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whoelscher

Author Websites, Branding And CopyWriting With James Chartrand From Men With Pens | The... - 0 views

  • Brilliant website design and why it’s so important for authors. James mentions some of her favorite authors who have ugly and terrible websites. BUT if the author is established, it doesn’t matter. New authors don’t have this luxury. We have to stand out in the market. We have competition. The author website is a way to connect. It’s critical to make a good impression and a personal connection. You can only do this through your web presence and social media. Bring them back to reading your work, so they will read your books, enjoy them and tell their friends. Chris Guillebeau, author of the recent $100 Startup tells how it was easy for him to get a book deal as he had an established platform online. Read more in James’ guest article - Is your website hurting your writing?
  • A bad choice of colors can kill first impressions.
  • A mystery might be greys and blacks, whereas a go-getting kickass non-fiction book might be red and modern white.
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  • The book can’t sell itself.
whoelscher

GigaOm's Michael Wolf Launches Digital Publisher BSTSLLR | paidContent - 0 views

  • Book publishers have long attested that short story collections don’t sell; Wolf would respond they’re not trying hard enough. “Traditional publishers don’t do a lot of marketing for the midlist authors today,” he said. “I don’t know if it’s that they’re too busy trying to survive or they don’t have the budget.”
  • “I’m organizing and coordinating all the different authors and having them all communicate to their specific niches and audiences. I’m driving them to a common landing page and we created a book blog. We’re leveraging social media and talking to the press.”
  • it’s true that, with limited marketing budgets, publishers often have to focus on the big titles, and smaller authors must pick up a lot of the marketing work themselves for a shot at success.
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  • Kevin Kelly’s “1,000 true fans” principle, the idea that an artist needs 1,000 true fans, “who will purchase anything and everything you produce,” to succeed.
  • that principle can be multiplied for a short story collection. “If you take a collection of mid-list fiction authors and put them together, you potentially have a culmination” of their thousand true fans, he said.
    • whoelscher
       
      Very true. It worked for the "Machine of Death" anthology, which was written by largely unknown authors.
  • This is the democratization of publishing, Wolf says.
    • whoelscher
       
      This is an over-used and grossly inaccurate term for what's happening in the industry. Democracy in publishing would spell disaster for all parties involved. There will also be a need for curators of content. So I think it might be more akin to a republic.
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    "If you take a collection of mid-list fiction authors and put them together, you potentially have a culmination" of their thousand true fans
whoelscher

Long Odds for Authors Newly Published - NYTimes.com - 0 views

  • But if the book is as good as critics are now saying it is, why didn’t it sell more copies before, especially since the rise of online publishing has supposedly made it easier than ever for first-time authors?
  • Given how difficult it is for first-time fiction authors, especially in a crowded genre like mystery, to find both an agent and publisher, it’s not clear “The Cuckoo’s Calling” would have made it off the slush piles.
  • An editor there told The Telegraph in London that the book “didn’t stand out.”
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  • a publishing contract is hardly a guarantee of critical or commercial success.
  • Mr. Entrekin cited “Matterhorn,” by first-time novelist Karl Marlantes, which he published in 2010. The author “worked on the book for over 20 years and couldn’t find a publisher,” Mr. Entrekin said. Then, as the book was about to be published in a tiny first edition, Mr. Entrekin got a copy from a buyer at Barnes & Noble, loved it, and bought out the first printing.
whoelscher

The Future Role of Agents | WritersDigest.com - 0 views

  • There’s a final dilemma. Publishers are now paying lower advances, releasing fewer titles and selling digital content at lower prices than print content (which in turn affects royalty payments to both agent and author). Assuming this is the new reality, there will be less money to go around for the number of agents now in business. Plus, will it be worth an agent’s time and energy to sell a project that doesn’t pay more than $1,500 upfront? Probably not. One agency has quietly come out with a new model that requires authors to pay a minimum commission—i.e., the agent must earn a minimum amount on a sale no matter what advance the publisher pays, which means authors would “share” a larger part of the advance upfront (or even pay out of pocket in the case of very low advances). Undoubtedly, there’s no shortage of aspiring writers who would be ecstatic to pay more to an agent if it meant securing a publishing deal. But such a model is sure to raise ethical concerns. Agents may take projects knowing they will ultimately be paid by authors rather than by publishers. Is the industry (that includes the author!) ready to accept such a shift in how agents profit?
whoelscher

Author, Jody Hedlund: How to Know When to Quit Pursuing Publication - 0 views

  • I'm not talking about throwing in the towel on writing.
  • if a writer is pursuing publication with the goal of making money, they're going to find themselves sorely disappointed.
  • hose who are pursuing publication for the money are probably better off getting a job at Walmart for a much steadier and reliable income.
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  • In the modern publication industry, writers are shouldering HUGE responsibilities. Not only are authors working on novels (sometimes multiple books in a year), but they're also writing enovellas and eshort stories to help with marketing visibility.
  • authors must also take a large role in marketing their books.
whoelscher

Long Odds for Authors Newly Published - NYTimes.com - 0 views

  • “Robert was doing rather better than we expected him to,” she wrote. Ms. Dewey said it had sold an additional 5,000 copies in the United States, for a total of 13,500, which is “a great achievement for any unknown author.”
  • “It would have stayed on the path it was on, which is towards oblivion.”
  • “It’s the power of the author brand,” Mr. Entrekin said.
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  • “Most books come out and do nothing,” Ms. Coady said. “There are still too many books being published. We can only get behind so many books, and then hope they take off on their own. It worries me that so many slip through the cracks.”
  • “There’s no formula,” he said. “A publisher can only do so much. A book’s fate is ultimately in the hands of the book gods.”
whoelscher

