Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Moving forward creatively

Anybody who loves books and knows anything about the book biz knows it's changing. The technology is changing. What readers expect is changing, where they buy and how they buy is changing. Wars are being fought over rights. People are losing jobs. Shit is hitting the fan. But opportunities are also opening. And nimble, quick-thinking, innovative authors will survive.


Like Cheryl Robinson. She's serializing a novel on her blog that readers can read for free--a new chapter every Saturday--to let people know about her work since she has a new novel When I Get Where I'm Going coming in September.

Like Tananarive Due and Steven Barnes who have teamed with Blair Underwood. Their latest novel will be one of the first Vooks--video books. It will be part print and part film scenes. Check it out.




Like debut novelist Ernessa T. Carter, who's giving away a T-shirt a day in a contest for people who pre-order 32 Candles, a book I LOVED and blurbed.




In other news:

Tayari Jones reviews Andrea Levy's latest in The Washington Post. Check out Indiebound for more on The Long Song.

Pearl Cleage discusses her very topical novel Till You Hear From Me.

And a blogger reminds us that before there was Mma Ramotswe there was the housekeeper-sleuth Blanche White, the wonderful creation of author Barbara Neely.

4 comments:

Vérité Parlant said...

Good wrap up. There should be someone tracking these efforts to determine what works and what doesn't. Did you see PW's article, Who's Got Pull in the Twitterverse?

Carleen Brice said...

Thanks for the link. I hadn't seen it. Yeah, it would be great to hear what works. J.A. Konrath has blogged a lot about that from his perspective. I'm not sure many people feel comfortable saying I spent X dollars and did X, Y, Z and got back X sales. But maybe if that information was aggregated in some way?

Toni Campbell said...

I loved the Blanche books! I miss that series.

Tea said...

Yummy, I love the title. I'm proud to come and visit your blog.