The Plot Thickens

Digital Book World is on and straight after it is the 24-hour free online conference put on by ALLI – The Alliance of Independent Authors. Register NOW so you can have 3 days perusing all the info before it is gone! 

In Publishing Business News…
Canada Independent Booksellers report a rise in print revenue according to Publishing Perspectives. This is good news if you have just launched a bookshop. (see last week’s post)

Meanwhile, Publish Drive have changed their author fees. They had introduced a flat fee for handling all the distribution in exchange for 100% royalties. Now they have a four-tier model. It still might be worth considering if you have quite a few books.

The French Military, taking a leaf out of the US military playbook, has put out a call to Science Fiction writers to write scenarios for them. Who better than a bunch of authors to come up with plots that might actually happen. (Debt of Honour by Tom Clancy published in 1997, 4 years before 9/11)

This year the Frankfurt Bookfair has a pavilion dedicated to Romani Gypsy literature. I first read of ethnic minorities becoming nation-states without borders in a Science Fiction novel. This pavilion recognises an ethnic minority, without a nation-state, and their literature. Literature is above borders.

Kris Rusch has published the next installment in her rethinking the writing business series. It’s all about money and licensing. How do you know how much to charge for each license?
(BTW Dean, her husband, is speaking on this topic in the free Alli conference if you needed another reason to register.)

Dean Wesley Smith is annoyed with the misinformation out there about how much it costs to Indie Publish. In his dumbest new myth blog post he points out it is relatively cheap… so anyone charging you $2000 plus you need to give the side-eye to. As ever, read the comments!! Some of the commenters added new resources to Dean's list that make it even cheaper!

Agent Janet Reid sends out a warning of a scam that she recently came into contact with. People who offer to represent you to agents… her thoughts… BURN.

The Alliance of Independent Authors has updated their publishing business reviews. If you are thinking of working with anyone in the publishing world it worth checking out whether they have a good review from ALLI.

Kathy Steinemann has a nifty list of ways to record the fabulous plot ideas that arrive in the middle of the night.

Amanda Rawson Hill gets a rave review from September Fawkes and just reading this guest post on How Theme and False Theme affect your protagonist, you can see why. 
This is a knockout… print this out and pin it on the wall post!

In The Craft Section,

Setting the scene- NowNovel Bookmark

Emotional mastery for fiction writers – C S Lakin- Bookmark

How to approach writing a villain protagonist - Scott Myers- Bookmark

The inner struggle- Janice Hardy

How to tell if you have too much plot and not enough character- K M Weiland - Bookmark

How can we make our conflict stronger- Jami Gold- Bookmark

In The Marketing Section,

Behind the scenes of an author newsletter- DIYMFA -Bookmark

Forget what you learned in Kindergarten, copy Madonna- Janet Reid

Promote your book hacks-Reedsy- BOOKMARK

2 great posts from Penny Sansevieri, Easy SEO for author marketing and 5 quick ways to ramp up 
your author central page-Bookmark Both.

On producing my own audiobook- James Scott Bell

To Finish

Do you call yourself a Bookworm or a Bookshark? Lit Reactor can tell you the difference. I was nodding my way down the list… so I know what I am.

Today is a day that haunts many people. Inevitably it has filled the internet with sad stories. So maybe we need to turn to Roald Dahl for the perfect quote (collection)
It doesn’t matter who you are or what you look like,
So long as somebody loves you.
Roald Dahl- The Witches

Maureen
@craicer

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Thanks.

Pic : Flickr Creative Commons- Rab Driver-  Cat Plotting Revenge

The Cost Of Being Vocal.

This week in the publishing blogosphere...The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers published their magazine with a chain mail bikini clad women on the front and an interesting article which had a line promoting  Barbie being a role model for her quiet dignity. Women members of the association objected to the tone of the articles and were immediately inundated with abusive emails...comments on their blogs...twitter feeds...from their peers.

When they published some of these responses...and detailed what it was like to be a women writing in this genre... the response was shock. How could writers do this to other writers...? And then it went viral.

Chuck Wendig wrote a great article about sexism and misogyny in writing and publishing. The next day he had to write another dealing with the comments on the first. Then today he had to follow that up, Why Men Should Speak Up About Sexism and Misogyny. The issues of the first article have spilled over into the gaming community, which has the worst instances of abuse to women working in this field. The abuse on Twitter coming to Chuck is miniscule compared to the  women writers who have lifted their heads above the parapet to say what their experience is like from other writers, convention fans and general male population who find out that they write Sci Fi.

I write Sci Fi. I read Sci Fi. I enjoy Science and Researching ideas and thinking of possibilities. I have friends who are scientists whom I talk geek with. I have never been abused as some of these writers have been...however I have had the disparaging comments on how ‘I’ (a woman/mother...) would know anything about that tech subject.... I ignore it and delete that person from my, consider-this-person’s-opinions-on-anything-valid, mental list. I quietly treasure the time a Male Scientist put a disparaging idiot in his place by agreeing with me. The look on that idiots face was something to behold.  The abuse to these women writers, coders and gamers is sustained, vitriolic and pervasive as trolls follow them across all social media. The level of abuse is scary with death threats often the least of the hate messages that spew out across the internet.  It is an important issue. It is nice to see male writers standing up to call out their peers who perpetuate these sexist, misogynistic attitudes. (If you are a Male writer reading this and you think this issue is over the top then read Ann’s Post and the first emails she got in response...Think about getting this level of abuse all the time....)

And so onto the other rants happening in publishing. The tendency of writers to not do their research before writing big articles in which they name other writers has annoyed a few people this week. Porter Anderson takes a look at the other big publishing firefight.

Publishing Perspectives has an interesting article on Why Publishing Needs to Foster a Startup Economy. (I’m sometimes wondering if we aren’t time warping to the 1880’s with the beginnings of modern publishing houses.)

With the speed of the publishing industry changes and the announcements in the last weeks of publishers pulling out of NZ, The League Of Shattered Authors makes timely reading. I have always promoted the idea of writer collectives...I think this is the future. Time to start banding together folks.

Forbes looks at The Future of Self Publishing and Beth Hull looks at 7 Things The Writer Needs To Hear.

With the ongoing focus on book covers Chuck asks what works...what doesn’t.... An interesting discussion ensued...and a link to a Lousy Book Covers site.

In Craft,

Some GREAT links this week.

Plotting made easy...This from is one of the websites to keep an eye on.

How to avoid trivial detail By Roz Morris on Jane Friedman’s site.

MythicScribes on Memorable Dialogue...

Victoria Mixon on Revising Wrong

Why Editors Focus On Page One...a great post on Jane Friedman’s site.

The fabulous K M Weiland on the 15 steps she uses to revise her MS’s

In Marketing,

The Indie Recon Teamare doing a week of Marketing Seminars

Free Software for Indie Authors

How To Pitch An Agent

The BookShelfMuse team on Foreign Rights Agents... Everything You Need To Know...This is interesting as Emotional Thesaurus starts to go Global.

Top 5 Errors In Layout from Joel Friedlander. (I am studying this carefully as I work on interior layout tweaking on a print book.)

Preplan your marketing as you write the novel...Interesting article!

To Finish,

How does a blog post go viral? The anatomy of a viral blog post tells you one example that worked. And for all you budding filmmakers...Amazon has a new free app for you, Storyteller. It takes your MS and storyboards it.

So you can go viral, Be a Force For Good and Change The World!

maureen

pic from Flickr/creative commons/ Gregoire Lannoy