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Copyright ©
2001-10
WritersServices.com
| |
Check what's changed and when:
 | The site is normally updated every Monday (London dateline). |
The email newsletter keeps you informed about what's new
in the WritersServices site.
| If you 'subscribe' - it's free -
we send you the update and links each week. |
| This month's online Magazine
is another way of catching up with what's new on the site |
26 July 2010
|
John Jenkins'
July column - John's view is that 'you can do everything with
dialogue: let your characters tell the story'. He illustrates
what he means by this and how you should go about it in his July
column. |
| Inspired by Colin Robinson's recent article in The Nation,
News Review takes another
look at Amazon, still growing fast and now the largest bookseller in
the world, with all that entails. Are they using their power wisely?
What effect do they have on publishers? There's a stop press
too, relating to the latest big story on e-books. |
|
The English language
publishing world - in the face of a changing situation as
English becomes ever more established as the international language,
Chris Holifield has revised this article in the
Inside Publishing series, which
consists of 19 articles which take you inside the publishing world. |
| ‘Any bookseller who might be considering whether to order
more copies of Brodeck's Report by Philippe Claudel, which
(in May) took the Independent Foreign Fiction prize, should look at
this week's charts. Astonishingly, translations currently account
for 40 per cent of Britain's top-ten bestsellers.' Boyd Tonkin,
Literary Editor of the Independent in our
Comment column.. |
| |
| 'Poetry is not a career, but a mug's game. No honest poet can
ever feel quite sure of the permanent value of what he has written,
he may have wasted his time and messed up his life for nothing.'
T S Eliot in our Writers'
Quotes. |
19 July 2010
| News Review looks at the big
international publishing companies and what a recent study shows about how
they have fared in the rankings in the last year. Trade publishing is not
top of the charts and it is the companies which have a global approach which
have grown the most. But waht difference does this make to writers? |
| 'I think there was what people sometimes call 'a gap in the market'
because I wanted to get away from the fantasy and sensationalism of James
Bond and the Ludlum-esque stuff... after a while too much fantasy has a
bludgeoning effect: you accept that the guy can fly, or defuse a bomb with
bare hands, or whatever.' Jason Elliot, author of The Network, in
the Bookseller, quoted in our
Comment column. |
| Tips for Writers
is our latest 8-part series for writers:
Improving your writing, Learning on the job,
New
technology and the Internet,
Self-publishing - is it for you?,
Promoting your writing (and yourself),
Other kinds of writing,
Keep up to date
and Submission to
publishers and agents |
| Our Writing Opportunity
this week is the Mslexia Women's Poetry Competition, open to women only
and closing soon, on the 26 July. First prize is £5 for up to three poems. |
| Our checklist on
Entering competitions helps you to review how you approach
competitions and to make sure you give yourself the best possible
chance of winning. |
| 'The writer who possesses the creative gift owns something of which
he is not always master - something that at times strangely wills and works
for itself.' Charlotte Bronte in our
Writers' Quotes. |
12 July 2010
|
Do you want to make a
Table of Contents for your book? It looks good to provide one,
especially when you prepare a large document. It does not take long and the
benefits make it well worth doing. If you are using Microsoft Word, or
most other word-processing packages, it is remarkably easy to get a
professional-looking table which is generated for you by the software. Not
only will the table look good but the headings are ‘active’; so people
reading the document on a computer can click on the TOC and jump to the
place in the text. Chas Jones shows you how. |
| 'Following on from our look at prizes and what effect they have last
week, this week’s column will be devoted to new prizes. There has been a
proliferation of new ones launched over the last few years, so there’s quite
a lot to evaluate. Some of them focus on new work but only a proportion of
them are open for entries from unpublished writers.'
News Review looks at new prizes. |
| Our latest Writing Opportunity
is the Luke Bitmead Writer's Bursary, in memory of the young author
Luke Bitmead. The top prize is a publishing contract with Legend Press, as
well as a cheque for £2500. |
| 'Only now that the book is out have I fully realized what the most
frightening part of the is process is. The questions: How will the reading
public respond? Do ads work? Do people even read much anymore, beyond
vampire books? Is the sophomore slump real? Is the sales rank on Amazon.com
a true indicator?... I want people to buy and read my book, but the reasons
for this want lie not in sales rank or blog hits. The reasons lie where they
always have for the artist. If we do our job right, writers can, in the
words of Muhammad Ali, shake up the world.' Glenn Taylor, author of
The Marrowbone Marble Company on Publishing Perspectives in our
Comment column. |
| Does your book need copy
editing, either to prepare it for submission or so that you can
self-publish with confidence? Our team of skilled copy editors is ready to
help. Here's an article about
UK and American copy editing
and another about
the
difference between proof-reading and copy editing. |
| 'And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the
outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to
creativity is self-doubt.'
Sylvia Plath in our Writers'
Quotes. |
5 July 2010
| New review of The Writing
Workshop Notebook by Alan Ziegler
- our reviewer Maureen Kincaid Speller concluded that: 'This is an unconventional book about writing,
inspirational as much as it is practical, and focusing on an aspect of
the writing process that isn’t much discussed. It would, I think, prove
a valuable addition to the writing bookshelf if you are at all
interested in the workshopping process and what it involves.' |
| 'The literary world is awash with literary prizes, with new ones being set
up every year. But what effect do these prizes have and do they actually sell
more books?... The answer is mixed. Some of the biggest prizes do have a major
effect on sales but others have surprisingly little impact. The €100,000
International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, which bills itself as the world’s
largest prize for a single novel, was won recently by a novel in translation
which will probably not sell in really significant numbers...'
News Review investigates. |
| Bob's Journal of a Virtually Unpublished Writer
offers entertaining insights into the life of an aspiring writer.
It's a WritersServices exclusive and you can go back to
the
start in 2001 and right through to its
end in
December 2007, when he reflected: 'Still haven’t broken through
my writer’s block. No longer even sure I want to. Why write? What’s writing
for? Have absolutely no idea. How can one add anything worthwhile to the
work of writers like Oscar Wilde? Yet the internet grows more vast by the
minute with the words of the millions who are certain their opinions are
worth airing.'
