Slogging Forward

 

 

This week in Publishing News,

The Guardian published an article on the latest survey of children’s reading habits. Woe. Children are not reading as much as they used to. And the books they are reading are not challenging enough. They particularly bemoan secondary school students who are barely reading at all in the UK and Ireland. There has been some talk about the falling sales of YA but I don’t think we are in crisis. It’s summer in the Northern Hemisphere and they are gearing up for an election. They need lots of drama to fill the newspapers.

 

Meanwhile, the finalists for the NZ Book Awards for Children and Young Adults were announced this morning. What a super line up! Congratulations everyone. I have judged these awards and I know how hard it must have been to come up with this shortlist. It is also great to see more books being entered, we’re only a few books short of the mark to have a long list, like the adult book awards. 

 

Publisher’s Weekly reports on the layoffs at Hachette. They have let go editors at Little Brown. When the publishing industry is under scrutiny to be more diverse in its people hiring, these particular layoffs don’t look good.

 

Audiobooks continue their upward trajectory in sales. They made over $2 Billion in sales last year. The survey from the audio publishers association reports that listener demographics are also on the rise with more children listening to audiobooks

The Textbook companies have got together to sue Google. At issue is the way that Google ads promote pirated textbooks to poor students. They are enabling scammers say the textbook publishers.

 

Dan Holloway of The Alliance of Independent Authors keeps an eye on publishing news and he recently reported on the willingness of media companies to do partnership deals with Open AI. If they’re not doing deals they are suing Open AI.

The Alliance also has some great podcasts on all things writing related. Check out Sacha Black and Michael La Ronn on marketing children’s and YA books and other interesting advice on their Q& A. They have transcripts of their podcasts.

 

Anne R Allen has an interesting blog post on changing up the author bookshop event. She got together with writer friends to have live theatre reenactments of scenes from their books. Think of the possibilities….

 

Two great writing craft articles caught my eye this week. James Scott Bell on writing and showing character emotion. A super post with great advice from the master.

Sarah Hamer writes a great post on the Story Triangle. She boils down structure to 3 essential must haves for a strong story. 

 

In The Craft Section,

Structuring an ensemble cast- September Fawkes - Bookmark

Tips for writing multi author series- D Wallace Peach- Bookmark

10 tips for writing steamy scenes- Gwynn Scheltema

Characters and writing race diversity- Gwen Plano

A Scrivener trick to use in Word- Debbie Burke- Bookmark

 

In The Marketing Section,

8 unique venues for children’s author visits- Chelsea Tornetto- Bookmark

Talking pre publicity- Sam Missingham- BOOKMARK-Print Out.

7 creative ways to sell more books- Fussy Librarian

6 savvy book promo ideas- Indie Author Central

Understanding Author Brand- Reedsy- Bookmark

 

To Finish

There is a great quote about writing from Elmore Leonard- ‘Try to leave out the parts people tend to skip.’

When you are faced with writing drudgery it can be tempting to skip over these bits, promising yourself you will fill them in later… and later doesn’t happen.

Two fantastic articles tackle this situation. Katie Weiland looks what might be triggering your resistance to writing and offers some great tips for getting through the drudgery.

Susan DeFreitas identifies the problem as your inner storyteller not knowing enough about your story/scene to write it. Both these articles have great tips to help you when the story writing becomes a slog.

 

Maureen

@craicer

 

Do you want the best of my bookmarked links in a handy monthly newsletter? You can subscribe here to join our happy band.

If you want the weekly blog in your inbox subscribe to the Substack version.

If you like the blog and want to buy me a coffee, I appreciate the virtual coffee love. Thanks.

Pic: Photo by davide ragusa on Unsplash

Challenging Times

 

In Publishing News this week,

The Romance Writers of America has filed for bankruptcy. For many years this association was the biggest writer organization out there. They had huge conferences which were the industry standard. A series of scandals in the last few years has seen their membership dwindle from over 10,000 to around 3000 or less. This means they can’t pay for hotels which they used to book 5 years in advance for their big conferences. The bills are due. There is no money leading to the filing. It is not the end of the association, but tight times are ahead. Meanwhile, the way things have been left has annoyed some writers. 

 

When Simon and Schuster was up for sale, Meta (Facebook) was interested in acquiring it. Good E Reader reports from recordings shared with the New York Times that they didn’t want the publishing company really- only the content. This is a heads up for any other publishing companies going up for sale. You could get bought for AI training purposes.

 

Publishing Perspectives reports that Bloomsbury have bought the academic publishers Rowman Littlefield. This is their biggest ever acquisition and doubles their footprint in the US. Richard Charkin’s monthly column on the good and the not so good aspects of publishing has academic publishers in the profitable section, so an excellent bottom line for Bloomsbury. Academic publishing has a captive audience- much to the annoyance of academics.

Dan Holloway of The Alliance of Independent Authors has a quick rundown of the opposition by some of the corporate sponsor behind the Hay Literary Festival. Do you take the money and close your eyes to where it has come from? Can literary beggars be choosers?

 

Lorna Fergusson writes about getting the balance right when you go on a writing retreat. She has a list of very good advice to consider from planning to expectations to the type of experiences that could help or hinder the benefit you might get from it.

 

Christine Webb writes for Writers Digest about balancing humour and emotion in your books. Going too far one way or the other can wreck the reading experience.

 

So what does fear have to do with bad writing? Ruth Harris answers this question in her monthly column on Anne Allens blog. Is fear stopping you from what you really want to write?

 

Do you let your characters fill in backstory? John Kelley has an interesting article on Writer Unboxed about letting your minor characters fill in information. Stories within stories.

 

Suzanne Lakin has an interesting post on inner conflict. How well do you know your characters motivations? She has a series of questions to ask your character that reveals their inner conflicts and can give you great pointers on where to take the character in the story.

 

 

In The Craft Section,

How to use white space And How Did I Get Here - Sue Coletta- Bookmark

Crafting compelling backstory- Michelle Barker- Bookmark

Steadfast arcs vs flat arcs- September Fawkes

Introducing your characters- K M Weiland- Bookmark

 

In The Marketing Section,

Using universal book links – Draft2Digital- Bookmark

Marketing forever mindset- Podcast- ALLI conference- Bookmark

Marketing to agents- Karen Whiting

5 tips for building superfans- Rachel Hanna- Bookmark

15 book promo ideas- Penny Sansevieri- Bookmark

 

To Finish,

It is always interesting to drop into Joanna Penn’s podcast. This week she has an interview with a former mental health nurse, Adam Beswick, about planning for success. Adam has a bestselling dark fantasy series using TikTok videos. He talks about going from being terrified to video himself to viral videos. It is an interesting interview on mindset and being open to new experiences. We send our characters on challenging journeys- shouldn’t we be challenging ourselves too?

 

Maureen

@craicer

 

Do you want the best of my bookmarked links in a handy monthly newsletter? You can subscribe here to join our happy band.

If you want the weekly blog in your inbox subscribe to the Substack version.

If you like the blog and want to buy me a coffee, I appreciate the virtual coffee love. Thanks.

 

Photo by Michał Robak on Unsplash