Publishing and Donkeys

Last weekend I went to a publishing seminar run by Jill Marshall of Pear Jam Books.  The day was chocka-block full of information about mainstream publishing, eBook publishing, audio books, printing and illustration.  Jill was honest about the ups and downs of the process she'd gone through with mainstream publishers and her personal experience of eBook publishing. 

The right gang will smooth the road
 to publishing success

Publishing a book is no easy journey, no matter what method you choose.  It's a bumpy ride on a stubborn donkey, round corners and up hills and sometimes you just have to get off and throw a wobbly or two.

But if you surround yourself with other travellers, who've taken the road before, who will cheer you on and give the donkey a good whack on the backside every now and again, maybe you won't fall off.

At the end of the course someone asked Jill what she thought about writing groups.  She said, if you choose the right one, they can be a great.

Definitely!  I belong to three!  I'm not even that much of a social butterfly and relish a good six hour stretch of writing all by myself as much as the next aspiring author, but these groups offer a sanity check.  There's personal experience, expert knowledge and industry know how to be had over a cuppa and bickies.  Get amongst it!

My Christmas Wishlist: an eReader please

pic courtesy of southpacificvacations.org

Take a look at the blog pages of Tauranga's most popular community newspaper, the Weekend Sun ( http://www.sunlive.co.nz/) to read the Tauranga Writers regular blog: Write Space. 

This time around I've had fun researching eReaders: http://www.sunlive.co.nz/blogs/2197-all-i-want-christmas-is-an-ereader.html

eReaders are relatively new to the kiwi consciousness but will no doubt be big on the Christmas wishlist for many this year, especially with the kindle recently appearing at Dick Smith electronics store at a very reasonable price.

I loaded kindle for PC on to my computer to try it out and I've had quite a few problems accessing the books I've bought.  This is worrying since the kindle is my current eReader of choice on the old Xmas list. 

Friends have had a lot of success using the Kobo but I like the variety of eBook titles available on Amazon.

We'll just have to see what Santa thinks!