Business
Psst…new books & business links are up on the Google Notebook. Check them out HERE. And have you submitted your entry in Writer Unboxed’s CONTEST CONTEST yet? Why not? Time’s running out! Check all the details (and read our hilarious entries) HERE.
Write on, all!
Read MoreI was intrigued when Karen Dionne wrote to Writer Unboxed about the upcoming Backspace Agent-Author Seminars: “Two days with 22 top agents on a program of panels
and workshops with plenty of free time to network.” It sounded interesting. So I wrote her back and we decided the best way to get the information out to you was through a Q&A. Enjoy!
Interview with Backspace’s Karen Dionne
Q: What is the Backspace Agent-Author Seminar all about? When is it, where is it, and what are the goals of the event?
KD: The Backspace Agent-Author Seminars are two one-day, back-to-back programs of panel discussions and workshops with only literary agents on the program. This year, the seminars will be held November 6 & 7 at the Radisson Martinique (32nd and Broadway) in New York City.
Authors can register for one day or both. Because there’s no overlap between the programs, if people attend both days, they’ll have the opportunity to meet literally dozens of agents. Registrations are limited to around 150, which makes a favorable author-agent ratio.
At this writing, Emmanuelle Alspaugh, Rachel Vater, Paul Cirone, Scott Hoffman, Eric Myers, Michael Bourret, Jennifer DeChiara, Jennie Dunham, Jessica Faust, Michelle Brower, and Liza Dawson, along with Daniela Rapp, an editor at St. Martin’s, are on the program for Tuesday, and Laney Katz Becker, Janet Reid, Stephany Evans, Caren Johnson, Alex Glass, Lucienne Diver, Jennifer Unter, Miriam Goderich, Kate Epstein, Joe Veltre, Elisabeth Weed, Deborah Grosvenor, and Paige Wheeler with Mark Tavani of Random House are on for Wednesday. The program is still a work in progress, and in the next few weeks, approximately 10 more agents will be added to the faculty.
The goal of the seminars is to create a relaxed, friendly environment in which authors can network, ask questions, talk about their work, and listen and learn from the people who make their living selling books.
Q: Do you have to be a member of Backspace to attend?
KD: Not at all. Any author who is looking for an agent is welcome to attend.
Q: How much does the seminar cost, and what does that fee cover?
KD: Each one-day seminar is $210. The registration fee for both days is discounted to $370. Registration includes all of the workshops and panels, as well as a buffet-style lunch at the hotel each day with attending agents.
We realize that New York can be expensive, especially for out-of-towners who often suffer sticker shock when they start pricing out hotel rooms, and so for authors traveling on a budget, we’ve posted links in the FAQ section on the website to several articles that suggest ways to cut costs when visiting the city.
Q: What do you consider some of the highlights for this event?
KD: All of the workshops and panels are going to be great, because all of the agents on the faculty are warm, personable, funny and smart. More importantly, they know the business, and they care about writers and want to see them succeed, and so the advice they offer on how to break in is really invaluable.
If I had to single out one part, though, I’d have to say that I’m particularly looking forward to the conversations between an agent and an editor at […]
Read MoreNephele Tempest with The Knight Agency is currently accepting direct queries for completed YA projects on her site HERE. She’s looking for “All types of YA fiction, though I’m particularly in the market for some great urban fantasy.” Nephele is a super nice and uber-competent lady, so don’t hesitate to take advantage of this unique–and short-term–opportunity. Good luck!
Read MoreWho’s the new favorite for the Booker Prize? Who’s going to make newspaper history by using scented print? Who’s experimenting by releasing chapters on Facebook? Check out the latest Books & Business news HERE.
And keep going with those great words! (See the latest additions to the contest and get all the info HERE.)
Write on, all!
Read MoreWell, well, well. It’s nice to be appreciated. From the NYT:
Bloggers have written about books since, well, the beginning of blogging. But a blog book tour usually requires an author or publicist to take the initiative, reaching out to bloggers as if they were booksellers and asking them to be the host for a writer’s online visit. Sometimes bloggers invite authors on their own. In an age of budget-conscious publishers and readers who are as likely to discover books from a Google search as from browsing at a bookstore, the blog book tour makes sense. Although a few high-profile authors have had their books sent to bloggers — James Patterson recently promoted a young-adult book this way — most of the authors are lesser-known and less likely to be reviewed in the mainstream press.
