Flagging Down Karma

This week the power of group/mob behaviour was in full view around the blogosphere.

And it wasn’t pretty!

E L James had a torrid time on an ‘Ask E L James’ Twitter chat that her PR people should never have enabled. Mob behaviour was in evidence when she was publically vilified at a live event. You can hate the stories... just don’t read them, but don’t attack the author. They are a human being. Porter reports on the fallout and how Chuck Wendig coped with it.

For the anonymous haters who hide behind computer screens and avatars to say hate speech- there will be KARMA.

This week Apple’s appeal against their sentence of collusion with the big publishers got thrown out. (See Karma...) Fortune magazine details just our cozy the deals Apple and the publishers made. It is not pretty reading.

Scribd, the ebook subscription company, has come up against the voracious romance reader and decided that limiting their subscription is the way to go. There are howls of protest from readers who are instantly penalised for reading too much and from writers who find their books have just disappeared. The Bookseller looks at the issue and what might be a solution.

Writers trying to get their head around the new Amazon subscription service pay per page read would do well to check out Susan Kaye Quinn’s comparison breakdown. Susan’s straight forward analysis clearly shows the writer just what a pay per page means as opposed to a borrow. Math wins and so do some writers.

Fake online reviews are still happening and some authors are being burned by negative review campaigns. Amazon is rolling out some new algorithms to clean this up. Porter talks about what can be done, should be done, is being done about sock puppetry.

In the Craft Section,

3 small changes that will transform your writing

Revising without tears (Bookmark)

Don’t trim words- Chop them out.

The writers skill- Stephen Pressfield

The secret behind making me care about your characters- Chuck Wendig (usual warnings)

Why starting with action messes up so many beginnings- Jami Gold

6 writing techniques

How fiction writers can ramp up tension and pacing- CS Lakin (Bookmark)

Truth and Fiction- Girl Cliques- Becca Puglisi (Bookmark)

In the Marketing Section,

Behind the scenes making a cover- Dane Low

Podcasting tools

Book marketing checklist –Tim Grahl (Comprehensive)

3 questions for indie authors

Social media for authors

Book marketing plans – (Bookmark)

Special forces tools that help writers-Bob Mayer

Book Market results- Nicholas Rossis (Fascinating! Bookmark)

Website of the Week

Grammar – You can’t ignore it. There are some great websites out there to help you write more better (spot the deliberate grammar mangling.) Check out the Grammarly blog for nifty tips and great articles.

To Finish,

Jane Friedman has an interview with Nathan Bransford on her blog. Nathan has been it all... an agent, a writer, a reviewer.... He is in a unique position to comment on today’s publishing industry.

maureen

@craicer

Pic: From Grammarly blog on writing retreats.

Trick Or Treat

Happy All Hallows Eve,

A couple of years ago Young Adult writers decided to hand out scary books to trick or treaters...and it has gained a following amongst the writing community in the countries that celebrate Halloween as a cultural festival. All Hallows Read...go to your local second hand bookstore...buy up ghostly children’s books and R L Stines...and hand them out.

This week in the publishing blogosphere there was a flutter as Larry Kirshbaum announced he was going back to agenting after heading up Amazon’s print publishing operation. Larry was up against it, when he was hired two years ago as all the bookstores holding onto deals with publishers decided they wouldn’t stock Amazon printed books. Traditional Publishing pundits have taken a ‘We Won Against The Mighty ‘Zon’ attitude but others aren’t so sure... Anyway you look at it, the authors are the ones suffering with poor print sales and no exposure to the bookstore browser. If the Mighty ‘Zon ever works out distribution into the bookstores for print books... the game will be changed.

In the blogosphere it is NaNoWriMo time and tips abound for how to tackle the month where everyone tries to write their 50,000 word opus. Editors and agents are shuddering because December heralds all these manuscripts hitting their floors. Many of them are saying they won’t look at a book that arrives in December because it won’t have moved beyond a first draft.

If you are not heading into the bunker to write you may be interested in the changing ownership hop of Figment, the teen writing community that keeps getting bought by very big publishers.... If I was very cynical I’d wonder whether they were keen to get their hands on the next big young thing who knows nothing about the cut throat business of publishing.... Lucky I’m not.... Dave Gaughren has a good blog post on this subject.

