Month: April 2015

Ebooks For Libraries

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This post by JA Konrath originally appeared on his A Newbie’s Guide To Publishing site on 3/31/15.

TL;DR

I want to help authors get their ebooks into libraries.

I want to help libraries acquire indie ebooks.

To do this, I started a business called EAF – EbooksAreForever.com.

I want to sell your ebooks to libraries.

 

What’s going on with libraries and ebooks?

There are 120,000 libraries in the US. These libraries, and their patrons, are eager for popular ebooks. Many libraries have a budget they must spend, or they risk having that budget cut.

Currently, libraries have no allies in the ebook market. They aren’t happy with the restrictions and costs of the current leader in supplying libraries with ebook content, Overdrive. Through Overdrive, many publishers charge high prices for ebooks, some higher than $80 a title. They also require yearly license renewals, and may force libraries to re-buy licenses after a certain arbitrary number of borrows.

Just one example of the perils of this approach for America’s libraries is that a library must pay for extensions of time-limited licenses of old ebooks and purchases of licenses for new ones. All kinds of sustainability and predictability issues arise. And that’s true even if the budget remains the same, rather than declining, as many have in recent years. It will be harder than ever for libraries to grow their collection, whether the licenses are time-limited or come with limits on the number of times a library can loan a book.

So libraries are spending a fortune and don’t even own the content they’re spending that fortune on. In many cases, if they stop paying the fees, they lose the content they bought. This has been dubbed “digital decay”, and it’s a money grab, pure and simple.

What’s going on with indie authors and ebooks?

Some indies are on Overdrive and 3M. I’ve been on Overdrive for a few years. My last quarterly check was about $60, and I have a large catalog. This is small money, not just for me, but for any writer. And I was fortunate enough to have been invited into Overdrive. Many authors are not.

The vast majority of libraries don’t have access to many of the ebooks that readers are seeking. The latest AuthorEarnings.com report showed that 33% of all ebooks sold on Amazon are from indie authors. Libraries are missing out on 1/3 of available titles, because they have no way easy way to acquire them.

 

Read the full post on A Newbie’s Guide To Publishing.

 

Writing With A Day Job

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This post by Nathan Bransford originally appeared on his blog on 2/18/14.

On last week’s episode of Girls, Hannah got a temporary day job in GQ’s advertorial department, where she had a taste of success (as well as free snacks).

Her fellow co-workers were fellow aspiring writers, and during a slightly fraught break room chat, they revealed that all of their writing successes came before they had a day job. Hannah quits, not wanting to wake up in ten years having failed to pursue her real writing, but later decides to try to have it both ways and vows to write three hours every night.

I’m sure this episode rang true for many a writer. Barring some sort of independent wealth or a generous benefactor, there are really only two choices:

– Quit/scale back your day job to have more time to write, plunging yourself into financial uncertainty.

– Keep your day job and carve out time for writing in the margins, plunging yourself into creative uncertainty.

 

Read the full post on Nathan Bransford’s blog.

 

Fifty Shades of Lit.

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This post by Andrew J McKiernan originally appeared as a guest post on Alan Baxter’s Warrior Scribe on 3/17/15.

It has been almost six months since Alan asked me to write him a guest blog post. He knows I’m fairly passionate and opinionated about the “Literary vs. Genre” debate, and that’s what he suggested I write about. That’ll be easy enough, I thought. So I agreed.

Turns out, it wasn’t so easy after all. So, instead of trying to create some kind of logical argument — as I was originally intending to do — I’m just going to wing it. Trust my instincts, follow my heart, and just lay it all on the table.

First, let me paste two comments I recently found accompanying articles re: the Literature vs Genre debate. They demonstrate why I get a bit angry when the topic comes up:

EXHIBIT A: User comment on article on whether Crime Fiction is real Literature [see Note 6 below]

“crime fiction has more in common with the crossword puzzle than with literature”

EXHIBIT B: User comment seen on Facebook:

“To me, literary fiction is just another genre, and today it means ‘realistic fiction written by professors, for professors.’”

[I can’t remember who said this, but I think the position is common enough amongst Genre readers and writers that the specifics aren’t important.]

Now, I’m not a professor and I ain’t had no fancy learnin’, but that sounds like crazy talk to me. Both comments based on a misguided and narrow view of what Literature and Genre might actually mean. And, though there’s been a lot of great work in breaking this ridiculously false barrier down, both sides still maintain a strong core of stubbornness and, to me, it seems a horrible prejudice.

 

Read the full post on Warrior Scribe.

 

Keys to Writing Books for Very Young Readers

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This post by Olivia Snaije originally appeared on Publishing Perspectives on 3/25/15.

