Friday 12 March 2010

What's the state of publishing

I came into writing from a commercial perspective,i.e. direct sales copywriting. It’s interesting that I’ve seen ideas converging over the last few years from my previous experience of copywriters (including myself) happily self publish in on and offline formats ahead of many ‘traditional’ writers.

From what I’ve heard and read, it seems that newspapers are struggling to find a workable strategy to make money online and publishing is fragmenting with smaller outfits able to be more responsive to new trends.(think of turning a ship round)

It is a time of flux and that may frighten you especially if you still have that traditional large advance as your Eldorado.  the new is that advances are shrinking even for the top authors.

Still I urge you to dive in. Publishing in its traditional format is dead. But this opens up opportunities for us as writers to strengthen our individual experiences in this wonderful world of writing.  The successful authors of the future will embrace all the technologies and use them to make the connections to readers that are vital at some stage whether direct or via agents and publishers.

Attending the conference gave me great hope for the future and I came home more enthusiastic and excited about the possibilities.

Check out http://www.writingindustries.com/ for more information on the sessions.  They are intending to upload recordings of the sessions.

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