In Publishing News this week
London Book Fair is coming up and Porter Anderson gives a run down on the big topics that will be discussed at the fair. No prizes for guessing that AI will be front and centre as how to use it/cope with it/ignore it/embrace it are the hot topics in publishing this year.
Forbes magazine put their toe in the water with a prediction on how the publishing industry will cope with AI “which promises to transform how we create, distribute, and consume content.”
Piper Bayard see’s AI as a cause for concern. She looks at the big questions. How much AI is too much and Will AI be the end of authors?
With the concerns about distinguishing your content from AI driven content, Dan Holloway of The Alliance of Independent Authors takes a look at a new initiative from The Authors Guild to champion a book registering site which makes it official that your book is human authored.
This week Simon and Schuster announced that they would no longer blurb books. This has caught some people by surprise with many thinking it is the back blurb that they are talking about, which seems daft. However, it’s the pull quotes from reviews by other authors that they are meaning. (I hope.) My bookseller family member said they had received books from PRH that had no blurbs on the back - only reviews. Which didn’t help when they had to catalogue the book.
Publishing Industry commentator Kathleen Schmidt weighs in on the blurb news in her article Let’s Talk About Blurbs Again – Is it past its use by date or does the blurb have a place in publishing?
Publishing Perspectives reports that the Big Five publishers and quite a few other interested groups have banded together to sue Idaho over their book banning efforts.
We are two weeks into the new American administration and the big news was around tariffs. Who was getting them who was not? Would there be a reprieve? If so for how long? The publishing industry is caught up in this as well. After all where are the big printers based? Publishers Weekly took a look at what the publishing industry might have to do to survive.
Katie Weiland has an interesting article on Creative Burnout Recovery. I am always asking my teacher colleagues about what they are doing to fill the creative well. This is important for writers too.
Netgalley has upgraded their reader experience by creating a new reader browser with the ability to read in the website and protect files from unauthorised downloads.
In happy news, Mac Barnett became the new US National Ambassador for Young Peoples Literature. In the UK this position is the Children’s Laureate. Here in New Zealand, we are eagerly awaiting who will get the nod as our Reading Ambassador. These positions are about connecting and inspiring reading and young people. These truly are the most important jobs. For every reader we inspire, we create a person who thinks about their life and other lives, who finds solace or inspiration in imaginary worlds and ultimately remains a reader into adult hood.
Donald Maass has another knock it out of the park article on craft. Nailing Purpose and Effect. Do you understand the primary purpose of the story? The intent. The intent of any given story is the effect that you want to have on readers. It is a must read.
In The Craft Section,
Creating a plot/subplot template-Laurie Campbell- Bookmark
Tag your dialogue- Margie Lawson
How to manipulate time in your writing- C S Lakin- Bookmark
Important parts of a book- Joe Yamulla
Most asked for topic articles- K M Weilands master list- Bookmark
In The Marketing Section
How cover art influences readers-Sierra Kay
Why reviews are a game changer- ReaderViews
Optimize your Amazon Central page – Penny Sansevieri- Bookmark
Generating article ideas- Sandra Beckwith- Bookmark
From obscurity to bestseller-Leonard Tillerman- Bookmark
To Finish,
How wedded are you to a particular sales platform? If it all fell over tomorrow would your business survive? That is the wake up call authors who were primarily relying on BookTok got faced with recently. The Alliance of Independent Authors canvassed a few of their superstar members to find out how they would navigate a similar business problem. This is a great article about being in control of your business.
Maureen
@craicer
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