Category Archives: Publishing Industry

June 11, 2010 · 6:45 am

More Cross Pollination

Having offered to do a bookplate for Tansy, I had to offer to do a book plate for Trent.

Death most Definite’  is the first of Trent Jamieson’s three books to be published by Orbit in the Death Works series.  Like Tansy’s series, I feel particularly proud of book one because we critiqued the manuscript at the last ROR. Meanwhile, Trent’s editor was taking it to an acquisitions meeting to see if Orbit would buy it. Everytime Trent’s mobile rang we thought it might be his editor reporting in. So you can imagine how exciting that was.

Trent’s series is also urban fantasy but very different from Tansy’s. Set in a Brisbane and south East Queensland, much like the one we know, only Death is a business and, what with corporate take overs and mergers, it can be dangerous. Steve is just a lowly employee, whose job it is to help the recently departed through to the after life, when he gets involved in a take over.

I have to admire the way Trent handles drama, death and danger with his trademark certain dry  humour. Seems like everyone is writing DUF ( Dark Urban Fantasy). It’s accessible. It’s fun.

I can recommend both Trent and Tansy’s books. What have you read in this genre recently that you’d recommend?

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June 4, 2010 · 8:34 am

When Publishers get it Wrong …

Publishers are only human and often the ‘gate keeper’ is a young person just out of UNI having done a Lit Degree. The submissions mount up and things get rejected …
Frank Herbert’s Dune was rejected 20 times before becoming one of the most beloved science fiction novels of all time. It has since sold over 12 million copies.
JK Rowling’s first Harry Potter book was rejected by a dozen publishers until Bloomsbury bought it, on the recommendation of the CEO’s eight year old daughter. I wonder if she is working for him now.
Would you believe Jasper Fforde recived 76 rejections before his first book, The Eyre Affair was accepted. I saw him at the Brisbane Writers Festival and he said, somewhat plaintively, ‘Puns used to be considered the highest form of wit.’ This will make you smile if you’ve read his books.
A publisher rejected Wind in the Willows because, as they told Kenneth Grahame, it was ‘an irresponsible holiday story’.
Who had to read Lord of the Flies for high school English? William Golding’s book was rejected by 20 publishers. One described it as ‘an absurd and uninteresting fantasy which was rubbish and dull’. This book has since sold more than 25 million copies in English alone. (Many of which were bought by students who had to study it. I suspect it is wasted on teenagers. You don’t get the true horror of it until you are much older).
And then there is the wonderful Ursula K Le Guin. Her book The Left hand of Darkness won both a Hugo and the Nebula. One publisher said:

‘The book is so endlessly complicated by details of reference and information, the interim legends become so much of a nuisance despite their relevance, that the very action of the story seems to be to become hopelessly bogged down and the book, eventually, unreadable. The whole is so dry and airless, so lacking in pace, that whatever drama and excitement the novel might have had is entirely dissipated by what does seem, a great deal of the time, to be extraneous material. My thanks nonetheless for having thought of us. The manuscript of The Left Hand of Darkness is returned herewith.’

So there you have it. What would have happened if these authors had let rejection stop them? Take heart. Many books that are publishable will be rejected. Some of my children’s books have been rejected 5 times before being accepted. It is simply a matter of rewriting and resubmitting until you hit the Right Editor, with the Right Book at the Right Time.

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June 2, 2010 · 11:38 am

This one’s for Fletcher

If you are a young writer who is looking for feedback on your work, showing your parents and friends is all very well but, unless they are writers,  they won’t be able to give you the feedback you need to help you develop as a writer.

If you are serious about your writing craft, then join a local writing group. Look for one that specialises in your genre. If you’re writing speculative fiction (fantasy, SF and horror) then Visions Writers is great. They have an on-line group for everyone and meet in person in Brisbane city, so that’s handy if you live in South East Queensland. Grace Dugan joined the Vision group when she was 15 and went on to be published by Penguin.

The Queensland Writers Centre run a Young Adult Master Class series, specifically aimed at high school students who want to develop their writing skills.

It is also great to have goals and submitting to a competition is a good way to get motivated to finish the story. Who knows you might win or get noticed by the judges who are often editors. So there is the Somerset College novella competition. On the Ipswich Literary Festival site there is a list of writing competitions for people under 18. There is also the Voices on the Coast Literary Festival, which has competitions, although theirs is closed for this year.

And there are markets in Australia for spec Fic short stories. ASIM is a regular magazine which has a good turn around time for submissions. Here’s the guidelines. And here is the Specusphere web zine. And here is Inspillers which lists current markets, competitions, magazines

Here’s an Australian Spec Fic site with lots of news  and reviews. If you want to know what’s doing well in Australia by Australian authors in this genre, take a look at the Aurealis Awards page.

And if you are interested in the craft of writing the ROR site run a writing craft post every Sunday, just put in requests. The latest one was on agents.

