REASONS TO BE BLOGGING

Two days ago, I talked about whether and when authors need "platforms"  -  see here. And I explained what I meant by that prosaic and commercial word. Don't shy away just because you don't like the word. That would be ostrichesque.

There is no doubt that a very good way to start to build a platform is to blog. Many of you already do. Many of your blogs were mentioned and visited during the

NETWORKS AND PLATFORMS - MUST I?

The more you talk to people, and listen, the more you know and the more you think. And that  -  knowing and thinking more  -  is the real reason why "social networking" is much, much more about the rather self-centred notion of "building a platform to improve your career." It is about making contacts, and making contacts is about being human. We are social creatures and we rely on networks,

BLOGOFFEE-MORNING-DAY - ALL WELCOME

Welcome to my humble blogabode for coffee, chocolate, cake, shoes, and anything else that will help your day flow. This is now an official part of the Biggest Coffee Morning in the World, organised by and for Macmillan Cancer Support. you may well find the normal seriousness of this blog has come adrift. I've had a hard day. ["Today" being yesterday, technically].

By the way,

DEALING WITH JOURNALISTS

To encourage you to focus on your goal of publication [you were wavering, I know you were], I thought we'd have a little look at that thorny issue: controlling journalists. Or at least from the very one-sided POV which is the one I am choosing to take today.


Journalists are lovely, of course, or, even if they're not, they're only doing a job. And that, dear readers, is the crux: they are doing

Stealing The Future

I was taking a writing break, surfing the net, and came across Steal This Movie 2.

It doesn't directly address copyright infringement, or offer any solutions. But it does a very good job of explaining why copyright infringement exists, and is unstoppable. It's 45 minutes long, and well worth your time if you have any interest in the future of ebooks, concerns about illegal filesharing, and questions about what the future holds.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xpXK8mDTiNg

One of the ideas I found to be the most compelling was the concept of fences.

In the past, property (including intellectual property) had owners. If you owned a bicycle, or wrote a book, it existed as a physical object. To protect your property, you could build a fence around it, so it wouldn't be stolen. Then you could decide what to do with your property. Sell it. Give it away. Throw it away.

But there are no fences anymore. Intellectual property can be copied and distributed, and there is no way to protect it. In fact, the internet was created so people can share and copy information.

I've talked before about gatekeepers. In the past, TV studios, movie producers, and publishers have decided what media the masses can see.

The Internet is changing that. Now, everyone can produce media. The way the trend is going, there won't be any gatekeepers. Or at the very least the ones who exist will have more competition and fewer ways to make money.

For a society, that seems to be a good thing.

But is it good for a writer?

While YouTube has shown that a lot of people can produce media--media that can take viewers away from the TV shows and films produced by the gatekeepers--it hasn't shown how those media creators can make money. The money YouTube generates goes to YouTube, not the people uploading their movies.

And the majority of people uploading content to the Internet aren't uploading their original content. They're uploading media paid for by the gatekeepers.

If you're an artist who wants to earn a living, the way to get paid is to work for the gatekeepers.

But how long will these gatekeepers exist in their present form? How long before the media shared by individuals--both original and pirated--reaches more households than the established distribution networks run by the gatekeepers? And what will happen when that tipping point occurs?

In our desire to share and copy media, we're destroying the institutions that create the media.

But here's the thing. We're only destroying the institutions. We're not destroying the artists.

I don't believe the incentive to create is directly tied in to a paycheck. I wrote many books before ever earning a dime. And if the publishing world collapses, I'll still write books.

If people have an interest in reading me, money will somehow follow suit.

After viewing Steal This Film 2, you won't walk away thinking this is the end of media.

In many ways, it's more like a vibrant new beginning.

THAT WASN'T MEANT TO HAPPEN + THANK YOU

Further to my last post about permission not to write and motivation and stuff, my agent has lost her normal excellent judgement and decided that my reluctant first two chapters of my very difficult WIP are "bloody good writing". This is very bad news as I had hoped to doss around for the next few months. I'd suspect she'd been drinking if it wasn't for the fact that it was rather early in the

WHY DO I WRITE AT ALL?

Look, I know Emily Gale and I are both YA authors but does that mean she gets to read my mind?? She's just blogged in partial response to my blog post [below] about writing habits, which was in response to her blog post about writing locations, and her new post is about writing and not writing, and permission not to write, which is what I was going to blog about next.

