It is Book Expo America time in the US and Golden Yarns time in NZ.
BEA is the biggest trade fair conference expo for the American publishing industry. This year in a bold move a group of Indie Authors are representing themselves and have a stand at BEA.
The comments and takeaways have been coming thick and fast all over Twitter today from BEA so the wonderful Jane Friedman has helpfully collated her day’s tweets.
There is definitely movement in digital publishing, distribution and sales. Publishers are finally getting to grips with what they should be doing...
Mobile is really
shaking up publishing and here is a slideshow showing this, which was presented
at BEA earlier today. Food For Thought!
Here in NZ the mergers
of the big publishers are beginning to bite.
Harper Collins
announced yesterday that they were moving a lot of their operations out of NZ.
This coming on top of the news that Pearson Education was also downsizing meant
that it has been a bad week for New Zealand authors. As we are still waiting on
news of what the Random Penguin merger will mean to NZ, which will be announced
in July, it just adds to the depression about lean times for writers here in
NZ.
Hybrid... Indie...
Self Publishing the words are on everyone’s lips now.
The rise of the small
Indie Press movement with a niche focus happening in the northern hemisphere is
beginning to gain momentum here in NZ.
Dean Wesley Smith has a great take on Indie Print Runs...yes Indies are getting into Print!
However the key to all
of this is distribution. Kristine Rusch has an excellent post on how the distribution models have shifted without anyone noticing and the change is
really profound!
In general discussion Tobias Buckell and his post on survivorship bias and why 90% of the writing advice out there is bullshit...struck a chord everywhere. Chuck takes a look at what Tobias said and put his own views...(usual warnings apply)
Last week I posted a
link to John Green's Radio NZ interview. John has posted a nice article on writing YA for those of you interested in his work...and why he thinks he got
so much success. Maureen Johnson is the next to be interviewed by Radio NZ
sometime this week. I had to laugh when she tweeted that she had to record the
whole interview under a blanket to muffle noise....
*UPDATE Maureen Johnson’s
interview on the coverflip project, which I covered in an earlier post, will be
on National Radio after 11am, Queen’s Birthday Monday.
Jane Friedman has 2
excellent posts to mull over. 2 Strategic Reasons To Keep Blogging and Why Google+ is Better Than Facebook for Authors. Kristen Lamb takes it a step
further looking at Facebook for Authors and what many are doing wrong.
In Craft,
K M Weiland on WhyYour Protagonist May Not Be Your Main Character
Ava Jae on When Not ToSubmit
Chuck Wendig on Killing Your Darlings...(warning it’s Chuck...it will be witty and profane)
In Marketing,
Pubslush...the Kickstarter site for Books
Why Pick Up a DebutWriters Book?- nice article by Jody Hedlund on how to make readers care.
To Finish,
Short fiction...there
is gold in them thar stories...
Two articles to get
you thinking. Short Is The New Long- The superb Anne R Allen
Lots of NZ children’s
writers will be heading to Christchurch for the Golden Yarns conference this
weekend. It will be a great time to look at our industry, what is moving and
shaking it and where the opportunities may lie for the nimble writer in the
fast changing publishing future.
