Cracking the Predictions for 2014

Happy New Year

2014 on Craicer was about to start with a round up of all the predictions for the publishing world for the year... until I fell and badly sprained my hand at a popular tourist spot in the North...so you got an extra weeks break and I narrowly escaped one.

This week is Digital Book Week Expo in the US (#DBW14) It kicked off with this one day conference on all things digital with children’s books. No surprises that the day was immediately sold out. Look what was on offer.

Publishing Trends has the quick round up...but really if you are involved at all in kids books you should take a look at what was discussed.

However the organisers have made some of the presentations available on slideshare...and for an extra insight you can scroll down the twitter feed. 

In Publishing Predictions for 2014

Ebook pricing was a big discussion point along with new publishing models... agent publishers, big publishers getting into concierge services, which publisher will be next on the block, subscription and library models.

Bob Mayer highlights audio as continuing to drive growth in sales.

Porter Anderson takes a close look at pricing in his latest Ether post, following on from discussions generated by predictions 2014.

Mike Shatzkin, publishing futurist, rounds up his important points and shrinking retail space for books is one of his top concerns...there is an obvious flow on effect everywhere and do we really need celebrity imprints? Johnny Depp gets his own imprint...

Mark Coker of Smashwords predicts big things for subscription models and the squeeze on libraries. He also puts in a plug for author collectives and the way authors are beginning to collaborate on branding and publish themselves collectively. (This has great potential in NZ as I keep saying...)

Author Media predicts writers focus on craft more, while publishers focus on platform... 

For those of you who use the New Year to Redefine Your Writing Goals…

Have a look at these articles.

Jane Friedman on What you want from Writing

Elisabeth S Craig on Meeting your Writing Goals

Dean Wesley Smith on How to Keep your Writing going as a Business.

K M Weiland on Easy Writing Resolutions.

Dave Gaughran on Enjoying Marketing...otherwise you aren’t doing it right.

On the flip side.

Hugh Howey raised the point that traditional publishers are about to try to market themselves as hip and independent publishers... this also became a talking point at #DBW14

Laura Kaye (Romance author) took issue with the Kensington Publishers comments on self publishing. She examined the myth and the reality points that they made...and then the comments opened up. What was really interesting in this conversation was the willingness of self published authors to talk about their incomes...and how they got them... which challenged all the original points made in the article. 

If you ever want to figure out where this publishing business is going just follow the romance writers. They are a very savvy bunch. (NB I heard over the grapevine that NorthTec may be including a Self Publishing course...tutor; a 6 figure income erotica writer based in Kaitaia...)

In an impassioned open letter to Indie Authors ... J M Gregoire asks everyone to lift their game! This letter has had many writers agreeing with her comments...

Go Forth into 2014 Armed With Knowledge... To Do It Write!

Next week I will be back home into my regular groove...well maybe when school gets back at the end of January.

maureen

Pic: Broken Christmas cracker...Flickr Creative Commons/Kurafire

The Quick and Dirty...

This is a busy time of the year so this is a quick post of things that caught my eye in the publishing blogosphere this week.

At this time of year ‘Best Of’ lists are pulled out of the drawer and dusted off. Publishers Weekly asked publishers to list their best children’s books... or the ones they wished they had published... interesting reading with a few familiar names... Go NZ.

Indiereaders also published their best of indie books for this year and that also makes interesting reading.

For all those who have e Readers a lot of these books are on sale for Christmas so your Christmas reading is sorted.   I note that in the letterbox mailers the tech stores are busily promoting mini e Readers for kids Christmas stockings... however  widespread take up of ebooks for kids are not a happening thing... yet.

Bob Mayer always takes this time of year to look at the current state of publishing and he kicks off his week with this blog post onBook sales over 2013 and the implications for publishers.

Again and again there are articles written about the state of Traditional Publishing against Self Publishing... and the perceived differences in quality and second class nature of those who self publish. Some people are still seeing it as a competition. This week Laura Kaye pointed out the bits that the Huffington Post got wrong when they tried to write about the current state of publishing.

Jacqueline Simonds talks about self publishing and distribution...this is the nut everyone hopes to crack.

Joanna Penn has written a great little post on working together to learn from and promote others in the same genre as you, along with a useful post on audio book tips from the pros.

In Craft this week,

Neil Gaimen on where great ideas come from

Ava Jae on stong supporting characters

10 tools to help writers write.

10 reasons to use the proposal process before you write the book

In Marketing this week,

How to format your book sales page on KDP

Lindsay Buroker- The art of selling on Amazon

The Book Designer on Genre vs Platform...very interesting post by C S Lakin

Jane Friedman on Reader Engagement

To Finish, 

In the weird files Writer Beware has noticed a new kind of weird. ‘The Literary Agent’ who is crowd sourcing which manuscripts she should ‘take on’ in her new venture. You've got to read it. How can people be sooo gullible that they think this is legit?

It is Christmas next week...I am taking a break for a couple of weeks and then I will be back with all those wonderful predictions for 2014.

maureen

Pic is Santa arriving in 1929 at Canberra airport. From the Flickr Commons Institutions pages. What wonderful collections of images are available here.