We're looking for new contributions to the Friday Flash Fiction website.

As the name says, the FFF website is a collection of very short stories by writers from all over the world and new writers are always welcome! 

We look for original works, 100 words or less (although there are also sections for longer and shorter stories). 

Here's the link if you would like to submit a story to the website. 

The Scottish crime writing festival Bloody Scotland is inviting applications from self-published writers for its programme.

Bloody Scotland would like to hear from self-published authors who wish to put themselves forward for the festival programme. Bloody Scotland 2016 takes place from 9-11 September next year and aims to showcase the best in Scottish and international crime writing.

The organisers prefer that those who apply are recently published and requests that authors don’t submit more than two pieces of writing.

Writers accepted to appear at the Bloody Scotland festival will be paid the same rate as traditionally published authors: i.e. £200 for a solo event and £150 for a panel event, plus a night's accommodation if necessary.
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To put yourself forward for the event, please see the contact details on the Bloody Scotland website.

A self-published book has appeared on one of the Washington Post’s best of the year lists for the first time.

Alisha Rai’s novel Serving Pleasure appears on The Post’s list of the year’s best romance fiction. Ms Rai, a lawyer by day, published Serving Pleasure through CreateSpace, Amazon’s independent publishing platform.

In an article in the Washington Post, Sarah MacLean, The Post’s romance reviewer said she had been asked to choose the five best romances of the year and she had, saying Serving Pleasure – the first book to break the no self-published rule – was an excellent example of the best of romance.

She added that romance was a massive market and readers could find exactly the kind of romance they were looking for, because there were so many niches these days.

Ms Rai has published a total of 12 novels, some with traditional publishers and some by herself. She said she had enjoyed experiencing the entire process of making her books, from story to creating a team and to marketing and packaging.
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She added that it was important to be honest about your own shortcomings and then hire the people who could be your experts.
 
Read the full story here.

Spiffing Covers published an article recently about the importance of being “authorpreneurial” – the definition of which is “an author/independent publisher/business entrepreneur in one”.

Currently, authorpreneurs are those people who have or have developed keen marketing skills and an eye to the bigger picture when it comes to book marketing, and that independent publishers are beginning to resemble traditional publishers more than ever.

With commercial publishers looking to sign self-publishers where they see potential and self-published authors being head-hunted via Amazon, authorpreneurial skills are more important than ever if you want your self-published book to succeed.

While content still counts as king (i.e. how you present yourself in the market, and ensuring you are discoverable by having a presence online and material that people read, watch, listen to and share, a good manuscript is still important. The content and the marketing skills are what will help people find that book and then spread the word.

Pic thanks to Alison Tait.

What's inspired you this week - we want to read your creative efforts over at Friday Flash Fiction!

Friday Flash Fiction is where writers go to procrastinate, sorry we mean craft their 100-word stories of perfect flash fiction. Why not join our community, a global group of writers from all around the world?

Our regular contributors take inspiration from world events, their own lives, books, TV shows, holidays and more. Join in and have fun!

Self-publishing authors are beginning to move into selling the foreign rights to their novel, according to a recent article in the Huffington Post.

This is great news for the self-publishing industry, as foreign rights might have been an area self-published authors steered clear of – and that could have meant missing out on huge audiences, as well as increasing sales at home.

The article by writer Elliot Katz highlights what happened to him when he published a self-help book aimed at North American men (Being the Strong Man a Woman Wants: Timeless Wisdom on Being a Man) and he started receiving emails from publishers in Mexico and Poland who were interested in the book.

​He has sold the foreign rights to publishers in more than 20 countries in Europe, Asia, Latin America and Africa. The Huffington Post article details how he did it:

• Firstly, he prepared an email about the book, including a summary, reviews, endorsements, and links to the book’s website and media coverage.
• He researched foreign markets – in many countries there are foreign rights agents who specialise in selling books from other countries to publishers in their own country. He found the agents through Googling “foreign rights agents” and the list included publishers and literary agents’ web pages with contact details of those agents.
• He sent those agents an email and when he received a positive response, he sent the book with copies of reviews and other media coverage.
• The offers he received (a foreign rights contract) granted the publisher only the right to publish the book in that country’s language. The author retained all the other rights. What he learned was to negotiate an advance, asking for royalties for the first printing and to calculate this, he included the number of copies in the first printing, the planned retail rate and the royalty rate.
• As he sold the foreign rights, he kept promoting in in the book’s publicity – just as the big publishers do.

Want to get ahead for Christmas? Why not treat yourself to one of the Comely Bank Publishing books?

We have three titles - Four Old Geezers and a Valkyrie by Gordon Lawrie, an amusing tale of what happens when you mix four old guys, YouTube and music.

For historical fiction fans, The Man from Outremer by TD Burke is a swashbuckling tale set in 14th Century Scotland, while Katie and the Deelans by Emma Baird is a tale aimed at young people and children abouts cats, magic and more.

And look out for Our Best Attention by Jane Tulloch, which will be published in January.

All of the titles are available on Amazon or from our book store. 

​Digital publishers, including self-publishing authors, are worried about content quality and formatting as they continue to focus on digital production, according to a new survey on trends in the digital publishing industry.
 
Jointly conducted by the Data Conversion Laboratory and Bowker, the survey showed that the number of respondents who have digitally published continues to rise – up from 63.6 percent in 2014 to 72.9 percent in 2015. The number of self-publishers jumped nine percentage points to 45.1 percent.
 
The 2015 survey also saw a 300 percent increase in the number of participants since the first survey – and 12.8 percent of them believe ebb oks are held to a lower standard than print, although 52.5 percent of respondents rated most e books as either good or excellent.
 
Check out the full story at eContent. 

Have you the urge to write fiction? Why not practise with some Friday flash fiction?

Our sister site, fridayflashfiction.com is the where you can submit your flash fiction stories. The bulk of material on the Friday flash fiction website is 100 words long, but you can also contribute longer stories. 

Flash fiction hones your self-editing skills. A great opening line is easy, but can you finish off a story neatly in 100 words?