The dramatic rescue today, while the world watched, of the Chilean Miners from their underground prison had all the elements of great story telling.
First the spine chilling event itself, How can they survive? Four months underground, limited food, psychological pressures and the decision not to tell them how long it would take.... The race to innovate new technology and drill down...The emotional and financial toll on the families. Breakthrough, two months earlier than predicted. Extraction. A new birth....
So how long before the book comes out I wonder? I noticed this week that the book on the Christchurch Earthquake has arrived in shops...that’s just under six weeks. Ah, the speed of publishing, either its a speeding train or a camel train.
This week The New York Times trumpeted that the day of the picture book was over. Parents weren’t buying them and children were encouraged to 'read up'. All over the blogosphere articles were posted refuting this and the sentiments expressed in the article from one misguided blogging book mother that she was forcing her 6 year old boy to ‘read up.’
In my experience (professional teacher, expert in reading,) children, especially boys, go backwards and forwards with their reading strategies and confidence until they are about eleven years old. Picture books can be very challenging reads...I’m thinking some of Graeme Base’s work aimed at twelve year olds...Forcing children to ‘read up’ defeats the purpose of encouraging reading. All you are doing is confirming for the child that reading is hard, a chore, and not worth their while....
Writing the books can be hard, a chore, and is debatable whether it is worth your while...but also like reading, writing can be a joy, a challenge and extremely rewarding.
Mike Shatzkin looks at the Frankfurt Book Fair, which has just wrapped up, and what we can learn from it...the world is getting smaller and what has happened in the US publishing industry is going to hit the rest of the world, very soon, harder and faster.
Liz Bury of Publishing Perspectives has an article on the Frankfurt Book Fair which looks at publishers use of ebook rights and what it may mean for world wide rights...tricky little lines in your contract that give the writer a bigger slice of the pie if they are sold in different groups.(Commonwealth rights separate from North American rights etc.)
Also looking at contracts is Jeannie Franz Ransom who has an interesting tale to tell about negotiating contracts.
L J Sellers has posted on the Blood Red Pencil blog, a publishers evaluation check list for Manuscript Readers. This is very informative and a handy little guide to look at before you send your master piece off anywhere.
Victoria Mixon has posted some humdinger articles this week...I could have linked to three but then I thought...just send you all to her site...grab a coffee first because I guarantee you won’t want to leave for a while.
Over on Craicerplus (my Amplify Page) I have links to articles on
5 Articles You Should Have Read Over The Summer (or our winter...but you can read them now as a quick
‘publishing in the now’ 101 course.)
10 Essentials For The Inspired Writers Life. (No surprises I agree with number 1 completely.)
The Infamous New York Times Article
A Screenshot of the Planning Sheet of a Harry Potter Book. This is really good and a good way of visually plotting all the story arcs...
6 Things You Lose When Writing A Novel...very funny piece from the great Tahereh
Salman Rushdie Has Written A Kids Book...( we could all be legit writers now...)
How To Create A Futuristic World...( now I know why I’m doing so much research....)
And if you have got to the bottom and thought 'hey there isn’t any marketing link...' Never fear, Bookbuzzr has a comprehensive list of ten things to think about when you are using the internet to market your book.
enjoy,
maureen
pic...once upon a time this was very now.
