Thursday, February 17, 2011

Game Changing and Piracy


On the side of my blog I have a list of must read blogs. One of those is Jane Friedman’s There Are No Rules. 

Jane is one of the touchstones in the blogosphere on publishing and change. She has been a keynote speaker at many big conferences on publishing and will be speaking at SXSW soon. Jane has a round up every week of what she thinks are among the best articles of the week (often I have already filed some of them for you) but I always pay attention to her list.  This week Jane highlighted a critical must read article by Kristine Rusch and yes I think that it deserves that status.

Kristine Rusch is a bestselling, award winning, romance, mystery and science fiction writer. She has been writing a series of articles on change in the publishing world. This week she has seen such a significant game change in self publishing that against all her previous advice she now believes that beginning writers should look seriously at self publishing...and not only them.

Bob Mayer was one of the first to comment (no surprise he agreed with what she said.) This week, on his own blog, Bob has an article about what he has learned in his writing life.  And it is a good read too. Bob breaks down the lessons he has learned since writing his first book...as he says... the more you consciously know about writing-the harder it gets!

However, to help you in this difficult creative endeavour is Mike Fleming and Elisabeth S Craig. Together they have sorted out a solution for storing all those links on writing... The Writers Knowledge Base.

This week Agent Mary Kole answered the tricky question...Would you turn down a book you loved but you knew you couldn’t sell? This is a good look at what agents are faced with...

Last week I asked the question, Who will be the digital ebook reviewers we trust?
I pointed you to Kristen Lambs blog post...this week also answering this question is Morris Rosenthal of Foner Books. Morris reckons that groups of writers will band together and become the new gate keepers...and then turn into writers guilds with too much power etcetcetc (check out the comments)

The Huffington Post has an interview with Annik LaFarge on effective author websites this is so full of information that you will probably need to set aside a long coffee break to take it in.

Over on Craicerplus (My Amplify Page) I have links to articles on

Writer Envy...The Rejectionist- Dear Superior Person

The Rules of Sci Fi...(don’t spare the red shirt guy)

The Best Writing Mistakes and How To Make Them

The Espresso Book Machine...This is a book printing robot in a NY book store which prints books 
immediately....Go and take a look at the video!...opens up a whole new world....

To Finish
The best article on story structure I have seen from the formidable Larry Brooks over on Storyfix, How to Learn Story Structure in Two Minutes or Less.

I leave you with Neil Gaimen talking on how Piracy helped him...

enjoy,
maureen


P.S The Jane Friedman that Kristine Rusch refers to is not the Jane Friedman of There Are No Rules. There are two Jane Friedman's in the publishing world.

2 comments:

Melinda Szymanik said...

Bookended with Depp and Gaiman? Now there's some smart marketing :)

Loved the Kris Kampusch article but would love to know how she sees children's fic fitting into this model. Also gobsmacked at the truth about the NY Times fiddling the figures - no wonder Amis thinks so highly of himself compared with childrens writers

Maureen said...

Hi Melinda,
This weeks Kidlitchat was on ebooks...
http://www.thehappyaccident.net/kidlitchat-transcript-february-15/
which is a hot topic...the writers librarians and teachers on the board commented that print books won't go away because of the tactile factor...think popup books...but that the ereaders will increase in schools and libraries...the technology is already filtering down in the states to the 9-12 year old market...A lot of comment on books with enhanced features...video and music soundtracks and background info embedded in the story. Marketing will have to be very different... Cover art to fit a one inch square screen etcetc....I think we will see changes in kid lit but again the important question is who will be the gatekeepers....

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