This year’s Bulwer-Lytton
Prize, the annual award for the worst opening sentence, has gone to
Molly Ringle's comparison of a lovers' kiss with the sucking of a
thirsty rodent. Given annually since 1982, the competition, sponsored by the English
department at San Jose State University, is inspired by the melodramatic
first sentence of Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton's 1830 novel Paul Clifford. |
|
'A multi-media strategy pays
richer dividends to busy, versatile authors for whom film adaptations, TV slots,
press columns and the like come easily. For focused literary types who simply
want the best deal for their words, other agents still keep faith with books
alone.' Boyd Tonkin, Literary Editor, in the Independent,
on literary agents, quoted in our
Comment column. |
|
Thinking about subscribing to a writers' magazine?
Our Magazine Reviews offer a
unique service, guiding you through what's available for writers: Writers' News, Mslexia, Writers' Forum, Writer's Digest, Scriptwriter
and Self-Publishing Magazine. |
|
'Almost anyone can be an author; the business
is to collect money and fame from this state of being.' A A Milne in our
Writers' Quotes. |
21 June 2010
| 'An article in a recent edition of the Bookseller has highlighted the
ongoing pressure on acquisitions in publishing houses, which has now become
acute. Helen Garnons-Williams, Bloomsbury fiction editorial director said:
"Our entire business is based on confidence, whether among the publishers or
the agents, and pretty much everyone is wobbling because no one knows what
will sell." Auctions have often faltered because the recession is causing a
massive loss of confidence and publishers are becoming increasingly
risk-averse.' News Review has
the story. |
| Our Writing Opportunity this
week is the wonderful new prize for unpublished novels set up by Terry
Pratchett and Transworld Publishers. Called The Terry Pratchett Anywhere But Here, Anywhen But Now Prize
it is for a publishing contract with Trnasworld with a £20,000 advance. |
|
Why do non-fiction books need an index? In
The Ins and Outs of Indexing
Joanne Phillips provides an answer, explains why it's a specialist job and why
computers can't achieve the same result as a skilled indexer. |
| Our skilled
Indexing service.
Are you an author planning to compile your own
index? Have you been asked by your publisher to provide an index for
your book? Or are you self-publishing your work?
If so, don’t let your
readers down by offering them a sub-standard index. A professional
index will set your work apart from other self-published books.
|
| 'I've always loved short stories. The process is probably
less anxious than writing a novel. There's something about the intensity of
a short story that I love... You can reinvent them all the time (whereas)
with the novel there's the huge weight of tradition. There's something about
modern life that suits the short story. It's a bit snipped up and jagged and
raw and I think stories are like that...' Michele Roberts, author of
Mud, in the Bookseller, quoted in our
Comment column. |
| The winners of the Michael Marks Awards for Poetry Pamphlets have just
been announced. Selima Hill won the Michael Marks
Poetry Award for her pamphlet
Advice on Wearing Animal Prints and HappenStance
won the Michael Marks Publishers’ Award on the basis of
their publishing programme in 2009. More on
Poetry Bookshop
Online, including the Chair of the Judges' fantastic speech, and
from
the British Library. |
| An Editor's Advice is a useful series is based on the
advice Maureen Kincaid Speller, a long-serving WritersServices
freelance editor, has given writers over the years. The series
covers
Dialogue,
doing further drafts,
genre writing,
planning,
points of view,
autobiography and travel
and
manuscript presentation. |
| 'Why shouldn't truth be stranger than fiction? Fiction, after all,
has to make sense.' Mark Twain in our
Writers' Quotes. |
14 June 2010
| Our reviewer, Maureen Kincaid Speller, said of the
The Arvon Book of Life
Writing by Sally Cline and Carole Angier: 'Many people
want to write about someone’s life, perhaps their own, and there are courses
to suit every level of interest, from university masters degrees to local
college qualifications' and concluded that it was: 'a brisk and
helpful guide on how to set about writing a life story... It is a sensible
account of life writing from experienced practitioners of what is both art
and craft, and I recommend it!' |
| 'A major recent study led by Nevada
University has showed that regular access to books in the home had a direct
effect on children’s long-term educational achievement. Involving
70,000 people in 27 countries, it showed that the effect of having 500 books
in the home was to increase by three years the length of time that these
children subsequently spent in education.'
News Review reports.
|
| Zoe Jenny has just published her first novel written in English,
The Sky is Changing. She
is the author of The Pollen Room, written at the age of 23, which was
translated into 27 languages and is the best-selling debut Swiss novel of
all time. Zoe wrote a
My Say article
for us on writing in a new language, Cutting the Cord. |
|
'Books are not dead. They may appear
besieged, ever more so as fragile retailers hunker down to re-examine their
own business models. There may be fewer new titles published over the next
several years... but I am confident that the book business will
evolve, as it has done for hundreds of years, and will occupy a considerable
position as a ongoing and valued medium.' Laurence Orbach, CEO of
Quarto, in the Bookseller, quoted in our
Comment column. |
| Tips for Writers is
our new series for writers and covers:
Improving your writing,
Learning on the job,
New
technology and the Internet,
Self-publishing - is it for you?,
Promoting your writing (and yourself),
Other kinds of writing,
Keep up to date
and Submission to
publishers and agents |
|
'The books one reads in childhood, and perhaps most
of all the bad and good bad books, create in one's mind a sort of false map
of the world, a series of fabulous countries into which one can retreat at
odd moments throughout the rest of life, and which in some cases can even
survive a visit to the real countries which they are supposed to represent.'
George Orwell in our Writers'
Quotes. |
7 June 2010
| John Jenkins' June column
looks at the recent decision by Rupert Murdoch to take the Times Online
private. But will this work, or are we all just too used to getting
things for free online? |
| 'The excitement surrounding the arrival of the i-Pad
in countries outside the US has caught the attention of the media,
reinforcing the idea that a mass audience is waiting to buy one and start
using it to read e-books. The arrival of the Kindle aroused similar
expectations and many articles presaging the end of the printed book...
‘Reading the Future’, the Bookseller’s third annual survey into what
readers and book-buyers are thinking, contradicts this view and shows that
the publishing world is much more focused on e-books than book-buyers are.'
