Lauren Myracle is being called this generation's Judy Blume, and since she's a fellow resident of Fort Collins, I just had to link to her interview in Publishers Weekly. Lauren's got that gift for speaking directly to teens and pre-teens, and especially captures the sensibility of girls wrestling with issues that their parents might not want to talk about. And even though her books routinely make the challenged and banned lists, she's not all dark and emo-ish. Check out her website to see her sunny, sensitive side that readers so love.

More confirmation of the seismic changes in publishing, this time from Barnes & Noble VP Marc Parrish at the recent GigaOm Big Data conference in New York:

"The book business is changing more radically now, and quicker, than movies or music or newspapers have, because we're doing it in a matter of months…In [the] next 24 months is when this business will totally shift."

B&N predicts that, for 2011, the company will sell 18 million ereaders. That's compared with the 900,000 they sold in 2009.

For more on Parrish's comments, go to http://goodereader.com/blog/electronic-readers/barnes-and-noble-claims-ebooks-will-reign-supreme-in-2-years/

Publishers Weekly has just published 2010 sales figures for top-selling children's books in hardcover, paperback and e-book format. Some trends to note: most of the best-sellers are either part of a series, or a licensed character/TV/movie tie-in. And the series are generally by established, name-brand authors. While this really isn't a surprise, it will be interesting to watch if more smaller publishers start doing series by lesser-known writers. It's clear that once readers find something they like, they want more of the same.

The positive take on these numbers is the sheer volume of the sales. We're talking millions and millions of books sold, for all ages, in a questionable economy. And if you look at the e-book best-sellers, they're often the same titles as on the print best-seller lists. More evidence, I think, that e-book sales don't take away from print, but just expand a book's audience.

Writers know the importance of outlining. A good book starts with a strong outline or plan. But do you know the importance of outlining your social media marketing?

Of course you have a website. You’re on Facebook, you tweet, you blog. You’re familiar with MySpace, YouTube, Tumblr, Linked In, and other social network sites. Do you have a plan to make your efforts work together toward your goal?

Unless you are one of those rare creatures who have never procrastinated or even been tempted to procrastinate important tasks, you’ll want to have specific time to reach the goals. Just as you break down writing a book into small steps, so you should break down your social media marketing plan into small steps.

A reasonable time frame to get a basic plan up and running is two to three months, depending upon how many elements you plan to implement. As you grow more familiar with the use of a marketing plan and develop a comprehensive career plan, you may want to take a more long-range view and create a plan for six months to a year or even more. Clearly, this is something you should start while you're writing your manuscript, in order to establish a social media presence. Once you've sold your book, you can instantly plug book promotion into your existing online platform. The following outline pertains to promoting a newly-published book, but many of the elements (such as creating a website and blog) can be started when the book is still a work-in-progress.

You’ll first want to identify your target audience. That’s obvious, you may say. I write for children so children are my audience. That’s great, as far as it goes. What about reaching your readers’ parents and/or teachers as well?

The number of social media outlets continues to grow. Use those with which you are most familiar and comfortable. As your skill and comfort level with these grow, you may want to add more.

Some of the most common social networks are:

LinkedIn

Tumblr

YouTube

Yahoo Groups

Twitter

MySpace

Blog Talk Radio

Facebook

Start with the basics. Is this your first foray into social media marketing? If so, you will probably want to begin with the basics to lay a strong foundation for future growth. Goals should define what your efforts will yield at the end of your chosen time frame.

Break them down. You know the goal-reaching routine. Break each goal down into a series of specific tasks. Have you ever watched the Bill Murray comedy What About Bob? Richard Dreyfuss, Bob’s psychiatrist, counsels him to break his goals down into baby steps. Apply this same advice to your social media marketing program. For example, if you want to increase your blog's presence by both offering to write guest posts for other blogs, and by scheduling guest writers on your blog (all in exchange for linking to each other's blog and promoting each other's books), you'll need to contact at least two to four other bloggers per week to meet your goal. Let’s look at how a sample eight-week plan would come together. If this seems like too much, spread it out over 12 weeks.

Week One:

- Create a series (three to five is reasonable) of 30-second videos previewing upcoming releases.

- If you haven’t joined Yahoo Groups allowing author promotion, do so. Search Yahoo Groups (http://groups.yahoo.com/) for keywords like author promotion, book reviews, children, author promo, novel excerpts, etc. Many Yahoo Groups have been established for readers to read excerpts, interviews, book reviews, and news of giveaways or contests hosted by authors for children.

- Look at your website.

o Determine if your website encourages reader participation. Does it need updating or to make it more easily navigable?

o If you have determined that it needs updating, design a new site, making certain you have included links to your other social media efforts.

