Such a busy week, Monday started with the NZ National Librarians Children’s Book Awards.
A great night with some expected and unexpected wins. The Hells Pizza chain
committed to another year of sponsorship. These are the only book awards left
in NZ with sponsorship.
Then Tuesday night our Tinderbox conference opened for registrations. The team gathered to toast the opening and watch the screen fill
up. Some workshops are close to full already less than 48 hours later. It looks
like we got the mix right with hands on workshops on writing and illustrating,
marketing, tax, contracts, editing, presenting, school visits, self publishing,
copyright and translation. Phew. After adding in various dinner and wine
events, we all needed a lie down before we opened for registrations. Don’t
leave it too late to register we might be fully subscribed in less than a week.
This week Amazon changed their Kindle Unlimited pay per
borrow rules. Now it is pay per page read... The sky is falling ran the
comments on Social Media. Hugh Howey shook his head and launched into finger
waving as he called out the worst nay sayers. Hugh doesn’t think there is a
problem at all. Porter took a more measured approach with comment from lots of sources... Do you want one entity to know so much about your reading habits?
This week the Authors Guild launched their fair contracts for writers campaign. Its time to let the public know just what can be stuffed into
a writers contract. Porter talks to the new guild president and finds out why
they are calling on readers to back the authors. Frankly the increasing
prevalence of harsh non compete clauses deserve to be exposed as unethical and
unreasonable bullying.
The lovely Janice Hardy has a great post on can we know too much about the publishing industry. here she outlines three mindsets and
encourages everyone to find what inspired them most to start writing. Sometimes
you need to block out the publishing world.
Today Smashwords launched a nifty addition- pre orders across the board to all their outlets... and you don’t need the product
ready. You can use your pre order
date as your writing deadline. Mark Coker explains all in his blog today.
In the Craft Section,
Tiffany Reisz on dialogue - Great Post
K M Weiland on Character goals
10 Simple keys to Story Structure- (Bookmark)
Complex Book Plotting – Great Post
Joanna Penn interviews Jen Blood on Editing (Bookmark)
In the Marketing Section,
E tools for freelancers (comprehensive list)
To Finish,
Joanna Penn interviews Nathan Meunier about gaming and
writing and some very exciting software that allows you to write a choose your
own adventure book and turn it into a game...
And the week isn’t finished yet!
Maureen
@craicer
