Maria Savva's Blog - Posts Tagged "digital"
Guest Post: When Indie met the establishment! by Laxmi Hariharan
**Today, I'm featuring a guest post from a fellow author, Laxmi Hariharan, about the The Literary Consultancy's upcoming conference: 'Writing in a Digital Age', which takes place next weekend in London.**
When Indie met the establishment!
Cut to twelve months ago—as a just born Indie, I listened to Kate Mosse (author Labyrinth) talk about how she was not on Facebook, Twitter or any of those necessary evils, which help Indie authors like myself build a platform. On a panel discussion she made it very clear that she preferred not to have her peace of mind destroyed by social media chatter, in order to really focus inwards and write. A fellow author confessed how she was beyond the point of being a social media junkie—she stayed connected even when she took her dog for a walk. It was clear to me that as a writer and a marketer I needed to find the sweet spot somewhere between the two. I needed to become a spider—a black widow?— an arachnid who sat square in the entre of a 720 degree social network web, and controlled everything that went around me, not the other way around.
It was about choice. I absolutely had the right to decide when I wanted to dip in and went I wanted to unplug. Isn’t that being an Indie author was all about.
Exercising your right to be read, to be seen and heard unadulterated by veils. Just one of the many insights I gained from attending the writing in a digital age conference, held by TLC. I will be back at the 2013 instalment of the same, as part of the storytime sessions, talking about where I am twelve months on—wiser, more confident, and in the throes of completing Return to 7 Islands (#2, Bombay Chronicles.) If you are wondering whether to go Indie or if you are Indie and pondering what next, then this is where you want to be. You will get the chance to meet fellow Indies as well as published authors, publishers, and agents too (some of them are really nice too, I promise.)
Writing in a Digital Age, June 7-8, London. Tickets on sale till June 6th.
Laxmi Hariharan is a content branding strategist and award winning author of epic fantasy. Find her at LAXMIwrites
When Indie met the establishment!
Cut to twelve months ago—as a just born Indie, I listened to Kate Mosse (author Labyrinth) talk about how she was not on Facebook, Twitter or any of those necessary evils, which help Indie authors like myself build a platform. On a panel discussion she made it very clear that she preferred not to have her peace of mind destroyed by social media chatter, in order to really focus inwards and write. A fellow author confessed how she was beyond the point of being a social media junkie—she stayed connected even when she took her dog for a walk. It was clear to me that as a writer and a marketer I needed to find the sweet spot somewhere between the two. I needed to become a spider—a black widow?— an arachnid who sat square in the entre of a 720 degree social network web, and controlled everything that went around me, not the other way around.
It was about choice. I absolutely had the right to decide when I wanted to dip in and went I wanted to unplug. Isn’t that being an Indie author was all about.
Exercising your right to be read, to be seen and heard unadulterated by veils. Just one of the many insights I gained from attending the writing in a digital age conference, held by TLC. I will be back at the 2013 instalment of the same, as part of the storytime sessions, talking about where I am twelve months on—wiser, more confident, and in the throes of completing Return to 7 Islands (#2, Bombay Chronicles.) If you are wondering whether to go Indie or if you are Indie and pondering what next, then this is where you want to be. You will get the chance to meet fellow Indies as well as published authors, publishers, and agents too (some of them are really nice too, I promise.)
Writing in a Digital Age, June 7-8, London. Tickets on sale till June 6th.
Laxmi Hariharan is a content branding strategist and award winning author of epic fantasy. Find her at LAXMIwrites
The Literary Consultancy's Conference 2013: Writing in a Digital Age
I have just come back from a two-day conference at the Free Word Centre.The conference was organised by The Literary Consultancy, in partnership with The Times Literary Supplement.
I am very grateful to my fellow indie author, Laxmi Hariharan, for telling me about the conference and arranging a press pass for me so that I could attend the event.
I enjoyed the conference and learned a few things that I am sure will help in my ongoing publishing adventure. Highlights for me were:
1. The keynote speech by Audrey Niffenegger (author of The Time Traveler's Wife). I picked up a signed copy of her novel, Her Fearful Symmetry, which I am very much looking forward to reading.
2. Steve Bohme's statistics about book sales (Bowker Market Research).
3. The speech by Robert McCrum, an associate editor of The Observer, about his perspective on the change in the contemporary book world.
4. Audience Storytime, where we heard from some independently published authors about their experiences with self-publishing.
5. Canon Tales: Stories Behind the Book, where we heard from various industry professionals about their love of literature and their hopes for the future of literature.