Here in our little corner of blog-land, we at WU try to do our bit for the author. Hard data of the effect of blogs on book sales is impossible to come by, but our traffic far exceeds that of a bricks ‘n mortar book store on any given day. And the interview or post will remain as long as we continue to pay our webhost. :-)
I don’t think blog book tours will replace the old fashioned ones entirely, but some combo of the two is surely a smart move for authors who need promo opportunities.
Read MoreThis has been a watershed year for e-publishing in the romance genre, and not in a good way. A few of the bigger outfits publishing romance, Triskelion and Mardi Gras, have vanished into bankruptcy, leaving their authors in limbo about their work and the rest of us wondering if e-publishing is ever going to fly.
A little bit of background (and now I’m working off my fuzzy memory, so forgive me if I’m off a year or so). Around 2000-01, with the advent of portable electronic book devices, e-publishing was being discussed with more and more enthusiasm among author groups. Writers who couldn’t find print publishers because what they wrote didn’t comfortably fit a market niche, were exploring this possibility seriously. Writers in the romance genre, in particular, were enthusiastic about Ellora’s Cave, an e-pub who explicitly wanted spicier, riskier erotica romances and were doing very well, thank you.
So were their authors, if rumor was to be believed. The royalty rate was generous, the overhead low, and readers were getting more comfortable with electronic books. Ellora’s Cave had kicked open the door for e-publishing with a viable market plan. Others followed. Triskelion Publishing (sorry, this is the only viable link I could find) offered a home to orphaned Regency writers when the last NYC publisher discontinued the line. Romantica (a hybrid genre of romance and erotic coined by Ellora’s Cave) was exploding, and other e-pubs flourished like Silk Vault and Mardi Gras (no link). Triskelion and Ellora’s Cave had been officially recognized by the Romance Writers of America. Authors were getting a foot in the door to publishing. Everything seemed to be going good.
So what happened?
Read MoreI’ll be tidying up the Google Notebook this morning, so don’t forget to go on over for your hit of Books & Business news for the week.
A study released last week really caught my attention: Kids eating foods and drinks from containers labeled “McDonalds” preferred the taste over the same exact foods served in generic cartons. (The health writer in me is seriously holding back a tirade on brainwashed children and unhealthy repercussions. I’ll spare you.) It got me thinking–really, it did–about books and whether I “ingest” stories differently depending on the cover and brand appeal.
Yes, I’m more likely to buy a book by a brand I know, a favorite author or known entity. If I choose an unknown author, I might grab for a book awash in dramatic colors, like this beauty at right (The Alchemist’s Daughter by Katharine Mcmahon) instead of something dressed in pink. I can tell you in all honesty that I fell for Juliet Marillier’s Daughter of the Forest years before I’d heard of her, had interviewed her, or begun blogging, because of the simple, poetic illustration of the cover. In a different vein, I picked up Christopher Moore’s A Dirty Job for the cover’s promise of macabre hilarity. And Charles Frazier’s cover for Thirteen Moons, with its gold edging and Caribbean-hued vista, made me buy it for its promise of a journey–even though I already had a teetering stack of books on my bedside table.
Read MoreLast week we were thrilled to have Eric von Rothkirch from the must-read blog Quantum Storytelling join WU as a guest blogger. Part one of his post on How to Make Your Novel into a Media Franchise generated a nice discussion on this exciting idea. Most of us just dream about having our work made into a movie, but Eric tells us ways to make this dream become more likely. In part one, Eric outlined the concepts of a successful media franchise. In today’s part two post, Eric breaks down the elements by using recognizable mega-franchises as examples. Enjoy!
Let’s take a closer look at these elements of successful media franchises.
Memorable or Interesting Character Names
Indiana Jones
A common technique for creating a memorable character name is to give them a nickname, and have everyone in the story refer to them by that name. In fact, the more successful naming conventions feature the character’s name alongside the episode title.
Read MoreAs an author, I probably don’t view blurbs like an average reader. Heck, I’m not sure that I view books like an average reader – first, I check out the publisher, then I read the acknowledgements to see whom I might know, then, if I’m really curious, I’ll google the writer to learn more about her history, her book deal, her life. But this is all beside the point. Today, we’re chatting about blurbs, or, for the uninitiated, those quotes on the backs of books that sing the praises of the words inside.
Now, it’s a long-whispered secret in the literary world that blurbs are often nothing more than cashed-in favors, an “I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine” scenario, in which one author agrees to laud another author’s work in exchange for a bit of publicity on the back of the book or for a future favor. Whether or not this is often true, I’m not sure, but I do know that in my case, this cynical application didn’t hold. In fact, to garner blurbs for The Department of Lost and Found, I emailed authors whom I thought might be interested in my material and asked them (very politely) to take a peek. Some didn’t have the time, some didn’t give blurbs as a rule, but many of them did write back and say, “Sure, if I like the book, I’m happy to endorse it.” And a few weeks later, they did. There were no secret handshakes or promises for reciprocation, though certainly, I am grateful to these authors, and should I ever be asked to help them out in some way, I’d do so in a heartbeat.
