This week has been a
busy one.
Two writing deadlines and in the middle of that WRITEONCON.
This year WriteOnCon
was in the middle of the week...as it is based in the Northern Hemisphere our
time zones don’t quite match up...but WriteOnCon is online so even if you don’t
get to all the live forum events you can still follow along as everything stays
online.
There is a HUGE amount
of information. To give you an idea...there were more than 30 kidslit agents and editors. They hosted panels and keynotes from YA to PB where they decontructed
pitches and queries that were randomly selected from the many many submitted.
This was great learning. It was always exciting when one of them in the forum
said I’ll message you privately for a full request.
There were keynotes and
workshops on all sorts of topics from more than 30 experienced writers, illustrators and editors. Attendees were encouraged to register their pitch, 1st 250 words,
first five pages and their query. A team of Ninja Agents would troll the
lists over the two days looking for projects that interested them...No one knew
who they were, they had code names...but everyone soon knew when they were ‘in
the house.’
This year there were
15000 attendees from around the world
and more than 2 million hits on the web site in two days.
Check out the feast of links and set aside some time with a huge cup of coffee. You will not regret
it....Then make plans to attend next year!!
WriteOnCon is the
brain child of seven writers who got together in 2010 to offer an on line
conference for people who couldn’t get to one. A fabulous idea which struck
online gold straight away...Many kudos and writer prayers to this stellar bunch of writers!
Because WriteOnCon was
the bulk of my online trawling
this week I have a short (but good) list of links for you to check out.
For those of you
looking at self publishing these two links have been getting lots of rave
comments this week.
Joel The Book Designer, On why a book looks self published and what to do about it.
Roz Morris looks at
Createspace and Lightning Source...which one is better for POD books.
Joanna Penn interviews
Lisa Cron about using brain science to hook readers. This is an interesting article on why we like
genre...it’s all biological!
One of the talking
points in the blogoshere this week was the Forbes article looking at Publishing
entitled Publishing is broken we’re drowning in indie books and it’s a good thing! Some very interesting
comments about gate keepers and what happens next in the industry.
FaBostory is ramping
up...we have some keen young writers out there. It’s quite tricky knowing that
they are soo good(when you are trying to write your own chapter!) Pop into the website and read some very good young writers!
