You’re getting this early this month as I’m flying to Seattle on Wednesday to attend the Galacticon4 convention – I was invited back to repeat the panel on fanfiction and the writing workshop I designed for the last Galacticon in Houston two years ago. Very flattering to be asked to take an encore! I will be back in early August, when I expect I’ll be focused hard on house move things (more on that anon)

Anyhow, here’s a selection of posts and articles on writing that have caught my eye over the last month:

Writing (general)

Note:  Am not linking to the Harper Lee book posts mostly because her ability to consent to publication seems iffy, to say the least, and the publication of a first draft book after she spent fifty years refusing to consider releasing it, leaves me uncomfortable about just how much she may be exploited. Personal thing, here. There are a myriad posts out there and easy to find if you google.

Note 2 :  Word of the month is Monopsony. If you understand it, let me know.

In Our CyberVillage: So Much Anger  Interesting post at The Writer Unboxed on the recent spats of bad temper on line – the #askELJames twitter debacle (if you missed it, a marketing ploy goes very, very wrong: a live Twitter event turned into a massive beat-the-shit out of the author fest instead with literally thousands of anti-James tweets ripping apart the Twittersphere), people disagreeing with Hugh Howey on Kindle Unlimited (see the publishing section below), reforming Reddit… a counterpoint to Chuck Wendig’s post -also see below.

 

.

Writing (skills)

9 Ways to Use Point of View to Strengthen Your Story’s Characters – E C Ambrose guesting at KM Weiland’s excellent site, with some good advice.

.

Writers on Writing

(a) Chuck Wendig

 

Online is IRL – a thoughtful piece about the #askELJames fiasco on Twitter at the very end of June. Chuck may not hold much of a brief for James, but he holds none at all for bullies. A great post, that calls our on line behaviour to account, and sadly Chuck was roasted for it in some quarters.

The Secret Behind Making Me Care For Your Characters – reminding us that it’s not the huge drama that captures us, but the little every day dramas the character faces that we can identify with.

Think, Plan, Write, Edit, Repeat – The mantra for success.

Dear Guy Who Is Mad Because I Wrote A Gay Character In A Book – wonderful, wonderful post that showed Chuck had refound his mojo for tackling contentious issues. Love it. It even has links to a picture that is not a cuddly pug. Grins.

 

(b) Everyone else

Lauren Roy: Five (And A Half!) Ways To Cast Out Writerly Doubt – am putting this first because go and read it.

Katie Pierson: Five Things I Learned *After* Writing ’89 Walls

John G. Hartness: Five Things I Learned Writing In The Still Of The Knight

Carrie Patel: Five Things I Learned Writing Cities and Thrones

S.K. Dunstall: Five Things I Learned Writing Linesman

 

 

Technical ‘Stuff’

Demystifying Keywords, Categories, and Themes For Amazon Indie Authors – sound advice from The Writer Unboxed.

.

Marketing for Writers

 

Ask Annie: The Line Between Self-Promotion and Spam – Annie Neugebauer at The Writer Unboxed on a sensible way to use Twitter.

 

Publishing

Very heavy section this month!

 

20 Years of Amazon
5 reasons to wish Amazon an unhappy birthday – someone at The Salon doesn’t like our megagiant. (warning – the site blanks out for ruddy ages while a sponsor’s ad loads. Worse than the days of dial-up).
At 20, Amazon Continues to Defy Predictions – Bloomsberg Business piece.
Authors, ABA to DOJ: Investigate Amazon’s Abuse of Its Dominance in the Book Market – I’ll link here to the Passive Voice’s round up post, since it has plenty of links if you want to follow the story of how one set of vested interests accuses another set of chicanery. Authors United (which has already had run ins with Amazon over publisher contracting and the American Booksellers Association accuse Amazon of being a monopoly.
Authors United founder says Amazon’s control of the book industry is “about the same as Standard Oil’s when it was broken up” The Salon talks to Douglas Preston about why authors are pressuring the Department of Justice to take action.
Authors United Epic Fail-O-Rama – Joe Konrath is not impressed by the previous item. Amusing but cutting.
Why Amazon monopoly accusations deserve a closer look – Fortune Magazine piece that isn’t terribly sympathetic to most of the Author United claims, but does think that Amazon’s delisting policies are worth investigation.

Kindle Unlimited switches to paying for pages read:
KDP Select And The Myth Of “The Pot” from Kate Aaron – a post I missed last month when I closed the round up, but I think is worth adding here as a coda. Because that last line says it all.
Amazon set to pay self-published authors as little as $0.006 per page read – A Guardian article analysing Amazon’s latest move
Erotica Authors Pull-Out on Amazon KU – Time to Come To The Dark Side! – Doesn’t look like Amazon’s changes are causing orgasms of the good kind…
Analyzing Kindle Unlimited’s New Page Read System Author Susan Kaye Quinn’s analysis is less emotional, and far more nuanced than most.
The Great KU Flip-Out of 2015  – Hugh Howey –who, let us not forget, has made a *very* good living out of self pubbing as well as traditional – with some measured words on not getting into a tizz too early.
Yes, once more Amazon is “screwing” authors: Set to pay them .006 per page – a heading for a post from Bob Meyer that doesn’t truly convey its sarcasm. A good read.
Writers Are Going Cuckoo For KU – TechCrunch.com that concludes although things they are a-changing, it’s still the best time to be an indie author.

SCRIBD
Is the subscription model in trouble? Scribd dumps romance titles – Bob Meyer on Scribd’s decision to stop providing romance titles because it’s too much of a loss to continue. Romance readers read too much. Obviously.
Scribd Cuts Romance Catalogue – Mark Coker over at the Smashwords blog with a thoughtful analysis.
Have You Canceled Your Account at Scribd? You Might Want to Double Check That – The Digital Reader on some dodgy practices.

 

 

That’s it for July. Enjoy the links!