Today has been a wet
miserable day...Autumn looks like it skipped on out without saying hello and
Winter's wild weather arrived, bringing the rain in horizontally.
So in an effort to
warm up in the last few days I turned to Twitter and checked in on what is
happening around the blogosphere because as everybody knows a good story will
while away the hours so you don’t notice the weather.
Over the last week Amanda
Palmer and the huge amount she made in a short time on Kickstarter have been on
everybody’s radar. My first thought, when I saw the project going live on
Twitter, it helps if you are married to Neil Gaimen. That is me coming from
a children’s writers perspective and knowing that Neil has over one million
followers. But John Scalzi puts it into perspective. She has worked her butt
off to build a following for over a decade. She has fans that love her and
support her and that she gives back to...and if you look at what she is doing for the money...it aint no easy thing. And in the end isn’t that who we are
writing for...our Fans?
Joanna Penn has a
great guest post from John Yeoman asking Is it worth it to be an author...?
Lately the great Mike Shatzkin, prophet to traditional publishers, has been noticed spending more time in his blog posts looking at the digital marketplace. This is not a that is marketplace going away...so what should you do for the future.
Writer Beware is also
taking a look at the digital marketplace specifically contracts that are now being written and in particular those nice little reversion of rights clauses...the ones when the publisher has to have a book out of print for 6
months before the author can write and get their rights back...Authors you need
to read this post.
If you have all your
rights and you want to exploit them then Catherine Ryan Howard's post Read this first -How to sell self published books is the post for you along with Joel's Guest Skype interview with Bookbaby on common book design mistakes he see’s all the time.
Bookbaby is a print on
demand service that is quite nifty. There are a few companies like this around
who are offering authors a reasonable way to get their books printed and
distributed...but there are scammers so always do your homework.
Mark Coker of
Smashwords has been doing his homework lately and has been analysing Smashwords
data for the last nine months trying to figure out what makes a book a
success. Mark has a great post on Digital Book World telling us what he found out.
Taleist is always a
good blog to pop into and they have a cool infographic telling you what you should spend your money on... Editing or Proofreading.
Roz Morris has a helpful guest post on Jami Golds blog about writing back cover copy blurbs.
Authorculture has a good post on tips for offline marketing.
SciFi Novelists have got a geat post on pacing fight scenes...and an hilarious example to show you
what to do...or what not to do...gotta bookmark it.
Novelrocket has the 5 must haves on the writer’s desk and then there is the 24 Free Online creativity tools to help you think up ideas along the way
Seth Godin has had
another idea...and he is keen to tell you about it in his new manifesto...but
most of all in this blog post he wants to tell you how to use tools that don’t make you look indie, cost hardly anything and spread ideas....
The King of the Wild
Things, Maurice Sendak died yesterday. His loss was widely felt through the
children’s book industry and many tributes to one of
the giants in the picture book world were written. This tribute was referenced by Judy Blume on Twitter who remembed Maurice fondly as they shared many memories of being on
banned book lists together.
Next week I’ll be
attending the New Zealand Post Children’s Book Awards our top awards for children’s books...There are no banned books in the list but there is lots of
talk about the emergence of graphic novels...placed in the Picture Book Category
so it will be an interesting night.