I'm going to be reporting back on what I learned at the conference in a short series on my blog in the coming weeks. There was a lot of information about how the book world has changed with the digital revolution. There were discussions about self-publishing, editing, what works best for marketing both traditionally published and self-published books.
It was well worth attending the conference. I met a few fellow writers who I will be keeping in touch with too. All in all, it was an enjoyable experience, and an informative and entertaining couple of days.
I have taken some comprehensive notes of all the speeches and discussions and will be writing about those soon.
Notes from The Literary Consultancy's conference 2013 - Writing in a Digital Age: Collaboration
One of the discussions at last weekend's conference revolved around how the digital age has facilitated many collaborative projects pushing the boundaries of technology and narrative.
Projects that were mentioned were:
1. Watershed, a cultural cinema and digital creativity centre in Bristol UK.
Watershed is a cross-artform venue and producer, sharing, developing and showcasing exemplary cultural ideas and talent. They produce work that cuts across film, music, theatre, design, visual art, and the creative and technology sectors.
The media studio is involved in development and research into new digital technologies.
Sandbox is a programme the studio has developed. Slingshot's 2.8 Hours Later game came out of the Sandbox programme: http://slingshoteffect.co.uk/ourgames...
Last year Sandbox worked on a project called REACT: a collaboration between the Universities of the West of England, Bath, Bristol, Cardiff, Exeter and Watershed Arts Trust.
There were 8 collaborations within the project around the theme of books and print.
Two of the projects highlighted at the conference were:
Writer on the train
This app offers short stories or a piece of writing relevant to the train's location: http://www.react-hub.org.uk/books-and...
These pages fall like ash
http://pagesfall.com/
http://www.watershed.co.uk/whatson/41...
The idea behind this project was to give the reader a collaborative reading experience.
2. The Writing Platform
Author Kate Pullinger spoke about The Writing Platform, "a website and program of live events dedicated to arming writers with digital knowledge". The Writing Platform is a free online resource for all writers and poets emerging, established, not yet published, traditionally published and self-published who are looking for neutral and best practice information about writing in a digital age in order to inform their practice and career choices.
3. A Million Penguins
Kate Pullinger also spoke about a project she was involved in called, 'A Million Penguins', which was a collaboration between Penguin and De Montfort University. It ran for 5 weeks in 2007, and the experiment was to find out the answer to 'can a community write a novel?'. It was on a wiki, and there were no rules. Anyone could write and edit it.
15,000 people worked on it, and a total of 80,000 people registered and read it.
The project was subject to vandalism, however, lots of it was deleted. One person logged in and changed all the nouns to 'banana'.
The conclusion was reached that, 'no' a community cannot write a novel.
Two years later, Kate Pullinger was involved in, Flight Paths: A Networked Novel. There were 100 participants.
Following on from that, she wrote a novel which was another stage of this project. That novel will be released next year.
4. Memory Makes Us
Kate Pullinger mentioned this new project that is a collaboration with if:book Australia. Here's a bit more about that project: http://www.futureofthebook.org.au/cat...
This project explores the role of memory in writing and reading. Submissions are still being accepted (until early July).
5. Brandon Generator
Nico MacDonald of Media Futures mentioned Brandon Generator, and stated that the boundaries of publishing are blurring.
Brandon Generator is an interactive story experience, created by Edgar Wright and Tommy Lee Edwards.
Here's a bit more about that project: http://www.wired.com/underwire/2012/0...
6. World War II Timeline App
Another interactive online story experience. More details can be found here: http://agant.com/app.php?appID=ww2
7. Creating Worlds: Black Crown
Random House's interactive adventure story involving choices by the reader that open up the narrative: http://blackcrownproject.com/s
8. Call of the Cthulhu
Based on the sci-fi novel, taking the existing narrative and finding a new way of developing it. http://redwaspdesign.wordpress.com/
9. The Harper Collins BookSmash Challenge
This competition has $25,000 in prizes and there are 3 months left to submit: http://booksmash.challengepost.com/
The challenge: Use imagination and technology to build software that goes beyond the traditional ways we read and discover books.
10. Zombies, Run!
https://www.zombiesrungame.com/
A digital narrative/game where you run away from zombies. This project was funded through Kickstarter. There were donations of $73,000 in the US.
This shows how popular these types of apps are.
11. Writing Research and Development: Lisa Gee and Contentment
Software to enhance storytelling:
http://getcontentment.com/
www.lisagee.net/
*********************************************************************************************
It was interesting to learn about all these collaborative projects. I hadn't heard of any of them before. As Nico MacDonald said at the conference, this is an exciting time in publishing. Collaboration is taking place in different ways. There is a lot of innovation. It will be interesting to see how much further these types of things develop.
