Category Archives: Publishing

Was attending #Bouchercon2025 a success for me?

PolyWogg.ca
September 14 2025

That’s a bit of a strange question, isn’t it? I went to a book conference; I was NOT looking for an agent or to promote a book; I had no real defined goals in advance. I didn’t ask “Did I enjoy it?” or “Was it fun / interesting / illuminating / horrible / terrible / no good very bad 4 days?”

I asked if it was a success.

It wasn’t cheap…registration was fine, $250 or so. But staying in the hotel for six nights at $179 US plus my flights plus all my meals, taxis, and minor souvenirs isn’t pocket change. I haven’t added it up completely but it’s probably between 3.5K-4K overall, Canadian. Which I knew in advance, not whinging. Food was a bit more expensive than I expected, with fewer cheap options in the area to get to, but I’ll come back to that.

But with the cost, and the experience tied to it, I find myself wondering of course if it was worth it. Particularly as this wasn’t a family trip, it was just me on my own doing my own thing.

And the trip was a bit of a test for me in three different domains. So if I ask if it is a success, I guess I have to ask if it was worth it in those three areas.… Read the rest

Day 4 of #Bouchercon2025 in New Orleans

PolyWogg.ca
September 7 2025

Friday was a late night for many attendees, I understand, and things lasted until the wee hours. I was not part of those shenanigans, I am old and boring. And I don’t know anyone nor do that kind of thing anyway. I digress. If you want to read about my non-conference aspects of the day, check out my personal blog at https://www.thepolyblog.ca/day-4-of-bouchercon2025-in-new-orleans/.

There was an early morning “Debut Mystery Author Breakfast” where a number of attending debut authors would get a chance to speak about themselves for a minute and introduce their books to the audience (if they haven’t been on panels already, for instance). The list included Brian Tracey (aka J.B. Abbott), Tom Andes, Faye Arcand, Valerie Biel, Andrew Bridgeman, Elise Burke Brown, Hunter Burke, Chelsea Conradt, John Dingle, Laurie L. Dove, Leigh Dunlap, Wendy Gee, Amran Gowani, Walter Horsting, R.L. Carpentier, III, Elle Jauffret, Georgia Jeffries, Christy J. Kendall, N.L. Lavin, Andrew Ludington, Josh Mendoza, Jennifer K. Morita, Mark Nutter, Mark O’Neill, Joe Pan, Ryan Pote, Jenny Ramaley, R. C. Reid, Michael Rigg, Jennifer Sadera, Diane Schaffer, Amie Schaumberg, Rob D. Smith, Suja Sukumar, and Mark Thielman. Tracey, Walter Horsting, Ryan Pote, and R.C. Reid were on panels I attended, and I’ll get around to checking out all of the new authors’ offerings, in lieu of actually getting up early enough to attend breakfast.… Read the rest

Day 3 of #Boucheron2025 in New Orleans

PolyWogg.ca
September 6 2025

My cold limited some of my conference going for the day, but if you want to read about the non-conference portion, you can over on my personal blog at https://www.thepolyblog.ca/day-3-of-boucheron2025-in-new-orleans/.

But if today is Friday, it must be day 3 of #Boucheron2025 in New Orleans!

The ninth set of panels started at 9:00 a.m., and I was all set for Panel 9-1: Multiple Series: Maintaining Storyline Silos. As I mentioned yesterday, I have plans for one pseudo-fantasy series and it will not interact with anything else. However, I am interested in a second series where a bunch of the characters WILL intersect, and there might be three or four mini-series within a larger series universe (yeah, kind of like the Avengers movies without superheroes of course). So, I was keen for the topic. But I also stalk Lee Goldberg online and I was really looking forward to what he had to say about his various series — Monk, Diagnosis Murder, stuff with Janet Evanovich, three active series now, TV shows out the wazoo, he’s got it going on. And his Facebook posts are frequently amusing. This week’s was about the word benippled. 🙂 A little fanboy-ish, I suppose, on my part.… Read the rest

Day 2 of #Bouchercon2025 in New Orleans

PolyWogg.ca
September 5 2025

I had a slow start to my morning. I had missed Tai Chi (yay), some sponsorship rooms, morning speed dating sessions to link people in Column A of the industry with people in Column B of the industry, and alas, half of the fourth set of big panels. I had hoped to catch “Hooking the Reader” with great first lines, but I needed breakfast first. You can see the non-conference portion of my day on my ThePolyBlog site at https://www.thepolyblog.ca/day-2-of-bouchercon2025-in-new-orleans/

I made it to the fifth set of panels at 10:30, and went to Panel 5-4: Kickass Female Protagonists: Prince Charming Is Out of a Job. The panelists were Steph Cha, Tori Eldridge, J.T. Ellison, Taylor Stevens, and Nina Wachsman. I knew of J.T. Ellison’s work in advance, and my brain is mush as I didn’t realize Tori Eldridge writes the Lily Wong Ninja series (I’ve only read two of them). Steph Cha was new to me but she’s written the new series called Butterfly (Amazon Prime). I’ve heard of the show as it has Daniel Dae Kim in it, but I haven’t checked it out yet.

