What happens when authors become cool online personalities

Not that YA author John Green (Paper Towns, Looking for Alaska) is a cool online personality only because he's trying to sell his books ... but look at what he got from his social network on his birthday -

And here was John's response:

If you can't be arsed to view the entire video, here's the most important thing John said:

People didn't make those songs or artwork or pictures and video clips in order to become famous or rich. They did it, to quote William Faulkner, "not for glory and least of all for profit but to create out of the materials of the human spirit something which did not exist before."

Mmmm. Human spirit.
He also said:

Every single day I get emails from aspiring writers asking my advice about how to become a writer. And here is the only advice I can give: Don't make stuff because you want to make money; it will never make you enough money. And don't make stuff because you wanna feel famous because you will never feel famous enough. Make GIFTS for people. And work hard on making those gifts so that people will notice the gift and like the gift. Maybe they will notice how hard you worked and maybe they won't. And if they don't, I know it's frustrating. But ultimately that doesn't matter because your responsibility is not to the people who notice but to the gift itself.

Wanna sell your book? Just go on Oprah!

If you feel for this guy, spare a thought for all the other authors out there.

If you can't see the video click here
(It's long by YouTube standards but this is your chance
to show you have an attention span longer than 4 minutes!)

Twitter vs Facebook - what's a children's writer to do?

Social Networking is dangerous territory for writers. Perhaps more so for novelists. All the writers I know seem to suffer addictive tendencies - coffee, tea, alcohol, pasta, Facebook ... the compulsion that drives us to write pushes us in other directions as well.

The writing is going slowly. So what do you do? Instead of forcing yourself to work a chapter out, you check your Facebook profile for comments. An hour later, you've watched eight YouTube videos and exchanged pleasantries with an ex-classmate who used to bully you in high school.

We have to do it, we tell ourselves. Times have changed. The author can no longer rest on his or her craft - to sell our work in this big bad techno world, we have to be actors, podcasters, bloggers, marketers, facebookers and now ... twitterers.

Techno-savvy agent Peter Cox, interviewed on the Tall Tales and Short Stories blog, talks about publishers expecting authors to have a "platform" -

Publishers talk about a platform. They say what has the author got as a platform? In other words can you attract publicity can you bring buyers with you? In the non-fiction area it might be diabetics or left-handed people or pilots ... is there a public out there who already recognises you who will buy your book?

That's why every Tom, Dick and JK in the book world has started up a blog (well, not JK - she doesn't have to blog). I know authors who don't blog who have been advised by their publishers to start one.

What fascinates me is that some of the very people who are urging authors to blog do not read blogs, much less blog themselves. They don't understand the care that goes into blogging, the time it takes to write a post, the time and emotional investment in building an audience.

At the recent London Book Fair, there was so much talk of Twitter amongst publishing people that I signed up to find out what it was all about. Here are my findings:

• It's like blogging. Except it's in 43 characters. I like that I can update my blog by embedding my Twitter feed at the top of the page. As a result, I blog less. But I've lost readers because not all my readers are on Twitter.
• It's like blogging. Except your followers are somewhat more anonymous because your micro-blog is in such a big alphabet soup, any comments are quickly drowned in other Tweets.
• People carry on conversations - but it feels a lot like eavesdropping ... and there's already enough noise in my home without eavesdropping on the conversations of strangers.
• It's like blogging because it's addicting.
• It's not like blogging because it's quick and you don't have to say much.
• As in blogging and facebook, the early adopters and more sophisticated Tweeters are based in the US. If you live in the UK, you lose out because of the time differential.

In the Tall Tales interview, Peter Cox also said:

There is a 97% BS factor involved and if all you do is listen to the latest things ... you've got to twitter, you've got to have a blog ... it can drive you mad ... You have to look at these things strategically and work out how is your time best spent.

