Passionate about Data...

Today I popped into The Children’s Bookshop and noticed a new series being promoted...what was so interesting to me was this contemporary thriller Y A series had photos of all the books in the series on the inside cover and when they were coming out... 2 months apart! The whole 6 book series in a year. This year Indie Authors have been talking about publishing two or more books in a series in a year to capture readers...and feeling quite happy that they weren’t being restricted to one book contracts from traditional publishing houses. This is the first time I have seen a traditional publishing house run with this idea.

There are so many risks to writing a full series when you don’t know if there will be an audience for it. A respected Editor looked at my Book One of a series and said...make it bigger...The first book has to sell the whole series. For a publisher to commit to a full year publishing schedule of six books is taking a punt on the reader when they don’t know if the book will take off. So how do you find these readers...how do you know what they want and what they will buy? It is all in the DATA.

Cory Doctorow has been stirring the pot this week with his article on the importance of metadata andhow publishers don’t actually know who their readers are...and they definitely aren’t telling the writers. So who does know? Cory has the answer and he has a warning that this is going to be a very important issue for publishing in the future.

But what metadata are Readers concerned with? Front matter and End matter and Authors had better have a handle on all of this.

Of all the data coming out, authors do like to keep an eye on trends and what editors might be looking for. Publishers Weekly report of a panel discussion with children’s editorstalking about exactly this is required reading.

James Patterson (mega author) is passionate about children reading and wants America to wake up to the demise of the publishing industry and libraries...So this week he took out front page ads in The New York Times to tell everyone of his concerns. He wanted to plant the issue right in front of Readers...reaction to his ads have been mixed from the literary community.

Kickstarter looks likeit could be replacing the publishing community...an interesting article for mid career writers to chew over.

Rachelle Gardner had the horrible experience of nursing a writer through a complete computer meltdown just before the MS was due at the publishers. She talks about all the different ways you should be ensuring this does not happen to you.

Author Solutions is off to court. http://publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/digital/content-and-e-books/article/57046-authors-sue-self-publishing-service-author-solutions.html

A class action is being taken against them. When you read Dave Gaughren’s article about how many publishers are involved in some way or other with Author Solutions, this court case looks very serious for everyone. Reputations...and profits...all on the line.http://davidgaughran.wordpress.com/2013/02/19/penguins-solution-for-authors-one-racket-to-rule-them-all/

Today a twitter discussion between agents about New Adult became a blog post on how agents should treat each other and what to be aware of in their public pronouncements. Do you really want an agent who doesn’t know anything about your genre?

In Craft,

For those writers wrestling with screenplays...Tell the story in visual beats.

How much detail is enough in your story.

15 ways to breakWriters Block.

Critique Partners...and how to maintain passion for your story.

In Marketing,

Twitter tips forauthors.

5 Reasons Relationships are the Core of your Author Platform.

To Finish,

Concert Pianist James Rhodes has written in the Guardian a thought provoking post on creative passion. Find what you love and let it kill you.... Read it and see whether you agree with him...How passionate are you to get that novel written? What are you doing about it?

Sorry about the huge URL's that appear this week. Bloggers highlight link broke in the middle of preparing this post.

maureen
PIC from

http://www.flickr.com/photos/tensafefrogs/3649985674/

Feeling The Emotion

ANZAC day* is always emotional. Whether you are braving the chilly dawn for the memorial service or later in the day at a full civic ceremony...there is always the tear in the eye, the tight feeling in your throat. On this day I think of all the members of my family who served in their different wars and are still serving. The one who didn’t come back in 1916, age 23 with no known grave...his brother, my grandfather who did. My husband’s grandfather, one of less than 200 that survived Gallipoli and the Western Front. ANZAC day is always harder when one of our family is overseas serving as a Peacekeeper.

When we were overseas last year, we met a Turk on a train in Italy. It was a special moment as we both talked about the war that forged our two nations. Each of us had a story to tell about visiting Gallipoli and crying. He talked about seeing a fused piece of metal, the result of 25 bullets that all hit together at once.

What a hell it must have been!

In the blogosphere this week a different kind of war was happening as reaction to Barry Eisler’s keynote address to the Pikes Peak writer’s conference was furiously debated on Twitter. Agents and Publishers taking exception to Barry’s comments that Legacy publishing was a lottery and their only value was for print distribution deals. Once the hot comments were out of the way and agents and publishers climbed down off the ceiling...debate was more constructive. Read the comments people...but give yourself some time...

In the last year very successful indie e-publishers have begun partnering with big publishers for print only deals and agents are becoming publishers on the side, organising editing, covers and marketing of eBooks or POD...it is pretty easy to see Barry Eisler’s point.

The London Book Fair has just wrapped up and there was lively debate around the changing nature of agents. So do you want a manager, a partner, a business coach...or a deal maker? And No an Agent is not necessarily going to do all of that.

Joanna Penn was also thrilled to be at the Fair. She has a huge blog post filled with video interviews and comments about the 2013 Fair, which had the most writers attend ever. Take some time over this one.

Joel Friedlander talks about his war on Word...how Word won...and what he is doing about it. Check it out and get a great deal on his solution!

Seven Steps To The Perfect Story is one of those amazing graphics that you really want to print out, stick on your wall and gaze at for a long time.

Myths about Query letters to Agents...don’t get too worried.

Elizabeth Spann Craig has been looking at Audio books and ACX. This is a feel good post telling you how to use ACX.

In Craft, It is all about Character Emotion...

3 Tips For Realistic Character Emotion

Real Life Diagnostics- Hooking The Reader- Janice Hardy dissects a submission.

Susan Sipal dissects your favourite Harry Potter Character Emotion Arc’s

4 Things You Need To Understand About Character Emotion...great roundup here.

Dropping into the Emotion Thesaurus, it’s all about sarcasm....

To Finish,

Roz Morris talks about Obituaries and why they are so important for writers...

maureen

*ANZAC Australian and New Zealand Army Corps remember their fallen soldiers on 25^th April the date of the landing of the Corps at Gallipoli in Turkey 1915. New Zealand lost ¼ of their men and more than ½ were severely wounded. The Turks lost twice as many allied casualties and their leader Ataturk Kemal became the Father of Modern Turkey. After a disastrous nine months the Allies left the peninsular in the dead of night leaving behind more than 44000 dead to lie with 87000 dead Turks. New Zealand suffered the largest casualties relative to their population of any Allied Nation and the campaign changed forever both Turkey, who won, and Australia and New Zealand, who lost but found and forged their own national identities away from Britain.

I saw Dire Straits perform this live when I was 21...it never fails to remind me of the loss and weariness of war and the need for Peace.