The Accessible NYTimes - 0 views

  • publishing is like Hollywood — nobody ever does the marketing they promise.
  • Mr. Mamet is taking advantage of a new service being offered by his literary agency, ICM Partners, as a way to assume more control over the way his book is promoted.
    • whoelscher
       
      Interesting direction for an agency to take. Is this the future for literary agents? Will they simply become self-publishing services? Will they maintain their role as gatekeepers or will they open up their services to everyone?
  • New Publisher Authors Trust: Themselves
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  • ICM, which will announce its new self-publishing service on Wednesday, is one of the biggest and most powerful agencies to offer the option. But others are doing the same as they seek to provide additional value to their writers while also extending their reach in the industry.
  • Trident Media Group
  • mostly for reissuing older titles, the backlist.
  • InkWell Management
  • she would not leave Harper completely because she loves her editor.
  • They treat it like a small business
  • the big publishers focused mostly on blockbuster books and fell short on other titles — by publishing too few copies, for instance, or limiting advertising to only a short period after a book was released.
  • If an author self-publishes, what, then, is the role of a literary agency?
whoelscher

Ten ways self-publishing has changed the books world - 0 views

  • The industry has long suffered the irony that effective publishing is most evident when invisible; it is only when standards are less than felicitous that we realise how well what we read is managed most of the time.
  • Gone is our confidence that publishers and agents know exactly what everyone wants to (or should) read
  • The copy editor, a traditionally marginalised figure, is now in strong demand.
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  • Now, as authors meet their readers at literary festivals, run blogs or tweet, they know their readers well and are no longer solely reliant on their publishers to mediate relationships.
  • Now that so many self-publishing authors are finding the market themselves, agents need to find new ways to make their work pay. If agencies are multi-faceted (film, television, after-dinner speaking) they may be protected, but smaller agencies will struggle.
  • The role of the agent is also changing.
  • New writing patterns are developing too: team writing; ghost writing; software to assist the crafting.
  • Self-publishing brings happiness.
whoelscher

How publishers gave Amazon a stick to beat them with - Tech News and Analysis - 0 views

  • A big part of that control stems from Amazon’s ownership of the Kindle, the leading e-book reader, and that books bought for the device have DRM built in. Stross argues that this effectively locks many e-book buyers into the device, since it’s virtually impossible to read Kindle books on other devices
  • Publishers — and some authors, especially those who control the Authors Guild, which has fought every attempt by Google and others to open up the book market — have been so obsessed with piracy and locking down their products that they have allowed Amazon to take control of their fate
  • even if you take advantage of Amazon’s self-publishing options to avoid having to get a traditional publishing deal, you’ve really just exchanged one corporate overlord for another.
whoelscher

Rethinking Book Marketing: Why Discovery Matters More | Write NonFiction in November - 0 views

  • authors have to realize that sometimes the efforts they make to promote their books…well…simply don’t have the hoped for impact. Why? Because these days readers spend most of their time in Cyberspace searching out information on their interests and seeking out the advice of experts and opinions of others. In the process, they may—or may not—discover you and your book.
  • why authors might need to stop focusing so much attention on marketing and rely more on discovery
whoelscher

Writer Unboxed » The No. 1 Overlooked Skill for Every Author - 0 views

  • The skill is copywriting.
  • A query letter is not a straightforward description of your work. It’s a sales letter. It should be persuasive and seduce the agent into requesting your work.
  • And this is why writers struggle with queries, because they can’t bridge the gap between writing to entertain (or inform or inspire) and writing to persuade. It’s a different mindset, and it requires an ability to look at one’s work as a product that has a selling point.
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  • Think about the titles of your site pages, too. Are the titles clear within a few seconds, telling visitors what content resides on your site? Don’t count on cutesy, vague, or artistic headlines to spark curiosity. It most often leads to content that goes unread.
  • How do you catch people’s attention in 140 words or less? Good copywriting.
  • For fiction, never outline the entire story. You tease the reader; you raise questions that you don’t answer.
whoelscher

Publishing Perils in the Digital Age - NYTimes.com - 0 views

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    The walls are crumbling...are the no-compete and the option clause in author contracts doomed?
whoelscher

On the death of book publishers and other middlemen - Tech News and Analysis - 0 views

  • the internet is potentially lethal to middlemen.
  • more profitable for authors
  • make sure that you are really adding value to that relationship with an author,
islandlibrary

Art and Photography eBooks: An Untouched World - How eBooks on visual arts can be profi... - 0 views

  • color represents the core of merchandise
  • presenting colors to the reader
  • bette
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  • LED (organic light-emitting diode)
  • e current status of the mobile device market.
  • 76.6%
  • Apple’s devices
  • necessary authorizations to reproduce art pieces that are owned by a museum
  • onsumer-awareness
  • new gold vein
  • for a publisher that has not been exploited yet.
  • COUNTERPART
whoelscher

Story Beginnings - The Loft Literary Center - 0 views

  • What are those authors doing in those precious first pages? In every book I looked at they were introducing me to a character so unique and compelling that I cared about what happened when the high stakes action came into play a few pages later. They opened not with a bang but with a voice—a choice well worth emulating. 
  • Rosanne Parry is teaching "Vampire-Free Fiction: Writing Real-World Novels for Young Readers"
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