My decision: I'm going to stay on Twitter and Tweet occasionally - to see where it's going to go. BUT I think it's more important to make the social networking that already works for you work better. That means giving my blog some TLC and creating websites that are forward- thinking and audience building - as in, audiences that I actually am engaged in ... not an anonymous mass.

And of course most important of all: I'm going to concentrate on writing my book and writing it well.

After all, what's the point of having a platform if you've got nothing to show for it?

Nicola Morgan's hilarious DIY video

Yes you can! Make your own promotional video that is - and you don't need a camera or video skills or sound equipment. All you need is a computer, wit and the text-to-movie website Xtranormal ... as Nicola Morgan (Deathwatch
) demonstrates on her blog, Need2bPublished:

If you can't see the video, watch it on YouTube

Further Education: be published, be seen and be sold.

I admit it. I'm becoming increasingly dependent on YouTube videos to keep my blog updated regularly.

But seriously, you guys, I am interested in your FURTHER EDUCATION. Especially you PUBLISHED writer guys, the ones who are no longer on the slushpile, the ones who have a book out, or a book about to come out, the ones who are still asking yourselves everyday, 'should I have a website?' 'should I blog?' 'should I do a video?' 'is it worth the time?'

My answer is ... AAAARGH. Some people don't deserve their success.

Anyway, here is John Green (again!) showing you guys how to keep faith with your young audience:

If you can't see this, view it on YouTube

Moral of the blog post: if you're about to be published, be seen by your audience and your book will be sold. You can't procrastinate over marketing your book (unlike when you're writing it).

Maureen Johnson manages to be funny in a serious book video

MJ is one of the funniest YA bloggers around and here's her new video!

It looks  like the Scholastic had this serious video made and Maureen got hold of it before the release.

If you can't see it, watch it on YouTube.

Performing authors and Fiona's video

My friend Fiona Dunbar's new book Tiger-Lily Gold has just come out and to celebrate she made this video (I helped!)

Meanwhile, Nicola Morgan (Deathwatch) is aiming for a world record in school visits.

Anthony Horowitz (The Power of Five: Necropolis) is appearing in a virtual event targetting nine thousand children in 216 schools.

And big name authors are guaranteed roles at a proliferation of children's book festivals to draw the crowds.

The Book Brunch children's column wonders "how much the life of a children’s author has become about personal contact with children as well as contact through books ..."

 Have we lost anything since the days when we only knew writers and illustrators through their books? When we weren’t necessarily sure what sex E B White, E Nesbitt, P L Travers, and L M Montgomery were, let alone what they looked like? (Though A A Milne and C S Lewis and J R R Tolkien had got famous enough for us to know.) Was there something to be said for imagining an author through his or her work? P L Travers looked liked Mary Poppins in my head.

Is the standard of performance getting too high for authors who are "merely" good at writing? So it is not enough to write a gripping tale: you also have to be Eoin Colfer in front of an audience. Or do these showmen do the whole profession the favour of giving it glamour, and making kids want to be in it, as they want to be other kinds of celebrities? Read more

Should we resist the demands of our ever-more-swiftly spinning world? Should we insist that writers be allowed to do only that, write?

I recently acquired a Flip Mino - one of those easy peasy pocket camcorders.

I figure the Flip would make it easier for me to build up some useful footage for a future marketing campaign.

There is never a better time to surrender to the inevitable than now.

Happy Random Things

So today, I had the choice of blogging about something really serious, heavy and mind blowing about the publishing industry or just chilling and sharing two really random but nice things I read online. Guess which one I chose.

First really nice thing: Nathan Bransford, the uber-blogging agent in New York (I think. You think Nathan's in NY?) - one of the 1376 commenters on his blog the other day pointed out that the world of publishing is turning into mush was no reason to be negative. So he's been positive all week. Which made me feel really positive too. Let me share the last two very positive itemsfrom his positive blog post Ten Commandments for the Happy Writer:

9. Be thankful for what you have. If you have the time to write you're doing pretty well. There are millions of starving people around the world, and they're not writing because they're starving. If you're writing: you're doing just fine. Appreciate it.

