Learning On The Job

I’ve been thinking lately about the way publishing works these days. 

Ten years ago it was find an agent or editor and pitch your work. Keep trying and learning and maybe they will like it and you will get published. 

Five years ago it was ditch that traditional route and self publish... just put it out there and find your audience. 

Now it feels like a convergence.

To succeed in this business you have to go in with an attitude of learning and improving your craft. This applies for both sides of the publishing coin. This excellent post by Jamie Raintree explores the ‘act as if’ mindset and planning your career first.

While you are digesting that, Jane Friedman has written about standing out to agents and editors.... This is good advice people.

As you are learning about the publishing business stop and look at Kris Ruschs deal breaker posts. This week she looks at agent contracts.You should be keeping one eye on the gold and both eyes on the scams and navigating your way around.

Publishing Perspectives has an interesting interview with Sarah McIntyre, the illustrator behind the campaign #PicturesMeansBusiness. This is a great campaign and a must read for every children’s book author and publisher out there!

Lindsay Buroker is a great writer and one of the hosts of SFF marketing podcast. She writes an informative blog as well. Recently she wrote about genre hopping and how to do it successfully as a writer.

This week Wattpad introduced inside the story advertising. This was predicted about three years ago as one of those ‘and then the world will have gone to hell’ scenarios. But Wattpad being digital and wanting to help the authors has said use the space between chapters. Is it a win/win?

In the ‘what will they think of next, Section,

Augmented Reality. (A.R.) Now think of bookstores. Now put the two together. It’s like playing Pokemon Go on the bookshelves. Especially designed for kids...

In The Craft Section,

Two great articles on writing dialogue- Bookmark Both

Fantastic dialogue tips – Now Novel and Editing dialogue- Jane Friedman

Writing sex scenes

5 crime fiction blunders to avoid

3 ways to build a better plot- Janice Hardy

Writing complex characters- K M Weiland – Bookmark

Writing from the opposite genders point of view

Building and keeping suspense

Character Arc development – Jami Gold Bookmark

In The Marketing Section,

5 guerilla tactics for promoting your book

When you’ve finished your first novel, what do you do- Anne R Allen-Bookmark

Keyword use on Amazon- Penny Sansevieri - Bookmark

The importance of your author photo

Print is still important- Elizabeth S Craig- Bookmark (and read comments)

Marketing on a budget

Creating the author business plan- Janice Hardy - Bookmark

To Finish,

These days you can write from anywhere and many writers do. Give me wifi and a coffee is the writers cry. However to be a productive digital nomad takes a little more savvy. Here is a list of productivity tips for your next foray of writing in the wild... or your nearest coffee shop

Maureen

@craicer

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Pic: Flickr/ Creative Commons/ Pedro Simoes 

Talking Across The Room

This week ahead of the Futurebook conference, a day was organised in London where authors and publishers got together and talked to each other. This is unusual in the book business as generally the dialogue is one sided. If you do a Twitter search on #authorday it will bring up some pithy quotes that were said throughout the day to authors and publishers by authors and publishers. The first report of #authorday is up on The Bookseller – Can we trust each other? It is a must read.

Among the discussions at Author Day was the continued lack of illustrator credit in the book business. Sarah McIntyre has made this a special campaign and after Author Day updated her website to reflect this. Pictures Do Mean Business For Illustrators. Authors need to read this!

Also discussed at Author Day – Assisted Publishing and Agents as Publishers. Jane Friedman has an interview with an agent that does this... Is it ethical?

The Author Earnings team of Hugh Howey and Data Guy have turned their sights on Amazon UK. Are the results the same as the US? Some interesting takeaways here... especially for global bestsellers.

Roz Morris has been taking a close look at pseudonyms especially in this digital world where a Google search can haul up stuff you may not want associated with your pseudonym.

21 ways to turn your book into a business - this is great advice for Non Fiction writers.

If you are juggling a writing life with full time work you need to read Darcy Pattison’s excellent blog post on ways to make your life a little easier along with the 10 must have qualities for the Indie author.