A Publishers Weekly article this week is definitely scaring quite a few people. The article has anonymous agents and editors saying publishers are beginning to carefully change contract wording so it doesn’t say what format they will publish the book in. If publishers don’t commit to a print edition or they go to a POD print edition so that rights will never revert back...or the Print edition will be under their new imprint where the writer pays costs (read Author Solutions here) then writer’s dreams may rapidly turn to nightmares.

A couple of weeks ago I was looking for a comparison piece on the indie music scene and the indie publishing scene and couldn’t find one and then into my Twitter feed pops this opinion piece from a musician writer.... Interesting reading.

Mark Coker looks at the economics of Ebook lending library style.

Joanna Penn has an interview with an expert on selling books into Germany. They have the biggest population of readers in Europe.

Now for all those great Craft Treats

These are the best blog posts I’ve seen on plotting this week.

Structure in HarryPotter and how JK Rowling followed the rules.

Plotting made easy.

Other inspirational writing tips worthy of bookmarking

How to figure out a great Concept

How to fix the sagging middle,

Why Voice is so important.

What do you do with a semi colon and other useful grammar stuff

Can you include song lyrics?

Telling vs Showing and how to figure it out.

NaNoWriMo a collection of tips and resources.

To Finish,

Two stellar opinion pieces.

On writing Y A from a literary writer... and what he learned, which was a heck of a lot!

Hugh Howey on the challenge of connecting with readers directly. You need to do it.

Here is my All Hallows treat for you...Writing tips fromGreat Authors. 

Print out a couple of these and hang them over your desk!

maureen

This great pic was from http://www.flickr.com/photos/rattler97/

Knowing Your Business

Knowing what business you are in has been theme of the publishing blogosphere over the last couple of days.

In an ideas convergence, sparked by Kodak going bankrupt, many commentators are looking at what happened to Kodak and drawing some parallels to the publishing industry.

Knowing what business you are in is the most important pointer to your future as Rachel Gardiner points out with this comment.

Publishers, agents and authors need to start from this very important truth: We are not in the “book” business. We are in the business of storytelling. This encompasses entertainment, information, ideas, creativity, inspiration, and intellectual exploration. It also comprises a social element—the relationship between reader and writer. We are in the business of fostering this relationship.

Mike Shatzkin, publishing futurist, puts it another way using statistics to highlight that in a conservative estimate publishers are looking at over 30% of their revenues coming from online...either through ebooks or Amazon bookstore.

But being halfway through the change in consumer buying habits in our decade of change has profound implications for all the big players in the publishing value chain.

Both these commentators are calling for a wakeup in the publishing industry and this is echoed in the comments section of each of these posts with big hitters weighing in to comment.

Kristin has advice for the big six to take now. Her post, bracing for impact, has a list of important points the traditional publishers should be doing now so they don’t go the Kodak way. (here is just one point she makes...)

New York, if you guys had an e-division, you could take on new untested writers that agents deliver with very little risk. If a new writer sells so many e-books, she earns a print deal and can earn a spot in a…bookstore. Publishers don’t waste paper printing books that don’t sell and bookstores don’t waste shelf space on…books that don’t sell.

 (Since this morning, when the post went up, she has over 109 comments endorsing her call and it is being retweeted everywhere.)

In the spirit of knowing what business you are in, a few writers have been looking at tips to improve the storefront of the author.

Authorculture looks at the author photo and the common mistakes authors make with this vital tool.

The wonderful team at Bookshelf Muse has a pithy post on creating a good Author platform.

Joanna Penn has a guest post on writetodone with the 7 truths of being a writer. This has struck a chord with nearly 100 comments on the subject.

In the add-this-to-the-craft files....

Joel has rounded up the best grammar sites...

Jami looks at using the Save The Cat Beat Sheet...(Save The Cat is one of the foremost books on screenwriting...)

Alison has an interview with Holly Cupala about marketing...check out Holly’s trailer...

Do you have a book manifesto? If so, does it reduce you to tears? If not, something is wrong...or why you are writing in the first place....

This morning I heard about the pinterest site on radio that is taking the social media world by storm. I know a few writers who use mood boards or inspiration boards to gather pictures of their characters houses maps etc...Check out this post about how pinterest works and how authors can use them to huge advantage...

As you contemplate the changes in the publishing business, spare a thought for those who are up against the wall holding on to the need for a printed book... a list of the downsides of an ebook.

1.You can’t hide a gun in an ebook...check out the rest of the list.

Of course if you can figure out a way to hide a gun in an ereader...a life as a crime writer could be beckoning or you could be taking care of business in a new way....

maureen

pic is a star wars bounty hunter...