10. Keep writing. Didn't find an agent? Keep writing. Book didn't sell? Keep writing. Book sold? Keep writing. OMG an asteroid is going to crash into Earth and enshroud the planet in ten feet of ash? Keep writing. People will need something to read in the resulting permanent winter

Second really nice thing: I was just browsing through the vlog (VIDEO blog - how many times do I have to explain this?)of the brothers Hank and John Green - John being the award winning YA author - when I came upon a 2007 item called "How Nerdfighters Drop Insults". What's so cool about John is in most of his posts he manages to (A) Tell kids it's okay to be nerdy (B)Make literary references that might get kids interested in reading. In this video, he quotes Shakespeare:

Oh how can we measure up to John Green?

So, if you are an author/soon-to-be author worried about the fact that authors now have to be not only writers but speakers, entertainers, web designers, educators, video editors, voice talents, marketers, etc etc etc and etc ... look away now because this is John Green's latest vlog (as in video blog) and it's relevant, funny, intelligent, touching (and he even manages to quote some ee cummings) and oh how are we to measure up?

If you can't see the video, view it here.

Do websites and book trailers sell books?

Yesterday on Facebook, I launched my new wheeze - web mentoring workshops.

I've been trying out all the different website-creating tools that have emerged online since the advent of Web 2.0 ... and have come to the conclusion that like the dinosaurs, I as a web designer, have finally become extinct.

It's not that people don't need websites anymore, it's just that if you are a small business, a self employed individual or small organisation like most of my clientele it doesn't make sense to shell out a thousand quid for:

• A website that you don't have the skills to maintain and update.
  

• A website that will become obsolete from Day One. Read about it in the Trouble with Websites
  


• A website that you can't afford to constantly be contacting your web designer for support and advice (unless of course, you marry one, which is what my husband did).


• Something you have no idea what to do with. A website is only a tool. Once it's up there you've got to use it. That's something a lot of people who already have websites really ought to understand.
  

Anyway, I am hoping that a lot of authors will agree with my reasoning and sign up for my workshops. I like authors. I really believe that authors can do a lot more for themselves online.

Interestingly, the New York Times yesterday came up with an essay on whether websites sold books:

A survey released last June by the Codex Group, a research firm that monitors trends in book buying, found that 8 percent of book shoppers had visited author Web sites in a given week. It didn’t, however, say how many clicked on the “buy the book” link. Read it all

With publishers continuing to set new lows for book marketing budgets, the beleaguered author really has no choice but to face up his/her e-fears and engage with the internet. This has prompted the rise of a mini industry ...

Still, a sizable industry has sprung up around persuading them to do so. AuthorBytes, a multimedia company started in 2003, has built sites for more than 200 clients, including Paul Krugman, Chris Bohjalian and Khaled Hosseini. They cost from $3,500 to $35,000 — with writers paying about 85 percent of the time. The staff of 20 even includes three employees whose entire job is updating.

I love the Authorbytes websites. If and when my famous writer friends are ever granted lots of marketing spend, I will urge them to go get an Authorbyte site!

If and when.

Otherwise, I suppose they will just have to settle for cheap old me.

My first workshop is on 3 March 2009 in North London.

YouTube Bit Me! (But I Deserved It)

I've gotten away with it so far but now, technology is catching up with me.

I got the following email from YouTube today:

Dear Candy Gourlay,

Your video, Why Writers Need Agents, may have content that is owned or licensed by WMG.

No action is required on your part; however, if you're interested in learning how this affects your video, please visit the Content ID Matches section of your account for more information.

Sincerely,

- The YouTube Team

Readers of Notes from the Slushpile will have seen this film I made with the kids on my street, to a soundtrack that included some blues guitar from Ry Cooder. I was rather spooked by the statement 'no action is required on your part' so I went straight to the video and had a look.

