L’Odeur des Livres
I was recently invited to present a soapbox speech at Melbourne’s Wheeler Centre as part of the Emerging Writers’ Festival. So I took the opportunity to berate those who espouse the smell of books as a defence of the printed book.
Needless to say, it wasn’t an entirely serious speech. But, at its core, it does have a serious message: the radical transformation at the heart of publishing presents an opportunity for everyone involved in bookishness: from writers to publishers to readers. Morose pining for an idealised past (that never existed) is not the way to face the necessary challenges.
At least that’s what I think.
Read MoreMasterclass at Brisbane Writers Festival
I’ll be lending my digital head to the Australian Writers Marketplace Industry Masterclass at this year’s Brisbane Writers Festival.
This industry seminar will introduce you to agents, publishers and writers and take you on a journey from manuscript development to published author promotion. It will cover the role of agents in a writer’s life, the publishing process, including developming and submitting your work, and new pathways to publication, and you’ll learn the tricks of promoting your book and yourself and the importance of both. This seminar is for emerging writers and those who are just plain curious about books and publishing. Walk away with tools and insider knowledge to help you navigate a pathway in the marketplace.
$100 from QTIX (price includes a copy of the new edition of The Australian Writer’s Marketplace valued at $49.95). Friday 3rd September 10am to 3pm. Queensland Art Gallery Lecture Theatre (opposite the watermall).
Read MoreByron Bay Writers Festival
If you’re heading to the Byron Bay Writers Festival and you’re interested in writing (you poor sod), it may behove you to check out the Nuts & Bolts professional development workshop for writers.
BBWF Nuts & Bolts is proudly sponsored by The Australian Writer’s Marketplace, and programmed and chaired by Queensland Writers Centre. Now in its fourth successful year, BBWF Nuts & Bolts will provide a full day of information for beginner/emerging writers seeking to develop the craft and business of writing.
This year it has the distinction of containing not one, but two Groths. They’ll never know what hit them.
Date: Thursday 5 August
Time: 10am – 4pm
Venue: SCU ROOM, Byron Community & Cultural Centre, Byron Bay
I’ll be on the afternoon panel on digital publishing, kicking off at 1:00pm. This session will include four presentations, with a moderated Q&A.
Presenters:
- if:book Australia representative: Digital publishing overview
- Rob Collings, publisher: Digital markets: opportunities and marketing
- Simon Groth: an author’s experience in digital publishing
- Alex Adsett, publishing contracts specialist: New business models: risks and rights
Darren’s session is on after mine, so he gets the last word. Typical.
Read MoreTwitterFEST Preview
Tomorrow, I will host the second TwitterFEST session for the Emerging Writers Festival. The session today went down remarkably well, despite my turning up right at the end and contributing only by telling everyone that I was late. In fact, it was fast and furious with discussion flying all over the place. I only hope I’ll be able to keep up (I won’t).
So the discussion tomorrow will focus on the iPad, released here in Australia on Friday. Early reports from the United States have focused on just how many people have forked out for one of the slick glass and metal flat screen thingos, despite the generally confused notion of what it actually, you know, does.
While Amazon, Sony, et al have focused on delivering a reader that attempts as much as possible to mimic the experience of a book, Apple has stuck to their vision of a multi-function future. Your devices, they assume, will do everything all the time. Which device you use, depends on context. The iPhone is in your pocket, the computer is on your desk or kitchen table or whatever, the iPad is for the couch and backpack.
How it affects your approach to books and reading will depend on community consensus. Academic publishing seems a doddle. Would you rather an iPad or sixteen doorstop textbooks? How it affects leisurely reading and fiction will likely be more complicated.
How complicated? That’s what I’d be keen to find out tomorrow.
I will try cutting and pasting the discussion (as much as I can) here on the blog tomorrow evening, for anyone like me who turns up late.
Read MoreiPad discussion at EWF TwitterFEST
Alright, so the blog posts have been few and far between of late, but the general level of distraction is declining, so I’ll resume regular broadcasts in the near future when I have something worth talking about.
In the meantime, I’ll be taking part in the Emerging Writers Festival via the jiggery pokery of this here interwebz.
The event is called TwitterFEST and you can attend by…well…twitting.
The topic is focused on that intriguing sliver of glass and metal called the iPad and, specifically around its ability to engage the broader reading public with text in pixels rather than ink. As moderator, I plan to continue my extreme ambivalence towards the device in the hope that a great discussion will follow.
It’s happening on Tuesday 25th May, 2:00pm Australian EST at http://www.twitter.com/simongroth
http://www.emergingwritersfestival.org.au/program/program-by-event/#twitterfest
Read MoreThe Books
