E-book diary (4)

The completed manuscript of Max has gone off to Justin, who will be formatting it for ebook status. I emailed him an ordinary Word Document and he is able to work with this.

It's worth mentioning here that I sent it to him with every spacing between chapters and 'new' sections scrutinised for uniformity. Ditto for intalicised sections and font sizes. It is amazing how many errors I found and it took me all day to get it right. Having said that it will be so annoying if I find any errors in the text that I've missed - but even with professional editing this can happen - one seriously bad editor changed my 'chaise longue' to chaise lounger!!

E-book mistake for prachett

E-book Fopa for Pratchett’s ‘Snuff’

All our woes about e-books confirmed about the lack of editing and proofreading in many of the self-published e-books diluting the quality of literature, by a very unexpected source.

Amazon managed to release and sell the un-proofread version of Terry Pratchett’s latest book, ‘Snuff’, in e-book form.

Amazon, has now corrected the mistake, and is selling the correct version. But who would have thought that ‘Team Pratchett’ and Amazon, both established and well-greased wheels could make a mistake of mammoth portions? And what does it say about the quality of the e-book industry?

Pratchett's E-book Fopa!

I personally think that e-book have a future and can make a positive impact on publishing industry as an addition to traditional methods. However, this does not install much confidence, how do us as writers ensure the quality of our books? Are we expected to be writer, editor, proof editor as well? If so I may as well put down my pen and keyboard!

My main question is where do we go from here? Quality controlling the amount of new e-book being published would be impossible so what else is there? Maybe a new form of book review, a critic that reviews e-books, taking into account quality of story, editing and bonus features? Will Book reviewing, or should become like a DVD reviewing? Film critics that reviews DVD’s, have to do this in a very different way to reviewing the film itself, obviously that’s part of it, but they also review the bonus and special features. Is this the way forward for e-book quality assurance?

Congratulations Sally and Jo!!!!

WOW!!!!!

Sally and Jo have both been longlisted for the SCBWI Undiscovered Voices 2012! 

Please join me in giving a rather large and loud round of applause to them both and read all about the competition here: 

http://undiscoveredvoices.com/index.php

Well done ladies - we eagerly await news of the 12 winners in 7 (will Sally and Jo have any fingernails left by then?) weeks. 

Gabby

Competitions!

Well, who knew that Twitter was so useful? Following publishers and writers means that you get to find out about all sorts of competitions, like this one:

http://www.wordswithjam.co.uk/#/comp-corner-cornerstones/4544902483 (incidentally this looks like a really good ezine too, although somewhat difficult to navigate and read from on my teeny, tiny notebook)

And I follow this blog - http://helpineedapublisher.blogspot.com/ - and she is running a synopsis critique competition which would be very useful if yours got used.

Gabby

Guardian Blog Ref; E-Books

Hi Folks,

With the whole debate over e-books, and of course Mary's venture in to the realm, I thought that this link may be of interest. It’s a blog by Jonathan Jones, form the Guardian, about the positive impact of e-book on the world of literature.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/2011/oct/10/ebooks-ereaders-books-kindle


Ta

Sally

E-book (2)

This week I have been editing, and editing and editing. This is because I am preparing 'Max MacCauley'for a review, and of course, it must be presented in the best way possible. One of the things I emphasised in my text book, A Seriously Useful Author's Guide, was to ensure that although it looked perfect on-screen, the printed out version told another story. I printed out on Friday, thinking there was very little to do, and got a huge shock. It was rubbish!! So I have become boggle-eyed reading and re-reading.

One of the dithers I have is whether or not to use the 'Oxford' comma or not. Modern thinking says not, but it's still 'my way' to use it. However, not using it on screen works well, but it doesn't look right (to me) on paper.

I think I had better leave it, send it to my reviewer, and go over it again before I send it to the technician who will do the formatting for the e-book.

SCBWI Agents Party

Hi folks, Nicki and I went to a SCBWI (Society of Childrens Book Writers and Illustrators) Agents evening last Thursday evening. It was in a pub in the tropical heat in our great capital. The place was heaving with folk much like us all, desperate aspiring writers wanting meat, and by meat I mean agent of course. The folks at SCBWI had lined up a panel of agents who all answered pre-prepared questions, plus more questions from the floor.

On the whole the evening was positive, the agents are all open to submission (mostly kids or YA I think) and are actively looking to sign new talent. What I should be doing now is summarising what everyone said, but as this has already been done by Addy, Candy and Terri on the Notes form the Slushpile blog, it seems silly to repeat – so check out their blog see link.

http://notesfromtheslushpile.blogspot.com/2011/10/scbwi-agents-party-what-agents-want.html?utm_source=BP_recent

The main points that I took away from the evening is this…

·         Web-presents – all the agents said it is advisable to have web-presents whereas other sate that they expect it. The general consensus was that authors should be promoting themselves and jobbing authors should be spending 20% of their time on the web, twittering, blogging and Facebooking! How terrifying how long it will be before we all need to be web-designers and engineering our own e-book features! On a more serious note it was said by several of the panel that they are more likely to sign a writer who is promoting themselves on line.

·         Myth - Most if not all of the agents on the panel do the first read of any submissions that land on their desks, how that for a myth breaker. They all said what they are looking for is a great story and even greater writing.

·         Submissions - Make sure you send what the individual agency want. This seems to be key, don’t annoy them by sending the wrong things in your submission, check out the submission polices on there web-sites first.

·         Agents are approachable! -  Who would have thought? After the baring the tropical heat, the probing questions, and a raffle, raffling off their services in the way of ‘one to ones’ with budding authors and illustrators, many of them stuck around and mingled, rather than bolt for the door.  I always thought that these agents would be like Al Pacino in ‘The devil Advocate’, but the ones I spoke to seemed very nice. I spoke to two, who both gave me their cards – and I or course thrust my business cards and piles of pages of submissions into their arms!

·         Clothes - Ware weather appropriate clothes, I almost passed out with heat exhaustion!

So how was it for me? Well I won one of the raffled ‘One-to-Ones’! with the lovely Claire from Rogers, Coleridge & White. Claire who looks like a younger Natile Portman, reviewed my picture book ‘How to Catch a Kangeroo’. Her comments were mostly what I know, but still useful, re-write in non-rhyming, and work on the story arch, but she seems to be happy to look at TME too. So all in all I think that’s a plus. However despite working for the last few weeks on my elevator pitch, we had a pitch working evening with the Abingdon Writers Children’s Sub-group (we need an acronym for that – suggestions anyone?) and practicing it walking around the house and on my way to anf from school every day, I fluffed it up. When I met an agent’s assistant who loves fairy tales, and YA, I couldn’t even talk! So I gave her my prompt card to read, I knew I should have got my pitch printed on a t-shirt!  So there goes, no matter how well prepared you are, you can still muck it up!