Keeping Warm

The weather has turned cold down here in the Southern Hemisphere and all the writers I know are scrambling for heaters, blankets, fingerless gloves and other warming devices that can be plugged in and set to run under their desks.

In the blogosphere some writers are keeping warm with rants on the duplicity and underhandedness of other ‘writers.’

Take a well known writer’s name. Add a middle initial. Put that on your same genre self pubbed book. Market...
Galley Cat alerted everyone to the digital duplicity.

You could see it as a blatent marketing ploy...but it is probably lower than that as Sarah from SmartBitchesTrashyBooks explains. Why did the writer target the Romance community?

For those who follow Jane Friedman you will know that she is moving into the literary community combining her social media knowledge, publishing and Uni teaching while working for the Virginia Quarterly Review. Jane was recently interviewed by one of the founders of the Alliance of Independent Authors and it is a great interview. Jane’s tips for author websites as being their hot hub for all things is especially good...chock full of good advice.

Joel Friedlander revisits the best fonts for your P O D book this week. Joel is a great resource and he has a website stuffed with hot tips.

Chuck Sambuchino has a great guest post by Emmy Laybourne on his 7 things I have learned so far series. (7 ways to keep warm, doing some of these.)

Madison Woods gives the floor to Kath Meis, the founder of Bublish which had a lot of word of mouth at last weeks Book Expo America Convention.  Writers, it’s a free tool...and an interesting marketing idea...

Alan Rinzler, erudite observer of the business has spent an entire post looking at Barry Eisler and what writers can learn from what Barry is doing.... Alan has been a solid note of warning for the last few years about digital publishing but this year the speed of change in publishing community has got him almost spinning...and if Alan, with his long view, is spinning where are the rest of us in the centrifuge.... ( I could stuff another hot word in here but I won’t.)

The Guardian tells us all about the new release of dot suffixes in the internet domain world and what it will mean for us...dot book anyone?

 PaidContent has an overview on a ground breaking move by Google into epublishing in Europe...this may have flow on effects for us down here and is a smack for Amazon.

In the craft section,

What are your characters thinking while waiting for the story to get going. This is a good post on the importance of fleshing out your characters.

K M Weiland has a nice little post on antagonist P.O.V. Should they even have one?

Larry Brooks’ Storyfix series on the Hunger Games has been compeling reading over the last couple of months but this post nails the novel and how you can nail your own work down to nine sentences. Just Brilliant.

My fingers are seizing up with cold...every sentence is finishing with me rubbing warmth into my hands...Ah winter...I so missed you...NOT.

Inspiration and Fiction

Some intriguing posts have got me thinking this week about writing and inspiration and the mixture of the two.

First up Fan Fiction. I remember explaining to an award winning Young Adult writer here what fan fiction was and how big it was. 
I started reading Harry Potter fan fiction with my daughter when we were desperately waiting for book five...and of course book six... book seven. Sometimes we would look at each other and say 'whoa that reads like J K Rowling wrote it.' 
Yes the writers were that good and some went on to have big writing careers of their own.

Jami Gold has a nice post on fan fiction and what it means to Authors. Do you want fans playing with your characters? Do you want restrictions? What can you do? Jami tells you the pro’s and con’s.

Publishing Perspectives takes a look at information gained from their one day mini conference on children’s publishing. Some interesting insights on what makes great children’s books.

You have to feel for the Russian Children’s writers. They have the same number of bookshops in Russia as in 1913. No awards for their work and no advertising of children’s books. Book Expo America has a Russian focus this year and Denis Abrams spotlights the struggles of their children’s publishing community. (and you thought you had it bad...)

Invent a Digital Reader then invent software for writers to create exclusive content. Apple did it with iBooks now Barnes and Nobel are doing it for the KOBO but with a difference...they want authors to play the KoboWriting Game.

Earn points and badges if you sell overseas...It is still being trialled at the moment...get the scoop here.

Kristen Lamb takes a look at Facebook and now that it is public what is happening to fan pages.. Facebook could potentially hold your page to ransom as they have to earn money for shareholders. How do you get around it. This applies to you if you have an author fan page.

Writers Digest have posted a list of seven things that will doom your novel...hopefully you are not guilty of any of these.

A standout post this week for me was this one. How I went from writing 2000 words a day to 10000. This is quite mind blowing in its simplicity and you will smack your forehead...

The WANA group/tribe, (We Are Not Alone) was started by Kristen Lamb a few years ago as an online twitter hangout for writers to share success etcetc. Kirsten is taking it up a notch and has created an online community social network site with classes... forums...resources and she has tapped into some great people to help her do this. Go and take a look.

Talli Rowland has a great post on dreams and the shifting goalposts of publishing. Have your publishing dreams changed in the last few years...are you having trouble just finding the goalposts.... Tali will help you make sense of it all.

Today the news came through of Ray Bradbury’s death. All those in the Sci Fi community mourn the loss of one of the giants of the genre. Neil Gaimen wrote a piece of what Ray Bradbury meant to him and it sums up what the sci fi community are feeling. One of the great legacies of Ray Bradbury is that tech he dreamed up became inspirations for the science community to build...so if you are reading this on a flat touch screen...Ray thought it up first!

R.I.P. Ray Bradbury.