May The Odds Be Ever In Your Favour

Hunger Games. Hunger Games. 

Everywhere you look. Hunger Games.

The promo is big...all over the Internet...FB...Twitter...TV...Radio...the stupid Team names have been assigned...are you Team Peeta or Team Gale...(completely missing the point but that is a rant for another time.) 

Katniss is the quintessential kick ass heroine down to her boots and braid. How and Why did this book get to be so popular? and What does it mean for an author contemplating their WIP and wondering if their story has the same potential to grab hearts and throats, wallets and imagination as Suzanne Collins story has.

Salon has broken down how the story became a bestseller and it makes interesting reading.

Word of Mouth is the key thing to remember...Hand Selling...Bricks and Mortar bookstores...Librarians...Children’s Book Reviewers...they were all targeted with advance copies of the manuscript which was photocopied...slapped inside a spiral bind cover and passed around six months before publication.

Oh the delicious irony of the very institutions under threat at the moment in the Brave New eWorld being the key that started the engine of this years blockbuster movie.

Helping The Odds

Word of Mouth...getting the word out about your project...and hopefully generating some excitement or at least readers is a hot topic in the blogosphere this week.

Jody Hedlund has Word of Mouth at the top of her list of how a writer can become and stay visible.

Rachelle Gardner has a timely list of 8 things writers should know about Goodreads.

The FAB Elana Johnson (WriteOnCon and YA Author) has an in depth look at Goodreads and Facebook marketing for children’s writers.

Kate Hart has taken an in depth graphical look at what has been selling in the last year in the Y A category...Contemporary is back....but what is following closely behind?

If you would like to check out some more intricate pictures that show lots of information...check out this one of the origins and then the sub genres of Sci Fi.

In Your Favour

Writers In The Storm have a guest post by lawyer Susan Spann looking at royalty clauses...this is a good overview about some tricky language that affects our bank balance...net... gross... wholesale....

Dean Wesley Smith has a good hard look at dead tree printing and concludes that it is worth it...and POD is the way to go. This is a very in depth article and the comments following it (over 80) are just as in depth...so take some time over this one.

The TOC conference is on in Bologna and they have been looking at the digital children’s book marketplace. Publishing Perspectives gives a quick overview of what people are saying on this topic.

A couple of quick resources for you.

Free Mac tools for writers.

The IndieBook Collective is a nifty little site that has lots of resources for writers who are Indie bound.

The Hunger Games Movie is a 5 star effort all the way. The screenwriters, and Suzanne Collins was one of them, hit every note from the book just right. The best movie from book adaptation I have seen.

Go see it... take tissues and pop corn!

maureen

It's A Dirty Job But Someone Has To Do It...

This week I have been contemplating promotion. 

Not for myself, but as an idea. It didn’t matter what I was doing, sooner or later some aspect of promotion ideology flitted through my brain because of a comment or an article or a question...It was everywhere.

The launch of the Fabo Story project...How do we promote it to kids?

The Wellington Children’s Book Association  AGM and panel event on Heroes...How do we promote it to the public?

Every good twitter link coming at me seemed to be on Promotion.

Then I got an email implying that we must have has PR and promotion experience to put on our very successful conference for children’s writers and Illustrators last year.

Actually No, however I did check out every book in the library to do with planning events and business management. This was an attempt to learn as much as I could about how we could get the word out and give the best conference we could, to people who were trusting us with their hard earned cash.

Promotion is part of being in business and business is what you are in if you are a writer.

Promotion is not a dirty word. It is a necessary word. 

You want an editor to look at your work so you must promote yourself as being professional, by writing the best story, presenting it well...clean pages, typeset, spell checked...

You want people to read your book...Telling readers about it, getting your name known, your author visits etc are all promotion for you.

Yvonne Perry of Online Promotion Made Easy has a good article to help you get started with building an author platform including a great set of links to overview articles.

Joanna Penn of The Creative Penn site has pulled together all the articles she has done over the year into one comprehensive links page on marketing. She covers everything from platform to podcasting.  She is a one woman university on the subject.

The Intern has five thoughts on book promotion, after her experience on a book tour. She is funny, ascerbic and thoughtful.  Her commentators agree that she is driving them crazy staying anonymous when she has a book to promote...Which does seem like the opposite of what she should be doing but you need to check out the blog to find out why....

Ali Hale has written one of the inspiring posts of the year with her article on writing bravely.

Has anyone recently told you how brave you are?

Probably not. The writing life doesn’t come off as requiring courage. In a normal day’s work, the worst danger you’re likely to face is a paper cut.

But if you’re a writer – if you’re taking ideas out of your head and turning them into words – then you’re sure as hell brave. Don’t forget that. Never let anyone convince you that what you do is easy or not a real job or even safe.

And that is just the beginning....

Elana Johnson stopped by on the blog this morning to comment on my shout out to the WriteOnCon team. I am in awe of their vision to create a conference for Children’s Writers around the world to participate in for free. What she didn’t know was that I planned to link to an interview with her fellow team member Jamie Harrington about how the conference came about. 

As you can stay at home and attend this awesome conference it is timely to look at the whole working from home thing. The workawesome site has 16 tips to boost your productivity if you work from home.

Over on Craicerplus (my Amplify page) I have articles on

5 Book Marketing Do’s and Don’ts

7 Reasons Why You Are Time Poor...(mea culpa)

How To Self Publish An E Book (This is so comprehensive....print it out)

5 Rules For Writing Y A

A brilliant article from Nathan Bransford on The One Question Writers Should Never Ask Themselves

How One Author Is Using Scribd To Find Readers

As an extra....Mike Shatzkin is on fire. This week he takes the publishers to task on ebook royalties. It’s a comprehensive article...be warned.

I noticed a few weeks ago that I had a large spike in my readers...when I did some investigation I found my blog had been mentioned by a family member on a discussion board for young mothers.  

The promotion was nice and unexpected and as I have tried to reward my blog promoters with a video just for them... I racked my brains to come up with something suitable....

And in shameless self promotion I entered myself in the Net Guide Web Awards for best New Zealand blog on a topic...so that’s one vote....as voting closes tomorrow (Friday 30th) I am expecting that there will only be one vote....snigger.... 

maureen