Category: News

Thought it was time to catch you all up on some bits and pieces. Firstly, I’ll be at CONQUEST, the Brisbane Star Trek con, this Saturday from 9.15 to 10 am. I’ll be a giving a general writing chat. The con is at the Park Regis and I’m looking forward to catching up with a few people I haven’t seen for a while.

The following weekend is the Redlitzer Gala Event where we’ll be announcing the winners of the Redlitzer writing competitions. Louise Cusack, Rowena Cory Daniells and myself will be awarding the prizes for the different categories. On the Saturday, I’m booked in to do a world building workshop at QWC. Need a set number for that to go ahead and I think there are still some places left. If you’re interested check it out here:

World Building

Date(s) – Sunday October 7

Time – 10:30am – 4:30pm

On the 25th October I’m speaking at the Victoria Point library. The details are as follows. Please come and support this event and say hello:

An evening with Marianne Delacourt

In website news, Joelene will be attending the red carpet event for Judge Dredd (thanks to The Spotlight Report), so look forward to an exclusive on that. We have Embrace by Jessica Shirvington as our Burn Bright Book Club Book this month and a Burn Bright interview with Jessica to accompany it.

For those that haven’t realised STAGE FRIGHT is now out and the reviews have been heart-warming. Grab your copy for the Xmas stocking.

Also not long until SHINE LIGHT hits stores. I will (finally!) have some news for you before the end of the year on availability of the Night Creatures series in the US.

And of course November is also the e-book release date of the SENTIENTS OF ORION series from E-Reads.

Sadly, I will not be in Adelaide or Brisbane for Supanova. Family commitments have taken priority (my son only turns 21 one time!), but I have spoken with Ineke and I will be in GC and Melbourne next April. Sorry for those of you coming to get books autographed. I have bookplates available that I can post. Let me know below in the comments section or email me through the contact form.

That’s about it for the moment!

It’s not news that the publishing industry has undergone huge changes since Amazon deluged the market with it’s Kindle eReader a few short years ago and ebooks finally blew the book market apart. They’d been threatening to take off for a decade, fuelled by the availability of the Sony Nook among other eReaders, but a Kindle linked to an Amazon account (and who doesn’t have an Amazon account) was a match made in heaven. With one click Amazon customers could download a book, often at half the price of the paperback.

Suddenly, self-published authors weren’t being sidelined at writing conferences and being called vanity published behind their back, because you can’t argue with money. Prolific published print authors were getting the rights to their backlist and self-publishing them in e-bookstores like Amazon, iTunes, Kobo and Smashwords, and often making more from those ebooks in royalties than they were from their new releases with big name print publishers.

That’s not to say it’s all success.  The writers who’ve done the best out of self-publishing are those who already had an audience. I’ve met many first-time novelists who’ve self-published and sold ten copies in a year.  I also met a multi-published print author recently who self-published a book on Amazon that Harlequin Mills & Boon had rejected and she made $40,000 on it in two months.

This was food for thought! I had a backlist of three out-of-print romances sitting around doing nothing so thought, why don’t I self publish them?  They were already edited. I had the rights back from the publishers. I just needed covers and the know-how, so I called on experts: Daryl of R&D Studios took the pictures I’d bought from iStock and my rough cover ideas and turned them into killer covers, then self-publishing expert Patrick O’Duffy told me how to upload them at Amazon, and with much less time and effort than I’d imagined, I had my Hapless Heroes quirky romance series up and ready for purchase.

Being part of the Amazon KDP program for self-published authors allows me 5 days of free promotion over 90 days for each book, so that’s going to allow me to have one of the books free almost every weekend (which will hopefully drive sales to the other two). I’ve already got a very active Facebook, Twitter, blogging network of contacts, so I’m currently slotting in #free #kindle #book promotions alongside all my usual chat. It’s not hard. In two weeks of promotion I’ve given away 520 free books which is a pretty cool way to start. Sales aren’t anywhere near that, but getting your name out there and your books climbing the Amazon charts is the name of the game, so I’ll be looking to build on that.

And that’s the difference between the two formats of publishing.  With print books you look to make the majority of your sales in the first six months – or the first month in the case of Harlequin romance novels.  e-Publishing is a long term project that translates into a passive income stream once the books are charting, because it costs you nothing further. You simply sit back and enjoy the royalties, the reviews and the pleasure of having new readers for stories that deserve to stay in ‘print’.

BIO:

Louise is an International award winning fantasy author whose best-selling Shadow through Time trilogy with Simon & Schuster Australia was selected by the Doubleday book club as their ‘Editors Choice’.  In Feb 2012 it was released digitally by Pan Macmillan’s ebook imprint Momentum Books.

In 2006 Louise travelled to New York to present the Queensland government’s Queensland Writing Showcase to speculative fiction agents and publishers, introducing them to the work of emerging Queensland authors.  In 2009 she was invited to attended the prestigious Crossover multi-media think tank in Adelaide sponsored by the South Australian Film Commission.

A writing tutor for over ten years, Louise has run her own business Writers: Working with Louise Cusack for the past five years and has completed 160 manuscript assessments, tutored over 80 writing workshops and mentored over 300 hours with more than 50 clients.  She has also led 12 writing retreats with various writing groups and been a Writer in Residence with QWC, Logan City Council, Redlands City Council and Gold Coast City Council, helping develop writing programs for regional writers.

Those of you following my FB and Twitter feeds know that I had a really enjoyable time in Cairns. I was kindly picked up at the airport by Hettie Ashwin and taken to Rydges Tradewinds.

Friday night was the launch cocktail party where I met some of the Tropical Writers, and then headed off to dinner with my friend Bernadette who I haven’t seen in five or so years. Hip little cafe and good food.

Saturday was a very full day; a three hour workshop (and they were an interesting, lively bunch), a panel on writing for young adults and children, launching Hettie’s book The Mask of Deceit and attending the literary dinner. Matt Reilly made a great keynote speech about retaining passion for what you do and afterwards I stumbled into bed.

Sunday was less hectic. The Big Book Club panel was very stimulating – we discussed Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward, Cold Grave by Kathryn Fox and Memoirs of an Imaginary Friend by Matthew Green. I have to say that Salvage the Bones was like reading something by Margo Lanagan – the use of language and the deeply personal insights. A truly splendid book. We also agreed that Kathryn Fox was doing a great job raising awareness of social issues and that Green’s novel will make a touching movie.

Collins booksellers did a fab job (had all my books) and all the organising committee were very helpful throughout.

Once my offical duties were finished I got to sit and talk stories, TV, comedy and the revolution with Tim Ferguson – definitely one of the weekend’s highlights for me. Hettie then deposited me back at the airport (thanks Hettie!), and I got to watch five epsidoes of Big Bang Theory on the flight home on the swishy new Qantas jet.

Thanks for having me Tropical Writers!