Looking After Number One

This week I have been reflecting on the way the Amazon rankings of Indie authored books have become a de facto filtered slush pile for big Traditional publishers. This week Penguin Random House offered a 7 figure deal to that rabbit book which stormed up the Amazon charts last week to number one.

Porter Anderson has an interesting article on crowd sourcing publishing platform Pubslush and publisher Colbourne Communications joining forces. Porter looks at these new models of publishing. This is high end collaboration, an interesting way forward in the modern publishing world.

Dean Wesley Smith has some pointed comments on the publishing business. What other industry has English Majors negotiating contracts.

M Louisa Locke has carefully examined her marketing strategy and compared it with the previous year. The results surprised her. Here she explains what she found out. The unexpected effects of a perma free strategy.

Jami Gold has a great post on Author Self Esteem. Why don’t we value what we do? Why do we feel a fraud for putting work out there? This is a bookmark post... and you must read the post that inspired it!

In the Craft Section,

6 character archetypes to dump- (Bookmark)

Crafting a compelling novel concept- Jane Friedman

Problems with multiple viewpoints

10 smart things to do when writing

Apps for writers

A simple trick to help with show don’t tell

Getting over the hump in writing

In The Marketing Section,

Targeted marketing for self published books

Stellar examples of FB cover photo designs

30 Marketing questions self publishers need to answer

6 Smart ways authors can collaborate – Angela Ackerman

6 tips for getting your book reviewed

11 ways to get better book reviews

Self-e Library Journal opens up to International ebooks

To Finish,

Glimmer Train Journal recently published an opinion piece by Carmiel Banasky. Do we become better people as we become better writers? It is an interesting article on writer self care and how we should be looking after Number One.

Maureen

@craicer

Pic Flickr/Creative Commons/ Timothy Krause

The Revolving Door of Publishing

Writers & Illustrators: All the networking/promo in the world can’t help unless you get your book FINISHED first. pic.twitter.com/XeliPtgAHG

— Debbie Ridpath Ohi (@inkyelbows) August 25, 2015

This week the hot topic around Twitter was that self published sleep book for kids written by a sleep psychologist which raced to number one on Amazon and is now in a 7 figure publishing deal. Hugh Howey looks at all the changes in publishing in this story.

Germany announced this week that they are scrapping DRM on Ebooks. Predictions that the English language will be next could be far fetched. Mike Shatzkin looks at DRM free implications and reading books on phones. Surveys just out say the number is up to 1 in 7 people mainly reading on their phone but which apps are the best for this.

Writer Beware reports that the Author Solutions case has been dismissed as they settled out of court... that’s one class action down... (PRH has deep pockets...)

Can data dictate publishing decisions? That’s the topic for Futurechat this week. With data being mined by Kindle Unlimited who know exactly when a reader stops reading to phone companies who know where and when a reader is reading.... What are the implications for publishers?

Anne R Allen looks at author blogs. How can you do better?

Writer Unboxed revisits the ten things not to say to a writer in light of some dubious comments being said to writers very recently.

Larry Brooks is writing for the Killzone blog and he has a few wise words to say about authors letting rip on their manuscripts before they have learned some fundamentals of the craft... (for a less measured approach see Chucks rant.)

Christina Katz has a post looking at 10 things happy productive writers do that they don’t need to.

Author Chronicles takes issue with those annoying pop up adds.

In the Craft Section,

Perfect opening lines- from TOR

How believable themes build believable plots

How to describe people (Great post)

7 tips for proof reading your book

Chuck has a no holds barred post on rookie mistakes that new writers make. (You may never look at dialogue tags the same way again.)

Janice Hardy has two guest writers writing some great posts. 
Bonnie Randall on killing your darlings unless you can give them goals and Amy Christine Parker on writing outside of your comfort zone. (Bookmark)

In the Marketing Section,

11 ways to promote your book with images

Query Letters- What agents love and loathe

Four podcasts every self publisher should be listening to

Selling digital products and services - Jane Friedman

Building an author website – Joanna Penn

How and where to obtain book reviews – James Rose

How to use Twitter to find Book Reviewers- Ricardo Fayet (Bookmark)

To Finish,

The Queen’s bookstore in London has turned hand selling into a high end art and a global enterprise... so now they are mixing it up by having a bookseller in Asia. Yes... I mean A Bookseller NOT A Bookstore...

Just when you think you know what is coming next in publishing...

maureen
@craicer
Pic from Inkyelbows… Debbie Ridpath Ohi

Maintaining A Positive Face

This week I have been thinking about all sorts of eclectic things to do with the life of an author.

Headshots... This is an awful necessity when you write... at some point some one is going to ask for a headshot. Writer Unboxed has a great article on this. I have heard of conferences arranging photographers who specialise in this... (hmmm must explore this.)