YouTube had solved the copyright violation problem by turning off the sound of my video. Next to the video a button appeared, offering to "Swap Audio". Thinking that some audio was better than none, I clicked the button and followed the wizards. Now the video now boasts a totally mismatched bit royalty- free blues soundtrack.

I was totally guilty as accused of course. I knew what I was doing. I'd even read the YouTube notices.

• It doesn't matter how long or short the clip is, or exactly how it got to YouTube. If you taped it off cable, videotaped your TV screen, or downloaded it from another website, it is still copyrighted, and requires the copyright owner's permission to distribute.
• It doesn't matter whether or not you give credit to the owner/author/songwriter—it is still copyrighted.
• It doesn't matter that you are not selling the video for money—it is still copyrighted.
• It doesn't matter whether or not the video contains a copyright notice—it is still copyrighted.
• It doesn't matter whether other similar videos appear on our site—it is still copyrighted.
• It doesn't matter if you created a video made of short clips of copyrighted content—even though you edited it together, the content is still copyrighted.

But of course I thought to myself, surely, in the vast scheme of YouTube video-dom, my itty bitty film was not going to attract any attention?

Not that I was unwilling to pay some kind of license to use lovely music for my little videos. But how?

I bought a book called Podcast Solutions:The Complete Guide to Audio & Video Podcasting 2nd Edition (I like reading manuals). The chapter on using music in podcasts opens thus:

Welcome to the minefield.

Apparently using music is not just a matter of one payment. You have to pay the writer of the song (composer's rights are handled by ASCAP, BMI and SESAC), the performer (record labels), and the owner of the master recording (or mechanical rights handled by the Harry Fox Agency). That's a lot of people to pay for a bit of fun.

The podcast book says:

Your best bet is to find music anywhere else but in your CD collection, unless of course your CD collection is made up only of independent artists who would be willing to grant you all rights to use their music ...

YouTube has not quite taken things to the level of the fingerprinting technology that MySpace uses to police its pages. But it's getting there. And giant media owners like Viacom spend zillions paying people to scour YouTube 24/7 for violations of their copyright.

I once was involved in the making of a radio programme for Radio 4. We were discussing adding some background music. I wanted to use some obscure Filipino pop music and asked my producer if there would be any copyright problem doing so. "Oh no," she said. "The BBC pays some kind of license that covers all that."

How I wish YouTube would charge us users "some kind of license that would cover all that". I would gladly pay.

The point really of talking about videos in this blog about children's books is that we are in the midst of a massive digital revolution in which conventional notions of copyright and royalty demand redefinition. The music and film industry have been struggling to define the terms of this new relationship that people (like me) have with media.

We are no longer just consumers, we want to become creators too.

What lies ahead for the book industry, late as usual, inching its way into the digital world?

Book Trailers on My Mind

I've been giving book trailers some thought recently. I've just realised that I have two rather talented brothers in the film-making business (one does animation the other is a corporate film maker) ... I wonder if they would do a skills exchange and make me some videos?

While thinking, I was scanning the web of course and discovered that someone has already put up a book trailer website! BookScreening.com goes by the catchline 'Know what to read next'. Check out this rather fabulous video for Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book, voiced by the author:

The Graveyard Book Trailer Narrated by Neil Gaiman from The Graveyard Book Tour on Vimeo.

While you're browsing the site, here's a geeky thing to notice - the videos from the video-sharing site Vimeo are much better quality than YouTube.

New Technology's Eternal Problems

Thanks to Jane Friedman of the There Are No Rules blog for this.

And so it goes.


If you can't see video, click here

Meg Cabot's World Tour

Meg Cabot has left the UK (Chicklish is running a Meg Cabot week featuring interviews they blagged while Meg was here).

I still think it's unfair that nobody told me she was coming.

Moving on, Meg is now in South Africa.

Meg Cabot at Exclusive Books Capetown. Photo by Nicky Schmidt

Lucky for you, Notes from the Slushpile had spies carefully embedded at Exclusive Books in Capetown where Meg made an appearance.

