What The Reader Wants

In Publishing News this week,

Two reports released in the UK, the UK governments response to AI and The Society of Authors survey on AI show the creators and the government are a long way apart over the value and use of AI. Dan Holloway of The Alliance of Independent Authors breaks down the key sticking points for each report. Governments are watching each other and trying to get tips on how to tackle this disruptive technology.

 

Pen America is sounding the alarm over the rise and rise of book bans in schools. This is a number which everyone would like to see going the other way. They also call out the worst states for this practice.

 

Publishers Weekly is pivoting to embrace all sorts of events for publishers. They have appointed a director of content studio to run custom content and events. With the demise of Digital Book World which took over Book Expo America leaving America without a bookfair I’m wondering if they are making moves in this empty space.

 

Kelley Way has an interesting post on copyright and how to gift it. This is primarily for a US audience but there are useful tips. Always make sure you know what the copyright laws are in your own country if you Indie publish. Passive Guy has a post on 10 copyright myths for a good reminder.

 

If you Indie Publish you will be familiar with Print On Demand. Book Vault in the UK has been quietly upping the printing game. This week they announced Book Vault Bespoke with foiling, ribbons, sprayed edges, and other goodies available to on demand publishers. Check out what else they have coming. Super exciting if you are a writer.

 

When is a book club not a book club? Most people understand a book club to be a group that meets to read and discuss one book at a time. How about a club that meets to silent read for an hour. A bookstore has an interesting twist on the book club starting with swap your phone for a glass of wine and comfy chair.

 

Leah Paulos writes on Anne R Allen’s blog about book promotion. If you struggle with this aspect of writing and publishing, you need to read Why There’s Nothing Icky About Promoting A Book.

Mirella Stoyanova has an interesting post on Jane Friedman’s blog about carving out boundaries. How often do you find your writing time frittered away by demands of others or life expectations or your own inability to commit. Mirella says boundaries are important in the relationship we have with ourselves.

Julie Duffy has one of those posts on Writer Unboxed that writers need to read at least once a year when they feel overwhelmed about the world outside their desk. How To Write When The World Is In A Mess. 

 

Katie Weiland always has amazing posts on the craft of writing. I was particularly struck with this one on the subplots. Are you paying attention to the structure of subplots? They have a rhythm all their own which can enhance the main story or wreck it. 

 

In The Craft Section,

Minding your pinch points in writing- Sue Coletta Bookmark!

Foreshadowing- Michelle Barker

How Goal, Motivation, and Conflict add tension- Helena Fairfax- Bookmark

10 Great Writing Tips- C S Lakin- Bookmark

Checklist for beginning your story- K M Weiland- MUST READ

 

In The Marketing Section,

What MVP means for authors- Kevin Tumlinson

9 author newsletter examples- Mailerlite

How To Create Fun Freebies- Colleen Story – Bookmark

A Q and A with Katie Sadler on Book Marketing – Fiona Erskine- Bookmark

Get your books found on Amazon- Karen Cioffi- Bookmark

 

To Finish

Elizabeth Craig has a great guest post from Hugh Cook on making your characters leap off the page. Hugh talks about the four fiction techniques regardless of genre that make memorable characters. After all it’s the characters you remember from that book you stayed up all night reading. This is the Writer Holy Grail. 

 

Maureen

@craicer

 

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Pic Photo by freestocks on Unsplash

Is It Goodwill?

This week in the international childrens publishing community everyone was talking about the genre slap that we took when Kent University (UK) decided that Childrens Writing was not literary enough to teach seriously... this followed the sacking of the Times Children’s Book reviewer, in a budget cut. The children’s writing community in the UK wrote a letter signed by 425 writers and librarians to the Times expressing their outrage at this. Childrens writers around the world are facing the continual disparagement of what they do so there was lots of agreement when Keren David wrote this blog piece. There is a beautifully put comment on it from New Zealand’s Maria Gill who summed up our feelings here pretty well.

As the fallout continues over Learning Media and the sales of back lists etc etc, anybody who has got an email with new contract terms in it please check in with NZ Society of Authors before you sign anything.

