Viability and Curiosity

 

 

In Publishing News this week,

January seems to be the month where the accountants have come back to work and said… Your business is not viable. 

The latest to crash is Unbound, a crowdfunding venture that I covered when they launched in 2011. It was a brave new world then and upvoting books to get published was a new exciting thing.

Also in the red is The Good Literary Agency which began in 2018 with a huge 500,000 pound grant. They were focused mainly on discovering marginalized authors in the hopes of uncovering potential runaway bestsellers to keep them viable. They discovered some but not enough. They close their doors in March.

 

Ahh TikTok, you came, you went, you came back. For everyone who has a business that is based on TikTok they recently had quite a scare. Publishing commentator Kathleen Schmidt has a great article on how you should be managing your social media content. First make it shareable. 

 

While this business is hard there is always room for hope with exciting new ventures just around the corner. Ingram Content Group (Ingram printers etc etc) have just launched a new business Film and TV rights marketplace, MediaScout. Publishing Perspectives has the low down.

 

Mark Williams has an article on The Alpine Collective, a new group that aims to help publishers across the globe use each other’s strengths to navigate new formats and territories. This is one of those groups that people often speculate would be amazing if only someone would do it… someone did. 

 

BookFunnel is a great company who got started when an author decided to take the pain out of download assistance for book buyers along the way he happened to solve other pain problems. Now they are venturing into helping with Direct Sales and have partnered with a company to manage the tax headache.

 

I was alerted to the coming closure of the Mobi format in the last week. Ho hum you say it’s been closed for a while. Yes. But after March the Mobi format will no longer be supported on Amazon. You might need to check if your mobi files will still be viable. You can use Kindle Create to construct picture books or image heavy books for EReaders in the Epub format. 

 

Bologna Children’s Book Fair is coming up fast at the end of March. They will be hosting an inaugural AI Summit at the fair specifically looking at how to leverage AI to enhance profitability in publishing. Publisher’s Weekly reports on their summit plans.

 

While you are coming to grips with AI – there is new technology right around the corner using it to develop other nifty tools like taking a 2D image and turn it into a 3D image and then animating it or generating a printer plan etc. Why is this important? Merchandise.  Mark Williams looks at the advantages for publishers.

 

James Daunt, CEO of Waterstones and Barnes and Noble has had an interesting five years at the helm of B&N and he has no plans to leave. In fact, he is just getting started. If you live in a town with a Barnes and Noble store, check it out. James wants a more local focus in each of the stores.  

 

Eleanor Hecks has a great article on how you can stay hopeful in a tough publishing climate. Sally Hamer has an excellent article on Why we don’t believe in our own writing. If you have ever looked at your work and reached for the bin… Stop. Maybe your judgement is flawed.

 

In The Craft Section

Use hidden experiences for empathy-Angela Ackerman- Bookmark

8 steps for getting better at editing- Ali Luke- Bookmark

5 phases to writing a fantasy novel- BookBaby

Dissecting Voice- Dave King

Therese Walsh writes about the LA wildfires leading to character understanding. What would you save in a fire? - Excellent!

 

In the Marketing Section,

13 bookmarketing tips- Victoria Jayne- Bookmark

Book promotion ideas- BookBaby

Unleash your Social Media potential- Rachel Thompson has an excellent article on Social Media now and how to navigate it. Bookmark

 

Sam Missingham has a fabulous video up on her YouTube channel that she did for a recent conference on how to create reader communities. Five creative ways authors can harness fans to sell books. Must Watch

 

To Finish,

In November last year, the Author Nation (the successor to 20booksto50K) conference happened. It’s the largest Indie Writers conference in the world. They have all the big industry players there and the conference is a bucket list item for many writers who live far from Las Vegas. The Indie Author magazine scored a coup by being allowed to show one of the keynote presentations. Be entertained and also learn about the curiosity gap and how you can put it in your writing with Drew Davis. 

Writers have bags of curiosity…make it work for you!

 

 

Maureen

@craicer

 

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Photo by François Verbeeck on Unsplash