This Week in the Blogs, October 13 – 19, 2013

POSTED ON Oct 20, 2013

Joel Friedlander

Written by Joel Friedlander

Home > Blog > Self-Publishing, Social Media > This Week in the Blogs, October 13 – 19, 2013

There’s been a huge amount of news in the indie publishing world this week, and we can’t possibly cover all of it at once. Today you’ll find some news mixed with help on marketing, editorial, and online retailing. Happy reading.

Porter Anderson on Writer Unboxed
Said the Online Retailer to the Entrepreneurial Author
“This morning, Friday, as today’s column moves, Campbell has published “Industry response sought to explicit ebook furor,” in which we learn that the UK’s Booksellers Association says “it will urgently consider an industry initiative to prevent explicit self-published ebooks becoming available on mainstream retailers’ websites.” This is interesting because, unless I’m missing it, the Booksellers Association (its US counterpart is the American Booksellers Association) has had nothing to say about urgently considering the thousands of upright, hardworking independent booksellers—we call them authors here at Writer Unboxed—whose work vanished this week as Kobo struggled to clean its lists of offending material.”

Robert Doran on Catherine, Caffeinated
Copy-editors: What They Really Do
“People often think that if you can write you can edit – and vice versa. But writing and editing are very different skills, and competency in one doesn’t guarantee ability in the other. The creative impulse that often drives the author should be largely absent in the copy-editor, who is tasked with problem-solving and who essentially approaches the text as a puzzle. Happily, the editor’s eye for detail complements the author’s creativity, and when they are combined successfully you end up with something great.”

Chris Robley on The Book Baby Blog
21 Ways a Reader Might Find Your Author Website
“One of your big promotional goals as an author is to attract readers to YOUR OWN WEBSITE, a place — unlike social media platforms — where you can control the user experience. Once the visitor is on your website, you can encourage them to take specific actions (like buying a book, checking out a sample chapter, or subscribing to your author newsletter). There are many ways to attract people to your website — both online and off. Here’s a list of 21 ways a reader could come across your author site. Are you taking advantage of them all?”

Nate Hoffelder on The Digital Reader
6 Things An Author Should Look For in An Indie eBookstore
“If you’ve been reading the ebook news lately then I’m sure you know all about the reaction by Kobo, Amazon, and B&N when “news” broke that they were selling adult content. They removed hundreds of questionable titles as well as ebooks that did not violate any rules or laws, with Kobo even going so far as to temporarily gut their self-pub section. No matter whether you think their response was justified or not, the events of the past few days remind us that authors can’t rely on the major ebookstores to be there forever. It’s past time that they set up a fallback position with an independent ebookstore.”

Sandra Beckwith on Build Book Buzz
Book marketing success formula
“Authors lacking the publishing power, connections, and savvy of this book’s publisher, Penguin Group (Portfolio Hardcover), can now turn away, thinking, “Oh yeah, look at what you can accomplish with a lot of money,” or they can stay here a little longer to learn from what we’ll see unfolding for this book. Why not use it as your prototype for book marketing success? The big publishers know what they’re doing. Do what they do, and you’ve got a shot at something big, right? Using Hatching Twitter as a case study, here are the components of your book marketing success formula:”

More Speaking in the San Francisco Bay Area

In the last 2 weeks I’ve had the good fortune to be invited to speak at two local events for writers. First was the San Francisco Writers for Change Conference, a terrific event run by agent and author Mike Larsen and his crew, who also put on the San Francisco Writers Conference. It was a memorable day, energizing for all.

Then I spoke at the Mechanic’s Institute Library on Author Blogging, a subject that’s near and dear to my heart.

The opportunity to talk to these groups, and to meet and get to know some of the authors who attend, is tremendously enjoyable, and it teaches me at every event something else about how to better help authors who are trying to get their books into the market.

If you’d like me to speak to your group, check out my Speaking page and get in touch with the Contact form.

Joel Friedlander, Mike Larsen
With Mike Larsen at the Mechanic’s Institute Library (Photo: Joel Blackwell)

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Joel Friedlander

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Joel Friedlander

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