(C) 2008, VICKI HINZE
WARNING: This is a no-edit zone…
It’s contest time. Writers from all over the world are entering contests and other writers (and editors and agents) from all over the world are judging and/or critiquing them.
I’m critiquing and judging (two separate contests) and coordinating a third. Why? Because I love seeing what’s there. What people are thinking, the kinds of things that fascinate them enough to tackle a book, the way they use their words and structure a story. In short, it’s fun.
Yesterday, a good friend and I touched base. She too is judging/critiquing right now. And while we, of course, didn’t discuss specific entries, we did both note a trend to heavy narrative in the works. And we both wondered why. Neither of us had an answer, so I phoned a third friend, who also does a lot of judging/critiquing. She, too, had picked up on this trend.
We put our heads together and determined . . . READ MORE…
May 21, 2008
WARNING: This is a no-edit zone…
This morning, I awakened to discover the following: “It doesn’t matter how good or bad the product is, the fact is that people don’t read anymore. Forty percent of the people in the U.S. read one book or less last year.” Steve Jobs–Amazon <Kindle Reader>
Troubling insight from a human being’s point of view and from a writer’s.
Any writer who has been publishing books for a length of time can tell you that the industry has changed mightily in the last decade. Any reader can tell you that, too. But their perspectives on those changes are significantly different.
Writers note more writers and fewer publishing slots. They note smaller print runs. They note the logical decrease in earnings.
Writers also note fewer books available in fewer places in the market. At one time, you could walk into stores like Wal-Mart, Target, and K-Mart and you’d find book departments. Over time, those departments have winnowed down to where some have a single aisle of shelving. Others still have more space, but nowhere near the square footage in the store that they once did.
Several factors, in my humble opinion, attribute to this… READ MORE
Tags: reading, books, authors, novelists, writers, fiction, novels, book trends
May 9, 2008
vickihinze