- Blogging.

o Schedule guest blogs by other authors for your blog and link it to your updated website

o Blog on your own and other authors’ websites. Read more

 I know that many writers are concerned that eBooks and apps will lead to their work being downloaded and passed around without recompense. Fair enough. But then there's this, from musician Martin Atkins during a speech at the recently completed South By Southwest festival:  

"It's not a problem if 20,000 people 'illegally' download your music. It's a problem if they don't."

And this, from author Cory Doctorow:

I recently saw Neil Gaiman give a talk at which someone asked him how he felt about piracy of his books. He said, "Hands up in the audience if you discovered your favorite writer for free ­­ because someone loaned you a copy, or because someone gave it to you? Now, hands up if you found your favorite writer by walking into a store and plunking down cash." Overwhelmingly, the audience said that they'd discovered their favorite writers for free, on a loan or as a gift. When it comes to my favorite writers, there's no boundaries: I'll buy every book they publish, just to own it (sometimes I buy two or three, to give away to friends who must read those books). I pay to see them live. I buy t­shirts with their book­covers on them. I'm a customer for life.

The point? If you spend all your time worrying about people stealing your stuff, you'll probably succeed in preventing it. That's because you most likely wouldn't have spent enough time building an audience who would care enough to do it in the first place.

Loosen up. Build your tribe. Worry less.  Connect more.

Editor's note: Audrey is a 13-year-old student from California who is currently working on her own novel between school, sports and choir. She's also a Contributing Editor to Write4Kids, focusing on middle grade and YA literature. If you have writing-related questions for Audrey, or want to suggest a topic for a future column, please contact Laura at Laura@write4kids.com.

Visit Audrey's new blog, Audrey Reads and Reviews, for more of her insights into YA lit.

For this blog post, I’ve interviewed Alma Alexander. Ms. Alexander has published the YA fantasy series Worldweavers from HarperTeen. Her side project is a very interesting one—she wrote a novel as a 14 year old, and she has been editing it and revising it on a website: http://heritageofclan.wordpress.com/. Visit her online at: http://www.almaalexander.com/.

Audrey: I really like the social structure of the story (with the clans and guilds etc). But, more than that, I like the world you’ve created. Do you have any advice for creating a world so thoroughly? When I read your work, I feel like there’s a bigger world out there than just the parts that you’ve written about. Any advice?

Alma: Actually there is a whole file that I created about that world (and yes, I still have that too) which delves into ALL SORTS of detail about it – most of which never ever makes it into the book/story itself. It’s what I call the Iceberg Theory of Writing – what the reader sees is only the top 5% of what there is to know, the stuff that’s above the waterline and looks pretty and spectacular. But it RESTS on all that invisible 95% that is under water, never seen. That is what provides the stability and familiarity for that 5% which appears to be floating effortlessly in mid-air.

In our own everyday mundane world that 95% can be as visible as the rest – simply because we LIVE in this world 24/7, live it breathe it hold it touch it smell it every day, and it’s deeply and utterly familiar and transparent to us. We take a huge amount of stuff for granted, simply because we KNOW that it is there. Creating a fantasy world from scratch means that you lack this built-in scaffolding, and you have to build your own. The advice you are asking for boils down to one simple thing – ALWAYS know more about your world than you let on, and then the reader will instinctively pick up on the fact that there is more to know, and therefore the world has a depth and a reality which is then comparable to our own “real” world.

Audrey: You have a lot of characters. They all seem to have totally different personalities. How do you do this? I love ensemble casts (I usually write them, but mine are mainly all teenagers), and you seem to be writing about all different social castes and ages. How do/did you figure everything out about the characters? How do/did you keep everything straight about them? When I try to do a lot of characters, I mix them up.

Alma: Hi, my name is Alma and I HEAR VOICES…

Well, that’s a simplistic way of putting it, but that’s what it boils down to, for me. I don’t so much create characters as allow them in, simply let them wander by and tell me a story, and I simply take dictation. The fact that they all have different voices stands to reason – they are all different people. I contain many many people, I contain worlds. But it isn’t something I do on a conscious level. I simply listen.

Part of the ability to write across the boundaries of class and race and age comes from the fact that I am a voracious reader. I devour books – and every book I read teaches me something which gets filed away for future reference for if and when a character who might be so VERY different from myself might need such knowledge or identity markers. If I am writing about somebody from a culture with which I am less than adequately familiar, I will immerse myself in reading about that culture until I “internalize” some of its basic ideas and beliefs – and with those, comes the voice.

A character’s voice is rooted in that character’s context and culture. These are creatures who all exist in a complex mix of relationships to the people and places in their lives, to their set of beliefs, to their faith, to their worldview, to their morality, to their physical and metaphysical address in the world in which they live. All of these things inform the way they respond to that world.

