Catching The Speeding Train in the Writing Journey

This week I have been thinking of added content....following on from ideas sparked by the 1000 true fans post and talking to various friends about the widening fields of being a content provider(author)

On Monday I was at Te Papa for the Institute of Modern letters Monday lunchtime talk series which featured Kate de Goldi talking to Vic. Writer In Residence, Paula Boock. Paula’s journey from editor to YA writer to script writer to TV Film producing to writing her first adult novel which we were privileged to listen to a bit of...(main character is a child tho, so she hasn’t strayed far away from us) and it got me thinking about the writing journey.

A long time ago I scribbled stories for myself then I thought I‘d better learn how to write so I went looking for the magic formula.(guess what... there isn’t one) Along the way I collected rejections...then I got an acceptance...I’ve made it, I thought...No I hadn’t.

Lots more rejections later then writing took a back seat to life...I got involved in the writing community, so I wrote by osmosis...free association with some of the best in the world at writers talks etc. Then back to collecting rejections, trying my hand at new styles of writing but always, always learning.

Our writing journeys take us into many lands where the language is different and the culture is foreign and obstacles look insurmountable...and so it is with the new ideas of writing content and digital media to the children’s author. But in essence it is applying your skills in a different way using a different medium or media. (I joked to Fifi on Monday that Paula could be a poster child for the Spinning Gold Conference as she has applied her skills across two or three medias. Fifi is a poster child...Martin Baynton is the poster child, Janice Marriot who is writing scripts for the Wot Wots is a poster child... (they are all marvelous New Zealand children's authors trying their hand at new media.)

They are leading the way for the rest of us...and I will learn from them by osmosis and posting little snippets of interest to you all, who are struggling, like I am, to make sense of the speeding train called ‘Social and Digital media as it applies to our craft.

So onto the Future....Eeeeek I’m not ready.....

Fourth Story Media a new publishing company in the ‘states’ are ready to launch The Amanda Project. CEO Mike Smith describes the company this way on their website.

Traditonally, stories would be told through one medium. A film would exist as a film. A book would exist as a book. Now, the internet and new forms of technology are enabling storytellers to tell their stories not through one medium, but through every conceivable form of media.
— Michael Smith, CEO & Owner, Mind Candy and Perplex City

To have a look at what they are doing with The Amanda Project go here or just look at the video below.




Chorion based in the United Kingdom is working with a range of writers and literary estates to add media content to enhance the book presence. Here’s what they have done for Agatha Christie but their flagship is Children’s lit....(their slide show is really cool)go take a look at their website.

Merchandising: PC games, jigsaw puzzles, mugs, pencils, cushions, deckchairs and more are available at retail and online.
Stage: We license first class productions worldwide and actively oversee the hugely successful Agatha Christie Theatre Company's ongoing professional tours in the UK.
Online: The official website at http://www.agathachristie.com/ features blogs, games, downloadable content, information on Agatha Christie and every story she wrote, newsletters and a very popular forum for her fans.

The world is getting bigger and bigger for the author(content provider)...but seriously have you thought about turning some of your writing into added content slogans for merchandise????

And finally as a present to Tania Hutley...(stat counter says her site sends the most people over to read my blog...I’m awed...) the following video because she loved the Buffy staked Edward post.

maureen

pic is the Ave Solar train in Spain and the new way to travel without carbon emmissions... it's as fast as a jet...the way of the future????

How To Succeed after you have dusted...

Ok, I missed my usual blog day post...sorry...School holidays got in the way and also dusting.

Yes I am dusting...well orgy of cleaning anyway...this is in an attempt to finally make sense of the clutter on my desk so I can sit down at it and work this coming week. That’s the plan.

But as soon as I shifted some clutter I exposed more clutter and then there was the dust which not only could you write your name in but a short novel as well... get out the buckets etc and two days go by very quickly.

At least I’m feeling virtuous (dusty tho)

Two things have caught my eye recently. One was Joe Wikert’s Publishing 2020 Blog.
Joe was commenting on the cover article of Fast Company magazine about Amazon head Jeff Bezos plans for the future of publishing.
Joe is a publisher with O’Reilly Media Inc so he has an interest in the changing face of publishing...The italics are quotes from the article in Fast Company.

Here is a snippit.

Jeff Bezos is trying to do to book publishers what Steve Jobs of Apple did to the music industry. With its iPod and iTunes Store, Apple carved out a largely virgin market so fast that it was able to wrest control of the digital-music distribution system and thus dictate what the record labels could do.

I've occasionally been concerned about this but I'm not sure there's much to fear after all. I'm seeing more and more e-storefronts popping up every week and even though the Kindle is pretty popular it hasn't been the runaway success the original iPod was. Even the iPhone itself is a worthy competitor to the Kindle. Ironically enough, I think it's when Amazon fully opens the Kindle platform that we'll have to worry the most about this. That will probably have to happen at some point, but Amazon doesn't seem to be in any hurry, so relax...for now.

Should that happen, book publishers would have more to fear than just being squeezed. Amazon could phase them out completely, treating them as the ultimate middlemen orphaned by a new technology.

Forget about Amazon. Any publisher that isn't already worried about this in general is asleep at the wheel. With all the great self-publishing services out there and the ever-growing importance of social media and author platform it's crucial for all publishers to determine the value they add to the ecosystem.

In some ways, book publishing operates like one of Joseph Stalin's five-year plans.

This statement made me laugh out loud. Literally. It's painful to admit but true that some publishers still try to lay out 3- and 5-year financial plans. This, in an industry where most have had a hard time coming close to their latest annual and even quarterly forecasts. Ugh.

Read the whole article...it’s interesting...thought provoking and will give you a heads up to the future....which with the speed of the digital revolution will be here next year....after all blogs are more than five years old...twitter has just had its third birthday...
Joe is optimistic and thinks there will be great benefits for authors... coming soon....

The other thing to catch my eye is a comment by Seth Godin on Social Media. Do you need twitter and face book etc? And before you think oh sure, yeah, I know what he will say....watch the one minute video...he doesn’t think they are all that useful but something else is...



As the great Jane says

"the strength of your relationships is essential to getting ahead, which means having a network of people who like you and/or trust you."

Go out there and enable each other...

maureen

pic is from http://www.mybigcareer.com/?p=22