Projects that were mentioned were:
1. Watershed, a cultural cinema and digital creativity centre in Bristol UK.
Watershed is a cross-artform venue and producer, sharing, developing and showcasing exemplary cultural ideas and talent. They produce work that cuts across film, music, theatre, design, visual art, and the creative and technology sectors.
The media studio is involved in development and research into new digital technologies.
Sandbox is a programme the studio has developed. Slingshot's 2.8 Hours Later game came out of the Sandbox programme: http://slingshoteffect.co.uk/ourgames...
Last year Sandbox worked on a project called REACT: a collaboration between the Universities of the West of England, Bath, Bristol, Cardiff, Exeter and Watershed Arts Trust.
There were 8 collaborations within the project around the theme of books and print.
Two of the projects highlighted at the conference were:
Writer on the train
This app offers short stories or a piece of writing relevant to the train's location: http://www.react-hub.org.uk/books-and...
These pages fall like ash
http://pagesfall.com/
http://www.watershed.co.uk/whatson/41...
The idea behind this project was to give the reader a collaborative reading experience.
2. The Writing Platform
Author Kate Pullinger spoke about The Writing Platform, "a website and program of live events dedicated to arming writers with digital knowledge". The Writing Platform is a free online resource for all writers and poets emerging, established, not yet published, traditionally published and self-published who are looking for neutral and best practice information about writing in a digital age in order to inform their practice and career choices.
3. A Million Penguins
Kate Pullinger also spoke about a project she was involved in called, 'A Million Penguins', which was a collaboration between Penguin and De Montfort University. It ran for 5 weeks in 2007, and the experiment was to find out the answer to 'can a community write a novel?'. It was on a wiki, and there were no rules. Anyone could write and edit it.
15,000 people worked on it, and a total of 80,000 people registered and read it.
The project was subject to vandalism, however, lots of it was deleted. One person logged in and changed all the nouns to 'banana'.
The conclusion was reached that, 'no' a community cannot write a novel.
Two years later, Kate Pullinger was involved in, Flight Paths: A Networked Novel. There were 100 participants.
Following on from that, she wrote a novel which was another stage of this project. That novel will be released next year.
4. Memory Makes Us
Kate Pullinger mentioned this new project that is a collaboration with if:book Australia. Here's a bit more about that project: http://www.futureofthebook.org.au/cat...
This project explores the role of memory in writing and reading. Submissions are still being accepted (until early July).
5. Brandon Generator
Nico MacDonald of Media Futures mentioned Brandon Generator, and stated that the boundaries of publishing are blurring.
Brandon Generator is an interactive story experience, created by Edgar Wright and Tommy Lee Edwards.
Here's a bit more about that project: http://www.wired.com/underwire/2012/0...
6. World War II Timeline App
Another interactive online story experience. More details can be found here: http://agant.com/app.php?appID=ww2
7. Creating Worlds: Black Crown
Random House's interactive adventure story involving choices by the reader that open up the narrative: http://blackcrownproject.com/s
8. Call of the Cthulhu
Based on the sci-fi novel, taking the existing narrative and finding a new way of developing it. http://redwaspdesign.wordpress.com/
9. The Harper Collins BookSmash Challenge
This competition has $25,000 in prizes and there are 3 months left to submit: http://booksmash.challengepost.com/
The challenge: Use imagination and technology to build software that goes beyond the traditional ways we read and discover books.
10. Zombies, Run!
https://www.zombiesrungame.com/
A digital narrative/game where you run away from zombies. This project was funded through Kickstarter. There were donations of $73,000 in the US.
This shows how popular these types of apps are.
11. Writing Research and Development: Lisa Gee and Contentment
Software to enhance storytelling:
http://getcontentment.com/
www.lisagee.net/
*********************************************************************************************
It was interesting to learn about all these collaborative projects. I hadn't heard of any of them before. As Nico MacDonald said at the conference, this is an exciting time in publishing. Collaboration is taking place in different ways. There is a lot of innovation. It will be interesting to see how much further these types of things develop.
Notes from The Literary Consultancy's conference 2013 - Writing in a Digital Age: 5 Key Stages of Self-Publishing (Part I)
At the recent TLC Conference in London, there was a Digital Masterclass on the 'Five Key Stages of Self-Publishing', in association with SfEP (Society for Editors and Proofreaders) and ALLi (The Alliance of Independent Authors).
I'm going to split this into two separate blog posts because there was a lot of information given.
