The Sinners And The Saints

 

In Publishing News this week,

The UK publishing industry is in turmoil this week over a controversial book that was called out by commentators, who then found themselves targets in a social media pile-on. The book has been pulled for a revision but the apology over the mess has created more controversy with well-known authors tweeting their support citing free speech without checking the facts. There is an open letter being circulated about the treatment of the commentators. 

N.B. If you hold an honoured position in the industry, be very sure of all the facts in the story before making public statements. No one will believe you made the statement as a private individual. As my journalist friends say, Nothing is ever off the record!

 

News broke this week of depths of parsimony attributed to one of the wealthiest entertainment companies on the planet. The comic book creators for the Marvel Movie franchise are being paid a flat fee of $5,000 and if they are lucky, a seat at the premier.

Yes – You did read that right. Check your contracts people and learn what all the terms mean.

 

Here in New Zealand, we celebrated the best children’s and young adult books of the past year. A fantastic night was had at the NZCYA awards by all as we gathered in person after last year’s virtual gathering. We are very mindful of the privilege here in NZ. In a nice touch, we applauded last year’s winners who were present. Congratulations to everyone who were finalists and winners on the night!

 

The New Publishing Standard takes a look at how the first year of subscription with Kobo+ shaped up. Every week there seems to be something about subscription plans as big players and not so big players jostle for room. This is our publishing future, as Mark Williams points out. You can’t ignore it you have to learn to work within it.

 

If you create comics you might need to look at a rapidly growing comic distributor platform which has just raised a substantial chunk of cash to expand with AI.

 

The stellar human being, Dolly Parton, is writing her first fiction book with James Patterson.

In an interesting creative addition, Dolly is also writing a companion album of songs that explores the themes in the book. 

 

This week Time magazine published the 100 best Young Adult books of all time. It made for interesting reading and a lot of Twitter congratulations to living authors. How many books have you read?

 

Nathan Bransford has a guest post from an acquisitions editor detailing all the steps that go into acquiring a book. Interesting reading.

 

In The Craft Section,

Don’t let excess baggage bring down your characters- Marissa Graff- Bookmark

Write like you are in love- edit like you are in charge- James Scott Bell 

Dual points of view- E J Wenstrom- Bookmark

Every hack needs an ideas file- Bill Ferris

Which story structure is right for your book- Savannah Cordova- Bookmark

The flat archetype of the child- K M Weiland- Bookmark

 

In The Marketing Section,

How to give readers a direct amazon review link- Sandra Beckwith- Bookmark

10 ways to handle bad reviews- Indie Author News

Book marketing success and 5 top Twitter tips for authors- Rachel Thompson- Bookmark

Personal branding for authors- Kimberly Grabas- Bookmark

Book Release Checklist – Elizabeth S Craig- BOOKMARK

 

To Finish,

When chatting to the supreme winner at the New Zealand Children and Young Adults Book Awards, Tania Roxborogh, she recounted a familiar story of feeling utterly demoralised as a young writer. James Scott Bell has a great article on advice for the demoralised writer. 

Success is sweeter after a long agonising climb to the top.

 

Maureen

@craicer

 

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Pic: Flickr Creative Commons – Steve Snodgrass

 

Genre Journeys

This week seemed to be genre week with interesting  articles from across the genre spectrum.

Children’s Publishing day at Digital Book World had some interesting takeaways. A few years ago it was widely speculated that with all these smart phones the early adopters would be teenagers. But they aren’t. They still want a physical book with printed pages.

But the genre could be slowly changing.

Over in the Romance field the HEA (happily ever after) ending is being questioned... do modern romances need this? It isn’t reflected in real life... is it? Some interesting thoughts in this blog post and comments.

James Patterson, who is his own genre, has been making waves this week with the revelation that there is a whole publishing arm devoted to just him... and he is employing them through his publishers, which would make him a Self Publisher with a traditional publishing house or a traditional publishing house with a self publishing imprint devoted to one person. No one can decide but it makes fascinating reading especially as he is publishing across age groups.

