Resources and tips for the self-published author.

The longest ongoing discussion in modern publishing is eBooks.

When they first arrived all those years ago they flipped the concept of publishing. They are still going strong but the same questions still exist—what are they doing to the value of content? Where do they fall in the categories of publishing? And most importantly—what is its fate?

Learning From Pulp Fiction

Over one hundred years ago Pulp Fiction was born. Pulp paper was cheap and so many magazines sprang up looking for content. Famous writers learned their writing chops writing for the pulps. Crime, Sci-Fi, Mysteries, Thrillers, The Noir Detectives, Westerns, and many more genres were born in the fifty or so years of Pulp publishing. I have shelves of Louis Lamour and Leslie Charteris ‘Saint’ books. They wrote fast and they wrote for their readers. This week Christopher Wells examined the ebook publishing phenomenon and compared it to Pulp Fiction. 

Joanne Harris spoke out against the absurd focus on debut writers in the publishing world and pleaded with publishers to support their existing writers instead of always chasing the next debut. The Bookseller has a roundup of her Q and A with Sam Missingham. Joanne makes great points on age banding in children’s books, why genre fiction is seen as lesser and the invisible women writers. (Share this article around!)

Last week I pointed you to Dean Wesley Smith’s great post on doing the maths in a writing business. He has a follow-up post responding to the various reactions to his post. Explaining again how writing is a business. While we are in Dean’s neck of the woods he also has an interesting post on how licenses are not the end of the road. This is a great post about helping writers to understand all the tricky rights paragraphs in contracts.

The Audible lawyers are insisting that the judge should throw out the Caption Copyright case. If you haven’t been following this, Audible owned by Amazon wants to introduce written captions to their audiobooks. Publishers say this is eBook publishing and an infringement on their rights and licenses.

Joanna Penn has just passed her eight-year anniversary as an author entrepreneur. She has a great blog about how she is working now and why she has started even more content generation podcasts.

Anne R Allen has a super post on how well-intentioned friends and family can sabotage your writing and your self-belief. This is one of those posts that every writer will identify with. Reading the comments will make you wince. How do you protect your writing sanity?

Kris Rusch looks at Failure this week. Failure is good. Failure means you tried something. And all the best learning comes from failure. I was fascinated to read about Ben and Jerry’s flavour graveyard.

This week Jami Gold had an interesting post on Writing Projects- Are we ever done? How do you cope with project overwhelm? Jami offers some good advice for when you can’t see the project because the TO DO LIST got in the way.

In The Craft Section,

5 character flaws to shake up your cast– Litlangislife

An easy way to find the right words- Writer CEO

Two great posts from Writelife- Writing action scenes and How to write a memoir– Bookmark both.

Evoke reader emotions-K M Weiland- Bookmark

Rules – who cares– Kathy Steinemann- Bookmark

In The Marketing Section, 

10 reasons readers unsubscribe from newsletters– Nate Hofelder- Bookmark

SEO for authors– Alli Blog

3 reasons authors need content strategies- Abbie Mood

Simple ebook design means good marketing– Alexandria Szeman

5 things to plan right now for good holiday sales– Penny Sansevieri- Bookmark

To Finish,

Joel Friedlander talks about understanding Styles in Manuscript formatting. I debated with myself whether this was craft or marketing and decided it was both. Knowing how to use styles is Very Useful. It will help you to craft the interior of a book as well as organise your manuscript.

Colleen Story has a way to boost your writing creativity- Go on a colour walk. She offers 5 ways to do this activity and how it can inspire your writing. You could even have fun with purple prose.

Maureen
@craicer

About Maureen Crisp

Maureen Crisp has been writing her weekly publishing roundups for over seven years. She is a traditionally published children's author as well as indie-published. She lives in New Zealand and is heading the team organising the 4th National Conference of Children's Writers and Illustrators. She is currently trying her hand at writing a children’s book series if she can drag herself away from forever tweaking her Mars novel or obsessing over space.