Publishing news and industry blogs for 7/13-7/26. It's been a fairly quiet couple of weeks, fortunately for my sleep schedule (or unfortunately, as it may keep me up wondering what major thing I've surely missed...)
Publishing News
The Writers Guild of America plans to try Joan Rivers for violating the writers' strike against E! by writing and running Fashion Police during the strike.
How much have publishers paid to settle the DOJ vs Apple and Big Six price-fixing suits? Approximately $166 million USD, apparently. This is before including the cost of lawyers and the trial, and not including any of Apple's possible liability.
Industry blogs
QueryTracker for 7/19 and 7/26.
If you haven't heard, J.K. Rowling re-discovered something many debut authors know: new authors have a harder time selling than established ones. She published a crime novel under a new pen name and suffered less-than-stellar sales compared to her Harry Potter series, until she outed herself as the author. But why, as an author, would she do that? Kathryn Rusch suggests it comes down to getting a clean slate and honest reviews untainted by the success of her previous works. Something Stephen King did, too. Rusch does then go on to scold the traditional publishing industry for blaming the writer (why didn't Rowling write more, write better, do more advertising, etc.). Of course, sales have taken off since Rowling came out.
Why do you need a query if you're self-publishing? QueryTracker's Ash Krafton explains why... and it has a lot to do with the fact that agents aren't the only people you might want to know about your book.
Publishers' Weekly publishes a report on the environmental impact of publishers, highlighting some of the industry's major improvements (that somewhat are helped by the rise of e-publishing, naturally).
Rachelle Gardner explains what it means to "get your rights back" from a publisher, an issue many veteran authors face. Make sure to have a reversion clause in your contract. And she offers 13 ways to convince a literary agent to represent you. Also, why it's important if you have an agent to let the agent play "bad cop" to the editors and publishers: you don't want to be known as the problem author, after all.
And Agent Rachel Kent offers safety tips for authors, who, in addition to fans, may come down with anti-fans. Don't become a target for identity theft or other crime: getting a P.O. box is a good idea, for one.
Jonathon Gunson talks about 11 things authors do to kill their marketing efforts.
And Suzanne Johnson encourages you to kill characters, and offers suggestions on how and when (hint: usually it's a bad idea to kill your hero. Usually.).
A new app, BookVibe, helps readers turn to Twitter to pull out book recommendations by noting the books the people they follow talk about.
GoodReads is up to 120 million readers. (Which is why seeing my book listed there is one of those daydreams I sometimes have in pre-published land. Is it odd that being on GoodReads is one of the things I think will make me feel like a "real" novelist?)
Fancy literary terms are explained through simple Disney examples.
What publishing news have you encountered in the past two weeks?
Publishing News
The Writers Guild of America plans to try Joan Rivers for violating the writers' strike against E! by writing and running Fashion Police during the strike.
How much have publishers paid to settle the DOJ vs Apple and Big Six price-fixing suits? Approximately $166 million USD, apparently. This is before including the cost of lawyers and the trial, and not including any of Apple's possible liability.
Industry blogs
QueryTracker for 7/19 and 7/26.
If you haven't heard, J.K. Rowling re-discovered something many debut authors know: new authors have a harder time selling than established ones. She published a crime novel under a new pen name and suffered less-than-stellar sales compared to her Harry Potter series, until she outed herself as the author. But why, as an author, would she do that? Kathryn Rusch suggests it comes down to getting a clean slate and honest reviews untainted by the success of her previous works. Something Stephen King did, too. Rusch does then go on to scold the traditional publishing industry for blaming the writer (why didn't Rowling write more, write better, do more advertising, etc.). Of course, sales have taken off since Rowling came out.
Why do you need a query if you're self-publishing? QueryTracker's Ash Krafton explains why... and it has a lot to do with the fact that agents aren't the only people you might want to know about your book.
Publishers' Weekly publishes a report on the environmental impact of publishers, highlighting some of the industry's major improvements (that somewhat are helped by the rise of e-publishing, naturally).
Rachelle Gardner explains what it means to "get your rights back" from a publisher, an issue many veteran authors face. Make sure to have a reversion clause in your contract. And she offers 13 ways to convince a literary agent to represent you. Also, why it's important if you have an agent to let the agent play "bad cop" to the editors and publishers: you don't want to be known as the problem author, after all.
And Agent Rachel Kent offers safety tips for authors, who, in addition to fans, may come down with anti-fans. Don't become a target for identity theft or other crime: getting a P.O. box is a good idea, for one.
Jonathon Gunson talks about 11 things authors do to kill their marketing efforts.
And Suzanne Johnson encourages you to kill characters, and offers suggestions on how and when (hint: usually it's a bad idea to kill your hero. Usually.).
A new app, BookVibe, helps readers turn to Twitter to pull out book recommendations by noting the books the people they follow talk about.
GoodReads is up to 120 million readers. (Which is why seeing my book listed there is one of those daydreams I sometimes have in pre-published land. Is it odd that being on GoodReads is one of the things I think will make me feel like a "real" novelist?)
Fancy literary terms are explained through simple Disney examples.
What publishing news have you encountered in the past two weeks?
Nice article. :D Good luck with everything you're trying to accomplish.
ReplyDeleteDid you know you can enable G+ comments on your blog? It is really really awesome. It integrates your G+ comments and shares right here in your blog so you can leverage notifications, stream updates, and post sharing without learning all kinds of crazy programming tricks. :D No more subscribing to comments through Atom feeds and filtering guests with captchas! It's win win for both the blogger and the guest. Check it out, google posted instructions on how to enable it, it's very easy. http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2013/04/bringing-google-comments-to-blogger.html
Thanks Matthew!
DeleteI've thought about it, but some people have mentioned having trouble with losing comments made by people without G+ accounts. I'd hate to cut off some of my readers like that! Maybe when I hear it's been fixed.