Thursday, September 6, 2012

Scattered Stars....



This week I have been thinking about children’s book illustration...on many levels. We are putting together a workshop day in children’s book illustration which looks really good. I am learning about print for the print version of Craic and making changes...and I have been studying websites and learning some new tricks.

Around the publishing blogosphere the pay for review saga goes on with more unseemly author behaviour being exposed. ‘Sock Puppetry’ where authors make up an alter ego email and leave 5 star reviews on their own work and 1 star reviews on their competitors...


Anne R Allen talks about these current practices and exposes what authors really need...independent book reviewers. She tells you how to find them and how to treat them...


Recently the Oxford Society of Young Publishers asked Roz Morris to address them. Her speech - How I Self Published and How It Changed My Outlook As A Writer. Roz has posted this speech on her blog and it is very interesting with some recommendations to the publishers on what they should be looking at...partnership models like Discovery imprints...for those books they love that Accounting rejects...  

Anna DeStefano is finally able to blog about her trials and tribulations with Dorchester Press. Publishing isn’t for Sissies. This is a really interesting article with Anna talking about her ultimate goal for her writing and how this goal had her making the decisions she did as Dorchester was going through the rocky shoals of print to digital to being bought by Amazon...along the way not paying advances and pulling books after contracts were signed. It is a timely piece for authors to consider their whole career and how each publisher contract should be viewed as part of the whole career plan.

Elle Strauss (mid grade /YA writer) has written an interesting post on Why you can’t indie publish the same way as traditional and how to approach publishing after her year of discovery.

Susan Kaye Quin is doing a week of self  publishing basics...These are practical posts on where and how to do it...


Dean Wesley Smith has been getting hot under the collar with writers who give away a % of their rights over a manuscript in return for services...this is a growing problem with authors who don’t understand what rights they do have....After all would you give your gardener a share of your house? but authors are falling into some nasty traps.

Two agents this week have highlighted what they are looking for.

Jill Corcoran (mega kidslit agent) has a list of what she is looking to represent.

Bridget Smith of Dunham Literary has detailed how and what she looks for in the first five pages of a submission.

Over in Craft

Dean43 talks about his list of SCI Fi rules...for the geeks among us.

The great Larry Brooks has a post on the square one story killer. This is one of those bookmark posts of Larry’s... An effective story is ultimately about its concept. Just great advice and a new way of looking at your story.

To finish,

“It took me fifteen years to discover I had no talent for writing, but I couldn’t give it up because by that time I was too famous.” Robert Benchley.

No comments:

Related Posts with Thumbnails