Be aware that increasingly publishing contracts are now including tricky little phrases such as ‘all rights in perpetuity’ and ‘Worldwide’ and last month Writer Beware commented on a contract that had ‘Universe wide.’ Check over this handy book contract clause explain-all.

Bob Mayer has been looking at the traits of sucessful writers these days and it comes down to the fact that they are ‘Outliers.’ This is a really interesting article.

Continuing in this vein is a great post by C J Lyons who is probably the most sucessful Hybrid author out there. How has she juggled her writing career stradling both sides of the fence...she went and built a new paddock.

Bibliocrunch has some tips if you want to look into self publishing.

Phillip Jones of FutureBook has been looking at the slap dealt to the science publishing community from a Nobel Prize winner about the elitist nature of publishing journals... The Open Access of scholarly work is the big talking point in the academic community at the moment.

DigitalBookWorld is hosting a webinar on Rights Marketing and Management. Check it out.

Author newsletters...How do you do them and what use are they. This is a nifty bookmark worthy post giving you the low down.

Publishing Perspectives is taking issue with The Best Of 2013 Book lists...which are appearing all over the web at the moment. One ofthe more comprehensive book lists I’ve seen is BookRiot’s. At least I have heard of some of the books.

In the Craft section,

Susan Kaye Quinn on Brainstorming Your Book. This is a bookmark it post.

Jodie Renner has pro tips on character description.

Writersinthestorm has a How to write like the wind...

Kirsten Lamb on character duality traits.

Sarah Juckes has discovered a nifty website to help youuntangle your plot.

There are three stellar articles from Jami Gold.

4 tips that solve 99% of your writing problems

Subtext when your characters are liars

Fix 4 common problems with The Emotion Thesaurus (Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi’s amazing book)

In the Marketing section,

Joel  Friedman has a nifty template for anyone wanting to do a dust jacket.

Julie Hedlund has been doing a kick starter for her picture book which became funded yesterday. Take a look at how she broke it down and what she offered.

6 books every marketer needs to read. I have read some of them and they are very interesting even if you are not a marketer.

To Finish,

‘Tis the season to get gifts for yourself  (or the writer in your life...) Here we have Chuck’s Ten gifts for writers updated from when he asked people to kidnap Neil Gaiman.

K M Weiland has the top 10 gifts for writers...(not as extreme...) and

Writer Unboxed has bypassed the gift list and gone straight to New Years resolutions for writers...

Spread the Goodwill!

maureen

Pic from Amazon (5* book on visual fantasy writing)

Feeling The Emotion

ANZAC day* is always emotional. Whether you are braving the chilly dawn for the memorial service or later in the day at a full civic ceremony...there is always the tear in the eye, the tight feeling in your throat. On this day I think of all the members of my family who served in their different wars and are still serving. The one who didn’t come back in 1916, age 23 with no known grave...his brother, my grandfather who did. My husband’s grandfather, one of less than 200 that survived Gallipoli and the Western Front. ANZAC day is always harder when one of our family is overseas serving as a Peacekeeper.

When we were overseas last year, we met a Turk on a train in Italy. It was a special moment as we both talked about the war that forged our two nations. Each of us had a story to tell about visiting Gallipoli and crying. He talked about seeing a fused piece of metal, the result of 25 bullets that all hit together at once.

What a hell it must have been!

In the blogosphere this week a different kind of war was happening as reaction to Barry Eisler’s keynote address to the Pikes Peak writer’s conference was furiously debated on Twitter. Agents and Publishers taking exception to Barry’s comments that Legacy publishing was a lottery and their only value was for print distribution deals. Once the hot comments were out of the way and agents and publishers climbed down off the ceiling...debate was more constructive. Read the comments people...but give yourself some time...

In the last year very successful indie e-publishers have begun partnering with big publishers for print only deals and agents are becoming publishers on the side, organising editing, covers and marketing of eBooks or POD...it is pretty easy to see Barry Eisler’s point.

The London Book Fair has just wrapped up and there was lively debate around the changing nature of agents. So do you want a manager, a partner, a business coach...or a deal maker? And No an Agent is not necessarily going to do all of that.

