Over the last week I have been wandering up and down the
country avoiding the earthquakes in my home city...they were waiting for me
when I came back...another three today...It’s like being on a moored boat every
now and then the floor rocks.
Rocking the publishing blogosphere is some Amazon bashing
that is going over the top...Melville House engages in some strong rhetoric
that had the blogosphere shaking heads. Passive Guy takes a look at the
impassioned argument from Melville House in Breaking News: Amazon declares war on the Book Industry and discusses what it may mean...someone needs to have a
lie down.
Here in New Zealand the keynote speaker, Sandy Grant, at our
local Publishers Association Awards...painted a disquieting picture echoing some of the passion from Melville House as well as looking at copyright issues
and government efforts to break this. Authors are left scratching their
heads...um where are we in all this?
Jami Gold has discovered new and horrible ways that authors are being pirated...and scraped by lowlifes and you will need to hang on to a
table while you read this. It involves mash ups...fan fiction...scraping and
Amazon...actually mixing that lot up and it could be some sort of new adult stuff
which is the target of pirates at the moment. Wouldn’t it be simpler to write
your own book?
Every now and again there is a publishing blogosphere story
that won’t lie down...and the RandomPenguin washing of Author Solutions is one
of them...Porter devoted a whole Ether post to it last week...I flagged it for
you in my last post but since then it has got bigger and murkier....
Finally some happier news...after all how many shocks can you take...(last count over 1900 this week)
The fab Literary Agent Jennifer Laughren, from whom I shared
a tweet with you a couple of weeks ago, had a Reddit community question time when you got to ask her anything on the agenting business. It is a great little
read and explains why she is one of the top agents specializing in Kids Lit.
And Smashwords has a preorder button...Media Bistro tells all about it.
In Craft,
Chuck - Ten Thoughts On Story...by now you should be used to
the warnings on content.
James Scott Bell from the great Killzone blog on creating conflict in fiction.
Elisabeth S Craig on creating back stories for characters.
The League of Extraordinary Writers have their top craftbooks list...and I’m pleased to say I have about half of them...and JOLLY GOOD they
are too. I’m working on acquiring another couple.
Writers In The Storm have a great post on figuring out turning points in your story...
In Marketing,
Joel Friedman has copyright disclaimers that you can use in your book
Selfpublishing advice talks to Bob Mayer on How He Did It....which echoes Kobowritinglife’s advice on how to promote on Kobo...
Bestsellerlabs has the second part of their navigating the book marketing maze...full of helpful tips.
Darla has another list of self publishing tips...
To Finish,
If you think you would like to try doing the audiobook
yourself... Joanna Penn has a nifty little article for you about what it
entails.
Since I started writing this...we had another three
quakes...mostly they are little but every now and again Mother Earth likes to
wake us up...which is why you need Resilience if you are a writer (Rachel Gardner) or just live in an earthquake zone....
maureen
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