So, I’ve been thinking about something over the last two days of being here.… Read the rest

Day 1 of #Bouchercon2025 in New Orleans

PolyWogg.ca
September 4 2025

Today was Opening Day for Bouchercon2025 in New Orleans, and my first Bouchercon ever. The non-conference bits are covered on my other site, ThePolyBlog, at https://www.thepolyblog.ca/day-1-of-bouchercon2025-in-new-orleans/.

I registered at 9:30, picking up my conference bag, program, t-shirt, badge and lanyard, and four hot little tickets for books in the Book Bazaar.

There are over a hundred books to choose from, and you only get four. I picked up two by Heather Graham, the chair of the conference, entitled Legacy of Blood (part of a series called the Blackbird Files) and The Rising. I’ve started reading The Rising already, but I’ve only read about 35 pages so far. I would have loved to spend hours browsing the tables, but my cold is still kicking my butt, so I opted for a Scarpetta novel by Patricia Cornwell as book #3 and Calico by Lee Goldberg, which has been all over his Facebook feed for some time, as #4. The fact that I don’t have any room in my carry-on for the return flight home in no way impedes my bookgoblin tendencies.

I chatted with Devlin Chatterson from Montreal on the way to the first panel, as he’s here representing Crime Writers of Canada.… Read the rest

The speed of disruption in book piracy

PolyWogg.ca
April 13 2025

When people think of piracy, they often immediately think of movies or software. Rewind to the ’90s, and your thoughts would have been about music with sites like Napster. Almost all of the previous significant industries went with alternate business models that put a huge crimp in piracy. In some ways, at least. Music was the first — they created the online platforms with unlimited streaming for a fee, aka the all-you-can-eat buffet. They also created distribution models where most major stars are available on all platforms, so you CAN still pirate music, but it’s a lot of work that is easily waived with a simple tap of your payment card. With way more benefit than you have time to do with pirated music. You don’t OWN the music, but if you have access to it generally whenever you want, why care?

Software has gone all-in on subscription models. Even if you can hack the current model or version, it won’t connect to a bunch of the online validation tools, and it’s only good for a certain amount of time. Game systems have moved to online platforms where the software does little more than give you access; without the subscription, there’s no point.… Read the rest

FFF: Managing in the public service like a Sheepdog

PolyWogg.ca
April 5 2025

As you can see on the PolyWogg.ca site, I have a PolyWogg Guide to HR competitions in the Canadian Federal Government. I cheekily called it Be the Duck as an extended metaphor, and I wanted something similar for another book in the same vein about being a manager. So this week’s FlashForwardFriday project is my future guide on being a manager, called Be the SheepDog: Managing from the Middle.

I went with the idea of a sheepdog rounding up sheep. It’s cutesy, a bit whimsical, maybe, and the dog is cute. The challenge is to know what to cover in a general guide to managing in the public service. I could, for example, talk about all of the different parts of government, but that gets to be more like an “introduction to public administration” than a management guide.

I could do something spunky like the 7 Habits of Highly Bureaucratic People, but I hate the term, and it’s not what I’m about.

I could do it like a business case study and talk about five or six complicated examples where features are added just to complicate the scenario, and after going through it, you feel good that you unravelled the mystery (that all started with the Big Bang).… Read the rest

Checking out some stock photo sites

PolyWogg.ca
March 12 2025

I’m working on a bunch of book covers, and to that end, I’ve been working through Fiverr with a contractor in Bosnia. They use DepositPhotos for their business model, which allows commercial use for books with their standard image license up to 500K downloads (I should be good). The contractor has given me multiple templates that I can use while swapping out the cover page and changing the text. Easy peasy lemon squeezy and the work they did saved me a ton of time for not a lot of cash. Small investment, big savings.