Lastly, if you are keen to write, talk to your school or local library about bringing a published author in to run workshops. The Redlands libraries have had me run three workshops in the last month, How to write a Book Proposal, Writing Dark Urban Fantasy and Pitching your Book.

Writers are a friendly supportive bunch. We are all united by a passion for writing and our love of the genre.  Feel free to ask questions.

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May 30, 2010 · 9:16 pm

More discussion on e-books

There’s a post over at the Mad Genius Club – writers division on e-books. Apparently Penguin have entered into an agreement with Amazon. But the pricing structure of their e-books doesn’t appear to make sense. Why pay more for some e-books than you do for the paperback?

One commenter sums it up succinctly:

For Baen e-books, they have apparently set their price point a little below their currently available hardcopy. This is exactly what I see as reasonable. The truth is that there is a loss of tactual enjoyment by reading e-books. You lose the colorful cover. You lose the non-volatile storage format (excepting things like fire and water). You end up with weird layout bugaboos and editing glitches from the combined effects of data-format transfer and whatever point in time the manuscript was ported over during the production process.

What you gain? Well, the books are readable if not necessarily as friendly or professionally laid out. You get more shelf-space. The ability to have multiple “books” in one device. Library portability. And the recurring need to recharge your reader.

I recently spent 9 days on a driving holiday in Tassie. I took my laptop to write on. I would have taken some books to read but I tend to read big fat fantasy books and they take up so much room and are so heavy … A small, user friendly e-reader would have been great. I could have had my pick of books, depending on my mood. (I know I could have taken e-books on my lap top but it is a baby lap top and the screen is the size of a postage stamp. Trying to read on that, after writing on it would have driven me crazy).

One thing about belonging to a shared blog with US citizens is it makes you realise how cheap ordinary books are over in the states They talk about paying $10 for a paperback. Here we pay $19.95 and think that is reasonable. (I’m not going to get into the discussion about Parallel Importation because we would only end up with the remaindered books from overseas and it would kill our publishing industry).

Does the price of paperback and hardcovers in Australia inhibit your purchasing of books?


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May 29, 2010 · 5:43 am

Pitch that Book

If you’re a writer, you probably dream of getting published. I know I did. (And yes, it really does feel as good as you imagine it will, the day the editor rings you up and says ‘I want to publish your book.’)

But it is really hard to get your book past the gate keeper. More publishers are saying they don’t take unagented submissions and it is hard to get busy agents to look at your work.

One way to get your work in front of an agent or an editor is to Pitch your Book at an event specifically designed for this. Pitching opportunities occur at conferences and festivals. On Saturday I ran a Pitching workshop to help people prepare for what can be a very nerve wracking experience. And I promised to provide a list of pitching opportunities. So here they are:

There are online pitching opportunities such as:

Allen and Unwin Friday Pitch

Random House Children’s Pitch

To pitch in person attend conferences. These vary from year to year. I know the Brisbane Writers Festival has had pitching opportunities. So check out your local writers festival and see what they are offering.

National Romance Conference

Childrens and Young Adult Conference

Bundaberg Writers Festival

New York and Algonkian Conferences

Here is a UK agent’s blog dedicated to the art of pitching.

The Pitch Parlour

And keep an eye on the agent and editor blogs. They often offer advice on pitching. Every now and then and agent will announce that they are open to pitches via their blog, so it is worth finding s few you like and following their blogs.

Sydney Literary Agent.

Kristin Nelson from Nelson Literary Agency.

Nathan Bransford from Curtis Brown.

Book Ends Literary Agency.

So that should be enough to get your started. Let me know if you have any questions.

Meanwhile, there were some questions about agents, so I’ve done a post here, for anyone considering approaching an agent.

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May 28, 2010 · 4:28 am

Drive by Post.

I’m running a Hands-on Pitching Workshop tomorrow.

Once again, the Redlands Libraries are supporting the writers in their area. For those of you who live in South East Queensland and know where the Victoria Point Library is, the workshop is on from 10 – 12 noon. Call Leah on 07 3829 8779

Bring your thinking cap, as they used to say in school!

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May 15, 2010 · 7:47 am

Industry Links

On Saturday I ran two workshops,  Proposal Writing and How to write Dark Urban Fantasy. The attendees asked so many questions about the publishing industry and the craft of writing that I kept saying I’ll put a link on my blog. So here is the post with the links to all those sites we talked about. Hi People  (waving madly).

Getting feedback on writing.

You’ll get feedback from a writing group, preferably one that concentrates on your genre.

A lot of the attendees were writing speculative fiction (dark urban fantasy, fantasy and SF). So here is a link to the VISION writing group. They meet in person in Brisbane, but they also have an online group where you can swap industry information and ask questions.

