Being a Fan...

Last night I attended the the New Zealand Post Children’s Book Awards. These are our top prizes for Children’s Literature and so are a BIG DEAL.

Today I have been reflecting on the surprises amongst the winners and the Judges comments about choosing books with a distinctly New Zealand flavor. 

For many years we have been looking outward trying to make our stories more international...or even ignoring our own stories thinking they won’t be of interest to an international audience. Publishers have hesitated about promoting New Zealand themed stories overseas...they won’t travel well, they're too kiwi. But these stories are our unique point of difference...amongst the fantasy/dystopian/superhero saturated publishing world and this year the judges decided to remind us of that fact.

Through it all Story is the defining thread...as Jack Lasenby (81), winner of the Young Adult category, said in his acceptance speech ‘Without Story, I Am Nothing.’

Jack’s writing career reflects New Zealands attitude to its own stories. He is a master storyteller deserving of a wide audience. His first novel for children tackled child abuse when no one ever talked about it and 'that is such a grim subject we don't want anyone overseas to know that happens in the land of Godzone'. Jack was known in New Zealand but no publisher took his work overseas...'it was too parochial'. Then he wrote dystopian Young Adult fiction, before it was popular...'great writing, but too dark...it might scare the children.' It won awards. His fun tall tales, for younger children, of life in New Zealand in the 30’s when he was growing up, great writing... won awards...'well the stories are too far removed from current children’s lives...won’t have any relevance to an international audience'. This year Gecko picked up his latest tall tale and took it overseas...and it got favourably reviewed by the Guardian.

Can we get over our cultural cringe and see if the world is ready for some real New Zealand stories. We are the nation of focus for Frankfurt and IBBY so we should start getting behind our great children’s writers.

 What interesting gems are there in my blog link roundup today? 

The importance of story links many of them.

From a cool infographic about how a story is born from Mediabistro to the importance of voice for audiobook narrators, the impressive Cris Dukehart on being a serial killer...and how to get the right narrators for your project from Bob Mayer.

The Book Designer has ten writing exercises to free your mind and K M Weiland talks about flipping genres halfway through the story and how to sort this out.

There is a guest interview featuring Editor Cheryl Klein who talks about the importance of plot and Bubblecow has a nifty piece on getting constructive feedback so you can edit.

The Guardian has an opinion piece on how Fan Fiction of popular stories is driving the new books being picked up and Rachelle Gardner has reprised her post on how to craft Book Proposals so your story can be picked up...

Two feel good stories offer hope out there...How one bookstore owner is taking on Amazon and how a self pubbed author of a popular scifi series got his project picked up in Hollywood.

Selfpublishing should be a marketing tool. This guest post has had lots of comment on Jane Friedmans blog and is a must read for the week along with the Books and Such agents blog on why everybody in publishing feels disenfranchised.

Joanna Penn has helpful hints on a marketing list to get your stories noticed and Catherine Ryan Howard tells you how to get your first readers.

Every link, a nice little story...I leave you with a video from Dan Blank about how the quality of the stories you create should last for generations.

The pic is The New Zealand Post Children's Book Award supreme winner...a distinctly New Zealand Non Fiction Story...which just happens to be a graphic novel!

maureen

Wild Things

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.