I have a confession... I’m getting addicted to podcasts.
I started out with just one... then I added another and now
I have eight podcasts I try to listen to regularly. I thought I could give them
up. When I accidently put my phone in the washing machine and had to replace it
I told myself not to load any podcasts on my phone. I lasted one week.
This all
leads me to the Spa Girls. They have been sharing some great
podcasts from The Smarter Artist Summit. Trudi Jaye interviewed some great thought leaders in publishing. Tune in while driving, or doing the dishes,
making a meal, having time out...
DiAnn Mills recently published a guest post on Suzanne
Lakin’s blog about writer courage. Did you even know that you have to be
courageous to write? 15 ways to strengthan your courage to write.
Rejection- Every writer will deal with it at some time. What
makes rejection worse is that writing is such a personal act it feels like we
have been rejected as a person. It is hard to distance yourself from the
writing. Mona Lisa Foster has a great series on rejection. Rejection is an opinion not a death sentence.
In publishing news this week... Smashwords announced that they have partnered with Findaway voices audio platform. Findaway is getting bigger. Audible may
start losing customers especially as Findaway doesn’t lock audio book contracts for seven years....
The other book aggregator, Draft2Digital, has been adding some new features as well. Author Pages and Book Tabs are their latest tweaks to a
website that is getting lots of praise in the Indie publishing marketplace.
Bookbub is also making changes. You can now recommend books
to your followers or groups... sharing the book love of your author friends.
Sam Missingham is a London based book marketer who has quite
a following in the UK book scene, She recently started a marketing service for
authors and one of the first things she did was to ask Traditionally Published
authors if they paid for book marketing. A surprising number did. Is this the
way of the future? Sam writes about the responses from the traditionally published authors- why they are picking up the ball from the publishers.
This week I was asked if I had heard anything regarding
Bologna Children’s Book Fair. I went for a hunt and found the regular roundup of Agents discussing what they predict will be big trends. Bologna is a rights
fair. Will we see another breakout hit? Nothing has come along lately... Agents
are wondering whether Young Adult is on the wain...
In The Craft Section,
Word count guidelines by genre- Anne R Allen - Bookmark
Show don’t tell- podcast – Joanna Penn, (always good!)
Creating a fantasy race- fantasy fiction
The magic fix it scene- Manuscript Shredder- Bookmark
How to write a character that can carry a series- Rebecca
Langley- Bookmark
Have you chosen the right main character- Kristen Kieffer-
Bookmark
In The Marketing Section,
A primer on book reviews- Joel Friedlander- Bookmark
4 ways to make time to blog- Rachel Thompson- Bookmark
How to lower FB ads costs- Amanda Bond - Bookmark
Book publicity is not just about sales- Penny Sansevieri
To Finish,
Book Covers. The most important marketing tool you have. But
book covers are subjective, they go in and out of fashion. It is always wise to
keep an eye on what is trending in your genre. Calvin Emerson of 99 Book
Designs, a book cover designer, talks about what is trending in book covers this year.
Maureen
@craicer
No comments:
Post a Comment