Last night I attended a prestigious lecture. The Book Council of New Zealand invited Lani Wendt Young, the current Pacific Laureate to deliver the speech, Stories from the Wild: Reading and Writing in the Digital Age. It was a notable speech from a passionate speaker. First, it was given by a Pacifica woman. (an indigenous voice… how rare!) Second, It was given by a successful independent author who is carving out a whole genre of contemporary Pacifica super-natural tales to great reviews. Third, the lecture was a consummate takedown of the white towers of traditional publishing. This piece in the Spinoff written by Lani is only some of the very telling points she made. It was brilliant. I can’t help agreeing with others that we witnessed something profound that will change publishing here.
Meanwhile over in the USA many people in publishing seem to think James Daunt of Waterstones UK will come in like the White Knight on a charger to fix the Barnes and Nobel chain and it will be tea and crumpets all round. Kristen Lamb is skeptical of the way James Daunt may go about it and it all stems from how he turned Waterstones around. Publishers better be clearing space from the warehouse floor for all the returns and workers… don’t expect a pay rise.
Last week I linked to an interesting article by Anne R Allen on whether your reader really needs to know all the little details of your life. This week Cheri Baker picked up on Anne’s theme and looked at her marketing manifesto.
Porter Anderson gets around the world as the roving editor for Publishing Perspectives. This week he looks at the successful Beijing International Bookfair. Among their offerings to the 320,000 visitors was a whole section devoted to English language learning for early childhood.
The lawyers are back from holiday and lawsuits are piling up.
The AAP is taking Audible to court over captioning
Authors Guild is taking a class action against Cengage Publishers over their subscription service.
The Romance Writers Of America are taking a lawsuit over the trademark of the word “Tamer”. The funds for this have been provided by the authors of the Cocky Collective.
(Cockygate lives on..)
Kris Rusch continues her look into licensing IP. She comments on how the whole thing can get overwhelming and offers some great ways to think about how to tackle which rights to license. How much do you care about the story? She suggests learning about licensing by first working with a story you don’t care too much about.
Scott Myers of Go Into The Story has a great roundup of the posts he made as he broke down Andrew Stanton’s TED talk on what makes a great story. Go Into The Story is mainly aimed at screenwriters but authors can learn a lot from the screenwriter's approach to story.
In The Craft Section,
Worldbuilding- Writelife- Bookmark
Get out of the writing doldrums- Jane Friedman
5 tips for engaging characters- Bethany Henry- Bookmark
7 Rules for cliffhangers- Ruth Harris- Bookmark
5 ways story stakes keep readers glued- H R D’Costa
In The Marketing Section,
Audiobook Promotion ideas-Mary Locke - Bookmark
Creating promotional copy that works- Janice Hardy
How to create a pre-launch strategy- Rachel Thompson- Bookmark
7 Social Media Tips for Authors- Scot La Counte- Bookmark
How to title a book- Dave Chesson- Bookmark
To Finish,
Recently Rachel Gardner shared that her fellow agents had a brainstorming session thinking up side hustles for their author clients. A side hustle is another stream of income. So writers based on your research what could you get a side hustle in…Hmm Spacecraft design anyone?
Maureen
@craicer
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Flickr Creative Commons Sumo- Better than Bacon
At one point this week I thought that my weekly blog would just be full of Book Marketing advice. I kept seeing great articles that I thought you might be interested in. And then I wondered if I was seeing them because it is nearly the end of Summer (on the calendar, not in temperature) in the Northern Hemisphere. The Autumn push of new titles ready for the new school year and the Christmas market is about to begin. The (Northern Hemisphere focussed) twice-yearly push of new titles in Spring and Autumn dominates the International publishing calendar.
So check out
31 ways to promote your Facebook page
5 ways to maximise audience engagement
And a great post on Book Promotion from The Book Designer blog.
Then all the craft articles started appearing in my Inbox. A great infographic on story ideas from Chloe Twist. Roz Morris had a great article on back story description and point of view hacks and Elizabeth Craig had a great tip on saving your outlines.
This week’s news in publishing- Google Play is now renting books from Open Road Media… like a library. I’m not sure where this is going and nobody else seems to know either.
David Gaughran has an informative post on the changes coming to Facebook Ads.
Lit Hub finally caught up with moves that Artificial Intelligence is making into the publishing world and wondered about Author Avatars. Your author avatar can now read your book in your voice to the reader.
If you want to know where all this technology is heading check out the AI and the author interview with Orna Ross and Joanna Penn from The Alliance of Independent Authors podcast. I have been fascinated with where this might lead in the next five years.
(If you are shaking your head in disbelief just think about the take up of voice-related search with Alexia, Siri, and Google Assistant predicted to top 50% next year.)
Parents are limiting screen time but have no problem getting Alexia to read stories to their kids.
What can an author do but get ready to face the future with some ideas of what may be important for their careers? That is where you should be keeping an eye on what Kris Rusch is talking about with Licensing. Her latest post looks at all the different types of licenses authors can take advantage of.
Jami Gold has an interesting guest post from Augustina Van Hoven on dealing with Author overwhelm… It’s all in how you plan. (Try not to be overwhelmed with all the planning tips…)
Anne R Allen has a great post on kicking the whole lot to the curb and focussing on what your reader wants. Do they really need an intimate view of your life or just the news that a new book is coming…
In The Craft Section,
2 great posts from Now Novel 5 uses for minor roles and How to start a chapter- Bookmark
Story fundamentals- Bookbaby
Evoke reader emotions- C S Lakin- Bookmark
Dialogue tips to captivate readers- Roz Morris Bookmark
How to avoid melodrama- Mythcreants-Bookmark
Understanding conflict- Janice Hardy- Bookmark
In The Marketing Section,
2 great posts on book marketing planning- Book marketing timelines and planning book marketing for holidays - Bookmark
Book promotion as a public service- Sandra Beckwith - Bookmark
Email marketing secret weapon- David Gaughran- Bookmark
Using Lyrics in your book- Everybody always asks about this.
What is Book metadata-(If you don’t know, you MUST read this.)
Tales from the book promotion road trip… (what not to do)
To Finish,
Scott Myers has a useful poster on character types to help you with spicing up your stories, or just printing out and decorating your office and Squibler has the 17 best websites to check out for advice on writing and lifting your writing game.
In the end, all we can do, as writers, is tell our stories as best we can in the right format for the most impact and entertainment. We are the storytellers.
Maureen
@craicer
My monthly newsletter is due out this weekend. I round up the best of the best links.When you subscribe you will also get a nifty mini book crammed full with marketing notes as a thank you. I’m living on coffee at the moment as I juggle a few projects. If you want to shout me a coffee as thanks for the blog feel free to hit the coffee button up top. I appreciate all the virtual coffee love. Thanks.
Pic:
Mr Bean as Avatar
