March, all stops are out for March. March 27th for me actually but the whole month has been taken over by the Indies writers. It used to be New Zealand Book Month but the organisers suddenly changed it to August, leaving quite a few writers' groups and libraries with plans already underway for March. I'm launching my novel, 'Tizzie', promoting my Writer's Choice colleagues' newest novels and selling our already published books at a launch in the library. It will be fun as I'm being supported by the friends of the library to help with food and service and we will enjoy a party atmosphere. I hope! Roll on March 27th.
It seems to me that sales only come if you put in the work, not on social media, but with people. I hate getting tweets about buying someone's books. I'd rather chat. I hate my LinkedIn messages to buy a book. I hate blog tours and bloggers where it's all about 'My Wonderful Book'! I've been talking about Writer's Choice a lot and people are interested in the group and why we are doing what we do as Indie publishers. It's easier to do that than push my novels. This way people don't feel pressured and I also have my colleagues' books with mine and am delighted to chat about them too as a reader, so it's gains all round. I've sold quite a few for them.
And the KiwiReads group grows. We are behind the NZ Indie Writers' Month and are pushing our books into public notice in a good way. So far the website is our main weapon. Tui Allen is working hard to get a perfect site for readers to finds New Zealand books.
We are still stuck on the quality bit. How do you choose without becoming like the agents and traditional publishers? It seem unsolvable.
Too many writers, too many readers and not enough ways to link the two in a sympathetic way. Or is it that there are enough readers for all the writers but we have yet to learn how to connect to the readers who will like our particular books?
I'm working on it!
Showing posts with label kiwireads. Show all posts
Showing posts with label kiwireads. Show all posts
Sunday, 12 January 2014
Saturday, 7 December 2013
Well I did it again! Missed blogging. It's summer! The nights are short it's light until 10 p.m. The farm work is never ending, and that Kiwiread website and its PR is eating up time. The new novel is wanting more writing time and the characters are getting insistent. Blogging falls off the list again!
One of the things which is now cropping up and concerns my colleagues at Writer's Choice and my colleagues working for Kiwireads is this quality control of Indie books so that readers don't pay money for writing which needs a lot of copy editing and and a good rewrite.
We all agree that quality control is necessary, but how do we do it? Readers want a good read, but how do you define that?
My romance writing friends will wave romance novels at me telling me the prizes they won and what good reads they are. I personally find the plots/characters unrealistic and can't stand the endings. So as a reader I wouldn't want to call them quality reads, but other readers love them.
I can't stand horror or serial killer mysteries. Does that mean there aren't quality reads out there for those who like 'em?
It's fairly easy to pick out a badly presented and edited book and say that isn't quality. How do you judge the content though as quality?
And with the Kiwireads site which is for quality indie fiction how does one tell authors that their book is grammatically and presentation wise perfect, but the content is boring, unoriginal and not worth reading? ANd who are we to judge?
Many of us are Indie authors because we didn't like the gatekeepers to traditional publishing and their 'money is the only thing which matters' attitude. We like the fact that our not easy to label work can be published. We like the control we have. So what do we do about these groups of writers springing up and insisting that they can tell quality from rubbish in content?
It's readers who want quality reads. Perhaps readers should be sorting them out and passing on the good word. I don't know, but it seems to me that groups of writers setting up a quality mark for quality fiction, and asking for money to do it are in danger of becoming as bad as the trad publishing sharks who preyed on new writers.
One of the things which is now cropping up and concerns my colleagues at Writer's Choice and my colleagues working for Kiwireads is this quality control of Indie books so that readers don't pay money for writing which needs a lot of copy editing and and a good rewrite.
We all agree that quality control is necessary, but how do we do it? Readers want a good read, but how do you define that?
My romance writing friends will wave romance novels at me telling me the prizes they won and what good reads they are. I personally find the plots/characters unrealistic and can't stand the endings. So as a reader I wouldn't want to call them quality reads, but other readers love them.
I can't stand horror or serial killer mysteries. Does that mean there aren't quality reads out there for those who like 'em?
It's fairly easy to pick out a badly presented and edited book and say that isn't quality. How do you judge the content though as quality?
And with the Kiwireads site which is for quality indie fiction how does one tell authors that their book is grammatically and presentation wise perfect, but the content is boring, unoriginal and not worth reading? ANd who are we to judge?
Many of us are Indie authors because we didn't like the gatekeepers to traditional publishing and their 'money is the only thing which matters' attitude. We like the fact that our not easy to label work can be published. We like the control we have. So what do we do about these groups of writers springing up and insisting that they can tell quality from rubbish in content?
It's readers who want quality reads. Perhaps readers should be sorting them out and passing on the good word. I don't know, but it seems to me that groups of writers setting up a quality mark for quality fiction, and asking for money to do it are in danger of becoming as bad as the trad publishing sharks who preyed on new writers.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)