Around the Town

Conversations I’ve been listening to around the web.

• Picture Books. Jean Reidy gives 10 Tips on Writing Picture Books.
• Novel Revision. Chuck Sambuchino has a great article linking to ideas for revising a novel, especially one you wrote during NaNoWriMo: Footnotes: 8 Articles on When Writing Becomes Revision.
• More Novel Revision. Hey! Thanks to Roz at Dirty White Candy (one of my favorite blogs) who reviewed Novel Metamorphosis: NaNoWriMo – now what? A Toolkit to Help You Revise.
• Online Promotion. Cynsations posted Cynthia Leitich Smith’s article Online Promotion: Making Your Author/Illustrator Website Educator-Friendly
• Flap Copy Shenanigans.
• NEW Publisher of Multicultural Fantasy. Tu Publishing will begin accepting submissions in January, 2010.

Revise with confidence.

All About the Town

• InkyGurl.com is posting Comics for Writers!!!

  

• Another month to write? It’s the WriDaNoJu. This one makes more sense to me than trying to write a novel in November. Aren’t these names getting funny? The NaNoWriMo, the WriDaNoJu, the NaPiBoWriWee and so on.
• An interesting list of Picture Book Don’ts.
• Victoria Janssen started a discussion about Online Promotions and Janni Simner responds with How NOT to Promote Online.
• And Janni is talking to her characters and to herself again! I feel like a voyeur, listening in on these conversations to the characters, but I can’t stop myself!

Revise with confidence.

The Arkansas SCBWI Conference is this weekend in Conway, AR.

Featured speakers are Anastasia Suen, Greenwillow editor Martha Mahilick, and agent Jennifer (Jaeger) Rofe, from the Andrea Brown Literary Agency.

Earlier, I linked to the websites and blogs of the speakers.

Full registration information is available on the Arkansas SCBWI website.

If you’re anywhere close, come join us!

Revise with confidence.

Children’s Books Beating the Recession?

What’s the state of children’s publishing?

Harold Underdown, The Purple Crayon website, has reported on the economic turmoil in publishing of late 2008 and into early 2009.

Publishing, especially books for kids, is on the upswing? So say a couple of postings:

• JIll Cocoran, Literary Agent at the Herman Agency pulls out quotes from Border’s statements on their rebuilding efforts and finds hope.
• Cocoran also send readers to The Wild Rose Reader for a report on an independent book store surviving, no, thriving against competition from Barnes & Noble.

Other Stories

• This is a bit late, but funny. 3 Reasons Why the Easter Bunny should NOT be Your Marketer.
• You write, but you don’t have a blog? Don’t want a blog? Then you need a Google Profile, so people can find some information about you online, information that you control. How easy is it to set up?
• NYTimes article on book advances. What percentage of books actually earn out their advance?
• Why First Reads or First Pages critiques at a conference is like the American Idol of Manuscripts.
• The UT-Austin Library has Norman Mailer’s laptop! What do they plan to do with it?
• Alan Gratz SHOULD be writing. Instead, he’s sword fighting? AND playing at harp? At the same time?
• Everything I Ever Needed to Know, I Learned from FolkSongs?
• And Janni is talking to characters again. What advice is she giving to heroes?

Revise with confidence.

To Market, To Market

Find yourself doing more marketing lately? Me, too. With the publishing layoffs in December and the market skittish, we need to market smarter. Here are some articles I’ve found interesting:

• Updates on Who’s Moving Where from Harold Underdown’s Purple Crayon site.
• 10 Tips to Getting Book Referrals
• It’s Not a News Release if There’s No News

And, in the upheaval, several former book publishing professionals are seizing the opportunity to move to independent book publishing professionals, looking at the opportunities and the silver lining in all that’s happened lately:

• Kara LaReau, former editor at Scholastic and before that, Candlewick, opens a creative consulting firm and has this advice on keeping a writer’s journal.
• Former publicists at Harcourt Children’s Books, Sarah Shealy and Barbara Fisch have opened a publicity and promotional company, Blue Slip Media. What talent! They were creative and efficient in everything they did for Oliver K. Woodman.

Revise with confidence.

I’ve been catching up reading the blogs of others, mostly those who labor to create novels, picture books and stories for kids. Here are a few interesting posts:

• The Crazy Blond writes a poignant post on mothering a foster child.
• Is it true? 7% more adults are reading literature? Even young adults are reading novels? This is indeed, good news.
• From the Guide to Literary Agents blog comes a surprising post on revision: Tips on Rewriting from Your Peers.
• And Janni is talking to her characters and her story again. These conversations fascinate me!

