Part 2 of 3: Trends in traditional book publishing

“What changes do you see coming in traditional publishing business models and contracts?”

Here’s Part 2 of the answer I gave to the Sisters in Crime of Upstate SC writers’ group earlier this month.

Trend:

There are increasing numbers of ebook-first imprints, designed to reduce publishers’ up-front investment in new, unproven novelists. Get used to this concept, because minimizing risk is a prudent business strategy.

Trend:

Quite a few new imprints dedicated to crime fiction, including crime novels in translation, have been launched over the past few years, as a result of the success of Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy.

Have you noticed that dark, horrifying, and brutal seem to be selling well these days? Vendettas appeal to readers, who might be growing accustomed to unconventional protagonists who are more renegade than heroic.

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Go to Part 1 of 3: Trends in traditional book publishing

Part 1 of 3: Trends in traditional book publishing

Earlier this month, I took part in a Q&A with the Sisters in Crime of Upstate South Carolina writers’ group at their monthly meeting in Greenville. They’re a fun bunch of devoted and serious crime-fiction writers, male and female. If you’ve been looking for a network of writers in this region, I enthusiastically recommend them.

One of the Sisters in Crime asked, “What changes do you see coming in traditional publishing business models and contracts?” Quite a few transformations are occurring, so I’ll make the answer I gave to that question into a three-part blogpost. Most of these changes already are taking place, but they might not be noticeable to everyone just yet.

Trend:

Publishers’ fortunes are rising and falling on the basis of one megabestselling series, such as The Hunger Games trilogy, the Fifty Shades trilogy, the Millennium series trilogy, Twilight, and Harry Potter. It’s easy to see all the consumer-facing hoopla, but these series have had huge impacts on their publishers’ bottom lines in certain years.

Trend:

Businesses like clothing stores, restaurant chains, ad agencies, and health spas that have never before been involved in publishing books are starting their own publishing initiatives. It makes sense to capture all of the profit potential in a particular niche of special interest. This kind of specialization is often referred to as a vertical—in essence, a one-stop shop. Get your canoe + purchase a code to stream the movie Deliverance + sign up for whitewater sports classes + buy the paperback edition of Into the Wild all in the same store, right? Special markets, and suitable formats for books sold through them, are becoming more interesting and important.

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Go to Part 2 of 3: Trends in traditional book publishing

European Literature Night 2013: Miha Mazzini among authors to appear at the British Library

On Wednesday, May 15, 2013, BBC arts journalist Rosie Goldsmith will host European Literature Night at the British Library Conference Centre, located at 96 Euston Road in London.

Two esteemed publishers who also happen to be gifted writers, Meike Ziervogel of Peirene Press and Charles Boyle of CB editions, will be present with two of their authors, Birgit Vanderbeke and Miha Mazzini. Accompanied by half a dozen additional award-winning authors from across Europe, the audience will embark on a literary journey spanning the region, from Spain to the Netherlands to Turkey, with entertaining stops along the way.

Rosie Goldsmith invites the public to “enjoy an evening of readings where the personal and the political sit side by side, shift places and remind us all of the joy and pain of being alive.”

Tickets for European Literature Night 2013 can be reserved through the online box office.

Sponsors include European Union National Institutes for Culture – London, the European Commission Representation in the UK, and the Czech Centre London. European Literature Night is produced by Speaking Volumes Live Literature Productions with the participation of Foyles bookstore.

Download program brochure (PDF)

Songwriting and storytelling in Nashville

If I didn’t have a few guilty pleasures, I’d never take a break from my work, so excuse me for being a fangirl, but I am shamelessly enjoying ABC’s Nashville “On the Record” videos, the web-exclusive content developed to help promote the television series. I like the show a lot, but I’m utterly fascinated by the brief videos showing how the songwriters work and the process of selecting individual songs to suit the plots and the specific characters who’ll perform them on the show. Have a look. The videos are like the special features and bonus material you get with DVDs, and they introduce the songwriters individually.

Now that I think about it, the show’s scripts are extremely tight. The ensemble cast is large, and there’s no superfluous dialogue. Scenes are brief if there’s no musical performance involved. The Nashville series scriptwriters are using compression as carefully and thoughtfully as lyricists.

