Reading, Writing, and Publishing Links: 2/27/13

Your random song of the week: "The A Team," by Ed Sheeran. Added this song to my soundtrack for the upcoming WOODS sequel (none of it's written, but the bits and pieces are starting to come together.

Sad video, isn't it? The music reminds me a little of James Blunt.

1) "Is Your Agent an Asset?" By Lynne Price of Behler Blog. This is actually really scary. Apparently there are a lot of agents who send out query letters that misspell words, leave out wordcounts, and fail to include a book's target audience? Price's takeaway point here is that if you work through an agent, you should always ask to see the letter that's being sent out to editors.

2) This interview with Chuck Sambuchino at Literary Rambles raises a couple of good points. My favorite is in question five, where he describes three different ways to focus your blog. I've been using a blend of #1 and #3 for this one--that's a combination of "related subject matter" and "writer's journey"--but I think I'd like to steer more towards #1. That will probably mean a bit more focus on fairy tales and ghost stories--and, as a result, more reviews of fantasy movies. I hope that's okay with y'all. : P

3) "The Series Death Spiral, and other unfortunate realities of publishing." Kevin J. Anderson explains how the sales of book 2 can actually make or break a series. If book 2 doesn't sell well enough, the publisher might decide not to publish book 3 at all.

4) "Perpetual WIPs: Literary Agents." By The Daily Dahlia. This is another "Gospel According To Agents"-type post, but the questions are good and the answers are interesting. Probably a must-read for those considering traditional publishing.

5) "Interview with Holly Black and Sarah Rees Brennan, YA Authors," at Racebending.com. Talks about the importance of writing a diverse cast of characters, and the difficulty of getting those characters represented in movies and on book covers.

6) "Romance novelist 'Jessica Blair' is an 89-year-old man." By Today News. You often hear about this happening the other way--lots of female authors use male or gender-neutral pseudonyms--but this is the first specific case I've heard of where a male author used a female one. I'm kind of interested in reading his books, now!

7) "Serials, or, How to Make Your Readers Hate You." According to Angela Benedetti, there are people out there marketing serials by pretending they're selling complete stories and surprising their readers with cliffhangers. Um... maybe don't do that?

8) "An Ode to the Series, Contemporary YA Style." By Kelly of Stacked. I actually never got into contemporary--by the time I hit middle school, I'd discovered fantasy, and never really looked back. If one were interested in seeing what's cooking now, though, this would be a pretty good place to start (her list is short, but there are lots more suggestions in the comments).

9) "Beta Outside Your Genre: Opposites Attract." Sarah Enni of YA Highway points out that fresh eyes (stylistically speaking) can be an advantage during the editing process.

Reading, Writing, and Publishing Links: 2/13/13

Hey folks! Happy almost-Valentine's day. I have lots of links for you today--it was a good news week. (Actually, these are more than a week old, because I'm way behind on my reading. I'm trying to catch up though!

While you read, please enjoy Efterklang's "Mirador." It's beautiful, isn't it?

I love weird videos.

1. "Shocker: B&N to cut a third of stores over next decade -- WSJ." Writeup by Shara Tibken of cnet. Apparently Barnes & Noble denies it's doing anything differently at all, but in light of this article from a few weeks ago I'm not sure I believe them. I do know that my regular B&N has cut its operating hours by five a week. Something to keep track of, I guess.

2. "Self-Publishing and Traditional Publishing: Enjoy the Best of Both Worlds." Jane Friedman interviews CJ Lyons, who has some interesting things to say.

3. "Secret Ingredient for Success." Opinion piece by Camille Sweeney and Josh Gosfield, of The New York Times, on the importance of self-awareness. Not specifically written word-related, but relevant to anyone trying to make their own career.

4. "Pulp-O-Mizer: The Customizable Pulp Magazine Cover Generator" (by Thrilling Tales of the Downright Unusual." Thanks To Steve Turnbull of the Google+ Speculative Fiction Writers community for passing along this wonderful toy. Here's mine:

Why do they have ray-guns? A better question would be, WHY DIDN'T THEY BEFORE?

5. "Hell is my own book tour," by Adam Mansbach at Salon. This post basically had me at the first sentence. However, the second and third are pretty great, too:

The publishing industry stopped having new ideas out of respect for the untimely death of Ernest Hemingway in 1961, and has been doing everything the same way ever since. Usually without adjusting for inflation.

Fantastic. However, I must point out that Bonobos aren't monkeys.

6. "Buying is a hard thing for bookstores to do effectively, and that becomes an increasingly important reality for publishers." By Mike Shatzkin of The Idea Logical Company.

7. "This is a Post about Plagiarism." Sarah of Clear Eyes, Full Shelves explains why she takes a hard line.

8. Miriam Forster, author of the upcoming City of a Thousand Dolls, shows us some lovely promo swag. I hadn't thought about quote cards, but they'd be easy to do, and would work for self- or traditional publishing.

9. "Best Business Advice for Writers: January 2013." Good links from Jane Friedman.

10. Via the above: "5 Ways Authors Can Get the Most Out of Goodreads," by Brian A. Klerns of Writer's Digest. A little chirpy, but does have some good ideas. I decided after my manifesto a few weeks back that I wasn't comfortable leaving negative reviews of books by people I might encounter socially (seriously, there are a lot of authors around here). However, an "Inspirations" shelf is a great idea, and I've been meaning to set up a proper author page.

11. Also via #9: "The complete and unabridged guide to GoodReads for authors: Account set-up, customization, and widgets, lots of widgets." Guest post by John Corwin at Novel Publicity & Co. Seems to be part one of a series.

12. "A Stake Through the Heart."  Patricia Wrede on character motivation. Helped me clarify a problem I was having conceptualizing the sequel to WOODS.

13. "State of the Digital World 2013."Janet Kobobel Grant of Books & Such sums up some of the key points from this year's Digital Book World Conference.

14. "Have You Planned For Success?" Lynn Price of Behler Blog lists things authors should think about before they make it to the "publication" stage. She raises some good points, but I'm not sure an author who's only gotten one offer of publication is going to turn down that offer just because s/he's not happy with the editors or distribution at that house.

15. On Galleycat, via Cuddlebuggery: "Tor UK Now Accepts Direct Submissions from Writers." So there's that.

16. Also via Cuddlebuggery: "Tamora Pierce wince 2013 Edwards Award for Song of the Lioness series and Protector of the Small quartet." Congratulations, Ms. Pierce! The Song of the Lioness quartet was really important to me when I was in elementary and middle school. Alanna was one of the first books I picked up off the YA paperback shelf at the library when I moved to North Carolina. (Two others were The Hero and the Crown and The Blue Sword.)  I was nine at that point, and I think these books had a lot of influence on what heroes, and stories, I looked for after that. So thank you very much, Ms. Pierce, and please keep writing. : )

And I think that's enough for right now, don't you? Have a great day!