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January 2009

The website for writers

News Review

• This week's News Review looks at book discounting, actually higher in the UK in 2008 than 2007 - and asks whether it's a danger or an opportunity.

• So who are the most popular fiction writers across the globe? News Review looks at a new study which shows that Ken Follett and Khaled Hosseini feature in more bestseller lists than any other writers in the nine countries studied.

• Children’s books are still doing well in spite of the recession. News Review looks at what's working and some publicly-funded UK programmes which are making a difference.

• No-one could call 2008 an easy year. As well as an unprecedented worldwide credit crisis it has ended with an abrupt slide into a severe global recession, which will affect every country in the world and all aspects of life.  So what about the book business in 2009? News Review gets out its crystal ball.

• This week's News Review looks at the responsibility of publishers in the developed world to help the developing countries get books and access to them through Creative Commons and the work of the book charities.
• Newspapers' book review sections are under threat as part of the general pressure on the papers to keep their print editions going. But does this matter for books? News Review takes a look.

Comment

• 'Times Books as we know it will be no more, but books themselves, thankfully, seem shockproof against change.  Neither economics nor e-readers will oust the beloved book. We don't stop reading because we are poor, any more than book lovers will give up books for their electronic lookalikes.' Jeanette Winterson, in her final column in Times Books.

• 'Through today’s gloom we may discern a spectacularly bright future in which the rewards to writers and readers and even to publishers will be unprecedented as world-wide multilingual backlists expand online in a cultural revolution orders of magnitude greater than Gutenberg’s world-changing technology generated five centuries ago.’ Jason Epstein, author of Book Business

• 'The heart and soul of any publishing business is its editorial department, the men and women who, crudely, acquire the 'content' on which the imprint depends...  Gone are the days, with rare exceptions, when an editor's positive enthusiasm for a new book could trump the negative anxieties of the sales department, almost the only books that now generate much excitement among publishers are would-be bestsellers.  Robert McCrum in the Observer

• Andrew Motion, UK Poet Laureate on poetry: 'Sometimes rejoicing in things as they are, sometimes criticising them, sometimes welcoming, sometimes rejecting - always keeping its eyes peeled, its ears open, and its devotion to meaning as intense as its passion for mystery...  A primitive pleasure?  Absolutely.  But a primitive pleasure that is endlessly transformed and re-invented.

Writers' Quote

‘You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me.’
C S Lewis

Check out the 16 different editorial services we offer, from Reports to Copy editing, Typing to Rewriting.

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 a some pretty strict ‘rules’ which you need to follow if you are to maximise your chance of success. Chas Jones's two part article shows you how to make a successful pitch.

Part 1

Part 2

Getting published

Chas Jones looks at a recent success on our self-publishing service, WritersPrintShop, A Sumerian Observation of the Kofels Impact Event, an intriguing book about a clay tablet on which in 700 BC a Sumerian astronomer had made a copy of a document about an unusual event in 3123 BC. For 150 years this enigmatic tablet had puzzled scholars in the British Museum, now the authors have worked out what the clay tablet said.  

Thanks to the opportunities offered by self-publishing, the authors were able to bypass traditional publishing and publish their book themselves through WritersPrintShop, reaching a global audience through the Internet.

Agents' Listings

The new agents' listings are now available on the site. Coming from the 2009 Writers' and Artists' Yearbook, these listings can be searched and provide the most up-to-date information about literary agents across the world:

UK agents

US agents

Agents from the rest of the world

Children's specialist agents

Writers' and Artists' Yearbook 2009

Our review of the Writers' and Artists' Yearbook

Colour printing

Colour printing is now available using print on demand, which means you can print one copy at a time.  Chas Jones reports on this technological breakthrough which means that self-publishers can produce colour books of as little as 4 and up to 480 pages through our WritersPrintShop.

Changes in the book trade

This new series by Chris Holifield looks at the book trade and investigates how fundamental changes in how it works are affecting writers. 

The first article is on Bookselling, the second on  Publishing, the third on Print on demand, the fourth on Self-publishing - 'really great' or career suicide?, the fifth on Writers' routes to their audiences, the sixth at at copyright under pressure and the seventh deals with Creative Commons.

WritersPrintShop

If you're thinking about self-publishing, this is the place to find out what's involved. If you're ready to go ahead, our high quality service is second to none and there's an economy version for those who want to tackle some of the work themselves. You can estimate the cost for yourself.

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