Go Global - Resistance Is Futile

It’s March and that means the publishing industry wakes up and announces new things…

Streetlib the Italian based digital book provider has expanded again
and is now in every country in Africa and enabling authors to publish in their own languages.
They have also expanded down under, this month opening up in Samoa. (last month it was NZ and Fiji)
They are on a super roll to enable authors to publish globally in their own languages. This is a big thing
in terms of readers.
Did you know there are more people online in Nigeria than in the UK? Think of the new readers…

Bookbub decided that as Audio is the big thing they better get involved and so they have launched
a new service called Chirp with Findaway voices. Where they showcase featured audio… for very CHEEP.

Recently the Guardian wrote about the world of academic publishing. That is where the author
of the article has to pay a huge sum of money to the journal to publish their academic findings.
Then the journal goes on to charge huge sums to the university libraries for subscription fees
to read the article… after the university paid for the research in the first place.
Someone is making heaps of money.
However Cengage an academic subscription service for students have quietly been circumventing
huge textbook fees and have just enrolled their 1,000,000 subscriber.

StoryTel, an online everything entertainment subscription service, have also been expanding.
They have opened up in Poland and they write about how subscription to an all in one service works…
Instead of spreading your love between Netflix, Itunes, Amazon, Spotify…. Get it all in one handy package.
This is the future… and books, newspapers, journals, etc are write in amongst it...    

The world is available to you in 24 time zones… which is a good thing because it doesn’t matter where you are
in the world you can attend the London Book Fair Alliance of Independent Authors conference
which is 24 hours of amazing goodies for authors and all FREE.
Conference organiser Sacha Black was just interviewed on The Creative Penn on Villains and Heroes
and it is a craft must listen.

Meanwhile another week another predator… Mark Coker, CEO and founder of Smashwords, found it
an interesting experience when he was contacted out of the blue by a publishing company that wanted
to make him a household name…. Hmmm.

Last year I reported the author disquiet around the handling of Harper Lee’s estate.
Now there are problems with all the theatre productions of To Kill A Mockingbird.
How to kill a golden mockingbird….

Roz Morris has been writing her blog for ten years. That’s a lot of content. She reflects on how she got
started and what she has learned along the way.  Anne R Allen has a great post this week on
how to write web content. Something I struggle with…

In The Craft Section,

12 signs it’s time to say goodbye to your writing project- Meg Dowell

How to write humour- WritePractice-

Effortless writing- Copyblogger

Should you give non humans marginalized traits- Mythcreants- Bookmark

Unsnagging your plot- James Scott Bell- Bookmark

How to avoid repetitive sentences- Janice Hardy - Bookmark

In The Marketing Section,

10 mistakes authors make in their online presence- Anne R Allen- Bookmark

Email newsletter examples- Hubspot- Bookmark

2019 Literary Calendar- Build Book Buzz- Bookmark

8 marketing tips- Writer Unboxed

5 reasons author tribes will make you a better writer- Dr J

To Finish,

Creative resistance is a thing. It is the nagging little voice that tells you all the words you’ve just written are awful
and you may as well give up. There are some great books out there to help.
The War of Art- Steven Pressfield is a great book or you can read Chuck Wendig’s latest blog on Self Rejection

Maureen

@craicer

In my monthly newsletter, I round up the best of the bookmarked craft and marketing links as well as some other bits and pieces. When you subscribe you will also get a nifty book crammed full with marketing notes. If you like the blog and want to shout me a coffee- hit the coffee button up top. Thanks.

Pic Flickr Creative Commons- Kevin Gill. What the world would look like if the polar ice sheets melted.

Losing The Plot

Last week when it was February and I was still thinking it was early February... (which caused me to miss an important birthday and completely screw up my calendar,) I mentioned a scandal that was just beginning to be noticed about Scammers stealing writer credentials and money laundering through Amazon. So now that this is becoming more widely known is anyone going to do anything about it....

Romance authors are spitting tacks about the pathetic royalties being offered by Amazon Audible Romance Subscription- think Kindle Unlimited but for Audio. They promised only good times ahead for authors who wanted to offer Audio books. The first Royalty payment is in... and it is shocking! Not only that but it is split with the Narrator and tied up for seven years. There is gold in them thar audiobooks...

