark)

In The Marketing Section,

Two interesting articles from the Book Designer blog - The ultimate guide to Twitter for writers and Quick Book Marketing tips.

In the spoken word realm, Audible wants writers to work exclusively for them... think radio serial style.

Podcasting and Indie Writers.

Hot book marketing tips for Indies.

Jane Friedman has distilled her Social Media philosophy and it makes for interesting reading. Are you being genuine in your outreach?

Website of the Week

I enjoy dropping into Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s blog. She writes with passion about the need for authors to keep educating themselves in the industry. This week she highlights how your attitude to writing and publishing can see you have a short career or a long one.

To Finish,

If you are on Twitter you will sometimes see conference takeaways being tweeted. This week the Pubsense conference looked at publishing in the future. The #pubsense15 Twitter stream was full of good comments.

Bookbaby decided to put up a nifty video using Neil Gaiman’swriting advice... Lets take it right back to the reason we write in the first place.

Maureen
@craicer

Living Virtually

Last week I had to come to terms with the fact that writers are mortal, that the world you loved to visit in a new book by a favourite author would be forever frozen. There would be no more adventures in Discworld. I enjoy Fantasy and SciFi or as they are increasingly being called SPECulative FICtion.* When you have read every children’s book in your rural town library by the time you are 11 then the only thing left is adult books (boring) or wild imaginary stories set in far away places. I didn’t come to Discworld until my 30’s when I discovered he wrote Satire... and I was hooked. So I thank Sir Terry Pratchett for the immense pleasure and laugh out loud funny lines and his headology – the gentle wry take on the human condition. The Guardian has a wonderful tribute article on Terry’s legacy and there is a nice bit of news about the last Discworld book.

If writer’s for adults know that it is challenging to independently publish a book then children’s writers know the hoops that you jump through are ten times more challenging. We are always on the lookout to find outliers who have taken the plunge to find out what works and what doesn’t. Jane Friedman has an article that looks like the definitive 101 guide to self publishing achildren’s book.

Jane is also conducting the Author Say survey and Phillip Jones of The Bookseller takes a close look at the midway results on what authors are saying about traditional /indie support and attitudes. It is a great snapshot with some surprising twists.

Some projects will fit better in different forms of publishing. Janice Hardy examines the Pro’s and Con’s of Traditional vs Indie for a good project fit.

This week there was a rumpus on Twitter responding to an essay challenging people to read books by everybody other than straight white males for a year.

The trolls were out ready to march on Koom Valley again when Neil Gaiman pointed out the author had a valid point.

The enemy isn’t men, or women, it’s bloody stupid people and nobody has the right to be stupid. Monstrous Regiment - Terry Pratchett

In the Craft Section,

Angela Ackerman has two posts that are her usual nuggets of excellence, tips when writing multiple POV’s in your novel and using the excellent Emotion Thesaurus to help you find mirror midpoints in the middle of your novel.

3 questions to ask when you start cutting your manuscript.

The role of desire in your plot... You had better be having some or the reader will disengage. (bookmark)

One important thing writers forget to do...

Two great posts from the Killzone blog - Crafting subplots and How to write a Young Adult novel.

K M Weiland has wowed everybody again with a story structure database... Drop in and check out all the books and movies she has analysed for structure. You will learn so much. (bookmark)

It’s still magic even if you know how it’s done. A Hat Full of Sky- Terry Pratchett

In the Marketing Section,

How to build a website in one hour.

How to translate your book.

How to polish your writer brand.

How to use an email list.

8 ways writers can be more reader friendly.

Jane Friedman interviews a group of literary authors about how they put a box set together of their self published work.

There is a new kid on the block in terms of marketing and it looks really interesting. Thunderclap. If you harnessed all those people who would come to your book launch from all around the world in one place at one time...

Always be wary of any helpful item that weighs less than its operating manual.  Jingo - Terry Pratchett

Website of the Week

Anne R Allen has a great blog of tips and advice. Here she has the definitive guide for writers on how NOT to sell books. Spend some time on her blog trawling around she has lots of great stuff.

Sometimes it's better to light a flamethrower than to curse the darkness. Men At Arms - Terry Pratchett

To Finish,

Our National Conference committee is tying down some great stuff for conference and around conference... yes we are going to make you work... but it will be amazing... promise.

In the mean time you can virtually attend Indie ReCon which is going to be bigger than before. The Indie Recon conference is a free online conference that is just packed full of awesomeness. This years program had me seriously thinking about running away from home to a motel for 3 days by myself so I could attend virtually every one of the sessions. (If the motel was in London I could also join the meet up day.) I am also pleased to find how many themes in Indie Recon are similar to what we have planned for Tinderbox in October.  We will be meeting in real time, (with wine) and having a great collaborative working time.

*Stories of imagination tend to upset those without one. - Terry Pratchett

Maureen

@craicer

PIC The Master Storyteller who will live on virtually… and isn't that just the best tribute….R.I.P.