If you are not writing, there is no point in knowing what is happening to publishing...

I am hankering for more writing time. It's easy to get sucked in to spending all one's time monitoring the changes occurring in the publishing industry. Can authors earn enough to pursue their writing if book prices decrease? Will Amazon swallow us all? Will e-books take over the world? How can I successfully create a buzz around my new book? All of this will be moot if I don't actually get off my proverbial and write new material. It's no good having a brand if there ain't no product. I have a few events coming up. I'm chairing a discussion at an all day workshop on E-books on Saturday April 28th (see details here) which will be filled with fabulous advice and information. Several of my publishers are conspiring over an 'evening with me' event for May 9th (details on this soon). There will be some interesting prizes on the night - schools especially might want to consider coming to this one. But more than anything I want to spend more time writing. My soul craves it. I have been reading a short story collection (Pretty Monsters) by Kelly Link and feeling both mighty awed by her skill and also inspired by it. In the meantime while I run away and get on with some actual writery stuff, go check out these interesting links. In the writers doing it for themselves corner we have this, (self pubbed author sought by well known agent) and this (a different approach to marketing your books - thank you to this blog for that last link) and in the red  corner, in defence of the other guys, there is this (commercial publishing still has a lot to offer?). I'm just saying no matter how things go I will still be writing. If the bottom falls out, the earth opens up, a flood wipes the earth and all its publishing clean, I still need to go and write some more. Of course I will probably stop long enough to go watch this because there are a lot of smart, witty, handsome people in it. Of course if Daniel Craig was in it, it would be perfect.