I have a life?

“I have been wondering why my life has been so manic lately?”
“Like duh!” says a school mum, as we watch our respective kids hanging upside down. “Look at what you’re doing...you are choosing to have a life...if you didn’t have a life..it would be a lot less stressful.“

I have to say she is right...oh well, putting up with the stress...Thursday blog day rolls around and I am feeling slightly more productive than usual. Tax done...Yippee. Church work done...Thank God.

Interview questions answered....Fellow blogger Johanna Knox wanted to interview the convenors of the Spinning Gold conference. (I wonder who they are....?)

I have been catching up on my scientific reading...

We even got away for a little holiday over the long weekend...It was a wrench leaving the computer, the phone, and all the requests for a little bit of our time...not .

But there are a pile of things to do here and this blog will never get written if I run around noticing them like the back yard which is still covered with debris from the last storm, the big tree in the back yard needs three broken branches removed but I’m not looking....not looking...and the husband doesn’t see them in the dark which is the only time he see’s the back yard....

So a couple of links for you today...It is nice to receive positive comments from friends who say my links are great and they pass them on to others...

Book Expo America is over for another year. The Writers Digest conference the day before had the usual accolades...

Janet Reid has written an extra ordinary post about a session where she received fifteen pitches in public on a stage in front of 500 people. And critiqued each one as a learning tool for the audience...Reading the comments of people in the audience witnessing fifteen people with the courage to put themselves out there to do it, is amazing...

And here is something to contemplate about e publishing from Mike Shatzkin of Idealog.

Complicating things further is an entirely different sort of offer coming up from Google. Everybody else, whatever the differences (and there are many!), is selling you a downloadable ebook file which you “own”. Google is selling you access to a file which they will stream to you. What’s the difference? Two big ones.
* When you close your web browser, you no longer have the book.
* Because of that, any concern about piracy goes away. If you can’t grab the file, you can’t “share” it.
This is game-changing in a very dramatic way. If you’re reading on a web browser, then there are no format issues. And if you don’t have the whole file, there are no piracy issues.

These ideas were discussed at Book Expo... a wake up call for the industry who thought book trailers on YouTube were the latest things in e publishing...

Of course the conference work keeps going and going...with two more blogs to manage as well as meeting agendas to prepare for...
I got a couple of rejections in the mail... life goes on...same old... same old...

That’s why I have a life....

maureen

Pic is from the website career realism...

Busy....Busy...

After the excitement of Monday Night, I have spent the week immersed in tracking registrations answering queries and emails and responding to begging emails.

Right at the beginning of this Conference Ride, a year ago last month, we thought ‘ok let’s aim for 80 people.’ That’s a reasonable number, (double the previous conference 16 years ago.) It is affordable at the venue. The next biggest venue would double our costs....(Would anyone in NZ pay $700 to go to the same conference given the current economic climate...)

When we began to realise the public interest in what we were doing we started to let everyone know that interest was high. The speed of the take up surprised us and baffled some who thought Oh I’ll register tomorrow or next week. So now we have a waiting list...growing by the hour....

I did take a little break on Wednesday night to update our WCBA blog about the New Zealand Post Children’s Book Awards. Fifi was texting them through from the award ceremony so I had to post them. Go Here if you want to read what I wrote.

Hats off and a wave to Melinda, fellow blogger, who won The Children’s Choice Award with The Were-Nana.

It has been a busy week...but I took another break this morning to catch up on blog reading.
So here are some little gems for you to take you into the weekend....

Every now and again I hop onto The Buried Editor site and have a look at what Madeline is talking about. Recently she posted the handout of the workshop she took at a regional conference in Texas. Madeline took a session looking at Online Marketing. It is very informative and covers a lot of ground. So go take a look.

The team at Writers Digest have put together a conference in New York that touches on some of the themes at our own conference. So worldwide, everyone seems to be asking the same questions. There is a great line up of speakers and sessions...

The great Jane has posted a MUST READ article on Five Ways Writers and Book Publishers Need To Embrace Change NOW.
Jane is an amazing resource in what’s coming and trends in the publishing world in America. Keep an eye on her....

When you take these 5 things together, I think authors will partner with publishers who offer a community of other like-minded authors (networking/growth potential), who offer diverse opportunities and methods of support, across all types of media, and who share the same values.

So it's been a busy week...

Maybe this weekend I'll get my tax done, paint that wall, write something on Mars....

Maureen

pic says it all really