In Publishing News this week,
Coming To a Book Fair near you…the Bologna Children’s Book Fair is touring to other book fairs. They are showcasing a pop up Pre Bologna experience. Porter Anderson explains why the ‘fair’ is making guest appearances and how it hopes to drum up more interest in its expanded format offerings.
The Oxford University Press recently settled their employees collective bargaining contract and everything looked rosy until they abruptly terminated a whole teams employment this week. Mark Williams offers his acerbic take on the news which must be how their employees are feeling now.
Amazon is holding out an AI carrot to Narrators. The Verge reports that Amazon Audible Narrators can now clone their voices and use them for projects. It is in beta but still it could be a lifeline for narrators whose livelihood is under threat from AI narration.
Meanwhile there is a new kid on the block offering 50 % profits to authors who want to provide audio options for their blogs and other written material. Check out Spoken, which is also in beta. Providing audio narration seems to be the 2024 big format mover.
Joanna Penn recently chatted with Sacha Black on pivoting genres. This is a chance to listen to two powerhouse writers and speakers chat about their different author business and how they are staying relevant and successful. Check out the podcast/transcript.
Joanna is also celebrating 13 years as a full time author and all the lessons she has learned along the way. Every year at her anniversary she does a roundup show about her journey to where she is and how the last year has shaped up for her. Congratulations Joanna.
Reuters reports that a class action has been taken against Academic publishers over their non payment of peer reviews which effectively amounts to price fixing in the academic publishing world. They report that academic publishers made over $10 billion dollars last year and paid out nothing to the people who provided the work. If you speak to any scientist you will hear this complaint constantly. When you publish an academic paper you have to pay the journal to take it. (Cost: thousands) Then the journal demands a peer review of an academic paper in the same field (which is done for free.) The journal publishes the paper and demands that the university pay a massive subscription so they can access their own research. Add in academic textbooks to a captive student population and you can see why they are rolling in money. Kudos to the neuroscientist professor who has finally had enough and brought the class action. I just want to know why it has taken so long for the scientists to do this? (career suicide anyone?)
Sue Coletta takes issue with a recent article written by AI on how to respond to 1 star reviews or even 4 star reviews. The advice given was Bad… very bad. Sue relates why you should never engage with reviewers.
Staying with reviewers and the fabulous Killzone blog, Elaine Viets writes about one reviewers annoyance at seeing the same things happening in book after book. Publishers should be picking up these errors. Check out the gripe list.
Katie Weiland has an outstanding article on trusting yourself as a writer. When do you know enough to write a good story? This is a print out and stick on the wall article.
In The Craft Section,
Should your novel have a prologue- Lucy Hay
How to resolve a characters internal arc- Angela Ackerman- Bookmark
Torn between two projects -James Scott Bell – Bookmark
A deep look at deep editing – C S Lakin-Bookmark
5 unexpected plot devices to consider- Savannah Cordova
In The Marketing Section
Two interesting articles on Book Promotion from Bookbaby- How to create revenue streams and Book promotion ideas- Bookmark
Building an author platform- Bookbub- Bookmark
Supercharge your mailing list- Cori Ramos- Bookmark
To Finish,
You have finished the book… the editor is happy. You have checked page proofs until your brain is fried. Then the knotty problem of who to dedicate the book to rears its head. Which family member … friend… inspiration… will you choose? Sophie Masson writes about the perils of dedications in books.
I am fast coming up to another big milestone with the Craicer blog. I have to dedicate all the many articles to the readers of the blog. Of course, as a teacher and learner I am hardwired for research and talking about what I learn so I would do it anyway. It is nice to hear that I’ve helped writers along the way with the right article at the right time or a new income stream or just greater knowledge of the world of publishing. The occasional tip into the coffee fund has been greatly appreciated over the years too.
Thanks for reading.
Maureen
@craicer
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Pic Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash
