Friday Link Love

More links, more love (maybe not so much for several articles below – can you tell which?)

The industry – how depressing?

• 9 Signs Self-Publishing Is Out of Control: Opinion, or Fact? – Lee Lofland published this piece from Accredited Online Colleges. It’s depressing reading for anyone like me, but hey – I got over it. Note that some of the individual stats in these points appear to be contradicting each other, in my opinion – particularly re the American books being/about to be published. Read the comments too, for some perspective.

• Simon Says – Joe Konrath published a letter from a publishing insider over the price-fixing and Doj findings. The post is long, and full of figures, and opinions. As with long posts with lots of information, a lot of the comments drill into one of the issues – are books fungible? E.J. Wesley talks about ebook price fixing too. David Gaughran has also penned a post on the subject, an open letter, with links to other thoughts from Bob Mayer and Dean Wesley Smith.

• It’s Easy To Ask For A Click/Like/Pin, Hard To Make A Sale – the title sums up the message via Dan Blank.

Marketing

• Marketing Your Way To A #1 Amazon Bestseller With Rachel Abbott – Joanna Penn provides a good summary of several methods used by Rachel Abbott, with links to detailed posts on Rachel’s own blog.
• You’re on Facebook, right? So Addman’s latest email from the social network about to bring down the world share traders, You Have Notifications Pending will remind you of what is necessary to exist nowadays.

Writing Life

With all that good news above, I thought it relevant to show what the authors in this industry are going through to produce their books and why –

• Plotting and Outlining – three posts this week on outlining techniques from standard, mindmaps, story maps and others at DIY MFA, and Janice Hardy gives another two important plot tips in the post – The Best Advice on Plotting I’ve Ever Heard: Two Tips That Will Make Plotting Easier
• Humpty Dumpty Sat on Wall – Peg Brantley (posting at the Crime Fiction Collective) talks about juggling her eggs between writing her next book, and promoting her current one in efforts to find sales.
• How Reading Novels Can Make You A Better Person – a psychology study at i09 tells us why we love those books.

Writing Craft

• Oh, What Now? Fixing a Stalled Scene – Janice Hardy provides some tools.
• Going Paperless – Jamie Rubin has pinned up his best posts for indies onto a Pininterest board. The Going Paperless posts, created as Jamie says, for his “Evernote’s Paperless Lifestyle Ambassador” role, have been popular, increasing his traffic for the month. A sign of the times.

Special Edition: RAK Blitz

To commemorate the release of their book The Emotion Thesaurus, Becca and Angela at The Bookshelf Muse are hosting a TITANIC Random Act Of Kindness BLITZ . The RAK Blitz was joined in by several writers I admire and they passed on their own RAKs to several others also on my own reading list. Becca and Angela have a special RAOK gift waiting for you as well , so hop on over to The Bookshelf Muse to pick it up.

As my own way of semi-participating in the spirit of the Acts, I’m listing some of the people entered this event, who I consider supporters or incredible inspirations for my own blogging and writing (the last, even if they don’t actually know I exist – yet!). Go and read their blogs, and say hi. Yes, I stalk them all – feed readers and follow buttons are so handy nowadays. Below this list are three more special people.

A full list of participants can be found at The Bookshelf Muse.

• JC Martin – full of support, can’t wait for her new book to come out
• Vikki and The View Outside – full of support, really helps
• Elizabeth S Craig – inspirational posts
• Lynda R Young is a fellow Sydney-sider, and turns up on so many similar blogging and writing challenges that I do (and probably doesn’t realise I follow her, lol)
• Janice Hardy – another on many people’s reading lists, so needs no introduction

Some additional mentions – the below are not participating in the blitz at time of writing, but deserve my mention –

• Cas – we are meant to be writing buddies, but everything went way too quiet lately, as both of us got busy doing what we do – writing and editing. But she’s come up for air, and I’m reminded I love her dedication and enthusiasm for writing. Also from around here-abouts. And mentioned in my WOTS post too.
• Clarissa Draper – I’d been reading her blog posts for ages – she does fantastic forensic posts for writers, really picked up on our shared quirky interests when she completed the A-Z Challenge with a series on death. Now I’m beta / critique for her latest project – one of my first official beta gigs where I’m going public on it.
• FierceBuddhist – from a morbid theme in Clarissa’s interesting current work, to the beautiful. I don’t know why he hangs around, but I’m so glad I found him, er he found me? Read his latest haiku for Mother’s day last weekend.