News Review investigates. |
| Our Contract vetting
service may be just what you need if you've got an agreement with a
publisher but are now faced with dealing with the contract. Our
contracts expert can advise and help you make sure you get a good deal. |
| Our Writing Opportunity this week is the Writer's Bureau Poetry and Short Story Competition, with
prizes of £1,000, a £5 entry fee and closing on 30 June. |
| 'I do try and remember what it was like writing books in the
void, back when I had to worry about whether they were even going to see
print. That was not a good place. I am very grateful not to be there. I feel
I not only narrowly escaped obscurity but also having to give up writing
novels altogether, which would have broken my heart. It is easy to be blase
about having a bigger audience. I don't take it for granted.' Lionel
Shriver, whose new book is So Much For That, in the Sunday
Telegraph's Seven. |
| Our
surveys, which are responses from people coming to the site, have
some fascinating information which has been garnered over the years. We look
at your reading and writing habits, and what you think about the future of
publishing. |
| 'All writing is difficult. The most you can hope for is a day when it
goes reasonably easily. Plumbers don't get plumber's block, and doctors
don't get doctor's block; why should writers be the only profession that
gives a special name to the difficulty of working, and then expects sympathy
for it?' Philip Pullman in our
Writers' Quotes. |
31 May 2010
|
London
Book Fair 2010: Masterclass - Organising author events -Amanda Pollard, illustrator of
An
Illustrated History of 1066, attends a London Book Fair Masterclass
to find out what part authors can play in organising their own bookshop
events. |
| 'Stieg Larsson notwithstanding, what are the chances of a
translated author selling well in the big English-speaking markets
of the US and the UK? The received wisdom has always been that
translations into English are tough going financially, with it
proving virtually impossible to make the figures work without an
English-language publisher on both sides of the Atlantic to pay for
the costs of translation.' News
Review looks at writers in translation in the headlines.
|
|
Our
Writing Opportunity this
week is The Tony Lothian Biographers' Club Prize, for an
uncommissioned first-time writer working on a
biography. The First Prize is
£2,000, there's an entrance fee of £10 and the closing date 1 August
2010. |
| 'I know it's somewhat of an unpopular opinion, but I think it's
unrealistic to expect that you can support yourself solely as a writer in this
economy... In the end, the better you make the book, the better the chances that
you'll get a healthy advance, and the harder you work with your publisher to
promote the book by publishing stories or nonfiction essays to raise your
profile, by blogging and keeping your website active, by thinking outside of the
box in terms of marketing and publicity, the better your book will do. But at
the end of the day it's the quality of the work that matters the most.' US
agent Julie Barer on mediabistro, quoted in our
Comment column. |
| We're proud of the good things writers have said about our site and have
collected them together on an Endorsements
page. |
| 'All writing is difficult. The most you can hope for is a day when it
goes reasonably easily. Plumbers don't get plumber's block, and doctors don't
get doctor's block; why should writers be the only profession that gives a
special name to the difficulty of working, and then expects sympathy for it?'
Philip Pullman on writers' block in our
Writers' Quotes. |
24 May 2010
| 'The Penguin Group and the Pearson Foundation have launched an
interesting new charitable venture, designed both to get children reading
and to encourage them to become charitable givers. When a child reads a book
online, they are able to donate another book to be sent to a reading charity
and can choose from four options as to where their this book is sent. The
site is free, so the child can read a book, as well as giving one.
News Review reports. |
| WiFi - Chas Jones looks at technical issues
relating to WiFi, explains how it works and investigates the security
issues which are involved. |
| 'My job is to entertain. There is a contract between the reader and
the writer. The readers give me their hard-earned cash and I have to
entertain them... It's my role to come up with the goods. I work in an
entertainment industry. I tell stories, people read them and enjoy the
stories, so I get paid, and get to write more stories...' Jasper Fforde,
author of Shades of Gray, in the Independent on Sunday, quoted
in our Comment column. |
| Our listing of International
Book Fairs gives you the basic information about book fairs across
the world and links to their sites. |
| This week's Writing
Opportunity is the Writers’ & Artists’ Yearbook
events for emerging writers
in London:
The Insider Guide to Hot to Get Published Saturday 19th June, 10am-4.30pm
and
Submitting Your Manuscript Wednesday 7 & 14 July 2010, 6-9pm. |
| Our self-publishing site,
WritersPrintshop,
provides a first-rate service and, if you're still just thinking about it,
there's over 90 pages about self-publishing, providing the fullest
information available on the web. |
| 'Writing is not a job description. A great deal of it is luck. Don't
do it if you are not a gambler because a lot of people devote many years of
their life to it. I think people become writers because they are compulsive
wordsmiths.' Margaret Atwood in our
Writers' Quotes. |
17 May 2010
| Dark Web -
Charles Jones looks at the fascinating subject of the dark web and asks why you
might want to make your website invisible. |
| 'The case of Robin Price, a Devon-based literary agent who has just
appeared in court charged with stealing over half a million pounds from a number
of clients, is a salutary one for unpublished authors. Over a period of several
years, Price had bamboozled sums as large as £293,603 out of hopeful authors...
' News Review looks at fraudulent
agents and why you should beware of vanity publishers. |
| The BBC National Short Story Award 2010 is this week's
Writing Opportunity. It's the fifth
year of this award for a single short story and the first prize is £15,000. The
closing date is 18th June 2010. |
| Our 19-part
Inside Publishing
series offers a unique insider's look at the publishing industry and explains
how it works, with articles on
Advances and
Royalties,
the
English language publishing world,
Children's
publishing and much more. |
| 'This analogy between music and books is something that keeps popping up.
Many people are saying that digital file sharing "killed" the music industry and
that if the book industry isn’t careful, the same thing will happen to
publishing. But the book industry is not the music industry... Books... are
already their own device with no need for any sort of player.'
Mark Leslie in
The Mark, quoted in our Comment
column. |
| Interested in writers' software? There's a number of
packages which can help you with your writing reviewed in our
Writers' Software section. |
| ‘If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can warm me,
I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken
off, I know that is poetry. These are the only ways I know it. Is there any
other way?' Emily Dickinson in our
Writers' Quotes. |
10 May 2010
| John Jenkins' May column
looks at how to kickstart writing a biography or family history, now a very
popular thing to write and something you can easily set out to do.