But now that I have the templates and can play with the covers and titles, I want to find some cover photos. I can generate them through AI tools, and I may do that for some. For example, I’m looking for a cover image that would / could represent 1940s Big Band / Swing music. I don’t particularly want a specific group, like the Glenn Miller Orchestra, so much as I’d rather have a generic “look”. Kind of like if I was writing about the 1980s and 1990s, I want someone dressed in Madonna-inspired fashion, not Madonna herself. It’s the vibe, not the person.

The test: 1940s music, Big Band or Swing style performers

I have some criteria.… Read the rest

FFF: A future guide to astronomy

PolyWogg.ca
March 4 2025

An author that I follow online does something called Free Fiction Mondays. I like the premise, but I’m going with FlashForwardFriday (FFF). Each Friday, I’m going to give you a preview of something I’m working on, with all the bells and whistles. For the last few weeks, I’ve been talking about an astronomy guide that I want to write. In short, I don’t like a lot of the guides out there already, not because they’re bad or anything, but because they don’t resonate with the way I approach astronomy. Nuances here and there, gaps over there, a metaphor that doesn’t land. And most of them without a “framework” to guide what they are trying to communicate.

My approach is simple — what would *I* need to know to do stuff? Nothing more, nothing less. An overview of the various topics, with enough information to get my feet wet and to be able to move on to the next piece, along with a framework of how it all fits together. That’s my goal. That’s what I want to share.

Let’s start with the cover

Astro cover

When I first started my HR guide, I framed it as a series, aka A PolyWogg Guide to Government.… Read the rest

It’s official…I’m heading to the Big Easy

PolyWogg.ca
February 22 2025

In previous posts, I talked about various book and writers’ conferences that interest me. I had it relatively narrowed down to ThrillerFest (in NYC every year) or BoucherCon (in New Orleans this year).

I really wanted to go to Thrillerfest because I love David Morrel and he was going to be there again this year (he goes every year). I looked at flights, had it worked out for some good options, and then went to book the hotel. Except I ran into a glitch. The main parts of Thrillerfest that interest me are Friday and Saturday. So I tried to book in Thursday and out on Sunday — four days, three nights. Except the main hotel is/was sold out. Well, dang it. Okay, it’s Manhattan, there are lots of choices. Except when I went to look for similar bookings, I was getting prices in the $1800 US range. Wait, it was only $300 a night at the conference. I started playing with options to maybe only go for one night (Friday), nd maybe fly down Friday morning, leave Saturday night. Quick down and back. I went back and was fiddling around with the main site and saw that you could see other room options even if sold out.… Read the rest

So, I want to go to a book conference

PolyWogg.ca
February 18 2025

I’m a book nerd, born and bred. I’m replicating that with my son, who has gone from having a book collection resembling that of a small town library to going through series after series to taking a book whenever we go anywhere. It is one of the things I am most proud of with him, even if most of it is just his personality and I get no credit for it. Having a literacy practitioner for a mom probably doesn’t hurt his support network either.

With that love of books, I’ve always wanted to go to a book conference. I minimally helped to organize a mystery one here in Ottawa the year Jacob was born, and the weekend that it happened? Yeah, that’s the weekend Andrea had a premature partial rupture of the membrane (PPROM). Fun times, I hung out with her at the hospital, scared out of our gourd. No book conference for us! I haven’t tried for another one since! 🙂 The conference or another kid!.

Which leaves me wanting to attend a conference somewhere. I don’t know if I want to attend a book festival or a writing conference, although either will do for my interests. 🙂 I’m scouring the web for some options; let’s see what I find.… Read the rest

Articles I Like: Six Myths About Traditional Publishing

PolyWogg.ca
December 2 2018

As someone who is interested in writing, I naturally have an interest in the publishing world. I grew up as an insatiable reader, and always dreamed that perhaps one day I would be selling books as an author. Later, I realized it wasn’t my primary interest in life, or at least not my only interest, and that I was more interested in the steady-paycheque world of being a salaried employee of a government entity doing public administration and policy. You know, a public servant, without the snide view of their role.

My writing has shifted over the years. Some email stuff from time to time, later some blogging and presentations. A few long reports for government. And I realized that as much as I might have dreamed of writing fiction, I have a knack for taking relatively opaque and / or complex topics and simplifying them in order to explain them to others. It’s fueled much of my career in government, as well as some of my personal blogging.

