Showing posts with label expansion plans. Show all posts

Have you heard about Authonomy?

It's a site created by the editors at Harper Collins (home of Avon, doncha know) . And it's purpose is to find new books and authors.

authonomy invites unpublished and self published authors to post their manuscripts for visitors to read online. Authors create their own personal page on the site to host their project - and must make at least 10,000 words available for the public to read.

Visitors to authonomy can comment on these submissions – and can personally recommend their favourites to the community. authonomy counts the number of recommendations each book receives, and uses it to rank the books on the site. It also spots which visitors consistently recommend the best books – and uses that info to rank the most influential trend spotters.

We hope the authonomy community will guide publishers straight to the freshest writing talent – and will give passionate and thoughtful readers a real chance to influence what’s on our shelves.

By the way, it doesn't cost anything to do this--just your willingness to create an online profile and post 10K words of your novel. Would be a great opportunity to circumvent the slush pile!

Publisher's Weekly has a great article from December 8th about the need for more books geared towards the black teen/YA market.

Publishers have noted that black teens will read if they have something that interests them, and that black teens have money and like to buy stuff. (Kinda like how they discovered 20 or so years ago that black adults read and will buy books if there's content they like.) But there's some good info in the article that's worth a look. Some highlights:

Wilson notes that series revolving around high school drama do well, compared to stand-alone titles. She cites the success of Scholastic's Bluford High and Dafina's Drama High series as evidence. Dafina began its young adult publishing program with the Drama High series by L. Divine and has since signed the author to a 14-book deal, with plans to publish her until 2011. Dafina is also looking to start a multicultural YA imprint.

Pocket Books ... decided to enter the teen inspiration market after noticing that the genre was underserved. The Simon & Schuster imprint reached out to its authors who write inspirational novels for adults—ReShonda Tate Billingsley, Jacquelin Thomas and Victoria Christopher Murray—to invite them to write for a younger audience.

Scholastic and Kimani Tru are also markets for YA books. Series centered around high school seems to be the most popular, though they all say they're looking for new diverse voices and a variety of settings, even historical.

If this year you're a black author looking to diversify your writing portfolio, you may want to think about the black YA market. And if you have a child in that age range, it probably wouldn't be a bad idea to try being co-authors. You can build your relationship with your children and make money at the same time. Sounds like a win-win to me.

Happy New Year, everyone!

I'm not going to bore you with resolutions that I'll a) forget about or b)blow off. To me, this is the perfect time to look back on what I've done and make plans for the coming year, kinda sorta how businesses do at the end of their fiscal year.

Authors are worried, feeling like they're being laid seige to with lines and houses closing and consolidating, e-piracy, used book sales, and mean girl reviewers. Oh, and the economy. Now I could easily sink into the mire and wail and gnash my teeth, but I'm not going to. Why? 'Cause I can't control that crap. It's too easy to focus on the negative and get all Eeyore on life. But Goddess, doesn't that just make y'all tired?

Publishers are not going to stop buying books. That's how they make money, by buying manuscripts and putting them out there for the reading public to purchase. Maybe they won't buy as many as they normally would, but when you have folks ponying up 6- and 7-figure deals, you realize publishing as we know it will still continue for a while at least.

Case in point: I found this blog today which I heartily recommend you adding to your daily or weekly industry reading. (And if you as an author aren't doing any industry reading, please navigate to another webage now.) Mr. Rinzler's December 31st post was all about two major deals he was outbid on, and why writers should keep writing:

Those of us in the book business are both the beneficiaries and victims of an authentic passion. Editors literally fall in love with books, authors, ideas. It’s our job. I’m always prowling, scouring the print media and internet, stalking writers and creative thinkers at parties and conferences.

I still wake up every morning with acquisition anxiety. If I don’t sign, I don’t thrive.

Mr. Rinzler takes a long view on the publishing industry. The publishing world is changing and it's an overdue change. As the old saying goes, "Adapt, or die."

Which brings me to my goals for 2009. I have three titles on tap for this year, all shorts. The first is in the Coming Together anthology that will be out in a couple of weeks. It's a erotic scifi romance short that I think you'll enjoy, and the proceeds go to a good cause, Amnesty International. Then I'll have Carnivale Diabolique, an urban fantasy romance about a travelling carnival that protects us regular folks from the big bads that go bump in the night. That will be late spring. And of course, I'll be in the next White Boyz installment coming in April.

I'm sure some folks have noticed my swerve into paranormal romance and are either alarmed or encouraged or just curious about it. So I'll come clean. I've been a fantasy/sci-fi/paranormal reader since I started reading. Fairy tales fsacinated me, then comics, then fantasy. Some of my favorite books are books I read as a kid: A Wrinkle in Time, The Left Hand of Darkness,Asimov's Foundation series, everything by Anne McCaffrey. The Death Gate Cycle by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman is one of my all-ime favorite series. Honestly, the first novel that I tried to write happened when I was 12 and was about three sisters who were protectors of a mystical land--while trying to navigate school: The Seneschals of Kirin. Where my 12 year-old self picked up the world seneschal, I have no idea. Now I'm wondering if I still have those pages in my old notebooks.

But yes, I love fantasy and paranormal. It's what I read first. If there's romance in it, it's a bonus, not a requirement for me. So this year, I'm writing an urban fantasy. It's a story idea I've been kicking around for a while, and I'm finally knuckling down and doing it. I've gotten some good feedback on it so far, and I'm hoping to make it my first New York sale. The story allows me to indulge in some of my faves: Egyptology, African gods and goddesses, History International. And I'm having a good time with it, which I think is the important thing.

Does that mean that I'm abandoning romance? No. It means I'm expanding my portfolio, my market. My goal is to be a career novelist, which means at some point having the income from being a writer outpace the expenses of being a writer. And as a writer, we have to push oursleves, and grow. Some venture into romantic suspense. Some try their hand at erotica. But the bottom line is the bottom line. So I'm going to adapt. Because the alternative isn't something I'm considering.