Callie Khouri, who wrote the screenplay that became Thelma & Louise, is the series creator. She wrote the originating script for Nashville and is credited with three additional episodes. The other writers on the show, each with credits for two episodes so far, are Wendy Calhoun, Jason George, David Gould, David Marshall Grant, Todd Ellis Kessler, Meredith Lavender, Liz Tigelaar, and Marcie Ulin. Somehow these folks are managing a seamless narrative with surprising and fairly realistic plot twists. I’d love to be a fly on the wall when they’re at work, because I know it can’t be easy.

Sure, the videos make it look slick and fun and effortless. You can be sure that it’s not. I’m really impressed by these people, and particularly by the respect they give each other.

Images © ABC.com

NewPages opens a literary magazine webstore

NewPages is in my RSS feed. It’s a good resource among many for writers who are submitting work to literary magazines. The site just announced the NewPages Magazine Webstore, an online storefront offering single issues of literary magazines. It is beautiful.

Prices for individual magazine issues in the webstore currently range from $4.50 to $18.95, plus tax and shipping. NewPages is shipping only to U.S. and Canadian addresses, but inquiries from customers in other countries are encouraged. I’m not affiliated in any way with NewPages.

If you’re just starting to submit creative writing to literary magazines, you should grab “The Writer’s Guide to Publishing in Literary Magazines and Entering Contests” by Ayelet Tsabari. It’s free. Tsabari’s certainly an example of the writers-are-generous-people meme. Do thank her, and don’t forget to pay it forward.

Another person to thank is John Fox, whose Ranking of Literary Journals links out to additional lists that use different selection criteria.

I’m gradually pruning defunct publications from my Delicious list of more than 4,000 that feature creative writing. By the time I finish updating the links, I’ll need to start over. By the way, I began updating from the far end of the list—the oldest links.

Writing for literary arts and pop culture websites

One way for authors to attract a little extra attention is by writing articles, reviews, or blogposts for any of the established or up-and-coming online magazines devoted to literature and pop culture. Some of the sites have much larger readerships than an individual’s blog typically can attract.

Of course, money is always nice, but if a writer needs exposure as much as or more than payment, then the opportunity for publicity alone might be worth the effort involved in writing a short piece. Most readers won’t know whether the author was compensated for an article, so the quality of the contribution should always match the writer’s reputation or aspirations. At the same time, the author probably should think of the endeavor as volunteer work for a worthy cause, not an avenue to a paying gig.

To capitalize on the exposure each time their work is published, writers learn to compose effective contributor bios including their web addresses. Readers won’t take the time to search for information about an unfamiliar author unless prompted with a URL.

Quite a few literary websites are calling for contributors these days. A few are listed here:

Fringe

The Nervous Breakdown

The Good Men Project

The Millions

The Rumpus

Fairy Tale Magazine

All Those Wasted Hours

Largehearted Boy

TransEnough

> Language > Place blog carnival

LiveHacked.com

NewPages

The Flaneur

Smith Journal

The American Mercury

Contents

Passages North

TeleRead

The State

Island

Paper Darts

Pollen

Parenting Express

BiblioBuffet

Elephant

Brittle Paper

Paper Droids

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If you know of any others like these, feel free to leave their URLs in the comments section.

Which bloggers are offering creative writers good advice about craft?

The most common reason writers don’t get published, or don’t self-publish successfully, is because their work is premature.

Many writers, maybe most, aren’t capable of seeing their manuscripts’ shortcomings, which additional effort could eliminate. It’s difficult to analyze literature and then try to apply the observable techniques of the best writers without imitating. If creative writing weren’t challenging, there’d be no value in succeeding. We’d all be good at it.

Some writers are sincere about learning and capable of improving their craft. I’m awed by the bloggers who are teaching the writers who are willing to learn. I’m opinionated, and you should take my opinion for what it’s worth, but if I wanted to become a better creative writer, these are the blogs I’d be reading:

Author! Author!: Anne Mini’s Blog

Mysterious Matters: Mystery Publishing Demystified

Real Actual Hilary (Hilary Smith)

Self Editing Blog (John Robert Marlow)

The Subversive Copy Editor Blog (Carol Fisher Saller)

Have you found any favorites?

The person with the best story

The most sincere and most articulate person who has the best story to tell will win.

The book deal. The job. The election.