Knowing the Why

 

This week in publishing,

Beijing Bookfair has now opened after a delay due to the pandemic. Publishing Perspectives takes a look at what is on offer in the face-to-face fair. Honoured guests to the fair are either zooming in or flying in. Either way, the success of Beijing will probably set the pattern for other book fairs going forward.

 

The Alliance of Independent Authors has their craft conference soon. It’s a free 24 hour conference with great presentations from excellent writing teachers. Check out who is speaking and what is on offer.

 

Mark Williams of The New Publishing Standard writes about Audibles' expansion into new markets with their unlimited subscription model. Will the expansion of their territories tempt the big publishers into Audible finally? With supply chains in peril, digital might hold out the lifeline.

 

Kris Rusch has a great post this week on the supply chain and how it is going to impact booksellers, especially the Christmas market. All the rumours are true. Buy your Christmas books now.

If you are not sure how a book gets from acquisitions to the bookstore, Nathan Bransford has a guest post on this very subject. When you put this together with Kris Rusch's post you see what traditional publishers are up against with their supply woes.

 

Publishers Weekly talked with some agents about the Middle-Grade book market. What do they see coming up and how is the genre changing. One thing they talk about which was a talking point at my dinner table last night was the expansion of Middle Grade into lower Young Adult – Big issues stuff without the romance aspect. 

 

Jane Friedman has a guest post from Jennie Nash about the why of writing a book. This is a great post that asks an important question. If you can’t answer it you shouldn’t be writing. Knowing your why means digging deep. This is a must-read. Jennie also has ten tips to write a book worth reading.

 

In The Craft Section,

Going deeper into structure- Jami Gold- Bookmark

2 great posts from Scott Myers- Franklin Leonards advice on screenwriting and Scene Descriptions

How to use archetypical arcs in your stories- K M Weiland – Bookmark

5 ways your story hurts your novel- Janice Hardy - Bookmark

 

In The Marketing Section,

17 Book Marketing quotes to inspire- Sandra Beckwith

How to be a great podcast guest- Joanna Penn

Creating a prelaunch strategy for your book- Rachel Thompson- Bookmark

All you need to know about Book sizes- Dave Chesson- Bookmark

How Bookbub ads drive sales- Bookbub- Bookmark

 

To Finish,

This month Joanna Penn celebrates 10 years as a full-time author - entrepreneur. This is milestone anniversary. Joanna has documented her journey to being a 6 figure Indie author and sustaining this career for many years. Her podcast backlist is phenomenal as is the depth of the information that she has shared with her guests to the author community every week. She is excited for the future. I’m always interested in where she thinks the tech will go as she is an early adopter. Heres’ to many more years of fabulous learning from The Creative Penn.

She definitely knows her Why!

 

Maureen

@craicer

 

Do you want the best of my bookmarked links in a handy monthly newsletter? When you subscribe you will also get a nifty mini book crammed full with marketing notes as a thank you. 

If you like the blog and want to shout me a coffee, hit the coffee button up top. I appreciate the virtual coffee love. Thanks.

 

Pic: Flickr Creative Commons – Buzz Farmers

The Sharks and The Scammers

 

 

This week in publishing,

Scammers and their scammy ways have been filling my social media this week.

 

Long Time readers of this blog will know scammers are out there. They prey on the dreams of authors and change their names and methods frequently. The hardest conversation, the one we don’t want to have, is the one where we know we are going to be pouring cold water on the dreams of Newbie writers. None of us like to do that and so many of us just stay quiet and hope they won’t be burnt too much. But these conversations are necessary. Newbies don’t know the ropes like we do. At the very least tell them to google the offers with the search term scam or complaints. 

 

A Tale of Woe was shared with me this week as a warning to authors out there. This is an Author Beware situation involving scammers targeting authors on Facebook.

Authors like to run giveaways for their fans. They use their Facebook author pages. Everything is fine until a book scammer targets them. Very quickly the author’s page is cloned. A fake page is created using copy/paste from the author's page so that it looks genuine. The scammer starts targeting page followers and giveaway entrants with friend requests. From there it’s a quick hop to asking for credit card details for book sales or sending them to fake book sites. Meanwhile, the author has no idea this is happening until the complaints come in. Facebook yanks their author page and they lose all their social media accounts. A devastating blow. What can you do? 

The author in this situation shared with me their plan to save their business. Read it carefully and check your privacy settings on Facebook. These scammers are targeting authors specifically. 

“If an author or artist discovers they've been cloned they need to act swiftly. The first 24-48 hours are one of the only opportunities to contain the problem. One emergency containment method is to temporarily make an author/artist's business Facebook page only viewable to their country. Seek guidance on methods to identify the imposters and request action from Facebook and Google to delete them from the system. Once some sort of normality is resumed then gradually different countries can be added back to the page viewing list.

Note - if the country where the imposters are based is identified it would be advisable to not add that country back to the viewing list for as long as possible. 

Google can remove 'phishing' sites within 12 hours, but Facebook offer no guarantees as to whether they can remove a profile or not. If an imposter is using a private VPN to access the internet, then they may never be found.”

Anne R Allen has a great post on how to stay safe from scammers.

 

Brenda Pollard revived an old post on how to figure out if you have received a genuine publishing offer. 

 

There are rumours on KBoards- Is Vella over before it got started? There have been grumblings about Vella from authors lately. Where are the readers for serial content on Amazon? Occasionally news does break on Kboards – Take with a grain of salt.

 

Staying with Amazon- Two publishers have filed class actions against Audible for irregularity in payments. Audiblegate is now before the courts. It promises to be an interesting court case. Here is hoping that Audible sorts out this mess that is hurting authors' pockets.

 

Kris Rusch has another great post in her series Jumping The Digital Divide – When should you get behind the hot new thing in publishing. Kris gives her reasons for a carefully considered approach. 

 

Publishers Weekly takes an in-depth look at the power of BookTok recommendations.

 

Substack- the darling of the subscription newsletter community claims the prize of Salman Rushdie to their platform. Should we take them seriously now?

 

Audiobooks wars are about to hit India with two big players eying up the 3^rd biggest market for audiobooks. The New Publishing Standard takes a look at the Indian Audiobook market.

 

Suzanne Lakin has a great post on nailing the purpose of your scene. It is a must-read.

 

In The Craft Section,

10 ways to write better plots- Now Novel- Bookmark

3 ways to strengthen a scene-James Scott Bell- Bookmark

3 rules for raising story stakes- Laurence MacNaughton- Bookmark

Revising your plot- Becca Puglisi- Bookmark

Pacing and character changes- Linda Clare

 

In The Marketing Section,

QR Code generator for authors- Dave Chesson- Bookmark

Book promotion language can attract or repel readers- Sandra Beckwith- Bookmark

Interactive storytelling -Alliance of Independent Authors transcript of conference session

A checklist for in person events- Penny Sansevieri- Bookmark

30 Book Marketing ideas – Nathan Bransford

 

To Finish,

Sometimes all you want to do is run away from the world and write. Headphones might block the world out but sometimes you need a little bit more. Kate from Wordsnstuff blog has made a list of writing music. She has a mix of classical white noise and film tracks. If writing to music is your thing check it out. 

Maureen

@craicer

 

Do you want the best of my bookmarked links in a handy monthly newsletter? When you subscribe you will also get a nifty mini book crammed full of marketing notes as a thank you. 

If you like the blog and want to shout me a coffee, hit the coffee button up top. I appreciate the virtual coffee love. Thanks.