In the Clans book, for instance, I am setting up a conflict between two people who love and respect each other – who are foster-brothers – who have both grown up aristocrats in a world where aristocrats have a certain social position – but their minds and the thoughts and feelings therein are very different, and when their positions in their world are rocked by new revelations they respond in ways that will set them up as enemies in what amounts to a civil war. It is important to realize that even people who on the face of it look almost identical to one another might react very differently to the same stimulus – and once you keep this in mind, the different inner voices of these people will make themselves known to you if you listen closely. Read more

In the latest chapter of big publishers' efforts to capitalize on e-book profits, HarperCollins started a new policy this week of limiting libraries' ability to loan out their e-books to 26 loans per title. At that point, libraries will have to re-license the Harper e-books for the next 26 loans. Librarians are outraged, saying the new policy will strain budgets and stifle the promotion of literacy. Two librarians have organized a Boycott HarperCollins website. Read all about the controversy here.

My initial reactions to the announcement, in no particular order, were:

• I understand Harper's desire to make money (it is a business, after all), and their rationale that hard copy library books wear out and need to be replaced — whereas e-books don't — could, I suppose, be argued. So why not a compromise? Why not let libraries license the e-book for 7 or 10 years, and then renew? When the license expires, librarians gauge how popular the e-book has been, and renew if there's still a demand for the title. Just like hardcover books.
• If I were a Harper author, I'd be incensed that my publisher was making it more difficult for libraries to carry a version of my book. (And if I were a Macmillan or Simon & Schuster author, I'd be really peeved, because according to the Publishers Weekly article, they don't license e-books to libraries at all.)
• Libraries are already forced to loan each e-book to only one patron at a time, just like hard copy books, and those e-books automatically expire after one set period. I learned this the hard way when I went to renew an e-book I was halfway through reading, and it had disappeared from my e-reader. I never got around to finishing the book.
• Isn't the goal of every publisher to build an audience for each book? Doesn't limiting access to certain editions of books limit the audience for all the books by that author? In other words, if I can easily check out the e-book version of Book One in a series and I like it, I'm more likely to check out (or buy!!) the hard copy version of Book 2 when it comes out.
• On a closely-related point, isn't the goal of every publisher to spread literacy and promote the written word? Shouldn't libraries be free to offer access to the written word to all their patrons, even those who are housebound and need to borrow books online? How about college students, who prefer to carry their research books on an e-reader instead of in a 50-pound backpack? Or the mother with three young children who just can't make it to the library on a snowy day, but wants new books to read to her kids?
• And finally, remember that libraries aren't asking for the e-books for free. They're paying for the license. And I'm willing to bet that they don't license an e-book unless they also have the hard copy of the same title on the shelves. So the author still gets royalties, and the publisher still makes money.

Publishing is changing, and the old way of doing business needs to change as well. As big publishers become less relevant in today's market, and authors are finding it easier to self-publish, I think it's unwise for publishers to limit the public's access to their authors' books. But that's my opinion. I'd like to know what you think.

Among the many reasons would-be authors give for packing it in and giving up their dream is "I'm too old".  Nice try, but it doesn't wash.  William Steig (Shrek, Pete's a Pizza and many, many other wonderful books) didn't launch a children's book career until he was 61.  Laura Ingalls Wilder didn't publish her "Little House on the Prairie" series until she was in her 50's.

Courtesy of the Huffington Post, here's a look at some more authors who got a late start – but finished big.

And then, allow us to destroy some of your other possible excuses for calling it a day.  Here's

Five Reasons Why You Can’t Be A Writer (And Why None Of Them Are True)

Keep writing, people!

What do Dr. Seuss, Maurice Sendak, Margaret Wise Brown and Beatrix Potter all have in common? Other than being beloved authors and household names, none had children of their own. And yet that didn't stop them from creating books that children have cherished for generations.

There's a difference between having a child, and having a childlike sensibility. Simply being a parent doesn't mean you can effectively tell a story from a child's point of view. Sure, having kids can help, and if you're paying attention you'll gain valuable insight into their world. But I've read lots of manuscripts by parents and grandparents who feel it's their job to teach a lesson to the world's young ones (and their own offspring in particular, who simply won't listen when it's time to turn off the TV and do their homework). Not to mention that they have to work all five of their children's names into the book, as well as the family dog.

Personal stories don't always make for fiction that's universally appealing. There are plenty of gifted writers with loads of children, and I hope their kids appreciate the great stories Mom and Dad are telling them. But having kids doesn't necessarily give you any special writer-powers. And if you're not basing your story on your child, then you're free to change the character, send the plot in a new direction, and use every bit of your imagination. If you can do all that and be a parent too, good for you. But if you're using your childless status as an excuse for not getting published, you'll have to scratch that one off your list.

What do you think?

We're pretty excited about the future of children's publishing.  To spread our optimism, we've just created a new blog that will focus solely on the brave new world of ePublishing — and the opportunities it will bring for authors.

It's eWriting4Kids.com, and it's online right now.  Head on over to http://eWriting4Kids.com and have a gander!