Leo Hartas, an illustrator, makes a plea for writers to understand how to commission an illustrator. If you are in the market for having illustrations for your project... read this first. I know illustrators who say these words often.

One of the most heart felt posts on Social Media came from Anne R Allen this week. This follows on from Jami Gold’s post last week. Anne talks about the increasing pressure on writers to be everywhere... You don’t need to be. She makes absolute sense and this is a must read for every author out there.

Catherine Ryan Howard who is a Go To Guru on how to self publish has an agent and a traditional publishing deal. This is an interesting journey... and one a lot of writers are taking as Hybrid is seen as a good career move.

This week publishing futurist Mike Shatzkin has been thinking about the need for publishers to use critical data research in the acquisitions process. These days research and data profiles are becoming easier to find and use so why aren’t publishers using them? As always read the comments for the robust discussion points.

Today while traveling on an errand a character, whom I had put on hold for a few years, popped into my mind demanding that now was the time to tell his story... never mind I’m in the middle of something big... somewhere else. Some characters are so rude! This got me thinking about Story Structure and this led me to one of Larry Brooks latest posts on structure versus pantsing. There is no opposition. There is subliminal understanding that every story should have a beginning and an end. This is a one of those A-HA posts that you will print out!

In The Craft Section,

18 tips to deconstruct novels to nail genre- C S Lakin Bookmark

7 steps to hook readers

How to write a love scene- Jane Friedman Bookmark

6 emotional motives for your characters- Mythcreants

2 Bookmark posts from  K M Weiland 5 ways to trim your word count and 11 killer chapter breaks.

The 4^th rule of storytelling from Pixar

Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi have compiled a popular posts list.

The critical importance of crafting a strong opening- Jody Hedlund Bookmark

In The Marketing Section,

6 ways you are ruining your book marketing- Bookmark

Social media guidelines for newbies

How authors can find readers- Jane Friedman- Bookmark

What to talk about in the marketing meeting.

A guide to what agents are looking for in the first five pages- Bookmark

6 straight forward ways to structure a blog post

To Finish,

Y A Highway is an interesting site where YA authors hang out. They have an interesting infographic (very Jasper Ffordish) with lots of clickable links on all sorts of interesting posts. This is well worth a trawl. Children’s writers cover all genres the good and the bad...

Maureen

@craicer

Colourful Easter pic from https://www.flickr.com/photos/praktyczny_przewodnik/7047496769

Writing Costs

This week two critiques of James Patterson’s Master class in writing bounced around my Twitter feed. One was from The Observer and the other from Writer Unboxed.

James Patterson is a prolific bestseller who has a team at his publishers devoted only to his work. This year he started a fund for booksellers to encourage reading. Our local children’s bookseller was a lucky recipient. So a master class from him was always going to be interesting. It’s a huge bang for your buck. ($90US) I can’t help thinking that other writing craft gurus will have to lift their game.

The other topic to get bounced around this week was the cost of publishing.

Joanna Penn has a critical analysis of her own writing business and six figure income. Kate Flora has a critical analysis of how much it costs to write traditionally. (i.e. with a Trade publisher.)

Nick Stephenson is also talking about the cost of self publishing but he sees it as a value....

Last week I linked to Steve Hamilton's fight with St Martin's press Kristine Rusch has an excellent post on this and the fact that had he done it in 2005 his career would be over… but authors who have done it have some tricks up their sleeves…. 

Porter Anderson takes a look at balancing Trad and Indie publishing interests. Whether you come in on one side or the other or are firmly hybrid, there is a lot of discussion in what way a writing career can go now. Porter mentions Deborah Cooke’s recent essay, What I miss about Traditional publishing, (very interesting) as he compares the two camps. Jaye Manus takes issue with some of Deborah’s ideas especially where she says that Indie publishers need someone to say NO that is not a good idea.

Elizabeth S Craig has a great post on publishing podcasts... She talks about her favourites and finds a few more from her readers.

Anne R Allen has an excellent post on social media... she is not a fan of email newsletters. She talks about the best way you can promote.

Have you heard about ageism in YA? A young writer points out that teens aren't being listened to...