His May column shows how to get yourself started with websites,
books and magazines. |
| 'Every so often a completely unknown writer hits the headlines after
years of trying to break through and the dream come true provides fresh hope
for many others. Recently it was the turn of Australian Rebecca James, whose
new book Beautiful Malice was sold to Allen & Unwin, making her literally
cry with joy. The timing couldn’t have been more propitious, as she and her
partner had just closed down their struggling kitchen design business. This
was just the beginning though. A week later Faber acquired the UK rights,
then the German auction went through the roof.
News Review reports. |
|
| USB:
Chas Jones guides us through this useful gadget:
'Released in April of the millennium year, this connection has been
a part of a revolution in the way we connect items to our computers.
Before USB connecting was an unreliable process but coupled with the
arrival of USB we had versions of Window that could support 'plug
and play' which made the business of attaching things to your
computer at least an order of magnitude simpler.... ' |
|
|
|
Rotten
Rejections lists the famous writers who had their work rejected:
The Diary of Anne Frank (‘The girl doesn’t, it seems to me, have
a special perception or feeling which would lift that book above the
“curiosity” level.’) and Lust for Life by Irving Stone (which
was rejected 16 times, but found a publisher and went on to sell
about 25 million copies) was pronounced: ‘ A long, dull novel about
an artist.’ |
|
| 'The sudden rush of Kindles, tablets and readers strikes me as
strangely illogical. Reading is supposed to be in danger, in decline. And
yet somehow these devices are going to make it more attractive... Call me
old-fashioned or just call me old. But you can keep your e-book ancillaries.
Stories are enough for me.' Anthony Horowitz, author of The Power of
the Necropolis in the Bookseller, quoted in our
Comment column. |
| Does your book need copy
editing, either to prepare it for submission or so that you can
self-publish with confidence? Our team of skilled copy editors is ready to
help. Here's an article about
UK and American copy editing and another about
the
difference between proof-reading and copy editing. |
| 'I would sooner read a time-table or a catalogue than nothing at all,
they are much more entertaining than half the novels that are written.'
Somerset Maugham in our Writers'
Quotes. |
3 May 2010
| 'Unable to make it across the Atlantic to deliver a speech in London
because of the ash, Mike Shatzkin asked someone else to deliver his speech
and it can be found on his blog. And uncomfortable it certainly is this
time. In a sobering analysis of the next 20 years, he says there is one
inexorable truth: ‘The price consumers will be willing to pay for content is
going to go down because of the laws of supply and demand.’
News Review investigates. |
| The
Digital Rights Management debate - Chas Jones looks at the way the views
on digital rights management are changing. Is generosity a good
sales strategy and what about piracy? |
| Ready to submit? Our page on
Making
submissions helps guide you through the process and
Your
Submission Package shows you what to send. |
| 'Writing fiction is inevitably much more personal. Not necessarily
autobiographical, but much closer to your way of seeing the world, and much
more demanding. I find it much harder... It’s a personal form of expression
as opposed to a screenplay where I think you’re second-guessing the director
or the producer or the audience.’ David Nicholls, author of One Day
and many TV scripts, in the Bookseller, quoted in our
Comment column. |
| Are you a poet who is trying to get your work published?
Have a look at
Getting your poetry
published and there's also a review of Chris Hamilton-Emery of Salt
Publshing's
101 Ways to Make Poems Sell, the best book on the subject. |
| There's just time to enter this week's
Writing Opportunity if you
hurry. The Templar Poetry Pamphlet and Collection Prizes close on 8
May and have an entry fee of £18 and you can enter online. |
| 'The art of writing is to explain the complications of the human soul
with the simplicity that can be universally understood.' Allan Sillitoe,
author of Saturday Night and Saturday Morning, who died last week, in
our Writers' Quotes. |
26 April 2010
| 'It’s been a rather surreal week in the publishing world, as the
suspension of flights destroyed what was to have been the best London Book
Fair ever... The second half of the week has been enlivened by the
extraordinary story of Orlando Figes, distinguished historian known for his
books on Russia. Poisonous reviews of his rivals’ books had been posted
anonymously on Amazon, but using the pen-name ‘Historian’ aka
Orlando-Birkbeck’.' News Review reports. |
| Our latest Success story
is that of Rosie Alison, who has just been
shortlisted for the all-female 2010 Orange Prize for fiction with her first
novel, a great vindication for this author whose first book was eight years
in the writing. |
| If you want editorial input from our professional
editors, have a look at our
Services, especially
our
Editor's Report,
Submission Critique and
Children's
Services. Also available is
Copy
editing,
Manuscript Typing and our new service,
Indexing. |
| 'We're back to who can tell the best story. Will it be you, about
your own life? Or will you let others tell your story for you? Literature
offers us all, writers and readers, the best method of discovering and
retelling the changing story of ourselves. The story is both journey and
surprise. And as everyone knows, even the past is altered, depending on, not
the facts, but the interpretation.' Jeanette Winterson on her first
book, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, in The Times, quoted in
our Comment column. |
| Are you writing poetry but finding it difficult to get it published?
Look at our page on
Getting your poetry
published. |
| 'Once a book has been declared a bestseller, its sales accelerate -
like the freshwater polyp the best seller breeds from itself - and the
book-buyer can happily accept the judgement of the great majority.'
Frank Muir, in our Writers' Quotes.
|
19 April 2010
| New
agents' listings - our brand-new, up-to-date agents' listings
have been compiled from agents' own websites and other information
they publish about what they're looking for. You can use them to
research which agents to submit to. The listings cover UK and US
agents, with separate listings for children's agents in the UK, and
international agents from all over the world. |
| Use these listings to find the right agent for your work and
then our pages on Finding
an Agent,
Making submissions and
Your submission package will help with your submissions. |
|
Become a biographer - Chas Jones looks at why you might decide
to become a biographer,
covering searching out the right subject, dealing with celebrity and
whether you should make your book fact or fiction, footnote of
history or a piece of literature. |
| Also on the site are
Writing a biography or autobiography and
Writing Memoir or Autobiography. |
| 'The subject of this week’s News Review was to have been the
London Book Fair (LBF) how it has grown in importance and numbers
and what its role is in relation to other international book fairs.