Joanna Penn was also thrilled to be at the Fair. She has a huge blog post filled with video interviews and comments about the 2013 Fair, which had the most writers attend ever. Take some time over this one.

Joel Friedlander talks about his war on Word...how Word won...and what he is doing about it. Check it out and get a great deal on his solution!

Seven Steps To The Perfect Story is one of those amazing graphics that you really want to print out, stick on your wall and gaze at for a long time.

Myths about Query letters to Agents...don’t get too worried.

Elizabeth Spann Craig has been looking at Audio books and ACX. This is a feel good post telling you how to use ACX.

In Craft, It is all about Character Emotion...

3 Tips For Realistic Character Emotion

Real Life Diagnostics- Hooking The Reader- Janice Hardy dissects a submission.

Susan Sipal dissects your favourite Harry Potter Character Emotion Arc’s

4 Things You Need To Understand About Character Emotion...great roundup here.

Dropping into the Emotion Thesaurus, it’s all about sarcasm....

To Finish,

Roz Morris talks about Obituaries and why they are so important for writers...

maureen

*ANZAC Australian and New Zealand Army Corps remember their fallen soldiers on 25^th April the date of the landing of the Corps at Gallipoli in Turkey 1915. New Zealand lost ¼ of their men and more than ½ were severely wounded. The Turks lost twice as many allied casualties and their leader Ataturk Kemal became the Father of Modern Turkey. After a disastrous nine months the Allies left the peninsular in the dead of night leaving behind more than 44000 dead to lie with 87000 dead Turks. New Zealand suffered the largest casualties relative to their population of any Allied Nation and the campaign changed forever both Turkey, who won, and Australia and New Zealand, who lost but found and forged their own national identities away from Britain.

I saw Dire Straits perform this live when I was 21...it never fails to remind me of the loss and weariness of war and the need for Peace.

Being A Hybrid

The Digital Book World conference is over and attendees are digesting the big issues. 

Their comments and ongoing discussions about where publishing is heading in 2013 range from ‘we are over the worst of the transition...things are settling down’...to Batten down the hatches... this ride is only just beginning!

It does behoove* the author to keep an eye on what is happening in the wider world.

First up for comment...this from inside the conference, What Authors Want.... It seems that a third of authors want to self publish their next book...

Porter Anderson dives into Ether for Authors looking at the big issues from DBW

including What authors want...Hugh Howey...and Hybrid** is your new model.

More authors are being offered Wool like deals! News filtering through Twitter today. (oh joy...maybe this will be the big happy news for authors this year.)

To take advantage of publishing's current state of flux...authors are thinking Hybrid is the way to go. (A mix of Traditional and Self/Indie publishing.)

Dean Wesley Smith has been saying it all along...Dean wraps up a series of blog posts looking at crunching the numbers of the new Hybrid world and how you should approach the business of writing. As always check out the 97 comments!!

The next big talking point was Why online book discovery is broken and how to fix it...This article from PaidContent has many people quoting, dissing, upholding...but no one is ignoring it. I have been seeing it quoted all over the publishing blogosphere along with Brett Sandusky’s Elephants In The Room post that I linked to last week. Lots of other juicy posts in last week's blog are still being chewed over.

Also being hotly discussed...the Tools of Change conference coming up and a keynote issue  Piracy, Does It Really Harm The Author?

Publishing Perspectives has 5 Trends to watch for in trade publishing...

Roberto Calas has an in depth look at how to work/write/live Kindle Serials on Lyndsay Buroker’s blog...Boy oh Boy...this is a post that will have your head spinning...but incredible A++ for effort! Dickens followed this model of publishing...(I think he may have been a hybrid...) so maybe we're just going back to the good old days of 200 years ago...

Agent Sarah La Polla has a look at Literary vs Commercial and the reasons for figuring out where your MS lies.

In Craft,

Alan Rinzler takes a look at Character...when you walk in their shoes you write with authenticity.

Elisabeth Spann Craig also wants you have characters that surprise ...

