Dirty words

Selling Selling Selling. The words that Authors hate. 

But I just want to make up stuff and write. 

I don’t know how to sell. 

What if no one likes it? 

This cuts right to the core of the writer secret fear. What if I can’t write and they finally find out I’m a fraud. 

This week Roz Morris wrote an excellent article on building a readership as a quiet rebellion against selling. It is a must read.

K M Weiland has an excellent post - How to market when you hate marketing... It’s all about mindset. If you reframe the conversation to giving... This is a great post. Lots to think about.

If you are an Indie/Hybrid Author you will know that getting a Bookbub featured advert is the holy grail of Book Marketing. Many apply - few are chosen. Bookbub is introducing another new service... New Releases...

Bookbub was at The Romance Writers Association conference- Romance writers are some of the savvyest writers around. Bookbub has an RWA book marketing takeaway list. 

Many writers use Gmail. Anne R Allen has a interesting guest blog from Nate Hoffelder on the changes that are coming to Gmail and how Authors can make use of them.

Two great posts from Jane Friedman’s website recently - Non Fiction writers who let their knowledge get in the way. We have all met that person who is full of facts and figures and can turn an interesting subject into a boring one really quickly. What can Non Fiction writers do differently?

Do you need a Trade Distributor? I am wrestling with this at the moment. Jane Friedman has an excellent post on what a trade distributor will do for you and what they won’t.

Kris Rusch has been thinking of writers who are pushing themselves hard in the Hamster Wheel of Doom. Are you writing to market too much without writing a book of the heart? 

Do you have an author uniform? Do you need one? I hadn’t thought about it before until I realised that quite a few of my fellow children’s authors do have an author uniform... sometimes unconsciously. Then I wondered about the writers for adults... 

In The Craft Section,

Beyond visuals how to show other senses- Jami Gold Bookmark

Emotional wounds- Angela Ackerman ( Buy the Book)

Creating unforgettable settings- Becca Puglisi

Crafting a body language voice- September Fawkes- Bookmark

Man vs Self- Now Novel -Bookmark

7 steps to create a flexible outline- K M Weiland

Building Characters layer by layer- James Scott Bell – Bookmark

The hero’s emotional midpoint

In The Marketing Section,

Adding a video to your Amazon Book Page- Bookmark

Questions about Writer Platform- Rachelle Gardner

Bad book design choices from The Book Designer- 

Stop selling books Start selling benefits- Bookbaby- (Interesting flip)- Bookmark

Preventing Amazon book reviews from deletion- Iola Goulton

How to self publish and market a children’s book- Joanna Penn talked to Karen Inglis this week about  this subject in another great podcast. Bookmark

To Finish,

Among the other dirty words whispered around writing and publishing are scams that target the newbies.

The Alliance Of Independent Authors has got a wary eye on something new. De Montfort – a hedge fund specialist has added a new venture... De Montfort Literature.  A writer will be selected and paid a years salary to write a novel. Sounds too good to be true... Well If you think a hedge fund can flip the book publishing world on its head... pick winners and bestsellers... and leave the writer alone to write what they want... which is what they are promising then the successful writer had better read their contract very carefully. Take a look at what could go wrong under this model.

Maureen

@craicer

In my monthly newsletter I round up the best of the bookmarked craft and marketing links as well as some other bits and pieces. When you subscribe you will also get a nifty book crammed full with marketing notes. I promise… Newsletter out this weekend.

Pic: Flickr Creative Commons- Marc Falardeau

The Cost Of Writing

What are the odds that a reclusive writer who wrote one book that has topped best seller lists for nearly 60 years would suddenly decide that the time is right at age 88 with severe medical issues (deaf and nearly blind) to bring out the first book she ever wrote.  (insert dead fish smell here.) 

This has been the main topic of conversation this week in the publishing blogosphere.

Once the usual literary crowd finished celebrating that Harper Lee was releasing a sequel to To Kill A Mockingbird then saner heads started asking why and the story becomes increasingly unlikely. Is it a rights grab by a lawyer who took over Harper’s sister, Alice's, law firm after her death a few months ago. Is HarperCollins behaving ethically in this whole affair? Is the lawyer to be trusted or have they played a very long game? There are lots of questions around this. Where is Atticus Finch when his creator needs him?

Staying with things legal... Tess Gerritson talks about what is happening with her landmark legal battle with Warner Brothers who bought out New Line who had the option on her book Gravity 15 years ago... and it makes for some nervous reading for writers selling film options.

So the first two items this week are after the book has been written, Chuck Wendig looks at the emotional rollercoaster of writing the book with his handy guide.

Susan Kaye Quinn talks about the need to create... and how that jumbly mixed up feeling is telling you something important.

That something important could be the startling finding from last weeks author earnings report about that 30% of books being published without ISBN’s. Here in NZ we are in a relatively fortunate position of getting free ISBN’s. But in the rest of the world it is a different story. It is a real cost. Porter looks at the issues raised by the author earnings report and then discussion over ISBN’s and their value get a hammering in the comments.

If you have a toe in the academic publishing world these five predictions for 2015 are for you.

Seth Godin amplifies his call to publishers that if you aren’t selling direct to consumer you are....

In the Craft Section,

Kristen Nelson on what is uneven writing

21 fast hacks on fueling the suspense

K M Weiland on writing backstory

Susan Kaye Quinn on not rushing to publish

3 most effective types of inner torture for your characters

Writing exercises - changing the tail.

In the Marketing Section,

The big story this week is Bookbaby beginning Print On Demand. This is big news for those who don’t want all their stuff in the Amazon basket. Canny marketers have also discovered how you can play both sides...

Jody Hedlund on whether you really need social media

Jami Gold on branding 101

Self promotion for horrible people

Odd Stuff

Buzzfeeds collection of coffee mugs for book nerds

Jeff Sanders on why you need to track every little accomplishment.

To Finish

It is possible that Harper Lee stared at each of the 5 reasons why writers avoid writing in the face and took them on board or she didn’t know how to follow up the first book (first book syndrome) or, as everybody suspects, the phenomenal success frightened her to reclusiveness. But if this is a rights grab... it will be a landmark in publishing... as the day when some publishers lost all moral credibility.