Publishing By Numbers

The Big Big News in the publishing world was the sale of Barnes and Noble this week to Elliot Advisors hedge fund.
After five CEO’s in four years the lifeboat may have arrived in the nick of time for the troubled bookseller. Publishers have been holding their breath as the demise of the largest bookshop chain in the United States would decimate their bottom lines. 
Last year Elliot Hedge Fund bought Waterstones, a large UK chain of bookstores. James Daunt, who had his own branded chain of bookstores, continued as CEO. Waterstones went through a massive rebranding to make each of their bookstores act and feel like an Indie bookstore, thanks to James leading from the front, since 2011. 
So now that they are on the up, Elliot Hedge Fund must be betting that James Daunt can pull it off again as he has been named as the new CEO. (No pressure James.) Barnes and Noble came cheap. Only two years of Waterstones profits to buy one of the largest bookstore chains in the world. 
So how did Barnes and Noble get it so wrong? Author Kristen Lamb shines the spotlight on how the publishing companies could have done something and didn’t. After all, this was their biggest showroom and they effectively gave it to Amazon.

Staying with our global focus on bookselling, Sharjah Emirate has been making waves in the International Book World. They have built Publishing City, a purpose-built complex of over 400 offices for the worlds publishing community. ALL TAX-FREE. This week Ingram signed a large contract to bring Print on Demand services into Publishing City. Porter Anderson takes a look at how this might challenge and change publishing globally.

Amazon has been running a large literary prize for a few years now. This year entries are open to any book published in the English language. The prize is a wad of cash and a translation deal because translations may be the next big thing.

Anne R Allen has an interesting blog post on the lure of the writing template. Are all novels beginning to feel like more of the same? Are writers playing it safe with form and format and copying down the same format time after time or is this just the essence of storytelling.

Jami Gold has a great folder of templates to help writers on her website. She recently came up with another good one to add to her resources for Authors. A truthful to the Author priority list. If you flail around looking for all your to-do lists and get overwhelmed at setting goals and priorities for your writing, this is the template for you. A step by step breakdown of how to prioritize.

While you are thinking of goal setting  Katelyn Knox has figured out a way to track your daily writing and focus goals on a google form. This is really interesting. I never thought of using a google form in this way.

Another tool in the Indie Arsenal is this great website. Creative Law centre. This is a lawyer specialising in authors and their contract needs. Check out this great template for audiobook narrators and then fossick around and find other useful stuff.

Writer’s Digest has a roundup of twenty new agents and what they are looking for... If you want to get a feel for what may be coming in the next few years, go into Twitter (Agents love Twitter) and type #MSWL (manuscript wishlist) for a comprehensive list of agent wants.

Reedsy has put together a collection of solutions for Writer’s Block. Just in case you still need help to figure out what to write next, who to send it to, what your contract could mean. after you’ve used the right template, set your goals and tracked them before heading to Sharjah and appearing in a huge book tour through Waterstones and Barnes and Noble.
It’s all in the little details that add up to the big numbers of dollars... (WriterDreams)

In The Craft Section,

Writing scene endings – Now Novel

How to hint at emotional wounds- Angela Ackerman

Writing tone and voice- Dana Sitar-Bookmark

Internal conflict types- Lonerwolf

2 basic rules of editing- Allegra Huston

Overwriting- How to reduce your word count- Tara East- Bookmark

Story goals are they slowing your pace- Jami Gold - Bookmark

In The Marketing Section,

Guide to getting more readers reviews- Bookbub- Bookmark

8 query letter don’ts- K M Allen

11 steps to stellar Instagram- The Digital Reader

The new look KDP reports- Elizabeth S Craig- Bookmark

How to build an author platform- David Gaughran- Bookmark

To Finish,

Suzanne Lakin has a handy blog that I have linked to for quite a few years. Today she posted that she was involved in a huge story bundle. Over $5000 worth of courses, books, and templates for only $49. I was intrigued. It looks pretty impressive. It’s only available for a week so check it out. ( Tip: Go to the learn more page and scroll down the list of goodies.)