**********
Dr Alison Baverstock, Course Leader for MA Publishing at Kingston University, made the following points:
1. Take care
It's very easy to self-publish a manuscript and the sites that you upload to won't check the content, the quality of the product.
She warned that negative responses to books can hurt and be damaging for a writer.
2. Think about the objectives.
There are many different formats you can publish in. Consider the flexibility of formats.
3. Think of an e-book as a scroll.
A digital book is flowing text. A reader can change the font and font size, as well as line spacing.
She went on to say that there is no restriction on the length of an e-book. With e-books, she says there is a much more level playing field between indie and traditionally published books because no one can really tell who published it.
She says it's best to make e-books widely available.
4. You don't have to do it on your own.
There are various supports out there. Guides to formatting.
On Smashwords.com, for example, there is a free style guide.
She mentioned BookFlower a website where you can easily format your books on your own.
There was a demonstration of that website, and it does seem very easy to use to convert a document into an ePub.
Dr Baverstock also recommended the book Let's Get Digital: How To Self-Publish, And Why You Should, by David Gaughran.
She also recommended Jutoh.com
She gave a few tips for effective distribution:
The aim is to drive traffic to your book. Social media is useful. She recommends trying one thing at a time; changing one variable at a time to see what works and keep a record to learn from.
In regard to the question as to how much to charge for an e-book, she stated that we often underestimate how much people are willing to pay. The presentation of the book is important. We should not look at price in isolation. There are other factors that influence the decision to buy a book.
5. Gain vital market information
Whether you're self-published or published by a traditional publishing house, authors need to get involved in media/marketing. Publishers have become more reliant on authors for this.
Wendy Toole, Chair of the SfEP, stressed the importance of editing.
She said that at least 2 of the following should be done before publishing:
1. Get a manuscript assessment/critique
2. Developmental/structural editing
3. Copy edting
4. Proofreading
She said that it's best to use SfEP members, and also recommended TLC's services. She said you could also use someone who has been personally recommended to you by another author whose books are well-edited.
It was also stated that it's best to get your manuscript into the best shape possible before sending to an editor as this will save time and expense.
***********
In Part II of this part of the series, I will tell you what the speakers said about cover design and font type, and also pass on some tips from an author who switched from traditional to self-publishing.
I'm going to split this into two separate blog posts because there was a lot of information given.
**********
Dr Alison Baverstock, Course Leader for MA Publishing at Kingston University, made the following points:
1. Take care
It's very easy to self-publish a manuscript and the sites that you upload to won't check the content, the quality of the product.
She warned that negative responses to books can hurt and be damaging for a writer.
2. Think about the objectives.
There are many different formats you can publish in. Consider the flexibility of formats.
3. Think of an e-book as a scroll.
A digital book is flowing text. A reader can change the font and font size, as well as line spacing.
She went on to say that there is no restriction on the length of an e-book. With e-books, she says there is a much more level playing field between indie and traditionally published books because no one can really tell who published it.
She says it's best to make e-books widely available.
4. You don't have to do it on your own.
There are various supports out there. Guides to formatting.
On Smashwords.com, for example, there is a free style guide.
She mentioned BookFlower a website where you can easily format your books on your own.
There was a demonstration of that website, and it does seem very easy to use to convert a document into an ePub.
Dr Baverstock also recommended the book Let's Get Digital: How To Self-Publish, And Why You Should, by David Gaughran.
She also recommended Jutoh.com
She gave a few tips for effective distribution:
The aim is to drive traffic to your book. Social media is useful. She recommends trying one thing at a time; changing one variable at a time to see what works and keep a record to learn from.
In regard to the question as to how much to charge for an e-book, she stated that we often underestimate how much people are willing to pay. The presentation of the book is important. We should not look at price in isolation. There are other factors that influence the decision to buy a book.
5. Gain vital market information
Whether you're self-published or published by a traditional publishing house, authors need to get involved in media/marketing. Publishers have become more reliant on authors for this.
Wendy Toole, Chair of the SfEP, stressed the importance of editing.
She said that at least 2 of the following should be done before publishing:
1. Get a manuscript assessment/critique
2. Developmental/structural editing
3. Copy edting
4. Proofreading
She said that it's best to use SfEP members, and also recommended TLC's services. She said you could also use someone who has been personally recommended to you by another author whose books are well-edited.
It was also stated that it's best to get your manuscript into the best shape possible before sending to an editor as this will save time and expense.
***********
In Part II of this part of the series, I will tell you what the speakers said about cover design and font type, and also pass on some tips from an author who switched from traditional to self-publishing.