I love my Book Cover Designer... They are truly important in the visibility of your book, regardless of which way you publish. So Terry Goodkind (famous SFF writer) really caused shock when he came out to diss his latest novel cover. Things got out of hand... Unless you are Indie publishing then you have little to no say over what the publisher chooses for the cover. If you have a problem take it up with the publisher.... Lets play Good and Kind out there people!

It has been two years since Harper Lee’s death and the feelings of disquiet felt amongst the author community at how her estate was being handled. So this week when a court ordered that the will be made public there was considerable interest. As one commenter noted... the person who drew up the will benefits from the will... is that legal? Warnings to all writers out there... Know what you want to do with your literary estate!

From time to time I post articles about what is happening in the educational publishing landscape. They are the last bastions of the $150 cheap print textbook. McGraw Hill has plans... big plans... and it just might be that the last barricade will be over run by cheering students.

Teachers in Canada are not cheering... They are taking the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency to court in a bitter battle about what isfair use... demanding repayment of tariffs. This is a case to keep an eye on.

The lovely Ursula K Le Guin died last month and many people have been digging into her work and mourning the loss. Karen Fowler wrote about the ten writing lessons she learned from Ursula...

In The Writing Craft Section,

2 great posts from Bridget. Villain motivations- make it real- and Foreshadowing examples- Now Novel- Bookmark Both!

2 Bookmark worthy posts from Anne R Allen 9 secrets to supercharge your fiction- and Plot holes and pot holes- Bookmark BOTH!

Using the Comic Relief Character for more than Comedy- Joanna Penn

Ten tips on how to clean up your MS before sending itanywhere- Must Read!

What can you do about limiting your bad writing days...Robin Lovett has the answer.

Showing vs Telling from the fabulous Jami Gold- Bookmark

In The Book Marketing Section,

Are you ready for video? Help for the author.

Formatting using MS Word Styles- Joel Friedlander- Bookmark

3 ways to blogging success

Critical cover rules

5 author tools for authors who hate marketing- Bookmark

Sell more books overseas- Bookbub

4 affordable ways to master Book Marketing- Jane Friedman- Bookmark

To Finish,

Who writes to music? Film scores are the go to for lots of writers but have you ever consciously listened to pop songs about writing... hmmm

Lit Hub dug up a list of 11 and I was surprised... among the list was Devo’s Whip It...

March Madness starts now!

Maureen

@craicer

Pic: Flickr Creative Commons/ Kate Ausburn

I round up the best of the bookmarked craft and marketing links from the last month. When you subscribe you will also get a nifty book crammed full with marketing notes. Come and join our happy band.

Villains and Heroes

This week doing the publishing rounds....

That RITA book.

That Watchman book refund.

That guy who yanked his book from St Martin’s Press.

There are plenty of sides to each story... tho the RITA saga has left me scratching my head on how it even got published. (The RITA’s are the Oscar’s of the Romance world.) This book was nominated and finalled in two categories. Just dodgy on so many levels...

Then we have an Indie bookstore giving refunds for the latest Harper Lee book to disappointed readers. OK readers you were warned about the hype around it. You were told it was an untouched early MS... (possibly a money grab by the publishers.) The Guardian let off some steam around this.

This week’s epic marketing fail.

So you think you have a pretty solid career with your big NY publisher. You’ve won awards, earned out etcetc. Then your latest book (with starred reviews already) gets yanked before publication. Heard it all before... but this time it is the author that has yanked the book because the publisher lied about the marketing campaign. (Takes writer guts to do it.)

Brooke Warner has written a piece about the lengths some Traditional publishers are going to control their writer's marketing lives. Stopping writers giving endorsements to other writers being one of them. Isn’t it supposed to be a win/win marketing strategy?

Catherine Nicholls decided to try a little experiment and sent her novel out under a man’s name. The comments on this one are very interesting. When you know that there are more women in the publishing industry but a male name means the project gets looked at faster... um ?

The annual SCBWI LA conference wrapped up this week. Children’s writers who can’t get there drop into the official conference blog where a team of dedicated writers live blog the sessions. It’s always interesting. Grab a coffee scroll down to the bottom and live vicariously.