Being a nicer person because I am a writer. Book Trib had an interesting article on this.

Jody Hedlund looks at the other side of niceness when you feel you are the worst writer in the world... How can you dig yourself out of the hole?

Keeping a positive attitude helps when you are visualising your goals. If you are Indie Publishing 5 tips on how you can measure success.

This week Publishers Weekly had a column from Kristan Higgins asking the literary world to grow up when it comes to Romance writing.They are among the savviest writers I know and Kristan has a point. Read the Genre before you criticise it.

The New York Times has changed the way they will be reporting Children’s Best Sellers... There was jubilation all over my Twitter Feed. Now finally we will find out the best selling junior fiction books... When the list jumped from Picture Book to Young Adult best sellers... something had to give.

Sticking with big companies making changes… HarperCollins is shutting down Authonomy, their website where aspiring authors could post stories. It was an interesting experiment.

Joanna Penn has answered a bunch of questions about her writing business. She is a postive force when it comes to finding out about marketing. Here she has lots of tips.

In the Craft Section,

Killing your darlings – 5 writers talk about the cutting room floor

Using beta readers to help you write- C S Lakin

6 easy ways to achieve a perfect ending

6 things writers should know about MB Thinking vs. Feeling

5 writing challenges all writers face

How to find an editor – Jane Friedman

Creativity tips for the stuck- Nathan Bransford

In the Marketing Section,

Mastering Radio Interviews - Anne R Allen (Bookmark)

What do you do when your Amazon reviews disappear?

Ebook formatting using MS Word- Molly Greene

How to make 3D cover generators

6 types of Copyright disclaimers – The Book Designer (Bookmark)

What makes your story unique –The Art of the Blurb – Jami Gold

Creating Author Business Plans- Janice Hardy

Easy ways to build an email list

Website of the Week

Writers in the Storm have a great website with all sorts of great craft and marketing tips. Here are two recent Bookmark posts, 5 easy SEO techniques and How actions determine character arc. There are four writers contributing and they manage to cover all facets of the business. A great Go To Website

To Finish,

Chuck Wendig has a new book out soon. It is his 13^th and by now he should be used to the feelings of gut wrenching fear, nervousness and excitement... It only gets worse… He tries to maintain a positive face… (Positive warnings on language apply.)

Maureen

@craicer

Pic is from Flickr/ Creative  Commons - Wonderlane

Writing Costs

This week two critiques of James Patterson’s Master class in writing bounced around my Twitter feed. One was from The Observer and the other from Writer Unboxed.

James Patterson is a prolific bestseller who has a team at his publishers devoted only to his work. This year he started a fund for booksellers to encourage reading. Our local children’s bookseller was a lucky recipient. So a master class from him was always going to be interesting. It’s a huge bang for your buck. ($90US) I can’t help thinking that other writing craft gurus will have to lift their game.

The other topic to get bounced around this week was the cost of publishing.

Joanna Penn has a critical analysis of her own writing business and six figure income. Kate Flora has a critical analysis of how much it costs to write traditionally. (i.e. with a Trade publisher.)

Nick Stephenson is also talking about the cost of self publishing but he sees it as a value....

Last week I linked to Steve Hamilton's fight with St Martin's press Kristine Rusch has an excellent post on this and the fact that had he done it in 2005 his career would be over… but authors who have done it have some tricks up their sleeves…. 

Porter Anderson takes a look at balancing Trad and Indie publishing interests. Whether you come in on one side or the other or are firmly hybrid, there is a lot of discussion in what way a writing career can go now. Porter mentions Deborah Cooke’s recent essay, What I miss about Traditional publishing, (very interesting) as he compares the two camps. Jaye Manus takes issue with some of Deborah’s ideas especially where she says that Indie publishers need someone to say NO that is not a good idea.

Elizabeth S Craig has a great post on publishing podcasts... She talks about her favourites and finds a few more from her readers.

Anne R Allen has an excellent post on social media... she is not a fan of email newsletters. She talks about the best way you can promote.

Have you heard about ageism in YA? A young writer points out that teens aren't being listened to...

In the Craft Section,

What 4 agents are looking for in memoir- Alan Rinzler

Why your characters are boring

Character psychology- 9 common errors- Kassandra Lamb

5 reasons internal dialogue is essential

Revision techniques- Janet Fox (Bookmark)

Plotting essentials checklist

Planning your plotting – Janice Hardy

In the Marketing Section,

13 reasons why your novel query was rejected- Anne R Allen

Looking good on a web cam – Rachelle Gardner

How to market your books when you have a pen name.

Writers- using a project management approach.

Molly Greene has two great posts- 45 ways to sabotage your social media success and

Why readers download books-(Bookmark)

To Finish,

Whether you are Trad or Indie inclined you still need to write a ripping good yarn. So here is the word from Bob Mayer – Finding the shiver effect!

maureen
Pic From The Fabulous InkyElbows

Villains and Heroes

This week doing the publishing rounds....

