Studying To Suceed

On Monday I had the good fortune to attend the LIANZA awards. 

New Zealand librarians chose the best books published for children in the past year. 

Congratulations to the winners! Among the established high profile awards given were new awards in sub categories for books published in Te Reo Maori. As more people are becoming literate in the Maori Language there is a need for books to become more sophisticated. A lot of what has been published in Maori are children’s readers and non fiction. This is now beginning to change as children fluent in te reo age. I was happy to see that a novel based around science fiction including elements of myths and world building was the inaugural winner in the young adult section of the Te Reo awards. When you can have this kind of sophisticated plot, playing with futurist ideas, you know that the Maori language is alive and flourishing.  

Dinner out after with some of the brightest talents in Children’s Writing and Illustration in this country was the icing on the cake...and the jump start to my night....(Thanks for the help and the laughter, Children’s Writers and Illustrators are the best!)

WriteOnCon  has finished and the children’s literature world is digesting the insights gained.  So if you have been studying hard after reading the SCBWI blog (which I urged you to do two weeks ago...) here is this weeks study homework.

Adventures in Publishing have gathered together a conference round up for each day of the WriteOnCon

Day One and Day Two and Day Three and boy there is some great information tucked away in here.

Miriam Forster has put the two videos by Shelli Johannes-Wells on author branding from the conference on her website so hop on over and have a look.

If you want more information on author branding, The Book Designer has a comprehensive article on the subject. Everything you wanted to know...don’t forget that author branding equals business branding.

The Great Jane has interviewed Johanna Harness about the twitter phenomenon that is the #amwriting group. This is an interesting project by an unpublished writer using social media to get known. With over 2000 people participating in the project and an Amazon store and CafePress merchandise site you have to ask yourself  is this the way of the future? (If you have a book coming out with a great theme check out your contract...if it doesn't specifically say anything about merch maybe you need to look into it...a range of interesting quotes from the books and the book cover could make a nice tee shirt (thinking a certain Shakespear sequel here))

It is an interesting interview. Being interviewed on the No Rules blog jumped her stats over 1000%

Dean Wesley Smith has written an interesting overview of what he thinks is happening in publishing. He equates publishers as huge ships that take a long time to change course. The winners are the small press and indie publishers. They can move faster and ride the wave better. Authors who have a long backlist can profit also from the e-publishing phenomenon.

On Craicerplus (My Amplify Page) There are links to articles on

Swords Dominate 2009 Fantasy Cover Art...

The Ultimate Checklist Before Submitting Your Novel.(this is brilliant!)

How To Ensure 75% of Agents Will Request Your Material.(required reading)

Dean Wesley Smith- Killing The Sacred Cows of Publishing...thought provoking article by Dean with an Agent Responding...

10 Things To Do To Become A Better Writer In 10 Days

Self Publishing? A look At Lightening Source.

Finally

In the News -UK Penguin are opening their inboxes for a limited time to unsolicited manuscript submissions...very brave of them...

And

Nathan Bransford asks the question -If You Were King or Queen Of The Publishing Industry What Would Be Your First Order of Business?

Some very funny responses...give everyone donuts...yep after my day today....

Enjoy...off to find a donut

maureen

Image is from the very funny website Better Book Titles- The Titles They Should Have Used.

Yes - It is For Frankenstein!

(check out the rest!)

Being Social In The Media

This week I have been thinking about the Author and Social Media.

Publishers are seeing Social Media as a tool for marketing their Authors and Authors are being told that they have to be on Social Media. But which Social Media is best for you?

Should you Blog, Tweet or Facebook and if you do what sort of platform should you have?

Platform? I hear you squeak! 

If writing is a business (which it is) what does your business stand for? Are you a purveyor of finely crafted gentle bedtime stories for the under fives or a rip roaring paranormal farce for the fifteen plus age group. Do you write edge of your seat thrillers or explorations of the teenage psyce? Is your writing home in Non Fiction for kids or Fantasy Fair? Or are you all of these?

If you can define your platform for your readers then you have an easier time using Social Media to promote your brand of writing.

Three different ways that some Authors are using Social Media.

Sean McManus has an interesting article about using Twitter-Can you tweet your way to a bestseller?

Mary L Tabor blogged her second book as a way of coming to terms with a significant event in her life and this turned into a book deal.

Hire some actresses to read your book in prominent places. Ok it isn’t social media but it is social...

One of the key things about using social media is that to use it effectively you must add value.

Writing about your cat obsessively unless your writing platform is tied up to your cat in some way is not enough. However if you are a cat whisperer....and you have written a series of tween novels about the adventures of a spy who whispers to cats...then maybe you have a valid social media platform.

Jody Hedlund has an excellent post on social media for those people who think they have no platform.

If you are using Social Media already and are looking for another challenge Indie reader has a great article on podcasting your book, Books for your ears. More people are turning to podcasting as a way of getting the word out there about their work.

Seth Godin and Tom Peters were interviewed recently about blogging. Should we do it?

Two links on writing to think about.

Publetariat has a great list of links to help you critique better. This is good news for me as I start to pull apart my own work before sending it to a new critique partner.

Bob Mayer has an excellent article on pitching based on your goals. Bob has written some great thrillers and teaches a popular writing course based on Special Forces goal setting. As a former Special Forces Agent he knows of what he speaks.

Guy LeCharles Gonzalez was interviewed recently by bookviewcafe about where he thought digital publishing was headed. Guy is one of the founders of the Digital Book World conference and he sees the future of publishing as looking extremely bright.

So Authors...You  may as well get digital savvy because to take advantage of publishing in the future you have to be Social In The Media.

Over on Craicerplus (My Amplify page) there are articles on

For the closet geeks out there....How To Write Silly Science Fiction

Plot to Puctuation has a great article on What Star Wars Teaches On Character Introductions

Digital Book Covers...lets make them interactive...

What To Ask The Agent When You Get The Call...(pinup on your wall)

Adventures in Publishing are doing a great conference roundup over on their site (see my blog roll in the 

sidebar) There is a must read article on middle grade writing there with Linda Sue Park.

And now you have finally come to the end of this long post...to celebrate here is a joke for you.

 Guysread.com put together this great video to promote their children’s author collective.

Enjoy

maureen