Engagement

Each week I look over my collected links to see what an over arching theme for the blog might be. Sometimes it’s a stretch to link up the content but this week everyday there was something about writers being connected with readers and the disconnect from publishers and distributors with writers.  This is nothing new. I have been observing this for the last five years. However it is interesting to look at this within the context of this week’s headlines around the publishing blogosphere...

Libraries are where the readers are.

Last year two ebook library subscription services models kicked off, Scribd and Oyster. For a flat monthly fee subscribers had unlimited access to ebooks across formats. The big publishers sat back and watched developments and are now jumping on board. Today Simon and Schuster added their 10,000 book backlist to the services, following HarperCollins earlier this month. This is a bid for reader’s affections. All You Can Read buffet for $8:99/month. The publisher gets a cut when a book is lent... Mike Shatzkin is predicting that the biggest publisher of them all, Random Penguin, will start their own global library. (Or will there be a nice buy out in the future...)

Smashwords has just partnered with OverDrive the biggest library database system in the US to make all their books available. This model is interesting. If the one copy of the ebook is checked out customers have the option to buy their copy through the library...a win/win for libraries. And what about the chance for celebrity curated lists of books just for librarians to recommend.

The Amazon vs Hachette fight doesn’t look like it is winding down... Mike Shatzkin looks at the power play and how publishing has been flipped over with the power now belonging to the retailer who has the customers.

If you are an author in the middle of all this what can you do? Take control where you can of your own reader engagement. (get in the libraries...sell from your website.. reader fan email databases...)

Hugh Howey brought out another Author Earnings report this week. The howls that once greeted these one day snapshots of where the money is going in the publishing world have become muted... Everybody is scratching their heads...how can this be... the same figures again... Is Hugh right? If you are traditionally published this could be a game changer for you.

Joe Konrath has practical advice for how you navigate this changing world...(a bookmark post!)

Bob Mayer also tells you to take responsibility for your own work. Complaining is not a business strategy!  Change your mindset!

Dean Wesley Smith talks about foreign deals and how you do them...

Lindsay Buroker on whether it is worth becoming an Amazon affiliate.

In the Craft Section,

Feed the Reader within the Writer

Chuck on Writers Block (Trigger warning for your ears)

Stealing from other writers (it is not a bad thing....)

The ultimate guide for becoming an idea machine

Elisabeth S Craig on developing thematic ideas

Drama belongs in your logline not its creation.

5 essential story ingredients

In the Marketing Section,

How to create the perfect trailer. (useful for book trailers)

Slideshare book marketing from Joanna Penn

Free image sources list

How to Make WOW blog images with Pic Monkey (from the amazing Jami Gold)

How to build a contact list of readers.

How to manage an email list...software etc

Self publish a print book worldwide. 

Advertising on Goodreads

Dave Gaughran has discovered a new site, Noisetrade, which aims to build your fan base. They have just branched out into books from Indie Music.

Website of the Week: August Wainwright has collected the 50 best Indie resource sites around. Many of these are on my regular check list. (one stop shop)

To Finish,

How are the successful authors out there navigating on the publishing sea. Russell Blake a publishing phenomenon is interviewed on how he has gone from 0 to 500,000 sales in a couple of years. (you may hate him after reading but you can't ignore him…) MindBodyGreen checks out 10 things successful writers do differently.

Engage the reader... Make it easy for them to find and buy your next book... SIMPLE. (DUCKS…)

(There are lots of links in the Craft and Marketing sections to help you.)

maureen

Talking About The Revolution

This week has seen wide ranging discussions on where authors and publishing are positioning themselves.

Hugh Howey kicked it off with a piece in Salon where he said None of this is meant to say that everyone who self-publishes — even those who study the craft, take their work seriously, and produce a constant stream of material — will find material success. There is also luck involved and the fickle tastes of readers. But what is becoming more apparent with every passing day is that you have a better chance of paying a bill or two through self-publishing than you do through any other means of publication.

Chuck Wendig countered with a piece on his blog warning readers that only going down the self publishing route was courting disaster. I traditionally-publish. I do pretty well at that, too, I think, and actually over the last two years have well-eclipsed anything I made self-publishing. Just the same, I don’t think one is better than the other.

Both make important points which have been debated all over the blogosphere this week. Hugh agrees with Chuck...and compared with diatribes from last year on these different perspectives of Publishing Now, these guys are politeness personified (yes, I said that about Chuck...)

Susan Kaye Quin, an Indie midgrade writer, has also been engaging in this topical debate and she has some good points to make. She looks at both positions coming down firmly on the Indie side...as she would. Take the time to read the debate. Mostly everyone agrees Hybrid is the way to go if you can and different types of publishing for separate projects.

However what everyone is saying on both sides is that quality of content matters. You cannot knock off an ebook in a weekend and make thousands of dollars. This week I was invited to speak to a tertiary Creative Writing Programme. I was blunt because sugar coating reality helps no one. However one very important point I hoped they got was they are already on the right track, by being in a course that will teach them to write to their best ability. There after, it is as Chuck says,...’Art Harder’.

Jane Friedman in her new role as VQR guru brought together a high powered think tank to look at where digital is going in literary publishing. Get a big cup of coffee, the ideas fly thick and fast in the middle with multi media, freelancing and earning income. Porter Anderson, covering the HUGE Writers Digest conference last week, also looks at these ideas including the move of agents to become managers. This is an interesting idea and a way forward for agents.

Another big topic getting lots of talk time is Author’s Guild president Scott Turow’s opinion piece on Amazon buying Goodreads. Unfortunately Scott’s anti digital tirade did not go down well in the blogosphere. Dave Gaughren talks about what went wrong for Scott. He is mostly polite (not like other tirades.) In my humble opinion someone who slams Amazon as much as Scott shouldn’t have his books for sale on it.

Futurebook is asking Can Publishers Disintermediate Amazon...should publishers become retailers...so then....(Check out the article, discuss amongst yourselves.)

Elizabeth Spann Craig has a great blog and this week she is looking at making your comtent work harder for you...I know how she is feeling and have been doing my own investigations down this route...

Anne R Allen says there is a time and place to blog your book...Have you got the right time and place?

PaidContent has looked at Flipboard’s new moves and warns...publishers have not seen this coming and maybe they should be a little bit afraid....The video will knock your socks off (This is a must read!) Your own magazine in 30 seconds...

And to help you with graphics content, new kid on the block, Imgembed, which is revolutionising image capture for blogs, websites etc...no more dodgy steals...and it looks great from the photographers side too. That’s where the blog pic came from.

In Craft,

Stronger verbs and how to get them....

Jami Gold on Revising for Stronger Themes.

Creative writing Prompts: Digging Deep Into Character

When there is no time...How do you write on the GO

In Marketing,

Joanna Penn on Keywords Metadata and Discoverability and Paid Promotion - is it worth it?

Video Book Trailers...putting one together.

Book Signings that WOW (great ideas from Bookshelf Muse blog)

Author Platform - Are You Being Cautious or Lazy (Catherine Ryan Howard takes you to task.)

 To Finish,

In our biggest daily paper was a great article on a Pacific Writer, Lani Wendt-Young who looked at the gap in pacific islands fiction and started writing a Spec Fic series which has taken off among her target audience, Pacific Island youth and then into the wider world. It is a great project and shows what you can do when you stop talking and just write.

maureen