PARIS: Within a program of events celebrating French publisher l’école des loisirs’ 50th birthday, the cherished children’s book author, Grégoire Solotareff, gave a talk on Monday about how to transform an idea for a book into reality. In the tradition of Maurice Sendak or Leo Lionni (both of whom are published in translation by l’école des loisirs), Solotareff’s 200+ books for children, which he has been writing and illustrating for 30 years, continue to dwell in a magical and quirky universe. For the past 20 years he has also been the editor of an imprint called Loulou & Cie for children ages 0-4 where he has overseen the production of 400 books. It was in his capacity as both author and editor that he gave the following talk, loosely translated and edited here:

In 1985 I started publishing my books. It was lots of work at the beginning. I wanted very quickly to be published by l’école des loisirs because of its reputation. I presented my books to [co-founder] Arthur Hubschmid, and since then there have been lots of books.

One shouldn’t create books just to make them. You need to be passionate about it. At first you are shy and afraid of rejection. You’re not always confident. But you do need to be convinced about your work, you need to like it and want to do it. This is the first quality you need when you present a book to a publisher and say “This is what I do and what do you think?”

 

Read the full post on Publishing Perspectives.

 

Can We All Just Behave?

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This post by Maryann Miller originally appeared on The Blood-Red Pencil on 3/25/15.

Last month here at The Blood-Red Pencil I wrote about moral and ethical lines that we writers need to consider before we cross them just to make a buck. We had a great discussion about what we are comfortable writing, as well as our responsibility to consider what we’re contributing to society with our work.

One of our regular BRP contributors, Diana Hurwitz, had this to say on the topic:

Stories have the power to shape the collective consciousness. You can write with brutal honesty about what has happened and what could happen without suggesting that it should happen. Your work has a slant – perhaps a subliminal one. As a writer, you should at least be aware of the message you send and make sure it is the one you intended.

How we use our words is indeed important, and it is also important to consider how we act as professional writers. Addressing that need to always put a professional foot forward, was an interesting article on Writer Unboxed, written by Katharine Grubb. She asked some ethical questions that focus  on how writers present themselves and handle business dealings, such as:

 

Read the full post on The Blood-Red Pencil.

 

How You Can Create Your Own Lucky Breaks as a Writer

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This post by Holly Robinson originally appeared on her site on 3/30/15.

I was walking with my kids on the beach when my father-in-law leaned over the balcony to shout, “Your agent’s on the phone! He has a book deal!”

Was that my lucky break as a novelist? Not exactly. Remember Hillary Clinton’s concession speech after losing her presidential bid? She said that, although she hadn’t broken through the glass ceiling, “it’s got about 18 million cracks in it.” Crossing the threshold from unpublished to published author was a similar journey for me: I had to keep pounding on that door until, one crack at a time, it gave way. There was no one lucky break. It was more like a hundred of them.

You, too, can publish your work, if you’re willing to make your own lucky breaks as a writer:

 

1. Write. Rewrite. Repeat.
Whether you’re intent on traditional or indie publishing, that manuscript had better be polished until it gleams.

 

2. Find contests to keep you writing—and on deadline.
My first lucky break was a local area arts festival that was running a writing contest. I had just read an essay by Joyce Maynard in Redbook magazine, something about dating after divorce, and I was inspired to write an essay about my own divorce called “My Two Husbands,” revealing how important it was to me that my first husband was still part of my life even after I’d remarried. I entered the essay in that local literary contest and, when it won Honorable Mention, I had the nerve to send it to Ladies’ Home Journal magazine. They bought it, and my career as a magazine writer was launched. My experience as a nonfiction writer allowed me to develop discipline, hone my writing skills and begin building a platform as a writer. And guess what? By the time my first novel was published, my editor at Ladies’ Home Journal had become the books editor. She reviewed the novel in their pages as a “great summer read” and helped boost my book sales—which helped me land a contract for my next novel.

 

Read the full post on Holly Robinson’s site.

 

Navigating the Forest of Feedback: 8 Ways to Recognize Helpful Criticism (and How to Ignore the Rest)

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This post by Elizabeth Law originally appeared on her Elizabeth Law Reads site on 3/5/15.

Recently, on a flight home from vacation, I met author Randi Hutter Epstein and we we were talking about her work. She said “After about three days of writing, I don’t know if what I have is good, or crap. I’ll ask anyone their opinion!”

Exactly.

If you’re a writer you need feedback, whether you’re a novice or an author with 30 books under your belt. And there are a lot of people out there who are only too happy to give it to you. But how do you know what comments are useful, anyway? What should you take, and what should you toss? Here are some good things to consider when asking for, or getting, feedback:

#1) What are my manuscript reviewer’s credentials and experience?
Has he published books for the same age category as I’m writing for? Or is she perhaps less far along in the process, but still experienced in reading and listening to manuscripts, and in giving thoughtful feedback? Maybe he is at the same place as I am and we can learn together?

Because you don’t need to hire an experienced editor to get good feedback.  For example, critique groups probably help their members more with their works in progress than any other class, editor or method out there.  But do keep in mind who is telling you things.  If they are fellow writers, do you admire or like their work? Do they share your ability to learn and grow?   Or are they one of those types who seem to have all the answers, until you find out they’ve never actually published anything?

 

Read the full post on Elizabeth Law Reads.