Read MoreWe are very pleased to bring you our latest guest blogger, Eric von Rothkirch, blogmaster for the must-read blog Quantum Storytelling. We love Eric’s approach to craft and his willingness to explore the unboxed aspects of the publishing business.
Eric was born in St. Paul, Minnesota. He grew up on a diet of 80s action movies and video games. In his teens he played in rock bands, considering a career in the music business before the lure of video games was too great to pass up. Eric began building game levels for popular action games, which in 2000 got the attention of Electronic Arts. He did a brief tour of the industry before landing at 3D Realms in late 2001 to work on Duke Nukem Forever, and has been there ever since. Eric now aspires towards the creation of media franchises as he completes the first entry in a sci-fi novel series.
This is the first of a two-part series. Part Two will go live next week. Enjoy!
What do George Lucas and J.K. Rowling have in common? Tolkien and Stan Lee? They create more than just novels, films, and comic books. The true products they create are not just printed pages and celluloid strips run through projectors at movie theaters. Each one of them has created a successful media franchise, or several media franchises.
It is important not to limit your perspective about what you are trying to create to the mere medium you are creating it for. As a novelist you are not creating a book, filled with paper pages that have ink on them. You are creating a media franchise. Many of the successful media franchise creators I’ve mentioned didn’t necessarily set out to create a franchise. Lucas set out to tell a classic story with Star Wars, using the principles of mythology created by Joseph Campbell. But his approach is largely responsible for the success of Star Wars. And each and every one of the people listed above has approached their work in a way that led to a successful media franchise.
You are not just a writer or an author. You are the creator of a media franchise. Whether it is a successful one, intentionally, or unintentionally, is up to you.
Read MoreHot off the presses…the RWA board met at the association’s annual conference and decided to make several changes to the status quo, including the following:
• RWA has updated the definition of Subsidy or Vanity press to mean, “any publisher that publishes books in which the author participates in the cost of production or distribution in any manner, including publisher assessment of a fee or other costs for editing and/or distribution. ” (It’s not really considered a sale if it’s to one of these types of presses.)
• Henceforth, to be accepted into the Published Author Network (PAN), you must’ve received at least a $1000 advance from your publisher and be able to provide proof of this to RWA.
• Contest categories were reevaluated. Here are a few of the notable changes made:
Every speculative fiction writer seems to have a personal blog these days. The better ones provoke some great discussion on writing—see, for instance, the Romance discussion on recent Andre Norton Award winner Justine Larbalestier’s blog.
Some writers’ blogs include as much about the minutiae of their health issues / crises with pets and children / coffee and chocolate consumption habits as they do about books and writing.
Unfortunately, not everyone’s life is constantly fascinating. That’s one of the main reasons I don’t keep a personal blog. Most of the time, my life would make pretty humdrum reading. On the rare occasions when it gets dramatic, the last thing I want to do is share the details with the whole online world. Another reason for not having a personal blog is that writing one would gobble up time better spent (in my case, at least) on writing books.
Of course, some writers do a great job of keeping their personal blogs lively and entertaining. Dip into this one by Australian expat fantasy writer Glenda Larke, who lives in Malaysia. Either her life is more interesting than most, or she just has a talent for writing well about it! The very readable life observations are complemented by some excellent posts on the craft of writing and illustrated with wonderful photos. If you haven’t read Glenda’s novels, try Heart of the Mirage, the first in her current series, The Mirage Makers.
Read MoreI thought missing a week of publishing news would mean missing a lot, but really, not so much. Catch up by checking out the new entries at the WU Google Notebook HERE. And if you haven’t yet read my titillating late-night retelling of my New-Yorker-goes-west adventures, click HERE. Leave a comment in the bucket before you go, will you? I’m feeling pathetic and lonely without Kathleen.
I also feel the great need to rant about something.
I loathe the label Chick Lit. Am I alone in this? Does anyone else read those two words and cringe? When chick lit was hot–what, five or six years ago?–I read a few books in the genre, and maybe they poisoned me. I didn’t like them. But–to each her own–it’s not the books I have a problem with: it’s the label. Just look at that picture. Does it scream light and fluffy and oh-so-cute or what? You know it does. So here’s my point:
Read More
