Imagination Overdrive

Another Crazy Busy Week. 

Storylines was the usual mad crazy happy experience...with hundreds of kids watching, listening, imagining, making, eating, playing and loving children’s books with author’s, illustrators, storytellers and performers of one kind or another.   It’s lovely to turn around from welcoming a visiting author and introducing them to an audience to find a young fan who wants to talk to you about your book and have you sign it.

Chris Morphew was the international author this year. He arrived in Wellington to visit schools and be our guest at the evening seminar. You could feel jealous about this 26 year old who learned to write on the job producing 12 of the Zac Power series  for 6-8 year olds before beginning to write his young adult series, however he’s such a nice bloke so we’ll say Good On Yer Mate....

In amongst the busyness I took a look on the blogosphere this morning to see what the hotly retweeted articles were....and discovered these gems.

Kristen Lamb has two great posts up on her blog this week. The first deals with how to break your addiction to the little darlings in your manuscript and Kristen offers an hilarious 12 step programme to help you Kill Them. 

The second is a great article looking at marketing fiction...and how to get new readers for your work...You need to look at this if only for the truly weird picture she has chosen to portray inbreeding...hmmm stuff of nightmares....

Bob Mayer has been visiting down under. He presented at the Australian RWA and last week end was one of the keynote speakers at New Zealand’s RWA. He has some wonderful things to say about both conferences and he is handing out accolades to us down under. Check out his article posted today on his experiences...and then have a read of another article posted this week where Bob has talked about The Myth Of The Backlist And The Dramatic Change In Publishing...lots of comments on this one about the spaghetti stick model of publishing.

Mediabistro has a great article linking to a nifty set of instructions about converting PDF’s to Kindle files or epub files. This is particularly timely with Kindle about to be released here...in time for Christmas.

Tony Eldridge has reposted an article looking at how you can put HTML code into your jpeg  book Cover pic and have it go straight to a shopping cart....

For something fun to do with your imagination and a pen...check out 3 Ways To Reinvent Vampires

Over in the Craft Corner...

The Kidlit team have a great article on overwriting...and how to spot it....and how to fix it!

Daily Writing Tips has a great article on Brainstorming for writers and 5 strategies you can use.

Over on Craicerplus (My Amplify Page) I have a link to an article

Using Video Effectively...this is a great article looking at tips and tricks to enhance your website with video.

Today Steve Jobs resigned as CEO of Apple. Immediately the share price dropped. However he will still be involved in other ways while he still can. This is one of those watershed moments in technology. Because love him or hate him he has changed the face of technology and the way we use it...from our iPods out running to our iPad on the bus...not to mention the mobile phones, iTunes, the Pixar movies, animation technology we take for granted now...  The Wall Street Journal gathered an impressive list of quotes over the years from Steve. Look back and see what he thought the technology world would do and be as he began to unleash his imagination and drive on our digital world.

next week back to normal, I hope...

maureen

Brain Gymnastics...

This week the weather in New Zealand has been extreme. 

A polar blast hit the country bringing with it major dumps of snow to places that don’t see snow in fifty to one hundred years. At the same time it is the last planning week for Wellington Storylines. The 3 day weather chaos resulted in cancelled meetings due to extreme weather conditions and ongoing worry about how family members were going to make it home with cancelled trains and buses, disrupted school and power cuts. My week has been a busy, fractured, distracted, topsy turvey, COLD exercise in adaption to unforeseen circumstance.

So...This week’s blog post will be a short look at what caught my eye amongst all the drama of other events.

Jane Friedman talked with Amy Stolls on how book marketing had changed since 2005 when Amy brought out her first book and now. Amy has some interesting things to say on how her publisher guided her on marketing then and now. Now it is essential to generate word of mouth. Check out Amy’s journey and then compare it to what her publishers told her in 2005.

Justine Musk has written a marvellous blog post on compelling branding. In it she details what the author should be doing...It all boils down to your secret word...

Forbes explores who the world’s highest paid authors are and why and looks at the rise of ebook sales which have tipped the scales in this years income.

Mike Shatzkin has written two very compelling posts this week. The first looks at the irony of being a publisher today. He explores the agency pricing model and examines the implications of Apples move into publishing and how it will impact on the big 6 publishers and Amazon the 7th and biggest player.

The second post this week from Mike is the analysis of Tim Ferriss and his Hardcover deal with Amazon which was announced yesterday. The game changes...along with Amazon giving a seven figure advance to Tim for a non fiction book. Mike has done the math and Tim Ferriss stands to make 105% royalties....This has serious implications for the rest of the publishing industry...Can they compete?

Writeoncon 2011 has been sucking my eyes these last two days (when it has been freezing.) This is a free online writing conference for children’s writers. It is global... it is brilliant... and there are many great things to take away. If you are registered you can take part in the live chat events with agents editors etc. Or you can lurk and suck up heaps of knowledge. Sometimes the time difference works for us...and sometimes not...but as the transcripts from all sessions stay up in the forums set aside some uninterrupted time and be prepared to stretch your brain to take in all the learning you will be doing.

To finish,

A nice roundup of the ten commandments for the happy writer....and a plug for a huge event that a dedicated team of Children’s Literature enthusiasts have spent months preparing.

Storylines National Festival kicks off this Sunday in Wellington at the Town Hall. This is a free family event celebrating literacy with some of New Zealand’s finest writers and illustrators. There will be live performances of loved books, crafts to make, talks by celebrated authors, book demonstrations (we have chefs and gardeners getting hands on...) and how to draw comics with some of NZ’s finest graphic novelists. It’s a mad crazy day and we love it.

Every year the festival seems touch more places in New Zealand so check out the website to see where your nearest full day event is happening. Chris Morphew, of Zac Power and Phoenix Files fame, is our international guest and he will be speaking at an evening event on Tuesday in Wellington. All details on the Storylines website.

See you there.  

 maureen