Better Than Gold...

This last week has made me stop and think about friend relationships and how precious they are. 

When one of your friends is fighting for their life in hospital, you do stop and reflect on how much that friendship means to you and why. You do want to know that you have done everything in your power to help and support them because frankly you are not ready to deal with the hole in your life should they not be there.

This thinking leads on to an examination of your own life, (nothing like ICU with all the waiting around with other families facing similar or worse scenarios to get you thinking.) Am I doing what I should be doing with my life?

I have to say Yes. I love researching for this blog. I love all my writer friends. (Online/offline) I love the weird questions we ask each other, the laughter, tears, and shared wine, coffee and agony of waiting on the manuscript outcome.

I want to say Thanks Fifi, for getting me into this blogging game... Thanks all of you for reading and sharing writery thoughts with me via facebook, twitter or commenting or blogging or emailing or ringing me up or seeing me at book events...The value of friends outstrips the value of gold.

So what do I have for my friends today....

For those of you who are looking at independent publishing, How not to publish your print on demand book and How to get your ebook noticed, are great articles to read and get ideas from. Bob Mayer also has a great article on what it takes to succeed...

For those looking at the craft of writing, staring at your latest Manuscript and thinking there must be a better way to tell this...

Larry Brooks has a great article on 3 edgy tips to make your writing more compelling and Jane Friedman has a great article on adding structure to your writing life.

For those friends who have to get their head around self promotion and marketing, Kristen Lamb has a great post on helping you to understand that You are the brand, not the book...and why some marketers get author branding so wrong.

If you are interested, and I am, in what other children’s writers are doing to collectively share the self promotion load have a look at Kidslitauthorsclub. (NB.The FaBo team is about to get underway again soon...)

If you are feeling like a possum caught gazing into the headlights of the publishing change train...mesmerised by the possibilities...Take a look at a new phone app that has you writing and publishing online...from your phone. And there is a great audio interview with Seth Godin on the new face of publishing up on Litopia.

Over on Craicerplus (my Amplify page) I have links to articles on

Publishers Obsessions with IPads Elitist?

Bookstore Events- Hints for Success.

Adverts in Books- Watch This Space...(Ads in ebooks are being discussed...who will get the income? Can the author control the ads?....because it will happen, the publishers are trying to stay afloat by any means.)

Where Are The Male Writers?

E publishing Success - How Do They Do It?

To Finish,

Children’s writer, Neil Gaiman, was called “a pencil necked weasel thief”, this week, by a Republican Senator in the House of Representatives (USA) for accepting a cheque for a speaking engagement of $45,000 last year in Minnesota. 

Anybody who knows about Gaiman’s huge charity work and this event in particular knows the Senator made a very bad call...It is all over the internet...Neil blogged about it this morning in an effort to deflect the press from constantly interrupting him asking for comment.

All the money was donated to charity as Neil always does. The huge speaking fee is an attempt by Neil to stem the massive flood of requests to speak at events...so when an organisation fronts up with the cash...Neil donates it. The Library System in Minnesota had to use the remaining cash in their budget for writers to rural libraries or lose it back to the government and get their budget cut for next year. Neil lives in the area...perfect sense really.

The senators server has crashed...

Moral of the story;

Check your facts and don’t try to bully someone with 1,556,000 followers on Twitter.  

Happy things on the horizon...

Cassandra Clare is visiting Wellington on her Mortal Instruments tour. (Auckland is in for a great treat at the festival.)

My friend may go into a ward soon.

maureen

pic Neil Gaiman's poster for a Parkinson's awareness charity project.

Ch...Ch...Changes. (No.150.)

Three years ago, when I started this blog...the world did not know about the huge change in publishing just around the corner. 

Print was still king. E rights in contracts - do we really need to worry about them? Promotion...isn’t the book launch enough? Oh and book trailers, skype author tours, elending  and the demise of the newspaper... that is way in the future... isn’t it?

Over the last three years I have learned about author marketing, publishing trends, the rise and rise of independent publishing and the alternatives to the printed page. I’ve probably bored you silly with yet another link to Mike Shatzkin, publishing futurist and predictor of the trends that frighten you, that you hope won’t come true, except they do.

Mike is looking into the future to pick the big issues to address in nine months at the 2012 Digital Book World conference...The rise of children’s book apps are the next big thing to watch.

Kevin Kelley (of The Long Tail fame) has taken this even further and sees books existing in the cloud of web computing able to be mashed up into all different forms...in 20-30 years. His commenters take issue looking at the downside of ‘rogue’ governments controlling what people read or how they are informed by who controls the cloud and access to it...(or big business - Amazon and Google.)

With the huge upswing in epublishing in the last two years...authors becoming publishers, print publishers beginning to digitise their back lists, you could be forgiven for feeling a little shell shocked at the speed of take up. The key is to learn as much as you can before jumping in.

Elizabeth Spann Craig has a guest post on modern mythology about publishing myths...for authors and publishers. To E or not to E, that is the question.

Jane Friedman looks at who writers should trust to help them in this brave new world.

Three years ago you wouldn’t have considered book design important, or where to buy an ISBN number or whether you needed one before you flicked up your writing on the internet.

You wouldn’t have known about the importance of marketing and how to automate what you do, to make promotion easier.

You wouldn’t have known about escams that harvest content from blogs and websites, slap it into an ebook and sell it on Amazon or Kindle for $2.99.

This information is now becoming need to know and understand and presents a challenge to the writer who thought all they had to do was write.

Writing good stories has not changed in three years.

Roz Morris looks at how you can make dull scenes, that are full of information, interesting and Fictiongroupie has a good post on critique partners...why you need them and how to find them.

Over on Craicerplus (My Amplify page) I have links to articles on

Movie studios are looking for more YA books

Publishers obsession with the iPad elitist...(it’s big in the West but what about the East?)

To finish,

E Elle has a great post that will bring a smile to your face as you contemplate all the different roles the writer has.

I leave you with a video showing the emotional stages the writer goes through when writing that novel.

And a neat little spoof video.

enjoy,

maureen


pic...something yummy (Slainte)