In addition though, my interest in traditional publishing was never very high. Sending off query letters? Getting rejections? Negotiating rights? Maybe seeking an agent? I have zero interest in ANY of those things.… Read the rest

Articles I Like: The long and winding road to DRM-free ebooks in academic libraries

PolyWogg.ca
April 29 2018

I have surprisingly strong views about the efficacy, effectiveness, utility, and appropriateness of digital rights management on files, including both music and ebooks. Generally speaking, I do not agree with the powers that be (publishers) that there is a difference in “ownership” between buying something digitally and buying it in hard copy, particularly exemplified by a book. I do agree that there are different risks to the publisher, but that doesn’t mean in one I have bought it and the other I have merely paid to borrow it. I believe I have the same rights and obligations I had previously. Which means in its most basic terms that I have bought it for me and I can’t reproduce it for others, but the digital element puts two other limitations — I can’t loan it nor can I resell it. I am willing to accept those caveats, but it doesn’t mean I don’t own it. Or does it? If it is ownership in one case but modified terms of ownership in another, does that change? Of course, but as the courts are apt to rule, only insofar as it accomplishes the original goal. Of course all of that is about appropriateness. It says nothing about the utility, etc.… Read the rest

Articles I Like: The Key Book Publishing Paths: 2017

PolyWogg.ca
April 16 2018

Jane Friedman has a great personal site at JaneFriedman.com, but she also publishes articles frequently at WritersWrite. One of the more popular ones is her annual “what paths are there to publishing”. The chart and text goes through six different publishing models:

  1. Traditional publishing
    1. Big five
    2. Mid-size and large
    3. Small presses
  2. Alternatives to traditional publishing
    1. Hybrid publishing
    2. Assisted self-publishing
    3. DIY

Her intro to the chart spells out the approach more clearly:

Since 2013, I have been annually updating this informational chart about the key publishing paths.

[…]

One of the biggest questions I hear from authors today: Should I traditionally publish or self-publish? This is an increasingly complicated question to answer because:

– There are now many varieties of traditional publishing and self-publishing—with evolving models and varying contracts.

– You won’t find a universal, agreed-upon definition of what it means to “traditionally publish” or “self-publish.”

– It’s not an either/or proposition. You can do both.

There is no one path or service that’s right for everyone; you must understand and study the changing landscape and make a choice based on long-term career goals, as well as the unique qualities of your work. Your choice should also be guided by your own personality (are you an entrepreneurial sort?) 

… Read the rest

Articles I Like: A potentially long cold strike in Hollywood

PolyWogg.ca
April 12 2017

Since I watch a lot of serialized storytelling through scripted television shows, I often find myself reading business items about the industry, following ratings, looking to see which shows are picked up and which are not. And, for fun, following blogs of insiders like Lee Goldberg and Ken Levine. The world of TV is about to go a bit crazy, or at least it could, as it is time for a new contract to be negotiated between the Writing Guild of America (WGA, i.e. television writers) and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP, i.e. the producers). As Ken (can I call him Ken? I don’t know him personally, but he seems like a Ken rather than  a Levine) makes very clear in his latest post (By Ken Levine: Strike update), when they say “producers”, they are not talking about creative producers like Shonda Rhimes, it means the corporate studio suits.

You might remember back when there was a writers’ strike before…new shows didn’t get written, seasons got curtailed, blah blah blah. It wasn’t good for just about anybody involved. People reportedly lost houses, cars, etc. It is a sad reality that most of the people who really need to benefit from an increase in pay because of a strike are also the least able to sustain themselves during a strike.… Read the rest

Articles I Like: Shatzkin on ebook pricing

PolyWogg.ca
February 17 2017

I read a lot of different blogs about ebooks, writing, self-publishing, the publishing industry in general, etc. and there are several that are quite popular. Kristine Kathryn Rusch on anything to do with the business side of being an author; Dean Wesley Smith, her husband, on churning out new copy and generating revenue; Konrath et al on the wild west of self-publishing; ThePassiveVoice on an overview of just about everything newsworthy (a curation service); and then people like Mike Shatzkin if you want the view of big publishing. None of those descriptions are entirely fair, they’re not one-trick ponies, but Shatzkin often is on the opening tail of self-publishing as a viable business model. So it was interesting to see him last September talking about pricing with a bit more “indie-cred” than he would normally show (eBook pricing resembles three dimensional chess):

Amazon doesn’t need big publisher books to offer lots of pricing bargains to their Kindle shoppers; they have tens of thousands of indie-published books (many of which are exclusive to them) and a growing number of Amazon-published books, that are offered at prices far below where the big houses price their offerings.

That probably explains why Amazon can see its Kindle sales are rising while publishers are universally reporting that their sales for digital texts, including Kindle, are falling.

