On The Journey

It must be the season for figuring out how to get people reading again. Here in NZ our Book Council published a report that said Kiwi’s weren’t reading their own fiction. Why aren’t they? Everybody has opinions. Maybe it’s because they can’t find the books in bookstores.

Hugh Howey talks about the dismal earning reports of B&N and then goes into detail about how Indie bookstores are changing the face of bookselling. This is a fantastic read and for extra reading credit check out what Hugh would do if he owned a bookstore... highly likely in the future.

So what are Bookstores selling? The Guardian wrote about The Secret DNA behind Bestsellers and talked with the writers of an algorithm that attempted to find out. They have published their findings in a ... Book.

To make the bestseller... you need word of mouth... marketing... advertising budget.. etcetc or you can just get some pods. Jane Friedman has a fascinating guest post about street teams/ mini marketing brigades of fans

What about the contracts of all those people helping you to get published. Kris Rusch winds up her deal breakers series with a comprehensive list of who and how to deal with foreign rights requests.

And that brings us right to the beginning.... The writing.

Rebecca Solnit has Ten Tips On How To Be  A Writer. They are all good.

In The Craft Section,

Is your tone in tune with your novel- Roz Morris

Easy tip for developing story ideas- Janice Hardy

Giving your characters backstory- K M Weiland Bookmark

Inciting incidents – Stephen Pressfield- Bookmark

How to self edit- Now Novel-Bookmark

The pantzer outlining method – Molly Greene- Bookmark

Sharing your protagonists deepest feeling- Angela Ackerman

Shelters for homeless characters- Go Teen Writer

Sara Letourneau has a great series on character evolution

In the Marketing Section,

Developing your online relationship plan- Romance Times

Self publishing vs Traditional- Joanna Penn- Bookmark

4 steps to selling books on Social Media – Anne R Allen

Writing The End is only the start- Alana Kirk

Do writers need a FB page- Kirsten Lamb- Bookmark

How much does a book cost – Digital Book World

Social Media Care- Frances Caballo- Bookmark

To Finish,

While we are figuring out how to get our book out there... it’s a fact of a writers life that they will be spending time alone trying to figure stuff out. Daphne Grey Grant has a great post on how to work alone. Self care tips for the stressed writer. I’m off to find a warm drink... chocolate...

Maureen

@craicer

Pic : Flickr/Creative Commons /Jogendra Joshi

Get a selection of the months best links and other thoughts on the writing journey when you subscribe to my monthly newsletter.

Being Mad Helps

This week has been financial reporting week for some of the big publishers. Oh the tangled web of eBooks and Print Books. Is one cannibalizing the other? Pundits pored over the statistics. The Financial Review looked at the state of the publishing industry.

Mike Shatzkin has a brilliant post on the state of play with publishers still sticking to their plan of high eBook prices. Mike shows why he thinks this is a short sighted idea. The comments on this article were fast and fascinating with people discussing buying habits. Do you wait for a sale or buy an $11.99 eBook?

Gladdening the heart of Publishing warriors everywhere was the nice little snapshot of Author Earnings ISBN acquisitions. They are in decline. So was this why PRH cut them loose?

How often do you write what you want to write? How often does your editor get cold feet or ask you to tone it down. Or you get cold feet and tone it down first. This week K.C Alexander took over Chuck’s blog to talk about how she was tired of having her characters toned down, as not fitting a perceived feminine model... and things were about to change. This is an excellent post on courage and truth to your writing.

Kris Kathryn Rusch has been putting together an anthology of the early women writers in SFF. She explains how she came to be involved in the project. It all stemmed from being told that women were discriminated against in Science Fiction. Women of a certain age are ignored and their work disappears... so what do you do. You get MAD and then you become a force...

Kris was about to post the last article in her Dealbreakers series when she heard about the demand by Hachette for the advance back from Seth Grahame-Smith over the Pride and Prejudice and Zombies series. It’s big money and the contract is murky. This is a must read post as Kris explains. The contract is available to read and it is scary. The author was not the most important party in this contract. They weren’t even second...

In The Craft Section,

How to create tension in your writing- Now Novel- Bookmark

Writing great loglines

Opening your story- What you need to know- Janice Hardy- Bookmark

Using contractions in dialogue- K M Weiland- Bookmark

How to create strong character arcs- Sean Platt and Jonny B Truant- Bookmark

Avoiding book publishing blunders – The Book Designer- A great all round article!

Writing setting descriptions – James Scott Bell – Bookmark

A great collection of articles on Revision- Kidlit411

In The Marketing Section,

How are you connecting with your customers?

Book Marketing – The Good The Bad and The Ugly

10 tips to get book reviews- Anne R Allen- Bookmark

How authors can work together to promote- Janice Hardy- Bookmark

Don’t make these website mistakes

101 Book Marketing ideas

7 ways Non Fiction authors can be newsworthy- Nina Amir

How to make a fascinating Amazon Book Listing

How to make successful use of your author platform- Rachel Thompson - Bookmark

To Finish,

LitHub is an interesting website that publishes long form interviews and articles. Today they published an article on Nan Talese, an editor with her own imprint at Knopf Doubleday. It is a fascinating look through her life in publishing from editing Hemingway to working with Simon Tolkein.  

You have to be a little bit mad and passionate to write and work in publishing.

Maureen

@craicer

Pic: Boris Karloff in Frankenstein (1931)

Get a selection of the months best links and other mad thoughts when you subscribe to my monthly newsletter.