RIASS stuff:
A review of The Secrets of the Tides'by Hannah Richell'(Rating: 
)
A'giveaway of'Preloved'by Shirley Marr.
A review of the very funny, very rude'Mounting Desire'by Nina Killham'(Rating: )
I'm over on Reading Teen chatting about my audiobook habits.
Are you a nerdy type? My husband is looking for a top-notch web developer to join his company.'Details here.
Other bookish stuff:
Amazon's markup of digital delivery to indie authors is ~129,000%
How to tackle big taskslike writing a book.
A grumpy looking HP Lovecraft action figure
7 Strategy Tips From the World of Screenwriting'Plot is a series of events ''cause and effect played out over and over again. It can make for an exciting movie, but leaves you with a feeling of 'so what?' at the end. Plot needs Story. Story is what the plot is 'really' about ' in a movie it reveals the hero's need, their flaw, and how they face their flaw ''all of which is tied to the Theme.
The truth about memory and the novel: The Polish writer Hubert Klimko agreed that as'a novelist he fights a daily battle against memory ' also against time, but went on to claim that for the novelist, the most important memories are those you make up.
In 1931 there were only 500 bookshops in the whole of the US:'In the entire country, there were only some four thousand places where a book could be purchased, and most of these were gift shops and stationary stores that carried only a few popular novels, Kenneth C Davis writes in Two-Bit Culture: The Paperbacking of America.'In reality,'there were but five hundred or so legitimate bookstores'that warranted regular visits from publishers salesmen (and in 1931 they were all men). Of these five hundred, most were refined, old-fashioned carriage trade stores catering to an elite clientele in the nations twelve largest cities.
CJ Omololu on walking and plotting: I don't walk with anyone else or listen to music because I like to use the time to work out problems in my newest book or just think about what I have to do that day. Because I like to use the time to think, I take the same route every day so that I don't have to worry about where I'm going.
For publishers the long term is the only race worth winning: There's a lot of talk these days about how Amazon is dismantling book culture. There is some validity to this, but put in context of the books major publishers are publishing and ways in which they're screwing culture themselves, it's clear to me that the real problem isn't Amazon selling too many books to too many people at too low a price, but that we publishers are no longer capable of dictating the terms that allow us to continue to exist with the expenses and profit margins we desire.
The indie writer support meme gets slapped down: Self-publishing is not charity.'It's not a 6th grade trophy for participation. Readers don't buy books by indie authors'because'they're indie authors ' well, I'm sure some do, but those readers are probably also indie authors themselves. Are you really hoping that readers will support you based on your decision not to tough it out in the traditional space? That they'll 'throw you a bone' because of a business choice? That, recursively, is insulting to self-published authors, isn't it? That you should be patted on the head and given a lift because you made a different decision,'not'because you wrote a kick-ass book that deserves its space on all the bookshelves?
On the digital future of books: The most popular ebook'to have been sold in Australia at the time of the 2012 Sydney Writer's Festival was John Howard's'Lazaras Rising.'Well, that answers the question of who is currently reading eBooks and why grey-on-grey is acceptable. But the point is, this book only sold 9000 eCopies. Not quite enough to run off to the Bahamas with. And why would we buy more eBooks when basically they are just the same as paperbacks, but weigh less and can honestly be a total pain in the butt to download?
Patrick Ness makes history with first ever double Carnegie Medal honours'
This made me laugh.
Class Action Lawsuit Filed Against PublishAmerica
A wedding in a bookshop
The book trailer for the Hocus Pocus Hotel
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