Spring Cleaning

Spring is in the air...and that usually heralds change. You eye up the overflowing study area and vow to get better organised. (Your family snigger coz they’ve heard it all before.)

While you are contemplating your overflowing desk you may take time to contemplate the publishing industry. It too has been struggling with change. The printed word is rapidly changing into the e-inked word.
Curiosity Quill interviewed Jane Friedman about what she predicts will happen to publishing in the next few years and how authors can keep up.

 Joe Konrath takes issue with Ewen Morrison’s article in The Guardian- Are Books Dead and Can Authors Survive. Joe picks apart the article and points out where Ewen got it wrong. (so far 120 comments on this...)

If you pick up your manuscript and a cloud of dust rises into the air you might need to revisit your characters and do a little housekeeping...or a lot.

Jenny Hansen has a terrific list of tips about fighting dirty and ramping up the conflict tension in your story. 

Julie Musil has ten things you shouldn’t do when you build your characters... 

Both of these posts remind you that the story is key...and a strong story is what Editors want to read. A quick revision of WriteOnCon quotes reinforce this...but you can always get inspiration to keep going from revisiting the website and reading the sessions you missed.

Ruth Harris reminds you that all reading is research and offers some very good advice in how to pull gems out of the trashy magazines you just picked up. Don’t feel guilty...it’s research! (there’s an app for that.) 

Underneath the stacked books and laundry, next to the mouldy coffee cup, you unearth that really great story...the one that has been nicely rejected a few times and sigh. What would it take to just get it out there into the world?

Author Culture peeks into the world of Book Cover Design in an excellent interview with a top book cover designer. Lots of tips here...and some very useful ideas for branding.

The bookdesigner has a link to five nifty fonts that you can use for your Ebook cover and they are FREE. 

Roz Morris has done the hard work for you and step by step outlines how to deal with the American IRS when you are an author living in another country who wants to epublish on an American site. Bookmark this! It will save you months! 

Anne Allen has a great post on the death of the Book Tour and why we shouldn’t feel too sad about it... The desk has disappeared....the dust has taken over...you think seriously about giving up and reclaiming the space for a home gym....

Teresa M Owen has a handy list about why you shouldn’t become a writer to make you feel better. 

This week NZ National Radio interviewed a New Zealand company that has made a splash with their new product, Booktrack, Soundtracks for Books. James Frey is already making use of the technology with the The Power Of Six (his follow up to I Am Number 4.) Take a look at the videos and think about where we go from here....
 



enjoy,
maureen

pic from meeja darling....a wickedly funny journo blog

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