If you are in the synopsis business...check out this great how to do it...one of the best I have seen.

In Marketing,

Maximising the potential of your Facebook Author Page...some very interesting strategies here.

Catherine Ryan Howard looks at Book Distribution and how she has made an important discovery...Hybrids take note!

To finish,

Two posts that rocked me today...You can decide whether I was Buoyed up*** or Aghast****

The numbers proving that print still matters in discovering books

and The New Yorker on Slicing and Dicing The Content of Books...The new model of discoverability....coming soon to a Search Engine near you.

Oh and if you want a nifty little post to bookmark...try this one 5 other online dictionaries...***** effort!

*To be necessary or proper for: It behooves you at least to try.

**Something of mixed origin or composition.

***become more cheerful

****Struck by shock, terror, or amazement.

maureen

Pic: This is a Hybrid Plumeria...Isn’t it beautiful. Image courtsey of

http://www.flickr.com/photos/sheepbackcabin/7578181360/

Book Trailers - It's All Marketing

Part 3 of The Craic project: Book Trailers.

The part where Maureen becomes a movie producer....

Book trailers are the visual commercial for your book.

They have their detractors...why bother to film a commercial for the book, people will just want the movie.

They can cost mega mega dollars... if you want a good one you have to hire a proper movie producer and actors etc etc.

They have to be art forms eg Maggie Stiefvaters book trailers (all created by Maggie) and how many of us can do that?

In my talks with school librarians they tell me that if a book has a book trailer it instantly makes it marketable to kids. Librarians use the book trailer on the library website... and kids being visual beings...well you know the rest.

Start by having a look at other book trailers to see what others have done and to get some ideas. Some book trailers are all static images, some have short snippets of video...some are animated...Some are the pictures from the book itself with audio sound bites.

A book trailer does not and should not condense the whole book to 2 minutes of visuals. 

It does not need to be acted out...or filmed in a big budget way.

Entice people... Entice...Think of how you get an editor interested in your project.

Look at your back cover blurb and loglines...this is a handy start to storyboarding your book trailer. Define the images you need to convey the message you want, atmosphere, main characters, compelling plot point. But don’t tell the whole story you want to entice the reader....Repeat after me... entice... entice.

For my storyboard, I turned three pages on their side drew up a grid pattern and worked through the images and the text I wanted. I started with a little bit about character motivation...and the opening conflict point...then I added images which represented different factors...the rock stars... the security and I finished on an image that was a running gag through the story. So hopefully the book trailer would still be relevant after the reader had finished the story.

Then I imagined the finished project as if I had lots of money and I was in a darkened theatre.

I realised that I liked the image of words appearing on a screen as that fit with the whole fake online identity of one of my characters. My teen then pointed out that our computer could record text as it is written in power point. So all I had to do was type reasonably fast with no mistakes. (yeah right!)

Now you have your list of must haves and your story board sheets, it’s time to check out photo stock libraries.

This is where it costs. Can you find a cheaper image that conveys the same message? Is it a must have image?

After you have selected your images. Download them to your movie making software and play around to get the whole thing looking just right. Check the length of time you want each frame to stay on screen and how you transition from frame to frame. My movie making software took my text recordings as short videos. Don’t forget to have images of your book in the trailer, as well as where you can find out how to buy it. After all that’s why you are doing this...

Music is an important part of the book trailer. It conveys atmosphere and tension and brings a whole professional edge to the project. Finding the right music is important.

Warning! Listening to royalty free music sites is a tremendous time suck! (but oh so enjoyable... I thought about writing books to soundtracks...dubfunkreggaesoul book anyone?)

I was looking for some hard driving rock (because of the rock band motif...) but with a soft beginning...

I checked out the wonderful Kevin MacLeods Incompetech site but found the music that fit the project the best at 300 Monks. They aren’t a donation site but $27 for the perfect track isn’t too much to pay I thought.

I arranged the images and text videos and dropped the music track on to it. Then I checked the highpoints in the music track were matching the right images. (This is fairly easy to do with Apple iMovie, however I had a teen sitting next to me fixing up any mistakes I made. Tip: Have a handy teen around if you aren't familiar with the software.) 

