Gatekeepers

Gatekeepers...the ones who you have to placate or bribe to get into the hallowed ground...They are tasked with only letting through the gates those that are worthy...

This week on the publishing blogosphere Rachelle Gardner has a post about gatekeeping on your mind. If you have discovered that as you increase screen time reading and interacting with social media there is a corresponding downward spiral in new and exciting ideas coming out of your brain you may be struggling with the same issue.

Chuck Wendig has decided to name February 6^th the anti pirate day and started the ball rolling with his thoughts about pirates; Why I hope you don’t pirate my book. Many authors joined him and posted  their open letters to book pirates.

Jody Hedlund has written about when your family doesn’t appreciate what you do and how hard it is to get them on board...they are gatekeepers of your writing time and energy, and what to do about it.

Electricliterature has an interesting post on those writers who have nipped round the back to the side door. Author Entrepreneur...The Hybrid Author. They have some very interesting stats on this new Hybrid model.

John Scalzi (head of SFA) has a post detailing the sales numbers of his latest book... print, audio and epublishing and talks candidly about what is working for him. The fact that he is able to to talk numbers for his trad book is astounding...and The State Of a Genre Novel makes for interesting reading.

If you didn’t get a chance to look at Dean Wesley Smiths post on crunching numbers in a Hybrid world a few weeks ago (it was no 5 in his series) Read this post, No 4 and then No 5. In fact go read the whole series. If you wanted a no nonsense set of guidelines to follow this year to be a successful writer...it’s all in these posts.

Last year I gifted myself Steven Pressfields, War of Art and a nice gift it was too.

Editor Shawn Coyne has written a thought provoking post on Steven’s blog about where the midlist writer is now in the big six, five...world...Nowhere. Ouch what is a midlister to do...

Apple have decided to highlight self published books...This is an interesting article detailing the latest moves in the Gatekeepers of online publishing.

In craft,

K M Weiland on sure fire awesome setting creation and structuring scenes.

Victoria Strauss is guesting over at Children’s Publishing and she has a nice post on letting your characters into your head.

Plot Conflicts and Desires...or how to get the best out of your plot.

James Scott Bell on how to get emotional about your novel.

In Marketing,

Perfect press releases...

QR codes...which are apparently big in NZ...

Iain Broome has collected seven articles on Authors using Goodreads effectively.

Top Ten mistakes in self publishing.

5 Reasons to Set your novel in a famous place...

To finish,

How to deal with crushing feedback on your creative work...it may not be what you think it is...or you maybe in this situation.

maureen

pic from Flickr /counse

Burning Up

New Zealand is experiencing a heat wave. We are flocking to beaches...diving for water bottles or staring stupidly into the sky and saying what is that yellow thing?

Over in the publishing blogoshere there is disquiet...Sony has a nice little promo going on with the 20p (38cNZ) ebook and Amazon matched it coz that’s what they do and Sony doesn’t look like stopping this anytime soon....Ummm. This could have a major effect on everyone’s bottom line. FutureBook looks at the race to the bottom and the millons being squandered/earned/ redistributed...amongst the publishers who signed up for this promo.

Burning up Twitter this week is the news that Barne’s and Noble, America’s largest book chain is beginning to close stores and tightening their bricks and mortar footprint. By the end of the decade they will have slimmed down by a third. Mike Shatzkin takes a look at the implications.

In Amazon’s latest earning figures they forgot to put in the figures that everyone wants to know. Ebook sales means how many units over/under print ? and What about the bite Apple is taking in illustrated books because everyone really wants an iPad for kids books? and What does this all mean for hardware...and content providers. PaidContent check out the answers to these burning questions.

If you sign up for anything Amazon writer related...be aware The Amazon orb can burn you if you are not careful. This is a post about one writers baaad journey with Amazon and the lessons learned.

Mark Laurance was faced with a difficult situation on Reddit earlier today when he explained exactly what lowly income a writer gets and was told by several readers that they were now going to buy one of his books after discovering him through pirated books. Check out this fascinating stream of comments where readers defend piracy and Marks response.

Agent Rachelle Gardner looks at the tricky topic of story vs craft in her latest blog post which has racked up nearly 100 comments within 24 hours. Acquiring editors are all over the place with whether they want a great story and hang the writing craft or whether the craft has to be just as tight as the story before they will look at it.

Jody Hedlund looks back at life when she had one book published....and life now (5 books) and What She Wished She Knew Then.

If you could, would you distribute your books through the largest UK book distributor? Did you know it is now McDonalds? Publishing Perspectives  takes a look at McDonalds UK move. Could we do it here and who would lose out?

Joanna Penn is back in love with print! She tells why she came back to it and why for her it makes financial sense.

IndieReCon has released their schedule for the free online conference happening from 19^th Feb. Everything you wanted to know about independent publishing...three days... 39 speakers....Inspired by WriteOnCon...

In Craft,

Raising the stakes in your novel in the first 50 pages... When you get into the planning stages you need to have a good handle on complications. A good post on what you should be looking for.

Adding complexity to your characters...Why do your villains act the way they do...

Tracking time in your novel...If you don’t do it you can come to a very sticky situation...Here are some tips to keep up to speed.

How is your voice? This great post looks at refining your writing voice. Some great exercises here.

Karen Woodward is taking a close look at the StarBurst way of writing...In this post she tackles the classic heroes journey and the significance of Obi Wan Kenobi.

In Marketing,

How do you discover your books brand? And then what do you do....

The Market Within is a nice blog post for Children’s Writers to contemplate...after all their target market doesn’t buy the books so how do you engage with the buying wallets....

How do you know when you are a success? Angela Ackerman of the Bookshelf Muse has a great post detailing the signs...You could be a success and you don’t even know it...

Futurebook has a nice post on ways to optimise and monetise your social strategy in 2013. It sounds dire but if you have a business then this is very much worth a look. Immediately applicable to writers....

To finish,

11 ways to support a fellow writers book...I’m proud to be guilty of a few of these. Last week I was in a big chain bookstore carefully looking for fellow writers books so I could turn them...and found some other writer must have got there before me....They were all shining, face out, to the buying public.

Check out this interview with short story writer George Saunders on the Colbert Report...why short? Doesn't America only want Big Stuff? Gotta laugh!

maureen

pic: Fire  / Ben Watts  Flickr