Subject: Your June Indie Author News

Indie Author News

Hi Friend,

June is here, and here is your June edition of Indie Author News!

In this issue, there's a summary of the state of self-publishing technology as of 2021 (we're in for a decade of rapid changes!), a Yorkshire author spotlight, an introduction to a useful application for helping you plot your stories, and changes to Campfire Stories that might be lucrative for some.

So, without further ado...

The Status of Self-Publishing in 2021

The 2020's are already seeing a rise in digital book content. A surge in e-book sales, the continued rise of audiobooks, digital serial platforms, improvements in AI-written content and the infancy of unique digital signatures (Non Fungible Tokens) all signify a massive new shift in the publishing landscape. What will it mean and will there still be room for print books in this space?

It's been a little over a decade since the last big publishing upheaval began (roughly 2010). At that time the industry was buzzing over the discussion of e-books vs print books. Which would dominate the industry? Which should you put your time into creating (hint: both)? While the two formats eventually came to some sort of equilibrium, time and technology marched on.

Now, continued advances in technology spurred on by global lockdowns are once again disrupting the status quo and creating a bigger demand for digital content. In addition, younger readers, raised on portable mobile devices, are favouring a new approach to reading.

Read the complete article here

Maggie Cobbett

Buy Workhouse Orphan

Crime and Historical Fiction

Maggie Cobbett, who hails from the edge of the Yorkshire Dales and may be recognizable to some as an extra on the British soap opera Emmerdale, is an author of crime novels and historical fiction.

Formerly a modern languages teacher, Maggie has been writing for most of her adult life and has won several writing contests. In addition, many of her short stories have appeared in magazines, a fact that prompted her to write the author help guide Easy Money for Writers & Wannabes.

In April, her book Workhouse Orphan won a Readers' Award from ChillWithABook.com. Why not give it, or some of her other books, a read?

"Queen Victoria's long reign and the nineteenth century were both drawing to a close when a sad little procession straggled its way back from the cemetery to a cobbled alley near the docks. Supported by their closest neighbours, the Dawson children had just seen the remains of their beloved parents lowered into a pauper's grave and covered with a very thin layer of earth and slaked lime."

Learn more about Maggie at Author Insights

PLOTTR - Your Visual Plotting Aid

If you're a very visual writer like me and have trouble managing your plot beats in your head, there is help for you.

Plottr is a visual story plotting aid that runs on all platforms. It has a variety of modes for viewing and managing your plotlines with the main one being the Timeline view.

Not only does the timeline view help you process the events of your story quickly and easily to determine where the story might drag or where you've missed bits of information, but it

also comes with built-in templates to compare your story with.

Writing a Hero's Journey story? There's a template. An Action/Adventure, there's a template. The templates are not fixed and all parts are movable through drag and drop (as with your non-template versions), but for less experienced authors the templates are useful in demonstrating the main story beats for common story types.

I've recently started using Plottr to clean up old novels for republication and it's been very helpful.

You can try Plottr for 30 days free and if you like it, there's currently 15%-40% discount on various Plottr packages.

Check Out Plottr Here

Campfire Stories - Paid Author Collaborations!

Campfire stories will be expanding into writing contests very soon.

While the specifics are still being ironed out, some of our stories will be entirely driven by the winning story contest entries. Each episode that grows one of those stories will be a winning entry in a recurring contest.

While the details may change, we're currently considering an entry fee of £5 with the winner receiving £50.

Be reassured that we will continue to run our fun, collaborative stories as well as those campfire novels specifically planned for royalty-sharing publication.

Are you an author who gets inspired by working with others, or who prefers writing short pieces rather than longer prose? Or perhaps you have trouble deciding on plot directions in the middle of the story and you wish someone else could give you some inspiring ideas.

Campfires Stories could be for you.

Campfire Stories is a collaborative story writing project created by Utility Fog Press to enable authors to work together on interesting and fun stories. You can join a story to write just for fun, or we can help you publish the finished project under a royalty-sharing scheme.

Campfire Stories has completed one 7-author novella, Murder at the Mill, and is in the middle of a 3-author novel, The Dedanite Consignment. Both of these can be read for free by following the links to our website, or they can also be read on WattPad @Campfire Writing. Once completed, The Dedanite Consignment will be published by Utility Fog Press under a royalty sharing scheme.

We have a few story ideas on our website but we're open to facilitating any and all story ideas you might have. If this sounds interesting to you, why not sign up and tell us what you'd be interested in working on.

Join us here

If you're looking for answers to your questions about writing, publishing, or marketing your book, or you'd like to discuss with us what services we offer, we have weekly office hours.

Please be aware, we are again modifying our office hours system.

We'll be trialing an online office space from Gather.Town which we'll eventually be converting to a general virtual writers' retreat.

Office Hours will be:

Friday:

June 4 & 18 --> 11:00am - noon

Wednesday:

June 9 & 23 --> 4:00pm - 5:00pm

You can, however, visit the online office to look around or meet others at any time.

Visit the Office Here

Thanks for reading.

Stay healthy, keep active, and Write On!

Edwin Rydberg

Utility Fog Press

Subscribe

Subject: Your June Indie Author News

Indie Author News