Maureen
@craicer

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Pic: Flickr Creative Commons- Rafael Matsunaga- That was supposed to be going up, wasn’t it?

In The CON Zone.

I’m just popping up from the world of virtual conferences to write this blog post.

Conferences have been the main topic of the week for me. It started earlier in the week when I had a book association meeting and on the agenda (officially) was conference 2015. Yes I know that is next year...yes I know that it is probably last third of next year... Yes I know that is 18 months away. But when we planned the last National Conference of Children’s Writer’s and Illustrators we started 18 months out. You have to if you want a good Keynote speaker... and other great faculty presenters. You have to if you want a good venue... You also have to find out from your potential attendee’s what they want to learn about. **

Twitter was full of NY2014 SCBWI chat about how awesome it is and was. The great thing about the NY and LA Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators is the live blogging that goes on at these events (great for us writers on the other side of the world.) So instead of feeling envious of Kyle (pres of NZSA) getting to go (his choice, he paid for it, he deserved it) you can live vicariously and go visit the blog and scroll down on the right, dropping into those presentations that interest you. (Alternatively you can buy Kyle a couple of beers and pick his brains next time you see him.)

IndieReCon is happening now. 3 days of awesome virtual conference which is free. There are quite a few kids writers on the faculty of this conference which is Genre Writing orientated and very practical for writers looking into Indie publishing. There is lots of info on marketing, book production, agents etc. I started, yesterday, listening to a webinar on Fear and Writing with the Awesome Susan Kaye Quinn. I had already bookmarked her Marketing Indie Mid Grade books post to share here...(Read It!)

In the story that doesn’t die...more commentary on the Author Earnings site and the talking/hand wringing that is going on.

Brian O’Leary on The Empire Strikes Back – if Trad publishers would get past the handwringing and realize the game has irrevocably changed and what they can do about it.

Eoin Purcell on understanding the technology shift where writers have moved quicker than publishers.

Passive Guy (who is also presenting at Indie ReCon) on Mark Coker’s, guest column in Publishers Weekly (subscribers only) this week, reaction to the Author Earnings reports...yes I know that was long winded... (badly worded, it’s late..) just read the link...Passive Guy quotes extensively from the article.

In the Website of the Week

I want to highlight two.

Writer Unboxed is a website that has a large list of contributors. It is like a classy magazine with long form essays exploring some aspect of writing or publishing. The contributors are publishing and writing veterans. Jane Friedman contributed a long form essay from her new magazine Scratch on serial or episodic writing which is fast becoming a reader favourite. This is an examination of what it is and how to do it and who is doing it and why.

Today was #MSWL day on Twitter. Manuscript Wish List. If you type #MSWL into the search bar all the tweets from editors and agents come up of what they want to see. If you have a story that fits that criteria...when you query, following their individual website guidelines, you must put #MSWL in the query. It makes for interesting reading.

In the Craft section,

What is magic realism?

Jody Hedlund on writing scenes- a quick 5 point checklist.

Jami Gold on How to skip the boring parts

Screenwriting – the 3 act structure and how to break it.

Susan Kaye Quinn on tools for helping you write faster.

Larry Brooks on The Bermuda Triangle of Storytelling (Bookmark this!)

In the Marketing section

Bibliocrunch has a list of book sites that do bookpromotion.

Check out IndieReCon....

To Finish,

The Daily Dot has an article looking at the restarting of an authors career in Kindle Worlds...The Kindle Fan Fiction site...ho hum you might think until you find out that the author is L J Smith who was the original writer of Vampire Diaries who found her rights to her own work cut out from under her when she was fired from the TV show of her own creation...

**If you have any ideas for topics to learn about or conference wants... either comment here, on Facebook, or through email. We are preparing a short survey which is coming soon.

To finally finish....Hank Green, Brother of John (half of the Vlog brothers) posted a great Video today on books...its a rant really but entertaining...as only the vlog brothers can be...

maureen