Nicky Schmidt — aka Atyllah (a chicken from outer space ... but that's another loooong story)— packs her report with some cogent thoughts about authors and marketing.

Noting Meg's powerful online presence, Nicky writes:

I’m amazed at how much of the marketing is electronic – almost the whole customer relationship management side of her marketing is done via the internet – aside from the book tours and books signings. But the key marketing focus, it strikes me, aside from having a decent product, is customer relationship management. It’s interesting that in an increasingly competitive market authors are having to focus less on their product and far more on customer relationships in order to up and sustain sales figures. It’s no longer solely about how good the book is, but it’s also about how accessible you are to your market and how you woo them. That gives authors two full time jobs rolled into one – writer/entertainer and marketer.

Read Nicky's full report here - it's mandatory reading for anyone who is working on their strategy to dominate the world ... er, market their books.

Shoo Rayner's Drawing School

Okay, I'm trying to be a good author and ignore all distractions.

However Shoo Rayner is evil and has started a drawing school over on his website. I can't resist watching illustrators draw so now Shoo's new page has seriously set back my plans for world domination.

Here's Shoo teaching us how to draw his archetypal character, the Ginger Ninja.

My Friends Are Dragging Me Kicking and Screaming Into Facebook

So you see, though I've got a page on MySpace and a page on Facebook and a page on Bebo and a page on YouTube, and a page on Ning (bet you haven't heard of Ning) I was only doing the social networking lark as RESEARCH.

Honest!

My main photo-sharing thingy is Multiply, which a lot of people haven't heard of and that's because it mainly populated by my family and friends in the Philippines and frankly, I was happy to keep it that way.

The main thing I've learned from social networking is that the "social" is just as important as the "network". You can network meaninglessly with as many people you don't know as you want on MySpace, on the off chance that someday you will need to tell all these strangers that you've published your book. But there's nothing like a network that actually interacts with you - it takes years of blogging to get more than four comments (unless you join the Nude Blogging Movement, and then you get an instant fan base).

Or not.

I find Multiply the most rewarding because it's where my "social" is ... I only have to put one silly photo up of my husband and within seconds I have 27 pithy comments from my best friend in Washington and 27 comments from my brothers and sisters in Manila (there are many of us), discussing in detail every aspect of my husband's nose, ears, hair, etc.

It's very rewarding (unless you're my husband).

Anyway, my Facebook contacts may have already noticed that I have increased activity on Facebook. This is because my Multiply friends are slowly moving to Facebook. So now I have to go on Facebook to leave insults on their albums. Boo!

Meanwhile, one of my fave YA authors John Green (Abundance of Katherines) posted this fab link imagining HAMLET's newsfeed on Facebook!

This brilliant cartoon by Nick Anderson of the Houston Chronicle

AND here's an image of VP hopeful Sarah Palin that I took off the facebook page of Maureen Johnson (Suite Scarlet, 13 Little Blue Envelopes). Yup that's a bear. And yup, that's a giant crab. It really focuses the mind on the coming US elections.


THESE are the things that make all that wasted time on Facebook seem worthwhile.

What's In a Website?

a quick note: friends, please visit my Volcano Child blog (yes, yes, I know, obsessive compulsive me etc etc) - help me make a good impression with ahem! The Powers That Be ...

There is a bit of a discussion at the British SCBWI message board about author websites.

Do you need one?

Where do you start?

Can you cope?

When I first started trying to get published, I set up my homepage CandyGourlay.com. It was 2001, and I was only just beginning to get to grips with code. Blogs were not yet in flavour nor were connection speeds terribly good and Web 2.0 was a twinkle in someone's eye. So my website was really, just a leaflet about me, an online CV.

I started up this blog in 2004 after emerging from SCBWI's conference in Madrid with piles of notes and nowhere to publish them. At the time, I thought I would use my journalistic skills and dash off feature length reports on the writing events I attended.

