Challenging The Big Boys

Last night I attended a prestigious lecture. The Book Council of New Zealand invited Lani Wendt Young, the current Pacific Laureate to deliver the speech, Stories from the Wild: Reading and Writing in the Digital Age. It was a notable speech from a passionate speaker. First, it was given by a Pacifica woman. (an indigenous voice… how rare!) Second, It was given by a successful independent author who is carving out a whole genre of contemporary Pacifica super-natural tales to great reviews. Third, the lecture was a consummate takedown of the white towers of traditional publishing. This piece in the Spinoff written by Lani is only some of the very telling points she made. It was brilliant. I can’t help agreeing with others that we witnessed something profound that will change publishing here.

Meanwhile over in the USA many people in publishing seem to think James Daunt of Waterstones UK will come in like the White Knight on a charger to fix the Barnes and Nobel chain and it will be tea and crumpets all round. Kristen Lamb is skeptical of the way James Daunt may go about it and it all stems from how he turned Waterstones around. Publishers better be clearing space from the warehouse floor for all the returns and workers… don’t expect a pay rise.

Last week I linked to an interesting article by Anne R Allen on whether your reader really needs to know all the little details of your life. This week Cheri Baker picked up on Anne’s theme and looked at her marketing manifesto. 

Porter Anderson gets around the world as the roving editor for Publishing Perspectives. This week he looks at the successful Beijing International Bookfair. Among their offerings to the 320,000 visitors was a whole section devoted to English language learning for early childhood. 

The lawyers are back from holiday and lawsuits are piling up. 
The AAP is taking Audible to court over captioning
Authors Guild is taking a class action against Cengage Publishers over their subscription service.
The Romance Writers Of America are taking a lawsuit over the trademark of the word “Tamer”. The funds for this have been provided by the authors of the Cocky Collective. 
(Cockygate lives on..) 

Kris Rusch continues her look into licensing IP. She comments on how the whole thing can get overwhelming and offers some great ways to think about how to tackle which rights to license. How much do you care about the story? She suggests learning about licensing by first working with a story you don’t care too much about.

Scott Myers of Go Into The Story has a great roundup of the posts he made as he broke down Andrew Stanton’s TED talk on what makes a great story. Go Into The Story is mainly aimed at screenwriters but authors can learn a lot from the screenwriter's approach to story.

In The Craft Section,

Worldbuilding- Writelife- Bookmark

Get out of the writing doldrums- Jane Friedman

5 tips for engaging characters- Bethany Henry- Bookmark

7 Rules for cliffhangers- Ruth Harris- Bookmark

5 ways story stakes keep readers glued- H R D’Costa

In The Marketing Section,

Audiobook Promotion ideas-Mary Locke - Bookmark

Creating promotional copy that works- Janice Hardy

How to create a pre-launch strategy- Rachel Thompson- Bookmark

7 Social Media Tips for Authors- Scot La Counte- Bookmark

How to title a book- Dave Chesson- Bookmark

To Finish,

Recently Rachel Gardner shared that her fellow agents had a brainstorming session thinking up side hustles for their author clients. A side hustle is another stream of income. So writers based on your research what could you get a side hustle in…Hmm Spacecraft design anyone?


Maureen
@craicer

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