Standing Up

 

 

In Publishing News this week,

The death of the Ukranian writer Victoria Amelina stopped the publishing world for a moment. Everyone reflected on the life of courage and commitment to the truth this writer embodied in her professional life. Victoria had just come back from Norway where she had accepted an award on behalf of another friend, children’s author Volodymyr Vakulenko, tortured and killed by the Russians occupiers. Victoria was using her writing skills to document war crimes. She had just finished a day of presenting at the Kiev Bookfair when the restaurant she was meeting other writers in suffered a missile attack. R.I.P.

 

Publishing Perspectives reports on the opening keynote by Hugo Setzer at the Contec Mexico publishing conference. This conference is dedicated to sustainability, translation, and audio publishing. There were some heated challenges to the wider publishing industry about the need to walk the talk on sustainability practice in publishing.

 

AI is back in the dock again this week with the news of a class action against Open AI from authors whose work was recognisably scraped by AI. 

Mark Williams from The New Publishing Standard looks at the arguments in this case and draws some pithy conclusions. Is the demise of the author a valid argument in this case?

 

While the courts are looking at AI- news is breaking that Amazon is using AI to summarise product reviews. So far this hasn’t extended to book reviews but it can only be a matter of time. Will you be able to trust a book review in future?

Meanwhile, Amazon is going to have to do something about the proliferation of AI written books in the bestseller lists. Somehow the bots got in and gamed the system. Amazon did crack down, but not fast enough. To add to their woes Amazon is in court for unfair practice surrounding their Prime subscription model. Their defence lawyers will have to do an amazing job as their client even named their dubious practice after the story of the trojan horse.

 

Joanna Penn revisited AI and the Author in another great podcast session with Nick Thacker this week. This is a great discussion on using AI as a marketing tool. Nick and Joanna talk about how important it is to have a human be the creative brain behind the words.

 

The Alliance of Independent Authors has a deep dive into the seven processes of publishing. This week they are looking at marketing. This is a comprehensive article about mindset and the differences between promotion and marketing books.

 

Kris Rusch continues her excellent series on Niche Marketing. This week she examines what niche really means to the writer and how you can benefit from it.

 

Lithub traces the evolution of the celebrity memoir. 

Now Novel has a great article on using story planners to get the bones of your story down. 

Kathy Steinemann has a nifty redundancy quiz- Can you identify the redundant words in the sentences? A good craft quiz for warm ups.

 

Donald Maass has another cracker of an article on Writer Unboxed. What are your promise words? He takes a dive into the words used in the opening chapter that should signal what the story is promising the reader.

 

 

In The Craft Section,

2 Great posts from K M Weiland How to trim your word count and

Think about the lie your character believes- Bookmark

Turn the tables on popular tropes in fiction- Liz Kerin - Bookmark

A guide to writing Romance- Now Novel-Comprehensive!

Subterfuge in dialogue- Becca Puglisi

Can a novelist write like a screenwriter- Anne R Allen- Bookmark

 

 

In The Marketing Section,

How to write a good book description- IngramSpark

2 interesting posts from Penny Sansevieri- Quiz your book marketing knowledge and How the current tsunami of books reshapes book publicity- Bookmark

10 tips to get a Bookbub featured deal- Draft2Digital- Bookmark

Author newsletter data- Bookbub- Bookmark

 

To Finish,

Recently the BBC publicised another author getting a first publishing deal in her 70’s. What is interesting is this author has been signed for a 5 book deal and she is 77. Writing is for every age group and it is never too late to start. The only pre-requisite is that you have an entertaining story to tell.

 

Maureen

@craicer

 

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Pic: The poster for the Kyiv Book Fair

 

The Rumours Are True

 

 

In Publishing News this week....

Earlier in the year I wrote of a rumour that TikTok would start a shop…and now they have. They aren’t selling books in it yet… but publishers will be wondering when. An important side note though, with the ownership of the TikTok site being controversial, many states and countries are looking at ways to limit its influence. If you build a business only on TikTok it could disappear overnight. Mark Williams points out that English Language publishers could be heading for a disaster here.

 

Big Bad Wolf is back. For new readers BBW is an outfit that buys up remaindered English language books from publishers and sells them in huge 24/7 book sales in Asia and Indonesia. The numbers are eye watering… and show that there is a huge market for these books in other countries. (Not to mention, a quick way to get a fast buck without the author getting a slice of the sale.)

 

Do you remember the HarperCollins strike from earlier in the year? (BTW the TV/Film writer’s strike is still ongoing.) It may have been resolved but HarperCollins seems to have mislaid payment of some outstanding bills to content writers. Lawsuits about to start.

 

In welcome news the USA Today Bestsellers list is back after its hiatus. The USA Today list is only judged on book sales across many outlets so often gives a truer picture of what is selling compared to other lists where list placement can bought.

 

Children’s writers were thoroughly approving when Michael Rosen was awarded the Pen Pinter prize "for the ability to address the serious matters of life in a spirit of joy, humour, and hope." 

 

I can already tell that Kris Rusch’s new series on niche marketing is going to be another epic series. This week she talks about multiple newsletters and why they are a good idea.

 

Recently I have seen questions from writers who have been diagnosed with ADHD about how they can manage the diagnosis and also write effectively. This article recently published in an online journal might shed some light. Other ADHD writers find that writing sprints work very well for getting the words down.

 

Writer’s Digest has a spotlight on Sacha Black – Sacha besides writing lots of books, also runs the Rebel Author podcast and has a popular series of writing craft books. It’s a great interview.

 

Writers In The Storm have an article from Karen DeBonis on What I didn’t expect after publishing my book? Post publishing depression is a real thing.

 

Insecure Writers Support Group have an interesting post on archetypes- using Christopher Vogler’s Writers journey book for inspiration.

 

Have you thought about using onomatopoeia in your stories? This article looks at how words like rattle and screech add life to your writing. 

 

 

In The Craft Section,

What does you character want-K M Weiland- Bookmark

Using Story Structure to your advantage- Janice Hardy – Bookmark

How to determine your books timespan- C S Lakin- Bookmark

Positive traits can have drawbacks- Becca Puglisi- Bookmark

Save the cat beat sheet- Kindlepreneur- Bookmark

 

In The Marketing Section,

How to write a book proposal- Reedsy – Bookmark

How to Quick Pitch your book- Ruth Harris- Bookmark

Adding direct sales to your website – Written Word Media- Bookmark

What can be author swag – Bookmark

7 tips to boost your Author homepage- Camilla Monk-Bookmark

 

To Finish,

I came across this article from Colleen Story on 5 ways writers are like aliens from outer space. How dare she expose us. Yes, the truth is out there. We have been discovered. Luckily, all is not lost. Our eccentric ways are fully justified if we call ourselves writers. 

 

Maureen

@craicer

 

It's nearly time for my monthly newsletter. If you want the best of my bookmarked links and other interesting extras you can subscribe here to join our happy band.

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

 

 Pic: Photo by Albert Antony on Unsplash