But nature, with supreme indifference to the problems of human
beings, has decreed that the volcanic eruption in Iceland should
make it impossible for anyone to fly in and out of the UK... '
News Review reports on how
this disaster is affecting the Fair. |
| Read Michael Legat's 19 incredibly useful 19
Factsheets on everything from plotting your novel
to publishers' contracts. |
| 'The electronic book offers me a convenient extra way to read
while on the move. Given a good enough screen I am sure that I will
use it, and I certainly like the idea of being able to buy and
download difficult-to-locate texts at any time of the day or night.
This may also be the device that will allow newspapers and magazines
to survive as revenue-earning businesses. But I do not expect to
stop using physical books.' Lisa Jardine in 'A Point of View' on
BBC Radio Four, quoted in our
Comment column. |
| Our checklist on
Entering competitions helps you to review how you approach
competitions and to make sure you give yourself the best possible
chance of winning. |
| ‘If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I
wouldn't brood. I'd type a little faster.’ Isaac Asimov in our
Writers' Quotes,
the best
listing on the web. |
12 April 2010
|
Online advertising for writers
- Chas Jones looks at how writers can
benefit from using the web as an advertising medium, including using
Google ads and display ads to promote your book online. |
| ‘It feels great to have the iPad launched into the world --
it's going to be a game changer’, said Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO.
‘iPad users, on average, downloaded more than three apps and close
to one book within hours of unpacking their new iPad’. But is it
really game over for Amazon's Kindle, and how are e-books faring
anyway? News Review
reports. |
| In John Jenkins' April column
he ruminates on what writers can learn
from the great Anthony Trollope and concludes: His success is an inspiration to those
who feel they have failed early in life and fear failure more than
failure itself... he would set himself a target
of 5,000 words a day – or 28,000 words a week – and keep to it.
|
| Self-publish your way through the
recession - Our article by Chris Holifield, first published
in The Self-Publishing Magazine, looks at what's going on in the
publishing world and why it might make sense to consider self-publishing. |
| 'You could argue that all novels stand or fall on how
convincing and engaging their plot and characters are, but with
crime fiction and thrillers these ingredients don't just underpin
the story: they are the story.' Stephanie Merritt, aka S J
Parris, the author of Heresy, in the Observer, quoted
in our Comment column. |
| What does it take to
market yourself successfully as a jobbing writer today?
Joanne Phillips
provides the answer, which is that the
internet is a fertile ground for writers. You just need to know how to
make it work for you... |
| 'I think readers who aren’t used to reading contemporary
poetry are surprised to find it’s about our world now, our
experience; it talks about movies and pop music and stuff. It’s not
some fuddy-duddy thing, and most of it contains a good deal of
imaginative brilliance. My experience is that when people read
contemporary poetry they are engaged and interested in a way they
did not expect to be.' John Stammers in our
Writers' Quotes. |
5 April 2010
| This year’s National Poetry
Competition (which actually has an international entry although it is
run by the UK Poetry Society) has been won by Helen Dunmore for her poem
‘The Malarkey’. Better known as a novelist, Dunmore has produced nine poetry
collections and a number of novels. This poem was submitted on impulse just
before the closing date, so it was a great surprise for the poet when she
won the £5,000 prize. News Review
reports. |
| If you're thinking about making sound recordings of your work,
either podcasts or an audiobook, take a look at our
Audio Publishing
section. |
| The 2009 Diagram Prize winner,
of the wonderfully barmy
Diagram Prize for the Oddest Title of the Year for 2009 has just been announced.
And here's where
you can find the
shortlist. |
| Have you looked at our Problem Page? You can
send in your own problem to us, but
this one is pretty interesting because it's about problems with finding
an agent. |
| 'What keeps you writing
is that you don't ever enter a place that feels like home at last. You're still
going uphill. There's still a little glowing light in the distance that you're
trying to get to.' Mark Haddon, author of The Curious Incident of the Dog
in the Night-time in the Daily Telegraph, quoted in our
Comment column. |
| We've just updated our very useful
Printing and Publishing Glossary. |
| 'The "greatness" of literature cannot be determined solely by
literary standards though we must remember that whether it is literature or
not can be determined only by literary standards.' T S Eliot in our
Writers' Quotes. |
22 March 2010
| Chas Jones looks at the tricky subject of
Defamation ,
the defences against it, defamation and free speech, and how it works in
different parts of the world. It's all too easy to defame someone, so authors
should be wary about the risks. |
| At the report back from the annual UK Books and Consumers report this
week, Book Marketing Limited’s Research Director Steve Bohme pointed out
some interesting changes in consumer behaviour relating to books. Nearly
half of all book purchases were gift purchases, an increase from one-third
in 2005, a stunning proportion which shows that books have not lost their
attraction as gifts... Purchases were down 4% in 2009, compared with 2005.
News Review reports. |
| Hilary Mantel is the subject of our latest
Success Story. After
25
years of writing and eleven books published it's good to that winning the
Booker has transformed the career of this
excellent writer. Wolf Hall has now sold 196,463
copies in the UK alone and it is being widely translated. |
| Tips for Writers
is our latest 8-part series for writers:
Improving your writing, Learning on the job,
New
technology and the Internet,
Self-publishing - is it for you?,
Promoting your writing (and yourself),
Other kinds of writing,
Keep up to date
and Submission to
publishers and agents |
| '(Historical novels) are just novels that have a past location and
are therefore not swept away by the tide of present day life so fast. This
is the great agony of trying to capture the present in a novel - it's a very
slow thing to write and present life moves on in a hideously unexpected and
overtaking kind of way.' Rose Tremain, whose new novel is Trespass,
in the Bookseller, quoted in our
Comment column. |
| 'Writing is a dog's life, but the only one worth living.' Gustave Flaubert
in our Writers' Quotes.
|
15 March 2010
| Our latest review covers the
4th Edition
of Giles Clark and Angus Phillips'
Inside Book
Publishing. Reviewer Chris Holifield
commented that it had been substantially revised and that it 'provides
an excellent introduction to anyone with a professional interest in
publishing... No writer equipped with this book need ever feel
like an ignorant outsider again.' |
| 'This year’s Bologna Children’s Book Fair runs from 23 to 26
March and provides a good opportunity to have a look at the
children’s publishing industry. Not everything in the garden is
lovely but children’s trade (general) publishing is undoubtedly
doing a lot better than its adult counterpart.'