In the Craft Section,

What 4 agents are looking for in memoir- Alan Rinzler

Why your characters are boring

Character psychology- 9 common errors- Kassandra Lamb

5 reasons internal dialogue is essential

Revision techniques- Janet Fox (Bookmark)

Plotting essentials checklist

Planning your plotting – Janice Hardy

In the Marketing Section,

13 reasons why your novel query was rejected- Anne R Allen

Looking good on a web cam – Rachelle Gardner

How to market your books when you have a pen name.

Writers- using a project management approach.

Molly Greene has two great posts- 45 ways to sabotage your social media success and

Why readers download books-(Bookmark)

To Finish,

Whether you are Trad or Indie inclined you still need to write a ripping good yarn. So here is the word from Bob Mayer – Finding the shiver effect!

maureen
Pic From The Fabulous InkyElbows

Passionate about Data...

Today I popped into The Children’s Bookshop and noticed a new series being promoted...what was so interesting to me was this contemporary thriller Y A series had photos of all the books in the series on the inside cover and when they were coming out... 2 months apart! The whole 6 book series in a year. This year Indie Authors have been talking about publishing two or more books in a series in a year to capture readers...and feeling quite happy that they weren’t being restricted to one book contracts from traditional publishing houses. This is the first time I have seen a traditional publishing house run with this idea.

There are so many risks to writing a full series when you don’t know if there will be an audience for it. A respected Editor looked at my Book One of a series and said...make it bigger...The first book has to sell the whole series. For a publisher to commit to a full year publishing schedule of six books is taking a punt on the reader when they don’t know if the book will take off. So how do you find these readers...how do you know what they want and what they will buy? It is all in the DATA.

Cory Doctorow has been stirring the pot this week with his article on the importance of metadata andhow publishers don’t actually know who their readers are...and they definitely aren’t telling the writers. So who does know? Cory has the answer and he has a warning that this is going to be a very important issue for publishing in the future.

But what metadata are Readers concerned with? Front matter and End matter and Authors had better have a handle on all of this.

Of all the data coming out, authors do like to keep an eye on trends and what editors might be looking for. Publishers Weekly report of a panel discussion with children’s editorstalking about exactly this is required reading.

James Patterson (mega author) is passionate about children reading and wants America to wake up to the demise of the publishing industry and libraries...So this week he took out front page ads in The New York Times to tell everyone of his concerns. He wanted to plant the issue right in front of Readers...reaction to his ads have been mixed from the literary community.

Kickstarter looks likeit could be replacing the publishing community...an interesting article for mid career writers to chew over.

Rachelle Gardner had the horrible experience of nursing a writer through a complete computer meltdown just before the MS was due at the publishers. She talks about all the different ways you should be ensuring this does not happen to you.

Author Solutions is off to court. http://publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/digital/content-and-e-books/article/57046-authors-sue-self-publishing-service-author-solutions.html

A class action is being taken against them. When you read Dave Gaughren’s article about how many publishers are involved in some way or other with Author Solutions, this court case looks very serious for everyone. Reputations...and profits...all on the line.http://davidgaughran.wordpress.com/2013/02/19/penguins-solution-for-authors-one-racket-to-rule-them-all/

Today a twitter discussion between agents about New Adult became a blog post on how agents should treat each other and what to be aware of in their public pronouncements. Do you really want an agent who doesn’t know anything about your genre?

In Craft,

For those writers wrestling with screenplays...Tell the story in visual beats.

How much detail is enough in your story.

15 ways to breakWriters Block.

Critique Partners...and how to maintain passion for your story.

In Marketing,

Twitter tips forauthors.

5 Reasons Relationships are the Core of your Author Platform.

To Finish,

Concert Pianist James Rhodes has written in the Guardian a thought provoking post on creative passion. Find what you love and let it kill you.... Read it and see whether you agree with him...How passionate are you to get that novel written? What are you doing about it?

Sorry about the huge URL's that appear this week. Bloggers highlight link broke in the middle of preparing this post.

maureen
PIC from

http://www.flickr.com/photos/tensafefrogs/3649985674/