There’s also Romance Writers of Australia for those who are writing paranormal romance and dark urban fantasy. If you drop by the Authors page, you’ll see Keri Arthur (Best Selling Dark Urban Fantasy Writer) is a member. The authors are listed alphabetically and you can see what area they are published in on the right. RWA has a paranormal e-list for writers of this genre.

You could do Year of the Edit with the Queensland Writers Centre. They also run Year of the Novel which is on the same page.

Then you could get your manuscript appraised by someone who knows the genre. The Australian Writer’s Market Place is a great resource for finding publishers, agents, competitions and manuscript appraisers.

You could also apply for a mentor through the Australian Society of Authors. A mentor will guide you through the process of writing and give you feedback. Here are last year’s successful entrants who won a mentorship. The Competition is run every year, so watch out for it.

To get your work noticed:

You could enter competitions (you’ll find them in the Australian Writers Market Place) but here are a few.

Varuna runs a number of programs such as fellowships and mentorships.

The QWC is offering an opportunity for children and Young Adult writers to work with editors from Allen & Unwin. And this is their page for general compeitions and opportunities.

CYA Conference (Children & Young Adult writers) often runs pitching opportunities as well as a competition for both published and unpublished writers.

Bundaberg Write Fest is run each year and often has an opportunity to have your work read by and agent/editor.

There’s the Text Writing Competition for YA and children’s books.

The Ipswich Writers Festival aren’t runnign their competition any more and Voices on the Coast and Somerset Literary Festicval competition are for children who write, not for children’s writers.

Steampunk

The workshop attendees were also intrigued by the steampunk genre. Here is a link to Richard Harland’s post about how to write steampunk. And here is a link to Richard in his outfit, about to set off on his book tour. Here is a link to a post I did on the topic, complete with steampunk dalek!

Editing

I did a post recently onthe editing process and here it is.

E-Books

I did a survey on e-books, who is reading, who is writing for them. Here’s the results. There are links through to several other posts on e-books.

So that is it for now. If there’s anything I’ve missed let me know.

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May 14, 2010 · 9:04 pm

Nourish the Inner Writer

It is time for me to ‘Nourish the Inner Writer’. I had to take myself aside the other day and tell myself, ‘You can’t do everything, Grasshopper. Take a step back and have some quiet time’.

I feel like I have been running on the spot since I went back to work in February. Teaching three subjects was fun, I enjoyed the students and I learnt so much, you always do when you teach. This time it was Academic Essay Writing, Interactive Narrative (for computer games) and Script writing & Storyboards. But this meant there were assignments to mark every three weeks or so, because we run an accelerated course and it was the marking that got to me.  I’ve just finished a week of marking to get everything done in time for moderation.

All this wouldn’t be so bad if I hadn’t had to edit my three books in the same 12 weeks. The books come out a month apart starting in June. Over here at the ROR blog I’ve done a post about the editing process. The short version is that each book has to be edited 3-4 times before it goes to the printer and each book is over 100,000 words. I’m up to the page proofs of book two (that’s the last one before it goes to the printer) and I just sent back the copy edits (that’s the second last one) of book three. So I’m nearly done.

On top of this I’ve been trying to write the first book of my Australindia series, which is really exciting, but completely new — new world, new characters etc. I find writing a first draft requires dedicated time at the computer because I have to get into the headspace where the characters and the world come to life. And I just haven’t had blocks of time to do this. It’s made me feel guilty and slightly edgy, because the story keeps calling me back. The characters are getting ‘ansty’. (That’s Australian slang for a bit ‘aggro’, sorry another bit of Australian slang, but I’m sure you can work out what it means).

Feeling guilty because your book characters are getting neglected must be a specifically writerly phenomenon. Trent Jamieson’s done a post about it here. You have to give yourself permission to take time off to recharge the batteries.

So that’s what I’ve done. I’m going to take time off. The next term starts on the last day of May. I have a very small window of opportunity. Daryl and I are going to run away to Tasmania for a driving holiday. It’s not quite as romantic as it sounds because we have to take our youngest son (15) with us. But I am really looking forward to being visually stimulated. Tasmania is lovely. And I’m taking my laptop with me. I plan to write in the evenings. No marking, no deadlines, no large family to run about. Heaven!

So that is how I plan to nourish the Inner Writer. How do you Nourish your Inner whatever it may be?

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May 8, 2010 · 11:41 am

Now Authors have to pitch that book

And you thought all you had to do was write a good book!

As more pitching opportunies come up, it is not enough to be able to write a good book, you need to be able to sell it to an agent or publisher. Over here at the ROR blog, I’ve done a post on how to pitch.

In Australia there are online pitches like the  Allen and Unwin Friday pitch and the Random House children’s book pitch.

If you are brave enough to pitch in person the national romance conference run by RWA, have pitching opportunites.

And the Childrens and Young Adult Conference has pitching opportunities.

