A lot of my readers are already bloggers. You guys can skip this—although if you have anything to add, I’d sure appreciate it. My post this week is mostly for the lurkers (love my lurkers!) who know you’ll probably need a blog eventually, but feel intimidated by the whole process.Lots of sites give tips on how to make your blog successful (Nathan Bransford had a great list of Seven Tips on How to Build a Following Online last week) but it’s hard to find the A-B-C basics for set-up. I had to learn by trial and error myself, making a lot of...
Sunday, 28 November 2010
Monday, 22 November 2010
Sunday, 21 November 2010
I sure did upset some people when I expressed my envy of YA/MG writers in last Sunday’s post. I said—in what I intended to be a humorous fashion—that the children’s wing of the book business looked to me like rainbows and unicorns compared to the dark fortress that is most of American publishing.Well, it seems I was wrong. Somebody has been hunting the unicorns. His name is James Frey. This is the James Frey who cashed in on the big market in I-was-lost-but-now-I’m-found recovery tales that were hot stuff when Oprah was the queen of the American...
Tuesday, 16 November 2010
When I wrote on Sunday about YA/MG fiction seeming like a welcoming world of rainbows, bluebirds and unicorns in comparison to the Phantom Zone of adult fiction, this is what I was talking about—here’s a quote from today’s post from the wonderful YA writer Beth Revis.“YA doesn't care about the rules. The YA genre is one of the few genres where you can have a contemporary romance beside an action-based sci fi and no one bats an eye. YA books care about telling a good story, and the rest of the rules don't have to apply. In adult books, you have...
Sunday, 14 November 2010
Last week George W. Bush’s memoir gave Random House their best opening day sales in seven years—170,000 print copies.BUT—on the same day, Middle Grade fiction writer Jeff Kinney launched his fifth book for Abrams in his Diary of a Wimpy Kid series and sold—375,000 print copies. Yeah. Do you wonder why so many agents are looking for KidLit and passing on that brilliant stuff you’re writing for grown-ups? You kind of have to wonder if it’s time for us all to give up on our chosen genres and start penning middle-school-nerd/angsty-teen sagas....
Sunday, 7 November 2010
Everybody who reads this blog probably knows I’m an obsessed long-time fan of Curtis Brown agent Nathan Bransford. When I read his Friday post saying he’s left the publishing business, I felt a personal loss. I know he promises to keep up his blog, and I’m not losing my agent, like Natalie Whipple, Lisa Brackman, Kristi Marie Kriddle and so many others. But “knowing” somebody with Nathan’s kindness and integrity in the business always made me hopeful. The news that he’s leaving for a more lucrative position at the tech news site CNET seemed...
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