Tuesday Round Up | 22/01/2019

by Anna Johnstone | Jan 22, 2019 | Blog

Good morning!

Welcome to another Tuesday round-up. This week we have another great podcast from The Creative Penn (okay, total fangirl) discussing running a one-person business, the Kobo Writing Life talks about podcasting as content marketing., and the Writership podcast discusses scene and story resolutions. In articles, we have two very informative articles on shrinking author incomes, and another on corporate censorship and their unchecked power. I’ve not had time to check out videos for this week’s round-up, but hopefully, I’ll be able to gather a few links for next week.

Happy reading!

Articles

The Disastrous Decline in Author Incomes Isn’t Just Amazon’s Fault

The bookselling behemoth is making life harder for writers, but so is the public perception that art doesn’t need to be paid for.

Publisher's Weekly | Breaking Down Financial Woes for Writers

In an effort to gather as much information as possible about how much authors earned in 2017, the Authors Guild conducted its largest income survey ever last summer, reaching beyond the guild’s own members to include 14 other writing and publishing organizations. In all, the survey drew 5,067 responses from authors published by traditional publishers and from hybrid and self-published authors as well.

Corporate Censorship Is a Serious, and Mostly Invisible, Threat to Publishing

When state or civil authorities blacklist books, the act is correctly labeled censorship. But what is the word when corporations order their subsidiaries to snuff out information?

Podcasts

The Creative Penn | How To Be A Successful Company Of One With Paul Jarvis

What if you could scale your revenue without growing your expenses? What if you could make a living with your writing but still remain alone in your writing room? I discuss these questions and more today with Paul Jarvis.

In the intro, I talk about second-hand book sales [Dean Wesley Smith], how the death of poet Mary Oliver can help deepen our writing [listen to her on the On Being Podcast], why ‘sparking joy‘ is so important (referencing Marie Kondo on Netflix), plus the Kickstarter for Intellectual Property Tracking.

Kobo Writing Life | Ep 133 – Let’s Talk Podcasting with Amanda Cupido

n this week’s episode, Cristina sits down with author and podcast producer Amanda Cupido to talk about her book Let’s Talk Podcasting: The Essential Guide to Doing it Right. Amanda talks about how she got into podcasts, the difference between podcasts and older media such as radio, and she discusses the underrepresented voices in the podcasting community. Amanda also shares her tips for starting your own podcast and the most common roadblock that aspiring podcasters encounter.

Writership Podcast | Ep. 136: Resolutions

We all have some idea of what a resolution is, but what are these scene and story-enders meant to do? In this episode, I explore scene and story resolutions in the context of C. Gabriel Wright’s LBGTQ love story, “Someone.” The editorial mission encourages you to collect resolutions by reading and watching stories—and from your own life.

Tuesday Round-up | 15/1/2018

by Anna Johnstone | Jan 15, 2019 | Blog, Favourites

My Tuesday round up was quite successful last week, so here’s another one. If any of you have blog posts or articles that you think would be useful for next week’s roundup, feel free to send me the links and I’ll give them a read.

This week The Creative pen discusses the benefits and fallbacks of voice technology with Bradley Metrock, The KOBO writing life podcast talks about the making of the movie version of The House With a Clock in its Walls, which sounds fabulous and has been added to my TBR list.

Podcasts

Voice Technologies For Authors With Bradley Metrock

What if the future is voice first? What if people ask AI assistants like Alexa or Google Assistant to find them a book to read? What if the primary consumption of books is in audio format, not print or ebook? I talk about these questions and more with Bradley Metrock.

KWL Ep 132 – The House with a Clock in its Walls

In this episode, Rene from PR sits down with the cast and crew of the recent film The House with a Clock in its Walls (based on the novel by John Bellairs) to learn about their experience working on the movie and their favourite books. Rene chats to director Eli Roth about his experience directing a fantasy/horror movie geared towards a family audience, actor Owen Vaccaro about working with successful actors Cate Blanchett and Jack Black and music composer Nathan Barr, about incorporating old school horror-flick sounds into the movie’s score.

Writership Podcast | Ep. 135: Scene and Story Climaxes

What are scene and story climaxes? Why do you need them? In this episode, I talk about the decisions your characters make, as well as the actions they take, when faced with a dilemma. You’ll hear Matt Bizzel’s horror short story, “A Window Out: Or, the Accidental Death of Frank Ortiz” and my analysis of the scene. The editorial mission encourages you to collect examples of these critical decisions and actions by reading and watching stories—and from your own life.

Articles

Videos

Tuesday Round-up | 08/01/2018

by Anna Johnstone | Jan 8, 2019 | Advice, Blog, Favourites

First of all, happy New Year!

We have all made New Year’s resolutions from time to time. This year I have only one: I promise to be better at updating this blog.

As part of this, I have decided to do a weekly roundup post of articles and podcasts which I feel will be useful to you. This week we have podcasts from The Creative Penn and Kobo Writing Life with some fantastic information on marketing, and articles with information on where the future leaders of the publishing industry think it might be heading, some useful information on phrases to avoid and how to write good dialogue, and a link to the Sunday Times short story competition sponsored by audible where you can win a first-prize of £30,000!

I want to especially mention the amazing members of the Twitter #writingcommunity, who helped my author profile @AHJohnstoneAuth to 1000 followers!

Podcasts

The Creative Penn | Lessons For 21st Century Creatives With Mark McGuinness;
- On the current climate for creatives and makers
- Having rules and boundaries around creative time and connected time
- Different types of assets creatives have, including reputational assets
- The importance of creating value with our work
- Looking through ‘the other end of the telescope’ in order to serve the reader
- The ‘ecosystem’ of a creative’s time and business
- The importance of rest and taking time off from creative work and listening to your body
- Swallowing the frog in any type of work
- Opportunities available with audio

Kobo Writing Life | Ep 131 – Ricci Wolman
- How to use Freebooksy and Bargainbooksy to reach more readers. As Ricci explains, they try to keep things streamlined to make securing a spot as painless and time-efficient as possible. Written Word has close to 1M readers across their sites.
- Ad stacking as a marketing technique to increase your reach.
- Their latest site, Reading Stacks, which focuses on the growing importance of audiobooks and makes recommendations for the best books to use your subscription credits on. Check it out at https://readingstacks.com/
- The ever-growing importance of investing in advertising if you want to grow your book sales. As competition grows, the cost of advertising is growing, and Ricci predicts this will continue. She recommends having a diversified marketing strategy.
- We’d highly recommend checking out WWM’s author blog, where they deliver tons of valuable information. Read their latest post, “Top Ten Publishing Trends Every Author Needs to Know in 2019,” for a stellar summary of industry updates.

Articles

“But we can agree that TV is part of the culture, right?” Yap asks in response. “We’re all human. Whether you want to call it entertainment or art, we’re all contributing to the culture.”

“It’s a total homogenization of culture,” Chew says. “Streaming has changed everything. I hope they’re not comparable. I don’t think literature is entertainment.”