News Review on the
biggest children's book fair. |
| If you want editorial input from our professional editors,
have a look at our
Services,
especially our
Editor's Report,
Submission Critique and
Children's Services. Also available is
Copy editing,
Manuscript Typing and our new service,
Indexing. |
| 'Whatever the future, a new generation of agents and
publishers sees the old publishing model as broken. There must, they
say, be a marriage between virtual and old text worlds. This
generation speaks the jargon of "disintermediation" (roughly,
commercial streamlining). The boom days are over. Writers will have
to adapt.' Robert McCrum in the Guardian, quoted in our
Comment column. |
| Our latest Writing
Opportunity is the Bridport Prize, with prizes for poetry,
short stories and flash fiction. Entry is open to everyone over 16,
there are entry fees and the closing date is 30 June 2010. |
| What does it take to
market yourself successfully as a jobbing writer today?
Joanne Phillips
provides the answer, which is that the
internet is a fertile ground for writers. You just need to know how to
make it work for you... |
| ‘It really is most extraordinary, having lived all these
years as a cheerful but inconspicuous blue-stockinged, gray-haired,
backseat publishing lady, to become a sort of show- stopper.’
Diana Athill, 92-year-old author of Somewhere Towards the End
in our Writers' Quotes. |
8 March 2010
| Latest
changes in the book trade 7: in the latest part of this series, Chris Holifield
looks at the subject of Creative Commons and how these special licenses
might transform authors' capacity to the license use of their books for
all sorts of purposes. |
| The rest of the series covers
Bookselling,
Publishing,
Print on Demand and the
Long Tail, Self-publishing - career
suicide or 'really great', Writers' Routes to their audiences
and Copyright. |
| John Jenkins'
March column covers the writing of memoirs and shows how his students
have approached writing in this genre. He then provides an elegant essay on the
semi-colon. |
| 'The staggering number of 285,000 new titles and editions were
self-published and published by community presses in the US last year, balanced
against a slightly lower figure of 275,000 coming from traditional publishing
houses... The Nielsen figures for the UK are 133,224, quite modest by
comparison... So, what do these huge figures mean for authors? At a time when
it’s increasingly hard to get published, why are there so many titles coming
out? The main answer of course is self-publishing and print on demand in
general. News Review reports. |
| An Editor's Advice is a useful series is based on the
advice Maureen Kincaid Speller, a long-serving WritersServices
freelance editor, has given writers over the years. The series
covers
Dialogue,
doing further drafts,
genre writing,
planning,
points of view,
autobiography and travel and
manuscript presentation. |
| 'If you feel sorry for publishers spare a thought – and a dime – for
writers, on whose shoulders this huge, discounting, rights-trading,
jargon-babbling profiteering melée rests. As things are, the writer’s share of a
book that sells for £10, after his or her agent’s fee, hovers between 35p and
40p: more than 95% is kept by the agent, publisher and retailer.' Henry
Porter in the Guardian, quoted in our Comment
column. |
| 'The writer's intention hasn't anything to do with what he achieves. The
intent to earn money or the intent to be famous or the intent to be great
doesn't matter in the end. Just what comes out.' Lillian Hellman in our
Writers' Quotes. |
1 March 2010
|
Writing Memoir and
Autobiography - if you want to write a memoir you’re in good
company – lots of writers want to try their hand at this category. In the latest
in our new Categories series Chris Holifield looks at how to set about
writing your memoir and how to publish it. |
| Other articles in the series are
Writing
Historical Fiction, Writing Romance,
Writing Science Fiction and Fantasy,
Writing Crime Fiction
and Writing non-fiction. |
| 'Quick Reads recently surveyed over 30,000 of their readers and found
that 100% said Quick Reads had made a positive impact on their lives. 88%
were more confident and 41% felt their job prospects had improved since
reading a Quick Read. Significantly, in terms of encouraging book reading,
82% said they were more likely to read another book after reading a Quick
Read.' News Review investigates
Quick Reads with World Book Day coming up on 4 March. |
|
Real Time Web for Old Time Books:
the Benefit of Social Media for Publishers and Authors - Fauzia
Burke explores the online activities you can do in real time -- from status
updates on Facebook, to microblogging on Twitter to uploading photos and
videos on other social media sites. If you want to explore how social
networking can help you market your book, her article provides a
starting-point. |
| Does your manuscript need Copy
editing? Do you know the difference between
copy
editing and proof-reading? Divided by a common language - are you
wondering about the difference between
American and British copy editing? |
| ‘Books are not a threatened species. They are ordinary features of
the ordinary world... Should we, who read books and believe that books and
the stories within them contain such power, be surprised that kids read,
that books survive? Of course not. We should be celebrating these facts.’
David Almond, author of Skellig, in The Times, quoted in our
Comment column. |
| From our archive, five excerpts from
Inspired Creative Writing by Alexander Gordon Smith from the
brisk and entertaining 52 Brilliant Ideas series. |
| 'If you steal from one author, it's research; if you steal from many,
it's research.' Wilson Mizner in our
Writers' Quotes. |
| The March Magazine is here! |
22 February 2010
| ‘I am saddened that yet another claim has
been made that I have taken material from another source to write Harry.
The fact is I had never heard of the author or the book before the first
accusation by those connected to the author's estate in 2004; I have
certainly never read the book.' J K Rowling.
News Review looks at the latest plagiarism claim. |
|
The 2009 Diagram Prize
shortlist - Click through to find the shortlist for the oddest title
of the year. Will it be Afterthoughts of a Worm Hunter or
Collectible Spoons of the Third Reich? Your chance to place your
vote on the Bookseller website. |
| 'I think John Irving said in an interview something which nobody says
about writing, which is that writing is sitting down and typing that
sentence, and that sentence creates the next sentence and the character
grows and the story grows from the physical act of typing what is going on
in your head.' Deborah Moggach in Scriptwriter, quoted in our
Comment column. |
| My Say 9 is from Zoe Jenny,
who was born in Switzerland but is shortly publishing her
first book written in English:
'Now that I am writing in English I have to start all over again, earning
my credentials in a new market. I am essentially back to square one. But
maybe that is the most exciting place to be.' |
|
The latest
addition to our fictionalised stories
about our services - how Alison used our children's editorial services
to get her magic unicorn story right. |
| Plus how an Editor's Report helped
Catherine, How
Copy editing turned
Tony's
work into a publishable manuscript, how
Makito benefited from
Manuscript Polishing to get his PhD into
shape, Self-publishing helped promote
Annie's
cake business and how Manuscript Typing helped John to get
his father's wartime diary into
good shape for publication. |
| Thinking about subscribing to a writers' magazine?
