I have a real mish-mash of links for you today. There's some interesting reading out there.
http://io9.com/5409552/independent-publishers-who-are-reinventing-the-future This post looks at several small publishing houses, one of them Chizine which I mentioned in a previous post as being open to subs. There's no links to the houses themselves but some of them do publish short story collections and a google search would probably hook you up to their sites.
http://www.jasonsanford.com/jason/2009/11/circulation-of-online-genre-magazines.html Jason Sanford has some interesting facts and figures in this post about online zines. Most interesting is that hits and downloads on audio stories is on the rise.
http://storytellersunplugged.com/blog/2009/11/20/the-happy-death-of-genre-vs-literary-in-the-days-of-the-technorenaissance/ Not just another argument about genre vs literary, but a well thought out look at how the Internet is changing the face of this marketing device of tagging writing in order to sell it. Her last two lines give us all hope for the future. "The emphasis won't be on what genre. The emphasis will be on great storytelling."
http://killzoneauthors.blogspot.com/2009/11/tired-of-same-old-formulas.html From thrillers to westerns each genre has a "formula" of sorts. John Ramsey Miller takes a look at these formulas and offers up some suggestions on how to write great stories within the confines of the genre formula.
For those of you who write Zombie stories there's a forum board that might interest you called Library of the Living Dead http://libraryofthelivingdead.lefora.com/ There's all kinds of great stuff here but of special interest is the calls for submissions section. The library is a publisher of anthologies featuring zombies. Of interest to both horror and western writers is this new one The Zombist: Tales from the Undead West. http://libraryofthelivingdead.lefora.com/2009/11/14/now-open-for-submissions-the-zombist-tales-from-th/page1
4 comments:
Thanks for spotlighting the Justine Musk article. I can't say that I agree with all her points. For instance, she says, Now it is about great story telling, rather than genre.
I think it has always been about great storytelling. Genre is a marketing technique.
She also mentions that readers will follow a favorite writer anywhere, and I do not believe that is true. My wife loves Nora Roberts, but will not read her stories dealing with witchcraft, occult, etc, nor is she a fan of the historical ones.
I agree that it's always been about great storytelling, but if the tags are gone, writers would be able to write any kind of story they'd like without being told it wouldn't sell because it didn't fit in a certain slot.
And you're right about following writers. With mystery writers I'll follow them into a new series, but if I don't like the new character, I won't stick around. I can't stand Robert Parker's Sunny Randall books but love the Spencer and Jesse Stone series.
I think it boils down to the reader's tastes when it come to following a writer.
My goodness all sorts of good genre stuff, thanks, Sandra.
Yep, there was all kinds of good stuff online today, Conda!
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