Buying Books

 

 

In Publishing News this week...

Another year, another big publisher on the sales block. This time it's Hachette. But there are differences. Their parent company is dividing the group into four and putting each group on the share market. Publishing by stock market dividends. I can’t see any problems with that model. Can you?

 

The director of The London Book Fair revealed he didn’t know much about the Global Book Business when he declared London was the first Bookfair of 2024. It isn’t and it’s not even the biggest. Mark Williams does a run down of the figures to educate the LBF director.

 

Publishing Perspectives are still filling their news pages with the International Publishing Association conference in Mexico. It’s getting bigger and with more star power- They have a top UN speaker and will be devoting a big chunk of programming to Climate Change issues.

 

Publishers Weekly sat down with some top Children’s editors and agents and asked what the themes of 2024 were. Hands up Romantasy. Manga is still looking good. Everybody is still waiting for the next Harry Potter (holy grail) book. Many have tried and failed. Perhaps HP is the last of the ‘once in a generation books.’

 

LitHub recently published an article by a New Zealand writer about what it’s like to have a successful story and then get told to Americanize it, when the publishers bought it because it was so edgy and cool. Who knew other cultures had their own versions of the English language? Can readers not understand different English words? SIGH.

 

Ricardo Fayet of Reedsy has an article explain the new changes to email which are rolling out this month. If you have a mailing list you will need to take note of the new requirements.

 

Kathy Steinemann has a great article on how to spot publishing scammers and fakes. Everybody should read this- even if you think you are very good at spotting them. Then head over to Writer Beware and take a look at the latest scams out there, like a cloned version of Macmillan Publishers.

 

Jane Friedman has a great guest article by Claire McKinney on why you need a press release and how to write one. This is a print out and stick on the wall post for marketing purposes.

 

The first rule of Write Club… Cathy Yardley has a super post on getting into the thick of writing, digging deep and channeling the things that speak to your passions then pouring them out on the page. And don’t forget about the last rule of Write Club…

 

Sue Coletta has a great post about how to write a dance scene. Like fight scenes they need some choreography and attention to surrounding detail. 

 

How do you know when you have too much dialogue?  And is it a bad thing? What about when the dialogue is authentic? Can’t you keep it? Anne R Allen has an excellent article on how to spot overuse, over authenticity and chatter going nowhere. 

 

In The Craft Section,

Scene Structure Basics - Lewis Jorstad- Bookmark

Vision board for writers- Sarah Rexford

All you need for characters- Writers helping writers- Bookmark

Increasing the emotional impact of your story- Angela Ackerman- Bookmark

What is overwriting and tips to avoid it- Edie Melson

 

In The Marketing Section,

Writing the perfect synopsis- Randy Ingermanson- Bookmark

ISBN’s all you need to know.

Creative Indies resource page- Bookmark

March Promotion opportunities-Sandra Beckwith- Bookmark

How to promote your book- Reedsy

3 creative ways to use your book2read account- Draft2Digital

To Finish,

As a teacher, I’m always interested in ways to get kids reading and unlocking the power of story. In Ohio a couple of schools have invested in Book Vending machines which are being used as rewards for good behaviour. The lucky kids get tokens to spend in the machine. Of course, you could see all the ways this could be problematic but still anything that gets kids holding books must be a good thing.

 

Maureen

@craicer

 

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Pic Photo by Streetwindy on Unsplash

New Lamps for Old

This week as the news of Barnes and Nobles purchase dribbled out, there was a taking stock over whether their saving was a good thing. On the whole, it was seen as positive but pundits are still taking a wait and see approach. The news that Waterstones staff felt their wages were too low even in the face of their CEO saying they got a ‘stimulating job’ to make up for it went over as well as you could expect.

News of another screw-over arrived from the Digital Reader. Libraries are smarting. Publishers have been changing the terms of access to ebooks by libraries. In the past six months, three publishers have changed access from perpetual access (at way over hardback prices) to access for two years (at way over hardback prices.) One way to kill ebook lending.

Remember when Audible annoyed the romance writers over the horrible terms of their subscription offering and writers left the service in droves. After all, getting pennies when it had cost you thousands to record an audiobook wasn’t very fair. We’ll do better said Audible. They relaunched their audio subscription with a new name... but it could be the same old... 

The New Publishing Standard is expanding its offering. They are backed by Streetlib who operate out of Italy. Streetlib are keen to open up the rest of the world to digital publishing.  They have committed to Africa where they see the next big market for books. (Just remember all the Commonwealth countries in there...) So a dedicated newsletter for the African publishing market is about to be launched.

Marketing is always a tricky subject for authors. It is hard to put on your marketing hat when you’ve just spent ages with the creative hat on. Two interesting blog posts caught my eye this week for authors wrestling with email marketing. How to improve your email marketing and 14 content ideas for emails. Go forth and improve.