Publishing Futurist Mike Shatzkin has an interesting post today about the changing nature of publishing. He makes a comment about not seeing any of the big writers jumping from Traditional publishing which a couple of years ago everyone expected. And when are we going to see the United Artists model of publishing? (I’ve been saying for years that the Indie future is in the Bloomsbury model.) I wonder when we will get to say I told you so...

In the Craft Section,

4 steps for organising plot ideas- Jody Hedlund (Bookmark)

3 crucial editing phases

Self editing tips

Emotional wounds- when you accidently kill someone- Angela Ackerman

7 things that will doom your novel

Killing your darlings- Janice Hardy

5 Tips for making writing a daily habit- C S Lakin

What is your characters internal struggle- Margot Dill (Bookmark)

22 experts on overcoming writing challenges

In the Marketing Section,

Changing your marketing mindset- Elizabeth S Craig

Online Marketing strategy for authors – Mike Shatzkin (Bookmark)

When to use pre orders- Lindsay Buroker (Bookmark)

3 tips to improve your pitch –Janice Hardy

22 ways a blog can sell a Non Fiction book- Joel Friedlander

Website of the Week.

I drop into Elizabeth Spann Craig’s blog pretty much every week. Elizabeth is writing about her learning journey as she becomes a hybrid author. This week she had an interesting article about what Traditional publishing needs to get the Hybrids back.

To Finish,

24 things that writers know only from other writers

and

Writers need their own personal heroes Why? Check out these 7 reasons.

(now go and make your list!)

Maureen

@craicer

Pic: Flickr Creative Commons / Ricky Brigante - Malificent

The Cost Of Writing

What are the odds that a reclusive writer who wrote one book that has topped best seller lists for nearly 60 years would suddenly decide that the time is right at age 88 with severe medical issues (deaf and nearly blind) to bring out the first book she ever wrote.  (insert dead fish smell here.) 

This has been the main topic of conversation this week in the publishing blogosphere.

Once the usual literary crowd finished celebrating that Harper Lee was releasing a sequel to To Kill A Mockingbird then saner heads started asking why and the story becomes increasingly unlikely. Is it a rights grab by a lawyer who took over Harper’s sister, Alice's, law firm after her death a few months ago. Is HarperCollins behaving ethically in this whole affair? Is the lawyer to be trusted or have they played a very long game? There are lots of questions around this. Where is Atticus Finch when his creator needs him?

Staying with things legal... Tess Gerritson talks about what is happening with her landmark legal battle with Warner Brothers who bought out New Line who had the option on her book Gravity 15 years ago... and it makes for some nervous reading for writers selling film options.

So the first two items this week are after the book has been written, Chuck Wendig looks at the emotional rollercoaster of writing the book with his handy guide.

Susan Kaye Quinn talks about the need to create... and how that jumbly mixed up feeling is telling you something important.

That something important could be the startling finding from last weeks author earnings report about that 30% of books being published without ISBN’s. Here in NZ we are in a relatively fortunate position of getting free ISBN’s. But in the rest of the world it is a different story. It is a real cost. Porter looks at the issues raised by the author earnings report and then discussion over ISBN’s and their value get a hammering in the comments.

If you have a toe in the academic publishing world these five predictions for 2015 are for you.

Seth Godin amplifies his call to publishers that if you aren’t selling direct to consumer you are....

In the Craft Section,

Kristen Nelson on what is uneven writing

21 fast hacks on fueling the suspense

K M Weiland on writing backstory

Susan Kaye Quinn on not rushing to publish

3 most effective types of inner torture for your characters

Writing exercises - changing the tail.

In the Marketing Section,

The big story this week is Bookbaby beginning Print On Demand. This is big news for those who don’t want all their stuff in the Amazon basket. Canny marketers have also discovered how you can play both sides...

Jody Hedlund on whether you really need social media

Jami Gold on branding 101

Self promotion for horrible people

Odd Stuff

Buzzfeeds collection of coffee mugs for book nerds

Jeff Sanders on why you need to track every little accomplishment.

To Finish

It is possible that Harper Lee stared at each of the 5 reasons why writers avoid writing in the face and took them on board or she didn’t know how to follow up the first book (first book syndrome) or, as everybody suspects, the phenomenal success frightened her to reclusiveness. But if this is a rights grab... it will be a landmark in publishing... as the day when some publishers lost all moral credibility.