The question of whether to

BREAKING WRITING HABITS

Something for the weekend, as they say. A little thing to get you thinking, inspired by blogger, Twitterer and YA author, Emily Gale - read her post here first.It got me thinking about something I've recently learnt: the things we believe are habits are just that - habits. And habits can (and very often should) be broken.We say things about ourselves which sound like truths, but they may not

STARTING YOUR STORY

""Begin at the beginning," the King said, very gravely, "and go on till you come to the end: then stop."" Lewis Carroll makes it sound so simple.Thing is, where is the beginning? Where does any real story start? And in fiction, where should you choose to start it?Although it was a blog-reader or two who asked me to talk about beginnings, it's also a sore point for me because I've been struggling

APPEARANCE + PERSONALITY MATTERS

Let me start by offering huge congratulations to successful author and reader of this blog, Daniel Blythe? Why? Well, partly because he sent me the link that is going to inspire this post. And partly because I see that his newest book, Autonomy, is .... sound the trumpets .... No 1 in Tesco! Hooray in spades! (NB - that's a link to the live chart and the trouble with being No 1 is that ultimately

The Great Ebook Experiment Part 2

I should win some sort of award for being disorganized, but if I won it I'd forget where I put it.

That said, I just realized when I switched ISPs, my previous ISP never killed my old email account. So I've spent the last few days wading through a few hundred emails from people who assumed I was ignoring them. And in doing that, I've been ignoring people who have emailed me recently.

But I'm very close to catching up. If you've contacted me about trying the ebook experiment, you'll hear from me by September 18th. If you haven't heard from me by then, try emailing me again at joekonrath(at)comcast.net.

Here's how this is going to work.

I'll need a ready-to-go chapter or excerpt from you, no more than 2500 words, sent to me as an email attachment in either MS Word .doc format or .rtf format.

Included at the end of the exceprt, please list:

1. The Title and your Author Name
2. Date and places the title is available
3. Your website URL
4. A brief two or three sentence bio

Here's an example:

"AFRAID by Jack Kilborn is available as an ebook, audiobook, and paperback, wherever books are sold. Jack Kilborn is the pen name for Joe Konrath, author of Whiskey Sour, Bloody Mary, and several other thrillers. You can find information about Joe at www.JAKonrath.com, where you can download many free ebooks."

I'll also need to know which ebook of mine you'd like the excerpt to appear in, along with two back-ups in case the first one is already full.

My plan is to upload the ebooks to Amazon Kindle on on my website on September 26th. They will run through all of October. After that, we'll pow-wow and discuss if this is getting results for people.

I've gotten a lot of private response about this, most of it favorable. Most people beleive:

Ebooks are here to stay.
Excerpts are a good form of advertising.
This is a pretty cheap experiment.

Will ads in ebooks become the norm? I'm betting yes. Ads appear in magazines, newspapers, radio, TV, and all over the Internet. Ebooks, with their zero cost to copy and distribute, seem to be a perfect medium for advertising. Especially non-intrusive ads that feature content.

Time will tell if I'm right...

BIG MISTAKE 3: OVER-WRITING

Thing about writers is we're passionate about words. (If you're not, bugger off, please).

Trouble with being passionate about words is we sometimes don't know when to rein in our passion. I admit that I'm guilty of this quite often. There are people in my life who do their best to stop me, and very grateful I am to them.

They are, in no particular order:
my husband - "Shut up: you're banging

17 REASONS WHY MANUSCRIPTS ARE TURNED DOWN

On the other hand, emerging from a migraine (see below) doesn't mean I can't push you towards someone else with wise words and no headache. Here are 17 reasons why manuscripts are turned down. It's nearly a year old, but some things don't change. "The Adventurous Writer" has other useful lists of tips. As with most lists, they're not exhaustive but a good start.Maybe over-writing is number 18.

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COMPETITION RESULTS

In my arbitrary way, I hereby declare the "You must be joking" competition closed. You may have noticed that I forgot to say what the prize would be. So, I am now happy to announce that the prize for getting both answers correct within my time-scale would almost certainly have been a vast amount of money. Sadly, no one got both answers correct. I am devastated.The correct answersMany of you

PARTY AND COMPETITION!

Time to celebrate. House-warming for my new address and a big thank you to all those of you who have stuck by me. Oh, and lovely follower Brenda has an agent! See comments after this post.So, a competition, don't you think? Because parties must have prizes and games and all manner of fun. I'm providing chocolate and sparkly wine. Well, I'm consuming it anyway, and you're welcome to join me if

YOU DO NOT HAVE THE RIGHT TO BE HEARD

Certain readers have dared to say that I've lost my crabbit touch. (Catherine, are you quaking?) Feedback is all very well, but that's plain insulting.

Well, see if you say the same after this one. (Not to mention the fact that I am very very close to spilling the beans on some SHOCKING covering letters I've just seen. But that's for another time. You don't believe the direness of the slush pile

OF BOOKS, MAGIC and YURTS

I only have a few minutes to bring you a post today, as I'm about to go to lunch with my agent to celebrate the start of September (I know: I don't need much excuse for lunch); the end of the Edinburgh Book Festival; a glorious sunny day; and the fact that I have a new novel brewing and the shocking first chapter is tantalisingly poised to be written but I am holding myself back.So, just having a