I try to get up and move around every half hour or so when I’m writing. But when you are in the flow sometimes you can forget to do this. Here is a timely reminder from one writer about what could happen if you don’t pay attention. Read it, it could save your life!

How often do you think outside the book? Are you thinking print, ebook, hardback, audio, gaming, movie, voice search, streaming, podcast... If your eyebrows lifted, check out Kris Rusch’s blog post on the licensing expo she has just attended. Joanna Penn’s guest, Makoto Takudome, shows how easy it is to get Amazon Polly to make your book into a podcast. 
Voice search and audio content are here to stay. How can authors use them to tell stories? There’s a new outfit making bite-sized stories for Alexa to read out. They need writers. 

In The Craft Section,

10 writing blogs to check out

Writing the anti-villain- Reedsy- Bookmark

Conflicts and goals in romance- Jami Gold- Bookmark

Goal orientated storytelling tension- Chris Winkle

5 ways to keep readers glued-  H R D’Costa- Bookmark

Two punctuation blunders – Anne R Allen- Upskill Here!

In The Marketing Section

How to get easy author publicity-Rachel Thompson

Getting paid to talk- Events after publication -Emma Darwin

Ten business models for Indie authors- Orna Ross

5 Book marketing strategies- Barbara Freethy- Bookmark!

7 ways to Make more money from your books- Leslie Millar- Bookmark

To Finish,

Jillyanne Hamilton has put together 20 super writing and publishing resources to help you make your book shine. Some of the resources will be familiar to you as I mention some people frequently but there are some new ones in the mix you might like to check out. 
Collaboration is the way of the future. Think artists collectives, Indie publishing houses, or just getting some like-minded friends together to take on the world. 

Maureen
@craicer

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Market Your Name

This week one of my friends posted an interesting article from Sarah McIntyre about crediting illustrators. Illustrators are often overlooked by authors and award judges when it comes to promotion. It is time that we remembered that a great picture book has an author and an illustrator working in collaboration and so they both should be equally credited when it comes to promotion. Sarah came up with the #picturesmeanbusiness campaign.

Darcy Pattison has a guest post on Jane Friedman’s blog about the promotion of children’s books and how she is using Pinterest as an experiment because children’s books are about the visual. 

Anne R Allen has a great resource blog for writers. This week she writes about the care and feeding of THE MUSE for writers. There is lots of great advice in here.

Going to conferences can inspire you to new projects. Joanna Penn talks about attending the ThrillerFest conference and what she learned there. This is a really fascinating article as Joanna is exploring the hybrid author position here. She also has a great interview with a publishing futurist…what might be around the corner and coming soon to an author near you... 

Following along on this theme is Porter’s think piece - finding and building fans of books is the most important thing an author can do ... here he reports on some big thinkers in the publishing game on this kind of marketing.

Jane Friedman has been getting serious of late with email marketing. She has written two excellent blog posts on email newsletters for authors and how to improve the newsletter to make it relevant. I’m interested in exploring this from a children’s writer point of view. Who do we send newsletters to...

I don’t subscribe to many newsletters but one I do and try to read frequently is Larry Brooks. His Storyfix website is great. His newsletters are direct and punchy on the craft of writing. Larry recently had a melt down moment which is worth reading. Writers you need to study your craft... figure out some stuff then apply it. If you write then you should read this.

Four important questions that agents ask writers in the pitch session... and yes you should be able to answer them...

In the Craft section,

Goals Conflict Stakes- Janice Hardy (Bookmark)

Copyediting –it’s not rocket surgery- The Book Designer (Bookmark)

Writing Terrible first drafts

Fishing out your manuscript hook- Kate Moretti (Bookmark)

How to write a synopsis- sorta- Ava Jae (Bookmark)

9 ways to use point of view to strengthen characters

4 Revision Goals- Darcy Pattison (Bookmark!)

In the Marketing section,

Does it pay to do a print book- Molly Greene

The unexpected effect of perma free- M Louisa Locke- Bookmark

Marketing Books as an Indie author

12 secrets to selling books

10 mistakes authors make that cost them a fortune

Cleaning up your Amazon Central Book Page- Elizabeth S Craig

How to sell more copies of a book you published years ago- Bookmark

Offering free ebooks to subscribers- Elizabeth S Craig 

Website of The Week

Every now and then you come across a web comic that exactly illustrates the writing life. Chances are you have seen an Inkygirl comic. So you really need to check out her awesome website where she has other great helpful tips. Inkygirl is also promoting the #picturesmeanbusiness campaign to recognise picture book illustrators on metadata and awards.

To Finish,

Mark Coker of Smashwords recently put up his Slideshare deck ... 6 hours of concentrated workshopping on publishing ebooks. You don’t have to wade through all of it. Just look at the transcript and scroll down to the section that interests you. This is like a Master class in eBook marketing.

Maureen

@craicer

Pics From the fabulous Inkygirl