Next Steps in Digitization for Book Publishers
publishersweekly.com – Saturday January 21, 2017
In this inaugural column, I’ve been asked to offer up some predictions for digitization in publishing in 2017. The problems—and solutions—of digitization are more complex than the question of e-books vs. print books. By and large, that divide has stabilized; print books are clearly still a strong part of the market, and e-books have their attributes (instantaneous purchase, no bundles to lug around, changeable font size).
The five-step manufacturing process that could make you a better writer
theconversation.com – Monday January 16, 2017
If you want to be a better, faster writer, you should treat your writing as a lean manufacturing process. “Lean” is an engineering technique for making manufacturing less wasteful and has been used in industrial production for decades. Today it has spread to sectors from software development to customer services. But I’ve found the principles of lean can even help improve the practice of writing, whether you’re producing a report or a novel.
Lean was developed from Japanese manufacturing ideas in the 1980s and 1990s. It involves applying five principles to minimise waste and increase productivity: flow, value, waste, pull and perfection. The key goals in lean manufacturing are to learn and continually improve. For writing, we have to first start with a finished piece of work in order to get feedback. Then we can start to apply the circular lean process and principles.
How to Not Waste Your Words: The Secret to Writing a Crappy but Usable First Draft
observer.com – Saturday January 14, 2017
Okay. Let’s get this out there: your first draft of anything is going to be bad — I mean, really bad. Because that’s the job of a first draft. To be bad. And your job is to write it.
Once you write the terrible first draft, you can write a better second one, and an elegant third one, and so one. But you must start somewhere. As writer Anne Lamott says, “Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts.”
Is 2017 Your Year To Write And Publish A Book?
forbes.com – Thursday January 12, 2017
Should you write a book this year? Do you have an idea that you’re convinced the world needs to read about? Consider the strange experience of Mr. Franz Kafka.
You Can Write a Best-Seller and Still Go Broke
slate.com – Wednesday January 11, 2017
In 2012, a month after the publication of her memoir, Wild, Cheryl Strayed was on a book tour, soaking up the wonder of her first big success as an author, when her husband texted her to say that their rent check had bounced. “We couldn’t complain to anyone,” Strayed told Manjula Martin, editor of the new anthology Scratch: Writers, Money, and the Art of Making a Living: “My book is on the New York Times best-seller list right now and we do not have any money in our checking account.”
The Kindle Effect
fortune.com – Friday December 30, 2016
Consider the metamorphosis of self-publishing. For decades it was dismissed as the desperate refuge of authors rejected by publishing houses, wannabes who paid a fee to a musty vanity press that would dutifully typeset their words and transform them into a few boxes of books that the “writers” could hand out to their friends.
Today, thanks to ebooks and Amazon (AMZN, -2.02%), self-publishing is a global phenomenon—an independent route intentionally chosen by more and more authors—that has spawned not only mega-bestsellers like Fifty Shades of Grey, but also hits in other realms, such as the movie version of The Martian. Ebook self-publishing has become a $1 billion industry.
Make this the year you finally write your book
mprnews.org – Friday December 30, 2016
According to a New York Times op-ed from over a decade ago, "81 percent of Americans feel they have a book in them."
If that's still true today, there's almost 200 million American adults roaming the country, dreaming of the novels and memoirs and cookbooks they have yet to write. If even a quarter of them ever move on to the actual writing stage, our bookstores are going to explode.
Irish novelist Elizabeth Reapy give her tips on writing a page-turner
irishpost.co.uk – Thursday December 29, 2016
FIRST-TIME novelist Elizabeth Reapy’s debut Red Dirt is a thrilling piece of fiction based on the lives of three Irish emigrants attempting to find their way in Australia.
Here, the Co. Mayo-based author tells Fiona Audley her top tips for any prospective writers…
Caimh McDonnell: too funny and too Irish
irishtimes.com – Wednesday December 21, 2016
Publishing used be a lot like a bad country disco. The publishers in this metaphor are the lovely ladies and the authors are the likely lads. I don’t mean that the ladies stand bored on one side of the hall while the lads are on the other skulling pints. No, this is another kind of bad. Imagine a GAA tournament clashed with a young farmer’s convention and the AGM of the Association of People Called Sean. The ladies are so out-numbered, it’s like the film 300 remade as a romcom.
Good news, though, the publishers found a solution. The ladies hired some bouncers to do their rejecting for them – literary agents. As a lonely author looking for love, you’ve now got to convince one of them to dance with you long before any of the girls will consider it.
A primer on writing from a gifted novelist
usatoday.com – Friday December 16, 2016
Charles Johnson, one of America’s finest novelists (Middle Passage) and foremost thinkers pondering the cosmos of literature, has published a road map to that cosmos as complex, daunting and rewarding as the destination itself. Titled The Way of the Writer: Reflections on the Art and Craft of Storytelling (Scribner, 256 pp., *** out of four stars), this dense little book could just as cogently be called The Rigors of Writing Seriously.
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