First of all, happy New Year!

We have all made New Year’s resolutions from time to time. This year I have only one: I promise to be better at updating this blog.

As part of this, I have decided to do a weekly roundup post of articles and podcasts which I feel will be useful to you. This week we have podcasts from The Creative Penn and Kobo Writing Life with some fantastic information on marketing, and articles with information on where the future leaders of the publishing industry think it might be heading, some useful information on phrases to avoid and how to write good dialogue, and a link to the Sunday Times short story competition sponsored by audible where you can win a first-prize of £30,000!

I want to especially mention the amazing members of the Twitter #writingcommunity, who helped my author profile @AHJohnstoneAuth to 1000 followers!

Podcasts

  • The Creative Penn | Lessons For 21st Century Creatives With Mark McGuinness;
    • On the current climate for creatives and makers
    • Having rules and boundaries around creative time and connected time
    • Different types of assets creatives have, including reputational assets
    • The importance of creating value with our work
    • Looking through ‘the other end of the telescope’ in order to serve the reader
    • The ‘ecosystem’ of a creative’s time and business
    • The importance of rest and taking time off from creative work and listening to your body
    • Swallowing the frog in any type of work
    • Opportunities available with audio
 
  • Kobo Writing Life | Ep 131 – Ricci Wolman
    • How to use Freebooksy and Bargainbooksy to reach more readers. As Ricci explains, they try to keep things streamlined to make securing a spot as painless and time-efficient as possible. Written Word has close to 1M readers across their sites.
    • Ad stacking as a marketing technique to increase your reach.
    • Their latest site, Reading Stacks, which focuses on the growing importance of audiobooks and makes recommendations for the best books to use your subscription credits on. Check it out at https://readingstacks.com/
    • The ever-growing importance of investing in advertising if you want to grow your book sales. As competition grows, the cost of advertising is growing, and Ricci predicts this will continue. She recommends having a diversified marketing strategy.
    • We’d highly recommend checking out WWM’s author blog, where they deliver tons of valuable information. Read their latest post, “Top Ten Publishing Trends Every Author Needs to Know in 2019,” for a stellar summary of industry updates.

Articles

But we can agree that TV is part of the culture, right?” Yap asks in response. “We’re all human. Whether you want to call it entertainment or art, we’re all contributing to the culture.”

“It’s a total homogenization of culture,” Chew says. “Streaming has changed everything. I hope they’re not comparable. I don’t think literature is entertainment.”

Videos