… Read the rest

Articles I Like: Thoughts on the publishing industry in Canada

PolyWogg.ca
December 16 2016

Back in September, Carla Douglas published an article on the website “Publishing Perspectives” interviewing Merilyn Simonds on the state of publishing in Canada (A Leader in Canadian Writing Takes Stock of Self-Publishing). When I saw the title, I thought, “Cool, must read that.” Then I saw Simonds’ former job as chair of The Writers Union of Canada and thought, “Oh. Maybe not.”

I am not a giant fan of TWUC or their approaches to some issues. Like the Author’s Guild in the U.S., many of the members are sheep who think the publishing world is still flat and haven’t noticed that Amazon’s disruption was in giving authors the opportunity to bypass traditional publishing and go direct to readers, often with not only greater ease of access but also greater revenues. This of course is the 3rd sign of the Apocalypse for the Author’s Guild who surprisingly support the position of agents and publishers on issues almost 1:1. Considering those three groups have some issues that divide them pretty substantially for self-interest, the alignment is often puzzling at best or frustrating in the mild or infuriating in the worst.

So I almost didn’t read the article. Kind of a “yep, read that, got the narrow view t-shirt, thanks”.… Read the rest

Articles I Like: Digital formats for books

PolyWogg.ca
August 29 2016

Most large newspapers, journals, magazines, establishment reps all have the same view of e-publishing…a giant collective “ewww”. Like you would only do it if you weren’t any good and had no other choice. Of *course*, they sniff, you would go with whatever format your obviously large and more knowledgeable publisher would do for you. I have little time for that stupidity, so often when I see those large establishment-supporters writing, I ignore them. If I want to see what is appropriate for 1975 instead of 2016, sure, maybe I’ll read them. Right after I read the tags on my mattress.

So colour me surprised when the NYTimes feed lists “Picking a Digital Publishing Format” as a headline. Technically, no pun intended, it’s not a full NYTimes article, it’s only on the website, and a Q&A in the “personal tech” area at that, but hey, I’ll take a gander.

The question was pretty straightforward — the reader wanted to know what the “best” publishing method for digital books was in order to ensure they could reach beyond Apple devices.

The answer starts out with a simple recognition that the author should find a format that works best for their book, and I wish they spent more time on that part of the response.… Read the rest

Articles I Like: A danger of identifying best practices in publishing

PolyWogg.ca
March 16 2016

Since I aspire to being a published writer, and will be eventually when I get some time and some butt glue to keep me in my writing chair, I haunt lots of writing sites and blogs and discussions to keep learning more about the business. Recently I came across a link to a post from Jane Friedman, one of the gurus in the indie biz talking about marketing, digital tools, and such. She was basically summarizing presentations at Digital Book World (DBW), and while I think JF has tons more experience than I, I found myself wanting to quibble with some of the conclusions (4 Lessons for Authors on the Current State of Publishing).

An author’s online presence is more critical than ever to long-term marketing strategy.

I don’t disagree that it is important, but hardly “critical” or even the greatest challenge in publishing. The changing nature of the marketplace from traditional to indie or self, the shifting weight from paper to digital, these are tectonic shifts. Self-marketing? Nowhere near as important as the primary role of the writer which is to write the best book they can first. JK Rowling wasn’t exactly burning up the digital world nor was her publisher when Harry Potter broke all the sales records around.… Read the rest

Articles I Like: Publishing's dominant business model

PolyWogg.ca
January 22 2016

I love reading Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s business blogs about the publishing business, and her latest is no exception (Source: Business Musings: Poor Poor Pitiful Me Is Not A Business Model – Kristine Kathryn Rusch). In fact, her latest two pieces are about the same thing — a recent Author’s Guild open letter of lament about the state of publishing, and how their rights are being unfairly trampled by big publishing.

I spend too much time reading policy briefs at work though because I want to take her arguments, condense them into a tight little memo to the universe, and go even further. For me, I’d pitch it even stronger.

  1. Publishing is a business — Not just a cliche, but that publishing starts with a business contract between two business entities. On the one side, you have the supplier — the author who has created a great work, and now wishes to make money from it. And on the other, a small number of publishers who have lots of small suppliers they make deals with for product. This is not a partnership between today’s special snowflake and an evil empire, it’s two business partners coming to a deal.
  2. Fear is frequently a factor — since there are lots of potential suppliers, and only a few get to sell to the demanders, it becomes a buyer’s market.
… Read the rest