I sorted out a credits end shot, tweaked a little, uploaded it on to YouTube and voila! It was done.

If you click on the Craic book site at the top of the sidebar you can go straight to the Craic website and view the trailer ... or skip on down to the bottom of the link roundup and have a look there...

Ah the Link Round Up...the reason I spend so much time on social media...hehehe.

This week has been the jump on Franzen week for making us all feel bad about having an ebook. Monkeysee puts the gripes into perspective.

Compelling Characters...Do you have one? Or are you kidding yourself? Check out this post from the writepractice to see if you need to up the ante. 

And what kind of hero are they? There are three to choose from now.

Character names...how do you choose the right one. Here is a great post on naming characters or yourself if you need to.

Now that you have the name and the character arc... Are you falling into a stereotype? Fantasyfiction has a great article on Alpha’s, Beta’s and Losers and wonders if the upsurge in Beta’s is because of the upsurge in woman editors...(Do women want Alpha males anymore?)

Last week I gave you a link to Bryan Thomas Schmidt’s Sell Sheet. Brian has part two up. What to do with one after you have made it...This is good solid information. (Thanks Brian)

Kristen talks about R.E.S.P.E.C.T. and the word Free as part of your marketing bag of tricks.

The writerlens has 5 ways to market indie books. 

This is expanded on in a huge way by Author Media with 89 ways to market your book.

Yup it’s all about the marketing!

So check out this book trailer for this great book! You can even go to the website and read the first chapter...(2.99 on Amazon and Smashwords.)

Standing on shaky ground....

Tuesday started off with excitement in the New Zealand children’s writing community and then the day turned into horror.

At 6am the finalists in the New Zealand Post Children’s Book Awards were announced. These awards are keenly followed by the community. There were familiar names and quite a few new names which is wonderful for showcasing the depth and quality of our children’s writers. Of course there were big surprises that established previous award winner’s latest books weren’t in the shortlist but that is the nature of awards.

The excitement and the hope that National Media might notice the Awards this year faded quickly as the news that a major earthquake aftershock hit Christchurch at 12:51pm (the middle of a busy day) came through. 

Christchurch is one of our biggest cities, situated in the South Island, it is very historic and often packed with tourists as it is the main gateway to the alps, glaciers, and our biggest scenic tourist attractions.

As the afternoon progressed and the scale of the destruction was understood, the country stopped.

We are now in a National State of Emergency with over 98 confirmed dead and the toll is rising. We have over 200 people missing. As I commented in my November blog post, New Zealand is small and there are only 3 degree’s of separation here.

People are desperate for news of friends and family in Christchurch including the New Zealand Children’s Writing community. Some of our most prominent writers and illustrators are based in Christchurch including finalists in this year’s New Zealand Post Children’s Book Awards. In a week when the New Zealand children’s writing community should be celebrating, we are sad and anxious for our colleagues, friends and fellow kiwis.

Life in the rest of the country goes on but with a sense of the surreal...the picture postcard perfection of one of our most scenic cities in ruins.

Our most famous Christchurch landmark last week and this week.

So a shorter list of links to look at this week.

In the blogosphere the 2010 Cybills were announced.  This is an award for children’s books nominated by anyone but judged by bloggers in the Children’s Literature community.

Bob Mayer has a great post on the seven keys to unforgettable characters, this is part of his return to the basics series.

Bubblecow has a good post on finding the essence of your book. If you are looking for how to write tag lines or elevator lines this is a good resource.

The Great Jane Friedman has an interesting post on commenting on blogs...so if you have always wondered whether you should and what you could say...Jane has the answer for you.

Over on Craicerplus I have links to articles on

Offering Value For Book Buyers and Bookstores

Indie Publishing- the Problems With Book Distribution (became an ‘Aha- now I understand’ post on 

facebook this week 

How To Make A Quick Video For The Internet

Maureen

Pic Catholic Cathedral Christchurch

In the video, South Island landscape and the Canterbury plain not far from Christchurch, famous courtesy of Lord Of The Rings