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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Creating Assets in 2025

 

 

And we’re back…Hello 2025.

So down under - it’s supposed to be Summer but we have been getting cold snaps. Summer taunts us by appearing on different single days. Meanwhile, in the Northern hemisphere its Winter and California has been hit by devasting wildfires. I think we can agree that the climate has changed. Publishers Weekly has an article on how the publishing industry is helping out in California. There is some good advice for small publishers in there about prepping for disasters, business wise.

The Christmas/New Year break saw a bankruptcy filing that alarmed a lot of people in the publishing industry. Diamond Comics filed for bankruptcy. The news rocked the comics publishing world as they are one of the big distributors of comics to bookstores. One commentator has described it as the make or break moment for the comics industry.

Comics are big business. While Diamond owes PRH $9 million which helped to trigger the bankruptcy, other companies are full steam ahead in publishing comic book versions of their intellectual property. Mattel are doing big deals for manga versions of their hot properties Barbie and Hot Wheels. Mark Williams talks about the new deal and its implications.

 

Publishing Perspectives has the follow-up article on the Created by Humans business which has officially started with some big author names backing it. This is a marketplace to sell licenses to AI to use your creative work, amongst other ideas. 

Remember, if you create it, you own the copyright. If someone copies your work without paying for it, it is theft. There is a huge market for Intellectual Property assets. Publishers are valued, bought, and sold on the size of their IP assets which is why publishers want as many rights from the creator as they can get. It is all valuable and on the asset side of the ledger. Even if they never use those e-book rights, or special edition, or audiobook rights in Spanish. Whoever holds the IP has the potential to make money. With AI doing some underhanded scraping last year – this is an attempt to control the playing field.

 

If you have been reading the blog for a time and following the news in the publishing industry you might have forgotten that eBooks are still new in some countries. The New Publishing Standard reports that Greece is about to take the plunge with eBooks.

 

We are a quarter of the way through the current century, and it’s been a wild ride in publishing. However, there are still questions from new writers about how to publish. Writers in the Storm contributor Gale Leach has expanded Jane Friedman’s article of the different ways to publish by looking at the keywords Responsibility and Control. How much of each do you want to give up?

 

In the UK the Society of Authors is protesting against the BBC’s new move to discontinue audio drama. This is a blow for authors and a boon for audio book publishers they say. Audio drama is another format to interest and publicise books to a new audience. Here in New Zealand, we have a similar argument happening with our state broadcaster who is not even reviewing New Zealand books, let alone making dramatic readings of them. Our Society of Authors published a stinging criticism of what is happening. No one is holding their breath to see if it will get covered by other news media. After all, how does a country define its culture…, music, art, stories… or, if you are a broadcaster, news and sport. We have made huge movements in covering women’s sport in the last five years, wouldn’t it be great if there was a cultural segment as well?

 

A first roundup of publishing news and interesting craft and marketing information wouldn’t be complete without a predictions for 2025. Written Word Media pulled out their crystal ball and found 10 trends and predictions for the publishing industry . I agree with every one of them. They also have a great article on how to grow your author business in 2025 without losing your mind.

 

Elizabeth Rynecki has a guest article on Jane Friedman’s blog on avoiding creative slumps by changing your writing and publishing medium. If you are looking for a new project this might tick your creative buttons.

 

The Dream Team of Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi are back in 2025 with their great website and blog full of resources but I have discovered that they are venturing into video. Check out this great little episode on inciting incidents by Becca. 

 

In the Craft Section,

The role of narration in storytelling- Gabriela Pereira- Bookmark

In search of the well crafted sentence – C S Lakin- Bookmark

Look to the past for your writing future- Eldrid Bird

StoryGrid- Resource page- full of goodies!

What happens when there is no plot- September Fawkes- Bookmark

 

In the Marketing Section,

Authors and Bookclubs- Sandra Beckwith

Broad vs Niche keywords (2025)- Dave Chesson - Bookmark

Social media for authors in 2025-Rachel Thompson- Bookmark

How to make an author website – Bookbaby

Selling books from your own website- Morgana Best- Bookmark

 

To Finish

 

I’m a fan of podcasts and I have a few that are regular listens. While I am on my summer break, I try to stay off the computer and focus only on being present with my family. Even if it’s reading a paper book in the same room. So, this week as I walked back into my study, I stopped to check out a couple of my favourite podcasts. The Spa Girls have a super interview with Ines Johnson on direct selling and special editions. Joanna Penn always has an interesting goal setting podcast show for the beginning of the new year. 

 

It’s time to get cracking and creating!

 

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 BoliviaInteligente on Unsplash