SURVIVING THE DIGITAL PUBLISHING AGE � DeeScribewriting Blog

Thanks to Dee White who blogged on this ASA panel. I learned a lot researching my 5 minutes' worth, and of course, more on the night!
SURVIVING THE DIGITAL PUBLISHING AGE � DeeScribewriting Blog
On Friday night I attended a session on digital publishing run by the Australian Society of Authors at the State Library of Victoria.
It featured high profile speakers like author Wendy Orr, literary agent Jacinta di Mase, Emmett Stinson and David Day.
It was good to see a large contingent of children’s authors and illustrators in attendance because for us, the issue is even more complex than most.
Take picture books for example, a topic covered extensively by Wendy Orr. She talked about the fact that PDFs can’t handle the double-paged spread that is an essential feature of so many beautiful traditional picture books.
Wendy had spent many hours researching her subject and discovered that whilst many of the PBs designed for e-readers had interactive features, these were rarely produced in consultation with the author so that the meaning and essence of the book could be lost in translating the story into this medium.
For this reason, Wendy suggested that apps not be given the same name as the book but be called App based upon the book…etc.
Furthermore, as Jacinta di Mase pointed out, the interactive component (which can end up being like a short movie or book trailer) of the book is like a separate edition and consequently should attract additional royalties.
Angelo Loukakis, Executive Director of the ASA commented that one of the difficulties in the evolving world of e-books was the variation in interpretation of modern terminology like ‘apps’ or ‘interactive’. Currently, there are no standard industry definitions and this is clearly an issue that needs to be resolved. I’m hoping that eventually the ASA will have a ‘standard’ e-book contract available for members to refer to.
Technology is ever changing and so are the players and opportunities in this field so as Jacinta mentioned, it’s important for contracts to have a sunset clause in them, where after a period of say two years, you have the capacity to renegotiate royalties.
Piracy was also raised as an issue with e-books, but this happens in the traditional book market already. How often do we lend a book we like to a friend and the author receives no royalties, PLR or ELR in the exchange? Even if books are pirated, there is still some indirect benefit to the author in getting their work ‘out there’. As we know, ‘word of mouth’ is a very powerful tool.
As a children’s author and parent, what concerns me most is not the advent of e-books as such, but that e-book sellers don’t categorise books for children other than to separate them into children’s and young adults sections.
So the buying experience isn’t like walking into a traditional bookshop, picking up a book to read the blurb and the first few pages to ensure that the content is suitable for the child reader. And I’m not talking about censoring here. I’m referring to the fact that one child will have very different tastes in books to another of the same age and gender.
E-books have opened the floodgates to self-publishing and consequently, the marketplace is overflowing with choices. So unless a prospective buyer spends a great deal of time researching and relying on reader reviews, they can’t really gauge whether the book is suitable for their child. For example, some 7 year-old boys love crocodiles and others are terrified of them, but unless the world ‘crocodile’ is in the title of the book, potential readers won’t even know that a crocodile is featured unless it’s mentioned in a review or some other publicity.
Parents of young children don’t have the time to spend hours trawling through online catalogues and reviews, and after speaking to a number of them, I discovered that many are choosing not to buy e-books at all or to just buy e-book editions of works they know rather than risking that the book they buy might not be suitable.
To me, this is an issue that needs to be addressed, and we as professional authors and illustrators need to find a way to get our message across to buyers — to let them know what our books are about and why our stories will work for their particular child at that particular age. When I work out how to do this, I’ll be sure to let you know.
The e-book debate is a complex issue but what came out of the night was that there are positive opportunities for authors in the new marketplace. We have to accept that change is upon us and make it work for us in the best way we can.
I can certainly see the advantages of making my books easily available to readers on the other side of the world. Radio didn’t die out when television was invented and I can’t see it happening to traditional books either. The advent of e-books just means that our books will now be enjoyed by readers in more than one form.

gillpolack: Women's History Month: Wendy Orr

Gillian Pollack had the great idea of celebrating Women's History Month on her blog. Some of her writers stuck to the topic a bit better than I did, so have a look at the series. There is actually a link to history in mine, but since I'm not ready to share the new idea, you won't see it... Anyway, this is what was in my heart as I wrote.

gillpolack: Women's History Month: Wendy Orr


My first guest I met through another Wendy - Wendy Dunn - when Wendy Dunn invited us both to be guests at an online writing festival for schoolchildren. Jodie Foster had just been signed to appear in the film of her book, so I was prepared to be intimidated. Wendy Orr is not intimidating, it turns out. She is, however, exceptionally interesting.

There ought to be a word for the time between finishing one manuscript and starting another. (I mean apart from ‘relief’ and ‘now I really do need to get around to all those other jobs I’ve been putting off for the last year’ – which may also be the best incentive for starting a new book.)

Of course each time is different, but this time sending off the fourth book in my upcoming Rainbow Street Animal Shelter series (for the in USA), coincided with the publication of Raven’s Mountain, my new middle grade novel in Australia. (By the way, I hate the term middle grade novel: it always makes the book sound as if it got a C grade. Must get over that.) But the timing means that I’m determined to take a couple of weeks off, not just for catching up on fan mail and accountant queries, and the perennial post-deadline task of trying to find my desk, but for reflection. And not just reflection for the purposes of interviews on the new book – because honestly, who doesn’t enjoy insightful questions that help trace our pathway through a newly completed work? This writing hiatus is a time for true reflection, on why I write, and why I write what I do, and then that sudden gift of inspiration which makes everything else fade into the background, as I get the first glimpse of what I want to write next.