That RITA book.

That Watchman book refund.

That guy who yanked his book from St Martin’s Press.

There are plenty of sides to each story... tho the RITA saga has left me scratching my head on how it even got published. (The RITA’s are the Oscar’s of the Romance world.) This book was nominated and finalled in two categories. Just dodgy on so many levels...

Then we have an Indie bookstore giving refunds for the latest Harper Lee book to disappointed readers. OK readers you were warned about the hype around it. You were told it was an untouched early MS... (possibly a money grab by the publishers.) The Guardian let off some steam around this.

This week’s epic marketing fail.

So you think you have a pretty solid career with your big NY publisher. You’ve won awards, earned out etcetc. Then your latest book (with starred reviews already) gets yanked before publication. Heard it all before... but this time it is the author that has yanked the book because the publisher lied about the marketing campaign. (Takes writer guts to do it.)

Brooke Warner has written a piece about the lengths some Traditional publishers are going to control their writer's marketing lives. Stopping writers giving endorsements to other writers being one of them. Isn’t it supposed to be a win/win marketing strategy?

Catherine Nicholls decided to try a little experiment and sent her novel out under a man’s name. The comments on this one are very interesting. When you know that there are more women in the publishing industry but a male name means the project gets looked at faster... um ?

The annual SCBWI LA conference wrapped up this week. Children’s writers who can’t get there drop into the official conference blog where a team of dedicated writers live blog the sessions. It’s always interesting. Grab a coffee scroll down to the bottom and live vicariously.

Publishing Futurist Mike Shatzkin has an interesting post today about the changing nature of publishing. He makes a comment about not seeing any of the big writers jumping from Traditional publishing which a couple of years ago everyone expected. And when are we going to see the United Artists model of publishing? (I’ve been saying for years that the Indie future is in the Bloomsbury model.) I wonder when we will get to say I told you so...

In the Craft Section,

4 steps for organising plot ideas- Jody Hedlund (Bookmark)

3 crucial editing phases

Self editing tips

Emotional wounds- when you accidently kill someone- Angela Ackerman

7 things that will doom your novel

Killing your darlings- Janice Hardy

5 Tips for making writing a daily habit- C S Lakin

What is your characters internal struggle- Margot Dill (Bookmark)

22 experts on overcoming writing challenges

In the Marketing Section,

Changing your marketing mindset- Elizabeth S Craig

Online Marketing strategy for authors – Mike Shatzkin (Bookmark)

When to use pre orders- Lindsay Buroker (Bookmark)

3 tips to improve your pitch –Janice Hardy

22 ways a blog can sell a Non Fiction book- Joel Friedlander

Website of the Week.

I drop into Elizabeth Spann Craig’s blog pretty much every week. Elizabeth is writing about her learning journey as she becomes a hybrid author. This week she had an interesting article about what Traditional publishing needs to get the Hybrids back.

To Finish,

24 things that writers know only from other writers

and

Writers need their own personal heroes Why? Check out these 7 reasons.

(now go and make your list!)

Maureen

@craicer

Pic: Flickr Creative Commons / Ricky Brigante - Malificent

Hashing Around

"I noticed a spelling mistake on P.205, paragraph 3. I felt I had to write to you to point that out" #TenThingsNotToSayToAWriter

— Aisling McDermott (@aismcdermott) July 28, 2015

Have you written anything I've heard of? #ThingsNotToSayToAWriter

— Chad Grayson (@chadgrayson) July 28, 2015

You should do something like Twilight, that was really popular!! #ThingsNotToSayToAWriter

— SarahCadence (@elsagrabthesalt) July 28, 2015

Social Media can be an addicting drug to writers. You are trapped in your home office (or laundry) your MS is not doing what you want (constant daily struggle) and you go the writers water cooler for a few minutes on Social Media and down the hole of addiction you go.

But its fun! This week I have been giggling at the hashtags on Twitter.  #tenthingsnottosatoawriter 
It got so much notice, newspapers were writing articles about it.

While writers are struggling with the things people say... they are also in business. This week Angie Hodapp of The Nelson Agency talked about royalty statements and how often they are chasing money that is owed contractually to the writers... its all in the percentages.

Kris Rusch has been musing on promotions... how she hates them and how they are necessary to a writers business  and then she realised that there was another way to look at them.

Mike Shatzin (publishing futurist) has taken a long look at the tweaks Amazon are doing this week including adding notifications of new books for readers to Amazon author pages. He comments that publishers need to sharpen up their A game. As usual whenever he mentions Amazon the comments pile up.

The Bookseller reports on Ender’s Analysis of the future ofthe book trade. If you thought publishing had been disrupted enough with eBooks it is only the beginning of the change. The high street bookseller remains critical to discovery...