Well, the blog evolved and developed a voice of its own, it's funnier now, more personal, more frequently updated. It probably helps that I've also acquired the skills and tools to work faster online.

Then the world started to spin a little bit faster. Publishing was changing before our very eyes. Technology was changing. Children were changing.


I heard Scott Westerfeld (Uglies) give the keynote at the SCBWI conference in Bologna in 2005 and I was struck at how with-it he was about technology, about his fans and visiting his website, I realised that his blog had engendered a kind of connectedness with his readership that other authors would do well to emulate.

I wrote a piece on why competition from the internet meant authors needed to become more web savvy.

Then I decided to take my own advice and began to blog about my manuscript in progress. I saw my blog VolcanoChild.co.uk not as a leaflet about my book but more like a behind the scenes magazine. I wanted it to evolve as my book evolved.

Knowing that I was still some way towards sellling the manuscript, I could take my time, blogging on themes that run through the novel, such as: Children who Work, Mothers who Have to Leave, Real Witches and Living with Calamity. (Pictured right is a child circus performer in Shanghai).

Instead of building a website from scratch, I used Blogger, changed the template using my Photoshop and coding skills, and used Blogger's powerful tagging tool which put posts of a similar theme together on one page.

The ultimate objective of a blog is to create a conversation between the writer and the reader. However, I also saw the website as an easy way to build a website of substance to support my book - if ever and whenever it gets taken on by a publisher ... a bit like the online production diary that director Peter Jackson kept while making King Kong. The website gets noticed now and then, but ultimately, I am building up a strong archive for the IF and WHEN.

I have started another blog on a theme that I intend to explore in a future novel about climate change, I haven't been blogging extensively because I don't want to fill it with off-the-cuff stuff but with pieces that will someday be the beef to my future novel's bone.


Last year, i kept a comic blog on the building of my writing shed.


Blogs are not just diaries - they are conversations with the outside world, extended essays, online magazines on themes that you would never find on a newstand!

We have at our fingertips these powerful tools to support our craft - and they're FREE.

Here are three bits of unsolicited advice to those who still resist the onward march of the internet:

1) Computers don't explode when you get something wrong.

2) Any mistakes can be undone by pressing Control-Z (for PCs) . You can restore the deletion by pressing Control-Y

3) If your blog looks like crap, delete it and try again.

Here's a New Idea: Sell Shares in Your Novel

I had never heard of the author Tao Lin before but he has managed to paste himself onto my radar screen and I might just buy one of his books as a result.

Tao Lin Eeeee Eee Eeeeeis offering shares in his second novel-in-progress.

Investors can pay $2,000 (£1,000) in return for a 10 per cent share of the royalties of Tao Lin’s as-yet-unfinished second novel.

The Freakonomics blog dubbed Tao Lin a "rogue author" but sounded pretty positive about the idea:

Not only will the scheme defray his financial risk if the book does poorly, but Lin hopes that shareholders will promote his book out of self-interest.

In fact, when I checked Tao Lin's blog, there was only one share left and a waiting list!

The header on Tao Lin's blog (interestingly titled 'Reader of Depressing Books') links directly to his Wikipedia entry which informs us that he has been publishing poetry collections and e-books since 2006, several of which have titles all in lower case like this emotion was a little e-book and you are a little bit happier than i am.

Why would you want to buy shares? Tao Lin writes:

People who buy shares will also have more meaning in life if they already like and promote my writing, because they can promote my writing and also be making money for themselves, which can be exchanged for "goods" in concrete reality; therefore existential despair due to "having to do what you normally wouldn't be doing if you had a lot of money" can be relieved to some extent. Also it will be "funny" and "interesting" "for everyone" probably if people buy shares. You can call yourself a "producer" of my second novel if you want to do that. This is like a grant or something except it's like the stock market or something. You will be a stockholder in "Tao Lin's Second Novel's U.S. Royalties Corporation." "As people resell their shares the price of each share will go up or down, you will see this conveyed on MSNBC as a number going by on the bottom of the TV screen."