Our Magazine Reviews offer a
unique service, guiding you through what's available for writers:
Writers' News, Mslexia, Writers' Forum, Writer's Digest, Scriptwriter
and Self-Publishing Magazine. |
| 'Write without pay until somebody offers pay. If nobody offers within
three years, the candidate may look upon this circumstance with the most
implicit confidence as the sign that sawing wood is what he was intended
for.'
Mark Twain in our Writers'
Quotes. |
15 February 2010
| Latest
changes in the book trade 6: in the sixth part of this revised
overview of what's going on in the book world, Chris Holifield tackles
the thorny and currently highly contentious subject of copyright. |
| As e-books move into the mainstream and the parties involved in the
Google Settlement continue to slug it out, copyright is at the centre of
publishers' and authors' anxieties. Is this the end of the slush-pile?
News
Review looks at the problems facing unpublished authors who are
trying to get their work into print. |
|
Is a creative writing degree
really worth it? Having completed a creative writing degree, Josh
Spears thought he would become a bestselling writer or at least be able
to get a job.
Neither of these has happened, so was it worth it and would he
advise other writers to put themselves through the course? |
| The great writers and the canon... The idea of what constitutes literary value has
changed or become less consensual. It’s harder to establish what is good and
what is not, and that is one of the things that forms the canon. Barnes, Amis,
McEwan were the last people through the door, and then the door closed, and then
the building fell down.’ Giles Foden, author of Turbulence, in the Bookseller,
quoted in our Comment
column. |
|
Why do non-fiction books need an index? In
The Ins and Outs of Indexing
Joanne Phillips provides an answer, explains why it's a specialist job and why
computers can't achieve the same result as a skilled indexer. |
| Our new
Indexing service. Are you an author planning to compile your own
index? Have you been asked by your publisher to provide an index for
your book? Or are you self-publishing your work? If so, don’t let your
readers down by offering them a sub-standard index. A professional
index will set your work apart from other self-published books.
|
|
'This (writing) is the love of your life. It's what I want to do when I wake
up. Nothing feels so absorbing, so fulfilling.' Martin Amis, in our
Writers' Quotes.
|
8 February 2010
|
Don't procrastinate!
- 'Do you find it difficult to get started on your writing? Is it always
easier to put off finishing that research/ starting that novel/embarking on
the second draft? You are not alone, for many writers suffer from
procrastination.'
Chris Holifield looks at how to get yourself going. |
| Figures for 2009 just released by the big UK
publishers show just how tough a time they had and what a difficult book market
we’ve had in the past year. Seven of the top UK publishers had negative sales
growth last year... The only one of the top four to do well was the market
leader Hachette and that was because of Stephenie Meyer, whose £29.4m ($46m) of
sales accounted for an extraordinary 10.2% of the group’s total UK sales.
News Review reflects on what all this means for authors. |
|
Poem for Haiti -
from Gillian Clarke, National Poet for Wales, a beautiful poem which
is a lament for Haiti. |
| ‘Every agent has
their own style. Ed Victor goes to a party and signs up someone. Luigi Bonomi goes and talks to a film company or football agent. But I like doing
it this way (through his website) because it brings in interesting books, often
ordinary people doing extraordinary things. I love the range and serendipity…'
Andrew Lownie on finding agency clients through the web,
quoted in our Comment column. |
| Our
review of FAQs: Frequently
Asked Questions from ambitious writers and the answers by John Jenkins,
our columnist and the former editor of Writers’
Forum, is packed with answers
to all the questions you have ever thought of asking.
Chris Holifield's review concludes that: 'All in
all, this is a valuable resource, especially for the new writer, but
also for anyone who has tried to work their way through the writing
jungle.' |
| If you want editorial input from our professional editors, have a
look at our Services, especially our
Editor's
Report,
Submission Critique and
Children's
Services. Also available is
Copy
editing, Manuscript Typing
and our new service,
Indexing. |
| 'The ideal audience the poet imagines consists of the beautiful who go to
bed with him, the powerful who invite him to dinner and tell him secrets of
state, and his fellow-poets. The actual audience he gets consists of myopic
schoolteachers, pimply young men who eat in cafeterias, and his
fellow-poets. This means, in fact, he writes for his fellow-poets.' W H Auden
in our Writers' Quotes. |
1 February 2010
| News Review
looks at the battle of the titans which has just commenced: 'This has
been one of those weeks when there’s been so much happening that it’s
difficult to cover it in a single column. Apple has broken the news of its
iPad and, amidst the buzz about that, Amazon has already started to fight
back. This could be a turning-point and how publishing, books and authors
come out of all this is hard to predict...' |
| In
his latest column John
Jenkins deals with the famous piece of advice to writers: 'Show, don't
tell'. If you've ever wondered exactly what this means in practice, John's
examples provide a quick tutorial and will help you to make your own writing
work much better. |
| Bob's Journal of a Virtually Unpublished Writer
offers entertaining insights into the life of an aspiring writer.
It's a WritersServices exclusive and you can go back to
the
start in 2001 and right through to its
end in
December 2007, when he reflected: 'Still haven’t broken through my
writer’s block. No longer even sure I want to. Why write? What’s writing
for? Have absolutely no idea. How can one add anything worthwhile to the
work of writers like Oscar Wilde? Yet the internet grows more vast by the
minute with the words of the millions who are certain their opinions are
worth airing.' |
| ‘According to Amazon Kindle's vice-president, Ian
Freed, the success of the Kindle signals the end of physical books: 'The only
question is does it take three years, five years or 20 years?' I remain to
be persuaded that e-readers are capable of matching the varied activities we
engage in when reading. More is required to satisfy the dedicated reader than
replicating the content and appearance of a printed book, or emulating the
action of "turning pages" using a tap on a touch-sensitive screen.'