Well, that’s the theory, but in the middle of my tai chi class last week, I suddenly felt the beginnings of a new book. Since finishing the last proofs for Raven, last October, I’ve been playing with the idea of returning to a world that I’d created twenty years ago, when I first started writing and was still searching for my voice. I have no desire to go back to the mammoth adult manuscript that I wrote then, but the world itself is still alive for me. Travelling to India in November, for the Bookaroo Children’s Literature Festival, somehow confirmed my desire to return to this world, although I didn’t think it had much in common with the India that I saw. And then, in that dreamy tai chi state, I heard new questions about the main character, suggesting that she is totally unlike anything I had expected, and had an image of the story idea floating in soap bubbles above my head, fragile and iridescent. The image moved me to tears. (Luckily everyone else in my tai chi group is equally vague in the beginning, familiar sequences, so no one noticed that I was crying.)

The next day I saw what I thought was a small dragonfly hovering above our pond. The wings were exactly the same iridescent blue as my story idea bubbles, and I felt I had to take it as a sign. When a twitter follower identified the insect as a damselfly, I knew that it was.

On the other hand, the fragile insect flying off into the distance could also be a sign that it’s time to let Raven go. I’ve lived with her for two and a half years, and it’s hard to remember that I created her as well as her mountain and all that happens to her. She is so real to me it feels as cruel as letting a flesh and blood eleven year old out into the world alone. But perhaps that damselfly was telling me that she’s strong enough to fly. Time to let her go free, and clear out the rooms for the new damsel to move in.

post-teen trauma: Anatomy of a Novel: Raven's Mountain

The talented Simmone Howell is hosting a series appropriately titled: Anatomy of Novel on her blog:
post-teen trauma: Anatomy of a Novel: Raven's Mountain

Here's my contribution for Raven's Mountain, which I put together using Polyvore, as Simmone  suggested - a fun concept.
And in the next couple of days I'll get up some pictures of the launch, and blog about the Perth Writers Festival, which was amazing. Meanwhile...

Anatomy of a Novel: Raven's Mountain

Raven's Mountain by Raven's Mountain on Polyvore.com

1). The Fox and the Child: I saw this film when I was on about the sixth draft of Raven's Mountain, and the little girl reminded me very much of Raven, although she's prettier and a bit younger. She was red-haired, and though she's wandering alone in the mountains by choice, unlike Raven, she still faces the challenges of being out in the wilderness and interacting with nature. The first influence on Raven being a redhead is probably Anne of Green Gables, but the film represents my visual idea of Raven.

2) The Bear: Growing up in Canada means that bears are a background to any mountain hiking or camping, deeply embedded into the subconscious in a combination of fear and fascination. Our family mythology contained a few stories of close encounters with bears, including a home movie of baby me on a picnic rug... cut short as my father spotted the approaching bear and raced me to the car. Later, as a teenager, I was chilled to hear that a grizzly had taken someone from a tent not far from where my cousin and I had camped out in just sleeping bags. And yet I love to see them - at a safe distance, or in a film or documentary.

3) Snow White and Rose Red: Unlike most fairy tales, this one doesn't have a good and bad sister: they're simply very different: Snow White is blond and gentle; Rose Red is dark and lively. Raven sees her older sister Lily as a golden girl, and herself as the opposite. The fairy tale girls' mother is a widow, and once again, there's a bear... but it was the difference between the sisters that I was drawing on as the girls grew in my mind.

4)Pikes Peak Country: Climbing Pikes Peak with our dad, when we were ten and twelve, was highly significant to both my younger sister and me; there was obviously a tremendous sense of achievement, but it was so outside normal life that there was also a kind of 'otherworld' appeal. I'm not surprised it finally made its way into a story.

5) Mean Girls: I loved this movie; I felt it really captured a lot of those adolescent feelings that Raven is confused by as she sees her sister Lily changing from a caring big sister into a 'mean girl.' It also touches on the dislocation that Raven feels as she moves across the country into a totally different environment.

6) The Algonquin Legends of New England: I chose this because I couldn't get a cover image of Glooskap's Country, the collection of Algonquin legends I grew up with, which started me on my passion for First Nation stories. Later I became fascinated with Raven, the trickster god, who seems an appropriate one for writers.

7) Make your own Inuksuk: About six years ago my sister and I were walking on the beach in Vancouver and spotted all sorts of Inuksuks that people had been building. (You've got to remember that 'beach' on Canada's west coast often means rocks.) Something about them wormed its way into my subconscious.

8) Glasses: When I was putting myself into Raven's skin, it struck me that the first thing that would have happened to me if I'd fallen off a cliff is that I would have lost my glasses and been unable to see. I was always breaking glasses when I was a kid, especially skiing, or just playing in the snow, and then I'd have to make my way home without them, which was quite a challenge. But glasses are also a symbol of different ways of seeing: on the trip up to the campsite, when Raven is threatened by the mountains she takes off her glasses to soften the view.