The last WordPress for Non-techies post is up on Romance University. Blogger Carrie Spencer’s next group of lessons will be for Super Bloggers.
Here’s a fun site for writers: Wordnik, the online dictionary and language resource , has “launched a new, smarter online thesaurus that shows related words in context to help writers find the right word quickly and accurately.”
More bad news about Dorchester, with two editors let go and orders not filled to vendors, bookstores or authors.
“Mother. Write. (Repeat),” features Emmanuelle Morgen of Judith Ehrlich Literary Management who says one of the categories she represents is women’s fiction.
“I’m looking for a great read I can’t put down by an author with many more books in them! I’d love to find women’s fiction with depth and meaning, plus a hook that makes me say, ‘I HAVE to read this.’ I’m also looking for beautifully written historical fiction, along the lines of Philippa Gregory or Sarah Dunant; a thriller series; YA; and more romance.”
NY Times bestselling author Jodi Picoult blasts NYT for favoring white male literary authors. She says the reviewers disdain commercial fiction.
On her NPR blog, Linda Holmes defends Jodi Picoult and Jennifer Weiner for suggesting that there’s a “too-narrow view of interesting fiction” i.e., fiction written by “white male literary darlings.” And she’s upset by people who dismiss Jennifer Weiner’s books (and Jodi Picoult’s) as “chick lit,” meaning books about shoes, when that’s not what their books are about.
“I’ve written before about how much I dislike it when people don’t distinguish between popular women’s fiction and the much narrower category of shoe fiction (by which I mean fiction disproportionately focused on the acquisition of designer shoes and bags and other yabba-dabba-doo that is inevitably described in nearly pornographic detail). But at this point, I think the only solution is to stay away from the term ‘chick lit’ as much as humanly possible, because it’s become a term that means ‘by and about women, and not something you need to take seriously, although we’re not necessarily saying those things are connected, so it might be a giant coincidence.’”
The rest of the news is about e-book and e-readers and something that should concern every writer: e-book money.
Michael Stackpole blogs about 9 Must-have Clauses for Digital Rights Contracts. It’s a must-read post for authors with backlists.
“There are a variety of individuals—traditional publishers included—who are buying up the rights to backlists for little or no advances against royalties, with no firm schedule for publication, with no distribution deals in place, and with little or no expertise in how to actually create an ebook. And yet, writers who have complained for eons about how badly they are used and abused by publishers, are turning around and selling off these assets for a pittance.”
Seth Godin, a former book packaging owner and now a marketing guru, says his last book will be his last book published the traditional way:
“I honestly can’t think of a single traditional book publisher who has led the development of a successful marketplace/marketing innovation in the last decade. The question asked by the corporate suits always seems to be, ‘how is this change in the marketplace going to hurt our core business?’ To be succinct: I’m not sure that I serve my audience (you) by worrying about how a new approach is going to help or hurt Barnes & Noble.”
In response, Mark Coker, CEO of Smashwords, said:
“as e-books account for an ever-larger percentage of total units sold, the distribution advantage of having new titles in bricks-and-mortar bookstores will have to be weighed against the potential financial advantage of retaining ownership of a new book and distributing it as an e-book or on a print-on-demand basis.
He said that ‘midlist’ authors—those who are successful but not best sellers—who receive minimal marketing support from their publishers may be tempted to follow Mr. Godin’s lead.”
And here’s a hilarious and upsetting Huffington Post article by J.A. Konrath who asks whether print publishing is going the way of cassette tapes and buggy whips.
A study shows that people with e-readers read more. I knew that from my own experience, partly because of the ease of buying. This could be one reason why the the new Kindles are the best-selling product on Amazon already. But watch out, Amazon. The Literati color, wireless e-reader will be available in October.
Publishers Weekly says that Random House “won its showdown with The Wylie Agency,” and Kristin Nelson at Pub Rants called it a wake up call to publishers.