Revise with confidence.

Kindle 2 Great for Novels, But Still Needs Improvement

Have you been keeping up with the reviews of the Kindle 2, Amazon’s ebook reader? Here are a couple of the most interesting comments I’ve seen:

Jakob Nielsen says the Kindle 2 is great for reading novels, but less successful in reading newspapers or magazines where you must click on an article. Perhaps the most significant conclusion of his report is that he now endorses ebook readers.

Roger Sperberg, however, is enamoured with the Kindle 2’s always connected state.

And thanks to the Author’s Guild promptly raising public awareness of the copyright issues of Kindle 2’s text-to-speech feature! Amazon has taken the first step of announcing that publishers can opt out of the feature.

Anyone tried it? What do YOU think about it?

Revise with confidence.

Here are more conversations taking place around the net. I’ll be mostly offline until January 5.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

• Laurence Osborne, writing in the Forbes magazine, gives his opinion on why book publishers are currently failing:
  

  A powerful editor at one of the big houses said to me last week, “Very little of the recent cutbacks and consolidation are the product of the economic meltdown. They are the result of several years of bad decisions.” Quite so. But what are those bad decisions?

  Industry insiders provide a depressing catalog: a failure to acquire the kind of franchise authors now topping the bestseller lists, a lack of editorial insight and supervision (resulting in longer, sloppier books that bore readers stupid), extravagant author advances, agents all too happy to sacrifice the long-term interest of authors for short-term profit, incompetent management at the top and a lack of books that have commercial impact.

• Need a last minute Christmas gift?
• Will The Tale of Despereaux movie delight or disappoint? Or will you stick with the audio version?
• PW asks: Do authors really need a website?

Revise with confidence.

Even if it is the week before Christmas, there’s lots of interesting discussions going on!

• Novel Revision Retreat. I’ll be teaching the Novel Revision Retreat in Illinois on February 27 – March 1 for the IL-SCBWI. Only nine spots remain! Register soon! See comments here from previous participants. Or see comments from Kirby Larson here.
• LeGuin movie. After her disappointment with the Earthsea movie, another Ursula LeGuin film?
• Ageism. Is there ageism in publishing?
• Ebook prices. What’s a fair price for ebooks?
• First paragraphs. Did you read the winner of agent Nathan Bradford’s first paragraph contest? Especially interesting is his discussion of WHY this one won. In discussing the top five paragraphs, Bradford twice says, “Normally I don’t like/care for. . . ” Fascinating that breaking his expectations made these do so well. Then, the list of three most common — and most unsuccessful — openings is enlightening. A post to ponder.

  Along those lines, here’s a post about query letter cliches.

• Newbery Medal in dispute. Have you been following the discussion about the Newbery Medal? It seems that some think it’s pointless because the committee selections are too difficult for kids, handle difficult topics, and would never, ever, be on a Children’s Choice award list. What do you think?

Revise with confidence.

I am woefully behind in sharing some great posts with you! Here’s a ton of links to articles of interest.

• Dori Butler just interviewed me for KidLit Central about my experience of judging the SCBWI Works-In-Progress Grantl
• Meanwhile, check out this podcast: Carla McClafferty is featured on Book Bites for Kids, talking about her new book, In Defiance of Hitler: The Secret Mission of Varian Fry. The book has already gotten a Starred Review! Wahoo!
• Suse Haberfeld continues the conversation on the digestive process of writing, taking in words, so you can put words out.
• Janni continues the conversation on Voice. But, Janni, are you talking to your characters lately? I wish you’d put all your conversations together in one place for each book — what a great resource.
• Becky CC summarizes her experiences at the Novel Retreat in Three Acts (I was Act 2). If you want to take a novel from conception, through revision, and present it to an editor and agent – all within a single year! – then you need to check out this series of retreats planned for 2009-10.
• Nancy talking about why she started the Three Act retreats.
• President-Elect Obama is a doodler? Oh, yes.
• Did you know that Bowen Press, the new Harpercollins children’s book imprint headed by Brenda Bowen, now has a blog? Read the Bowen Press Blog.
• What could possibly be good about Rejection Letters?
• You didn’t participate in the National Novel Writing Month? Well, here’s the project for you: The National Novel Writing Decade!
• Anne Marie Pace says, “In 40,000 words, my characters shook their heads 30 times and shrugged 18 times.”
  My verbal tic is “a bit.” As in, “She shook her head a bit.” What’s YOUR verbal tic?

What have you read lately that is interesting?

Revise with confidence.