Keep being the kind of writer you want to be...

Borders on Queen Street in Auckland City is gasping its last. My daughter and I had a little time to kill before going to see Tintin at the movies on my birthday on Boxing Day so we wandered in and took a look. I stared at the children's novel by someone I know marked down to $2.00 a copy. I felt relief that only one of my books was in the sale and the price wasn't too hideously low. Then I went and bought a YA novel by another NZ author marked down to half price. I am a lowly paid author and a reader too and I guess I'm not apologising for buying a book at reduced prices. I can't and wouldn't stop folk buying my books at reduced prices. I would be a fool to think this might never happen to my books, and there always remains the chance that I find a new fan this way. When I can, I buy books from my local booksellers. Sometimes I buy from Amazon for my kindle or from Mighty Ape (they offered me a discount for my birthday and they had one of the books I couldn't find elsewhere - it was a no-brainer), today I downloaded a free e-book off Amazon which I didn't feel too bad about - I think Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and his estate have done well out of me over the years, and done exceedingly will in general. I try to spread the love around, and sometimes I am the recipient.

The Boxing Day Sales in general saw a positive increase in spending - a good day for retailers. But I couldn't help thinking how tight their margins might have been to lure customers in. Once all their bills are paid I hope they have enough to keep going. As has been said recently in the blogo-sphere (e.g. via Beattie's Blog) bookshops (and other retailers) can survive if they are smart/innovative about how they sell books (and other products) compared with the Amazons of this world. I'm rooting for them. Amazon has its place but it doesn't do everything a customer might want.

What can you do? Keep being the kind of writer you want to be. If your manuscript is rejected, it didn't fit with the publisher's programme or didn't quite make it through every hoop they needed it to jump through. If your book tanks, is remaindered or goes swiftly out of print, that's business. Sometimes business sucks. Perhaps you might be a bestseller or sell overseas, be reprinted or win an award. Yay!!! If you have written the stories that matter to you, in a way you feel proud of, then whatever 'life' your story has, you know you wrote the stories you wanted to write. Trends, fads, and publishers might come and go but your stories will always have your name on them.

Spongebob breaks the ice...

Lots to talk about today. Just swung across to Janet Reid's blog (http://jetreidliterary.blogspot.com/) and saw a very smart comment. She advised writers attending conferences that conferences weren't just about meeting agents and editors. Conferences are a great opportunity to meet other writers as well and this should be one of your purposes in attending. Of course there is much value in meeting agents and editors but in the day-to-day wilderness/jungle that is a writer's life one of the best survival tips is to make friends with other writers. No one else can know better the difficulties/agonies/ecstasies /disappointments and minutiae that make up your existence. No matter how generous, kind and understanding an agent or editor are, your writer friends are having the same experiences as you. No other group are as well trained in the art of surviving life as a writer. There is a divine karmic interwoveness to the whole thing too:- Some days i need support and encouragement, other days I give support and encouragement to someone else. We don't have a lot of writing conferences in New Zealand, but writers groups, critique groups, classes and organisations and their meetings are great places to make writer friends. They are an essential part of the writers toolkit.

Now I also came across this interesting piece (via Jenny Rappaport's blog, LIT SOUP at http://litsoup.blogspot.com/) 'about the marketing end of the book business, the rationale behind how buyers pick books, and a nice dose of bookselling history too.' You can read it here:- http://antickmusings.blogspot.com/2008/10/on-being-skipped.html. Its written about the American market but the general themes are relevant here too. Just as the health system has a purely financial end that recognizes the most expensive widgit is too much for the budget, at the polar opposite of the emotional end of being sick where you don't care how much the best widgit costs, its the one you need, the book industry takes your beloved book baby and says it needs to sell x copies or it can't break even. No matter how the industry evolves over time we will always be emotionally attached to the books we have slaved over and pored our hearts into and the publisher and booksellers can only sigh and say we have to make enough money to cover our book producing, book selling operation costs. They are not charities and there is no way we would want them to be. It is good to understand how all aspects of the book industry works. And it is always comforting to know that I am not the only writer being rejected or skipped.

The flipside to the financial realities is the fun to be had in meeting your audience. I visited Owairoa Primary School today in Howick, East Auckland. I met with each of the four year-3 classes at the school and talked about ideas, the writing and book making process and reading. It was a lot of fun and the children were wonderful. I'm glad i packed all my books into my Spongebob Squarepants suitcase. The children thought it fitting that books be protected by the King of imagination and it was a great ice breaker. Having my little viking bear along as mascot was also handy. The children were interested and enthusiastic. It got a bit tricky at the end, as having covered the same material with each group i began to wonder if i was repeating myself to the same crowd. As the information came out in different orders for different classes depending on their responses I couldn't follow the same sequence and tick off the list as i went. I will have to figure out a way to avoid this problem. I hope I get to do more school visits in future.

Whats been happening in the writing world recently...

Fifi Colston at www.fificolston.blogspot.com mentioned the YA manuscript competition Text Publishing in Australia are running, closing date 31 July with $10,000 prize money (www.textpublishing.com.au/ ). Of course I'm only 10,000 words into my YA novel and there's no way I could finish that in time to send it off. Drat and double drat. I keep telling myself that even if I could write that fast I wouldn't be sending in a terribly polished version which would do the story a disservice. I do wish I could write faster though. There are so many things I want to work on but I can only really concentrate on one thing at a time unless the other thing is short like a picture book or short story but i haven't had any of those kinds of ideas recently. I guess i just have to work with wot i got.

Justine Larbalestier has a nice little comment about rejection in her blog today in response to a commenter not yet brave enough to submit her own material anywhere. Justine says:

'Rejection is a huge part of this business whether you’re published or not. I know some people say that if you’re neurotic about rejection you shouldn’t try to get published. But I can’t think of a single writer I know who isn’t neurotic about it. Obviously, some more than others, but we all feel the sting of rejection. We all fear it.'

I agree. Nobody likes rejection. Its just a part of the job you have to somehow cope with. But the desire for publication outweighs the fear because no matter how many rejections we get we keep sending our writing out.

Justine has also been blogging about the proposal for parallel importing of books into Australia which poses a threat to the local publishing industry there. I wish i could explain it better. If you want to read more about it you'll need to check out Justine's blog because its a complex issue i don't know enough about. Its scary though as I wonder can/does it happen here in NZ and could we cope with any more threats to our already hard pressed industry.

At least booksellers here are doing okay right now with the Paper Plus chain investing in upgrading their stores and Dymocks opening some new shops, including one in my neighbourhood. Both companies say business is good and are happy to be investing for the long term. Yay. I'll be checking out that they stock my books.