A great use of hashtags is #MSWL Porter Anderson interviewsthe team who maintain the MSWL website and run the very popular MS Wish Listdays. Agents and editors use this to let everyone know what they are looking for. Always interesting reading.

In the Craft Section,

How to write a likeable protagonist- K M Weiland

How you should be hacking your readers brain – C S Lakin

Inciting incidents - how to start with a bang

How not to get sued when writing about real people-LitReactor

10 writing mistakes that kill your first chapter- Marcy Kennedy

Speech tags- (are evil) -James R Tuck

Query Tracker – Best writing advice

Shawn Coyne and The Story Grid- Joanna Penn

In the Marketing Section,

10 tweets you should never send.- Molly Greene

Direct sales venues for authors

Why podcasting interviews are essential- Bookbaby

11 must haves on your author website

Print and broadcast media case study for book promotion.

Negotiating contracts- Susan Spann

Website of the Week

Take a look at LitReactor They have interesting online writing magazine with columns on all sorts of topics.  This weeks great articles, The Art of the Pitch and Synopsis and Writing Productivity Tips.

To Finish,

This hashtag conversation had me snorting my coffee. If you have ever read regency romances or researched the regency time period you will love these clickbait articles that might have been found in a lifestyle magazine for men.

Maureen
@craicer

How to Rescue a Fully-Dressed Woman from a River, Lake, or Pond: Just trust us, you'll need this article. #regencymensfitness

— Tessa Dare (@TessaDare) July 30, 2015

The ABC Fitness Plan: Almack's, Brandy, Courtesans #regencymensfitness

— Zoe Archer (@Zoe_Archer) July 30, 2015

Market Your Name

This week one of my friends posted an interesting article from Sarah McIntyre about crediting illustrators. Illustrators are often overlooked by authors and award judges when it comes to promotion. It is time that we remembered that a great picture book has an author and an illustrator working in collaboration and so they both should be equally credited when it comes to promotion. Sarah came up with the #picturesmeanbusiness campaign.

Darcy Pattison has a guest post on Jane Friedman’s blog about the promotion of children’s books and how she is using Pinterest as an experiment because children’s books are about the visual. 

Anne R Allen has a great resource blog for writers. This week she writes about the care and feeding of THE MUSE for writers. There is lots of great advice in here.

Going to conferences can inspire you to new projects. Joanna Penn talks about attending the ThrillerFest conference and what she learned there. This is a really fascinating article as Joanna is exploring the hybrid author position here. She also has a great interview with a publishing futurist…what might be around the corner and coming soon to an author near you... 

Following along on this theme is Porter’s think piece - finding and building fans of books is the most important thing an author can do ... here he reports on some big thinkers in the publishing game on this kind of marketing.

Jane Friedman has been getting serious of late with email marketing. She has written two excellent blog posts on email newsletters for authors and how to improve the newsletter to make it relevant. I’m interested in exploring this from a children’s writer point of view. Who do we send newsletters to...

I don’t subscribe to many newsletters but one I do and try to read frequently is Larry Brooks. His Storyfix website is great. His newsletters are direct and punchy on the craft of writing. Larry recently had a melt down moment which is worth reading. Writers you need to study your craft... figure out some stuff then apply it. If you write then you should read this.

Four important questions that agents ask writers in the pitch session... and yes you should be able to answer them...

In the Craft section,

Goals Conflict Stakes- Janice Hardy (Bookmark)

Copyediting –it’s not rocket surgery- The Book Designer (Bookmark)

Writing Terrible first drafts

Fishing out your manuscript hook- Kate Moretti (Bookmark)

How to write a synopsis- sorta- Ava Jae (Bookmark)

9 ways to use point of view to strengthen characters

4 Revision Goals- Darcy Pattison (Bookmark!)

In the Marketing section,

Does it pay to do a print book- Molly Greene

The unexpected effect of perma free- M Louisa Locke- Bookmark

Marketing Books as an Indie author

12 secrets to selling books

10 mistakes authors make that cost them a fortune

Cleaning up your Amazon Central Book Page- Elizabeth S Craig

How to sell more copies of a book you published years ago- Bookmark

Offering free ebooks to subscribers- Elizabeth S Craig 

Website of The Week

Every now and then you come across a web comic that exactly illustrates the writing life. Chances are you have seen an Inkygirl comic. So you really need to check out her awesome website where she has other great helpful tips. Inkygirl is also promoting the #picturesmeanbusiness campaign to recognise picture book illustrators on metadata and awards.

To Finish,

Mark Coker of Smashwords recently put up his Slideshare deck ... 6 hours of concentrated workshopping on publishing ebooks. You don’t have to wade through all of it. Just look at the transcript and scroll down to the section that interests you. This is like a Master class in eBook marketing.

Maureen

@craicer

Pics From the fabulous Inkygirl