Nominations open for the Author Blog Awards 2010

The Author Blog Awards aim to highlight to readers the great content that you can find in author blogs and microblogs, reward those authors who engage with their readers online, and encourage other authors to do the same. Nominations are now open so please head over to www.authorblogawards.com to nominate your favourite author blog.

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In case you hadn’t realised before the announcement of the Apple iPad in January, this is the decade of the eReader. The publishing industry is going through a similar transition to that of the music industry in the last decade.

In these days when you can publish direct for ereaders like the Kindle, Cool-er and soon the iPad – or just blog a story – what’s to stop anyone stealing and copying your work illegally?

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The worst financial crisis in a century, an international banking collapse and global recession: it is enough to make a publisher cry all the way to the bank. But there is a flip side to the doom and gloom: It is possible to thrive — not just survive — in an economic downturn, especially if you are small, flexible and smart.

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The London book trade tweeted up again last night, at #twinter – a successor to #tweetmas, both organized by @benjohncock and @samatlounge of @thebookseller. Social media socialites from across the publishing industry were drawn to Belsize Park’s XO for gossip, drinks and networking. Once again, @missdaisyfrost was in attendance, but as undercover as ever. More [...]

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If the music industry is anything to go by, it is not the J K Rowlings, Stephanie Meyers or Dan Browns who will suffer if peer2peer file sharing becomes rampant in books, it is the already beleaguered midlist authors, whose work already struggle to find a place in a market dominated by multi-million pound global hitters and celebrities.

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If you were trying to make it in a rock band, you wouldn’t face the dilemma of ‘should I play gigs or try and get signed by record labels?’ You’d be thinking, “I’ll play lots of gigs, record my music myself and send it off to the record labels”. You’d have a MySpace page and do as much as you could to build up your fan base and reputation as a way of drawing attention to the quality of your work and proving that there is a market for it. So, why not apply the same philosophy to writing?

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