Lisa Jardine in A Point of View on BBC Radio
Four, quoted in our Comment column. |
| Is your progress as a writer stymied by the fact that you have old
typewritten or even handwritten manuscripts that you can't face retyping
onto a computer? Our Typing service
can help with this. |
| This week's Writing Opportunity
is the Michael Marks Awards for Poetry Pamphlets, offering
£5,000 for a poetry pamphlet published in the UK in 2009. Self-published
work is eligible. |
| 'The very cheapness of literature is making even wise people forget
that if a book is worth reading, it is worth buying. No book is worth
anything which is not worth much; nor is it serviceable, until it has been
read, and re-read, and loved, and loved again; and marked, so that you can
refer to the passages you want in it.' John Ruskin in our
Writers' Quotes. |
| The new February Magazine is
ready!
|
25 January 2010
| International Book Fairs 2010 -
our updated line-up of the year's book fairs across the world, a
unique feature of the site which is much in demand. Is there a
book fair near you? It might be worth planning to attend it if so. |
| 'So are agents really feeling the pinch now? Long
regarded as the fats cats of the industry, there are signs that the London
agency constituency is really beginning to join in the pain. You cannot
escape the conclusion that there will be redundancies, closures and mergers of
agencies... some of the larger agencies have
become quite big businesses and they will find it difficult to sustain their
cost bases. News Review examines the latest news from the agency world. |
| There's just time still to enter the Cardiff International Poetry
Competition 2010 if you do it online. It closes on 29 January, so
hurry! This week's
Writing Opportunity has a prize
of £5,000 and is open to all. |
| 'We all know the adage of 'everyone has a book in them'
- but how many truly have the commitment, courage, tenacity - and skills - to
write a series of novels? Writing a novel is not about ‘burning ambition’ -
where ambition is solely about publication or money or fame. For a novel to be a
good novel - and worthy of the generous readers who part with their cash to buy
it - it can only arise from the author’s absolute desire to write that story out
of their system - and being blessed with the necessary talent to do so...'
Freya North, in a Bookseller blog, quoted in our
Comment column. |
| Sell, don't tell: Some do’s and don’ts if you want to sell a script.
If you want to turn your book, dream or idea into a performance script for
film, stage or radio, it is going to be a very tough pitch. There are some
pretty strict ‘rules’ which you need to follow if you are to maximise your
chance of success. Read Chas
Jones' two part article. |
| 'Most people do not believe in anything very much and our greatest poetry
is given to us by those who do.' Cyril Connolly in our
Writers' Quotes.
|
18 January 2010
| There's better news from the UK book trade. 2009 was down just 1.2% down in value and only 0.5%
down in volume in a year which has seen a contraction in the overall economy of
5%, so the book trade can justifiably claim that book sales have held up
reasonably well. News Review reports. |
| This week's Writing Opportunity
is the
Biscuit International Short Story Prize 2010 for
stories of 1000-5000 words. The deadline is 14th April 2010, it's open to all and there's a £10/£11 entry
fee, so get writing! |
|
The
winner of
the 2009 T S Eliot Prize for Poetry is announced! |
| ‘Self-publishing has taken a huge leap forward in
recent years. It’s always existed, but with all the technological changes from
desk-top publishing systems to POD to blogging and so forth it’s now more
acceptable than ever before... The trend is hardly surprising: mainstream publishers have cut back and
cut back, so that even authors who had niche titles published and might have
been in print for some years now find it harder and harder to keep their books
available.' Eileen Campbell, Mind, Body and Spirit expert and
author of 6 books, in Bookbrunch, quoted in our
Comment
column. |
|
Thinking about publishing your own book?
Is
self-publishing for you?
helps you think this through and our
WritersPrintShop provides the best writers' resource on self-publishing on the web,
90 pages of information, as
well as a first-rate service. |
|
Here are answers to the essential
questions:
How much will it cost?
How long will it take?
& How much might you earn? |
| 'One man is as good as another until he has written a book.' Benjamin Jowett in our
Writers'
Quotes.
|
11 January 2010
| 'Americans are buying fewer books because of the economic downturn, and purchase
cheaper books when they do buy... Knocking on the head a favourite publishing theory
that books do well in recession, only 2% of consumers said that they were
choosing to buy books as an alternative to more expensive kinds of
entertainment. So, green shoots of recovery notwithstanding, the American book
trade is still experiencing tough times.' News Review looks at the American
book business. |
| John Jenkins' January
column
looks at a Robert Altman film, The Gingerbread
Man, based on a discarded story by John Grisham: 'Although it wasn’t Grisham’s best story, I enjoyed it. But the moral of this
story is: never throw anything away.
I realise that Grisham could probably sell his laundry list to a publisher but
for your new year resolution, dip down into that drawer and see what you can
salvage. You may find a gem.
And after you have done that go through stories and features you have sold in
the UK and see if you can sell them on for the American and other rights.' |
| 'So you want to write historical fiction? Your timing is good, because historical fiction is fashionable
again after many years in the doldrums. In fact it’s so popular that it
has virtually reinvented itself as a category...' The latest article in
Chris Holifield's Categories series explores the market and approaches
to
Writing Historical Fiction.
|
| Other articles in the series cover Writing Romance,
Writing Science Fiction and Fantasy,
Writing Crime Fiction
and Writing Non-fiction. |
|
'My life changed when I took control of my time.
Instead of waiting for inspiration to strike, I sit down to write for three
hours every day. It's much more effective - it's about giving yourself the
space for creativity to come.
Esther Freud, author of Love Falls in the
Sunday Times' Style magazine, quoted in our
Comment column. |
|
We were very honoured recently that the British Library asked to archive
www.writersservices.com in its web archive, where
you can find it at British Library web archive. The UK Web Archive is a corpus of websites selected by leading UK
institutions for their historical, social and cultural significance in the UK.
Also listed in this article on
their archive are other international web archives. |
| 'I have never know any distress that an hour's reading
did not relieve.'
Baron de Montesquieu in our
Writers' Quotes. |
| The January Magazine is here! |
Track all previous
updates to the site in the weekly archive back to 2001
2001
2002 2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
| |
|