Over at this UK agent’s blog The Pitch Parlour you can send in your pitches and get feedback.

And keep an eye on the agent and editor blogs. They offer advice on pitching.

Sydney Literary Agent.

Kristin Nelson from Nelson Literary Agency.

Nathan Bransford from Curtis Brown.

Book Ends Literary Agency.

So there you are, no excuse. What, you’re nervous? You never thought you’d have to sell your book to an agent or editor? Welcome to the brave new world of publishing, when the author has to not only be able to write, but has to be entertaining as well. I saw Ncholas Evans speak, when his book The Horse Whisperer came out and was made into a movie. He told a story about being asked to pose for a photo to go with an interview and the photographer said, ‘Try to look intelligent!’

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May 7, 2010 · 10:10 am

E-Books, a growing tidal wave?

Artwork by Hhen

As Kristin Nelson said:

When I’ve got an older grandmother expressing unabashed enthusiasm in owning an eReader, I can’t help but think the tipping point is near—even if current electronic sales only equal about 2% of the market right now (statistic via a recent PW article). (Read Kristin’s article here)

Over at the Mad Genius Club blog there’s been several posts about e-books — the prices, the eReaders and what the publishers are doing. I don’t seem to come across many e-books. When I ride the train to work I see lots of people reading paperbacks but not virtual books. Of course they could be reading e-books on their laptops, but they seem to be typing away like mad.

According to Amazon e-books sales out sold print book sales over Christmas.

Spare a thought for the humble hardback this Christmas. It seems the traditional giftwrapped tome is being trumped by downloads, after Amazon customers bought more e-books than printed books for the first time on Christmas Day. (Read the article here).

So I took a quick poll through several e-lists. The listers were readers and writers who are familiar with technology so they probably aren’t representative of the general Australian public. But they could be representative of them in a few years.

The responses were interesting. They ranged from people who bought 90% of their books as e-books and had been buying books in this format since 1996, to others who didn’t buy e-books at all. One person had downloaded free e-books or won over 40 of them, but had only read one so far, as … I love to hold a book, turn the pages, and put it on the bookshelf.

Some people are buying e-books to save the cost of postage from the US or because the books are hard to get in print format. Many had just started buying e-books within the last couple of years.

Those who are reading a lot of e-books are reading them on their iPhones, Kindle, Sony eReader, Adobe Digitial Editions, eeepc or on their lap tops. Lots of readers were considering buying a eReader of some kind. As one reader said:

I’m curious about e-books and I think I’ll be open to them as a reader (maybe even a writer) but I’m not confident with the technology at this stage. Waiting to see what emerges as the best reader. I like the idea of less paper (less dead trees) and also less storage space needed in my home. I’ll always love and covet particular paper books but I do think the space thing is marvellous – once I do embrace the technology I’m sure I will buy more books just because I’ll have room for them!

Many confessed a love for traditional books. While some saw advantages in e-books:

They are so immediate. You want a book, and – click- it’s there.

Or:

I read quite a few ebooks.  I use Project gutenberg and other sources to access out of print stuff that would otherwise mean I’d have to hunt in libraries.  I also download the freebies from publishers for authors I want to try.  If I love the writing, I then buy their books in paper, but my reading for long bus journeys etc is on my netbook.

Those who buy e-books are buying them through many different outlets: Fictionwise, Mobipocket, Library.com, Apple’s iBookstore, All Romance ebooks, Diesel ebooks, Books on Board, My Bookstore and Amazon Kindle.

Many people bought from several outlets and most liked going directly to the publishers. The feeling was that e-books in Australian bookstores were over priced.

My major gripe with ebooks for sale in Australia (through retail chains, particularly) is that they cost around the same as a paperback, so I don’t think ebooks will take the Aussie market by storm because of the price through bookshops. Online stores and publishers’ websites sell the ebooks at competitive prices and I like to be able to read a few sample pages before I decide whether to buy the book in print.

When asked if they were buying e-books for a specific purpose, most people said, they were either buying them for research or pleasure, or both.

I just buy them as I would once have bought paper books – only I find I’m buying at least twice as many (because they’re so cheap).

Those who were published in e-books felt they were getting a fair royalty which ranged from 20% to 40% and their books were available direct from the publishers as well as several other on-line outlets.

On the subject of the types of books available and royalties one reader said:

I think that when you move away from the idea that novels are simply re-presented as e-books, and look at short stories suitable for short bursts of reading time, or stories created specifically for the medium, a decent shop front should make self-publishing relatively effortless. The royalty issue becomes less important when authors can reasonably do everything themselves.

Even those who bought only print books were curious about e-books and, as one reader said:  

E-books do not go mouldy on my boat. — LOL!

On that note, I’d like to thank the many people who responded to my survey.

What is your experience of e-books? Are they a tidal wave, gathering out there in the ocean of the public’s book buying habits?

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