In the Craft Section,

5 important ways to use symbolism- Angela Ackerman

How to bring characters back into the action- James Scott Bell

7 easy ways to research – K M Weiland

Is there enough Death in your stories?- Devlin Blake

How to write good beginnings

The biggest problem in beginnings - Agent Sarah Davies

In the Marketing Section,

Two great posts from Molly Greene- How to upload and sell on Google Play and Using Contests and Giveaways

The risks of offering a freebie- Jami Gold

How to launch a thriller series- James Scott Bell

How to launch a book for new authors - Susan Kaye Quinn

Querying a new novel while the old one is still doing the rounds - Agent Janet Reid

To Finish,

I will wrap up the year next week... in the mean time if you have a project ready to go Pit Mad will be taking over Twitter on December 4^th (US time.) Have fun!

Maureen

@craicer

Pic from Flickr Creative Commons/ Ray Bouknight

Market Your Name

This week one of my friends posted an interesting article from Sarah McIntyre about crediting illustrators. Illustrators are often overlooked by authors and award judges when it comes to promotion. It is time that we remembered that a great picture book has an author and an illustrator working in collaboration and so they both should be equally credited when it comes to promotion. Sarah came up with the #picturesmeanbusiness campaign.

Darcy Pattison has a guest post on Jane Friedman’s blog about the promotion of children’s books and how she is using Pinterest as an experiment because children’s books are about the visual. 

Anne R Allen has a great resource blog for writers. This week she writes about the care and feeding of THE MUSE for writers. There is lots of great advice in here.

Going to conferences can inspire you to new projects. Joanna Penn talks about attending the ThrillerFest conference and what she learned there. This is a really fascinating article as Joanna is exploring the hybrid author position here. She also has a great interview with a publishing futurist…what might be around the corner and coming soon to an author near you... 

Following along on this theme is Porter’s think piece - finding and building fans of books is the most important thing an author can do ... here he reports on some big thinkers in the publishing game on this kind of marketing.

Jane Friedman has been getting serious of late with email marketing. She has written two excellent blog posts on email newsletters for authors and how to improve the newsletter to make it relevant. I’m interested in exploring this from a children’s writer point of view. Who do we send newsletters to...

I don’t subscribe to many newsletters but one I do and try to read frequently is Larry Brooks. His Storyfix website is great. His newsletters are direct and punchy on the craft of writing. Larry recently had a melt down moment which is worth reading. Writers you need to study your craft... figure out some stuff then apply it. If you write then you should read this.

Four important questions that agents ask writers in the pitch session... and yes you should be able to answer them...

In the Craft section,

Goals Conflict Stakes- Janice Hardy (Bookmark)

Copyediting –it’s not rocket surgery- The Book Designer (Bookmark)

Writing Terrible first drafts

Fishing out your manuscript hook- Kate Moretti (Bookmark)

How to write a synopsis- sorta- Ava Jae (Bookmark)

9 ways to use point of view to strengthen characters

4 Revision Goals- Darcy Pattison (Bookmark!)

In the Marketing section,

Does it pay to do a print book- Molly Greene

The unexpected effect of perma free- M Louisa Locke- Bookmark

Marketing Books as an Indie author

12 secrets to selling books

10 mistakes authors make that cost them a fortune

Cleaning up your Amazon Central Book Page- Elizabeth S Craig

How to sell more copies of a book you published years ago- Bookmark

Offering free ebooks to subscribers- Elizabeth S Craig 

Website of The Week

Every now and then you come across a web comic that exactly illustrates the writing life. Chances are you have seen an Inkygirl comic. So you really need to check out her awesome website where she has other great helpful tips. Inkygirl is also promoting the #picturesmeanbusiness campaign to recognise picture book illustrators on metadata and awards.

To Finish,

Mark Coker of Smashwords recently put up his Slideshare deck ... 6 hours of concentrated workshopping on publishing ebooks. You don’t have to wade through all of it. Just look at the transcript and scroll down to the section that interests you. This is like a Master class in eBook marketing.

Maureen

@craicer

Pics From the fabulous Inkygirl