Tao Lin assures the reader that he can be trusted, citing his ebay rating and promising to buy back shares from anyone who is not satisfied - AND that suicide is unlikely, at least for the next five to ten years so investors should be confident he is serious about making his novel work.

I "can be trusted," look at my eBay rating. I will create contracts and have them notarized. You can have my phone number, address, etc., I promise I will not kill myself within 5-10 years. Really I don't think "trust" is an issue, I feel like people can trust me.

When Reality Suffers in Translation, Try Fantasy

Sweating profusely in the tube the other day, I reached for a copy of the Metro freesheet to use as a fan. An interview with poet Bernardine Evaristo caught my eye. Her debut prose novel Blonde Roots has only just come out. Bernardine uses reversal similar to that employed by my hero Malorie Blackman in Noughts and Crosses. Says Bernardine:

I wanted people to look at the slave trade differently and the reversal was the vehicle for me to do that ... I wondered whether if I turned the slave/master roles around, people would have a different response to the issues ... Read the interview here

The white heroine is a farm girl taken away to be a slave in 'Aphrika'. The cover is very striking and it would be interesting to see how Evaristo builds her world. The Noughts and Crosses franchise is on its fourth book - Double Cross is out in November.

My fascination is partly out of self-interest - last year I started a novel based around some reporting I'd done on children left behind by the migration phenomenon in the Philippines.

The writing was bogged down by the weight and complexity of the reality I was trying to paint and I found myself turning to fantasy. The result was Ugly City, a 9+ novel about a city where parents have to leave and children stay behind.

If you had asked me a year ago if I would ever write a fantasy, I would have said of course not (I haven't even read Lord of the Rings, shock, horror!). But fantasy lends itself to turning unpalatable truths into roaring drama and with the layers pared away, I gained a lot of insight into the immigration situation I was trying to reflect on.

***

My friend Elizabeth emailed me this Rant-Not-To-Be-Missed by Mark Hurst over at the Good Experience blog. Here are the first two bullet points about "how most - not all - publishers work":

• They're not doing it for the love of books. Publishers want something that sells. Similarly, bookstores want something that sells. Publishers and bookstores want a book that sells early, sells often, and sells for a long, long time. If they don't think your book will sell, they won't pay much attention.

• Conversely, if your book will sell, it doesn't matter what you're writing about. You could write something boring, or irrelevant, or nothing at all - just a blank set of pages with a coffee stain on them will work fine, if the book sells. Do you get the picture? It's not about any high-minded ideals of literature, or craft, or changing the world - publishers and bookstores want something that sells. Drop any illusions about spending time with book lovers; this is business.

Read Secrets of Book Publishing I Wish I'd Known

For the record, I am told that it is not really that bad ... but not far off.

***

Being a rabid member of SCBWI, I'd just like to take this opportunity to point out to members that SCBWI's annual summer conference is now ongoing in Los Angeles. If you want to follow events, Alice Pope, editor of the Children's Writer's and Illustrator's Market, is blogging extensively about it. Thanks, Alice!

***

I met Mark Robson, uber prolific author of YA fantasy series like Imperial Spy and Dragon Orb, when I appeared before the Scattered Authors Society to tell them the Internet doesn't bite.

Mark was one of the authors who didn't really need my advice, since he already had an excellent website, blogged regularly and spent a lot of time meeting readers at bookstore events. He emailed me today to let me know he'd invested in a game on his website and do I know any youngsters who would like to check it out.

Youngsters (and Oldsters if you so feel the need)! Go slay some dragons! Here's the link to Mark's game page, see how you do.

How to Write

My neighbour, Hugo (age 9), often sits at the other end of my office, writing. He is capable of producing one of his graphic novels in the time it takes me to compose a sentence. It's wonderful to meet young kids with a passion for writing and for storytelling. I just had to get Hugo on film explaining the craft of writing. Listen and learn!