Global Fears and Solutions

This week seemed to be a global focus week.

Is there a books market outside of the UK and the USA and assorted countries that speak English?

Why Yes.

How do we know?

Because Amazon thinks so.

This week Amazon made moves into South East Asia... Alibaba,the East’s version of Amazon, is not amused.

Neither is India’s publishing and book trade. Suddenly they have less book shops than they did before.

Where Amazon goes so do Indie publishers. But how do you price for the market in the East? There are so many currencies?

This week Publish Drive talked about pricing books in South East Asia and what Indies need to bear in mind if they enter this part of the world.

Smashwords introduced Global Pricing. Now you can tweak each countries book price. They have made some changes to their dashboard too.

Jane Friedman takes a snapshot of the publishing industry at the moment. Is there a resurgence in Print books? Just how much of the eBook market does Amazon have?

The Guardian printed an interesting article by Y.A. author Meg Rosoff on the point of Fairy Tales. This is a rebuttal to Richard Dawkins and the government and the push to only make education fact based. This has seen a decline in the funding of the arts in tertiary education and beyond. Do we really need fairytales?

Sarah Moore has written an interesting post on nipping your creative fear in the bud. Just what do you have to be scared of?

OK 

Now how do you manage that fear?

Anne R Allen has been writing up a storm on her blog with two great posts recently.

Do podcasts sell books? There are some great publishing focused podcasts out there and I try to listen to one most days. It makes me feel productive when I’m taking a screen break. Also professional development also...  If you haven’t dipped in to one yet, you are missing out!*

The use of pop ups on authors sites is getting ridiculous. Anne asks is it time to kill the pop up?

Bang2Write have a beautiful Infographic on 12 unusual and achievable productivity hacks for authors. This is a print out and put on your wall post!

The Write Life takes a look at that deep fear of authors. What happens if I lose my work?

Here are some solutions you can implement straight away.

In The Craft Section,

10 tips for writing characters with anxiety- Hannah Heath

Mastering outer motivation- Michael Hauge- Bookmark

Why strong dialogue matters

What should the story climax include- Jami Gold – Bookmark

Systemic sabotage of aspiring novelists- Larry Brooks- Bookmark

Writing Romance fight scenes-Now Novel

7 questions to ask when you lose the desire to finish- Denise Jaden

6 rules to keep critique partnerships golden

Writing an outline- Tasha Seegmiller-Bookmark

In The Marketing Section,

5 reasons to be a social media minimalist- Chris Syme- Bookmark

The relaxed release- Elisabeth S Craig

Ebook checklist before uploading- Digital Book World- Bookmark

3 unconventional ways to use social media to find readers- Dan Blank

Two great posts from Kevin Tumlinson on the Draft2Digital blog, 10 sneaky hacks and Making yourself a brand.

To Finish,

This week in an online writers group the discussion turn to Authors selling Merch. I had a sudden vision of an author selling table filled with knick knacks. Somewhere in amongst the jumble of author branded merch on the table was the lone book that inspired it all. (Rather like our big brand bookstore....) Then one author said take a look at this... and we all said OOOOH. A whole different level of Merch for authors...

Maureen

@craicer

* Kiwi author Nalini Singh was on the Science Fiction and Fantasy Marketing podcast this week. One of our publishing rockstars!

I round up the best of the bookmarked craft and marketing links as well as some other bits and pieces every month in a newsletter. When you subscribe you will also get my nifty book crammed full with marketing notes. The blog runs on coffee fumes. If you want to say thanks feel free to hit the coffee tab. My brain says Thanks!
 

Pic: Flickr Creative Commons Guilhem Vellut