-
'The advent of ebooks and consumers’ reluctance to
accept the high price of hardbacks are having an impact on the traditional
relationship between hardback and paperback publication. Traditionally, one year
has been the norm and publishers have stuck to this for many years, in spite of
the growth of sales of paperback editions.' News Review investigates.
-
'Now it’s beginning to look as if World Book Night may
shortly become just that, rather than an aspirational name for the adult version
of the UK’s World Book Day. The United States is to partner the UK, launching
World Book Night in 2012... and 8 more Quick Reads are to come from bestselling
authors. News Review reports.
-
'American author Bob Mayer had published over
40 books with traditional publishers before he
decided to take things into his own hands and convert his backlist into ebooks.
By January of this year the author of 40 books had reached a turning-point.
After 20 years of writing, he had written himself out of his last
contract. Mayer said: ‘It was a good news, bad news situation. The good news
was for the first time in two decades I could really sit down and think about
what I wanted to write. The bad news is, that in traditional publishing, an
author without a contract is unemployed...’ News Review on the cutting edge
of the ebook revolution.
-
'There have been a series of events on the
bookselling front which may mark a seismic shift. In the States, Borders have
gone into liquidation after what seems like months - or even years - of
teetering on the brink. And in the UK Amazon has swooped on its successful
competitor, The Book Depository, buying out the competition. News Review
reports.
-
'Do you want to find out how to publish your work as
an ebook? This is something you may be thinking about, in view of the rapid
growth in ebook sales. Many authors are suffering from a big contraction in
their earnings. Midlist authors have found it increasingly difficult to get
their books published by mainstream publishers and may be looking for the the
chance to go it alone with ebook versions of their books.' News Review
investigates.
-
'The biggest thrill of my life was selling my first
novelette. It was a Western for Argosy magazine in 1951, called
"Trail of the Apaches". I'd done a lot of research about the Apache Indians in
the 1880s and they seemed like ruthless individuals out to raise hell, which
fascinated me... Elmore Leonard in the Independent on Sunday
-
'By encouraging and effectively subsidising the
creation and distribution of so many free apps by providing free distribution,
Apple has given rise to a situation where anything that's not free has to
work incredibly hard to prove its value, and in which consumers feel a
tremendous sense of entitlement to be amused and pandered to for basically next
to nothing... Simon Appleby, Digital Projects Manager for Octopus
Publishing in the Bookseller's Futurebook.
-
'I write full-time, it's my job, I have nothing
else to do. I've got no excuse for not writing a book a year... I have no truck
at all with this supposed link between quality and quantity, tell that to
Mozart... I understand that it's not everybody's cup of tea, but because I
come from a performance background, I'm not shy when in comes to standing up at
festivals or in bookshops. Mark Billingham, author of Good as Dead,
interviewed by Alice O'Keeffe in the Bookseller.
-
‘It could be that subjective factors may favour the
survival of a culture of the written word, whatever happens on the ever-stormy
seas of technological innovation and consumer economics. So far as we can
see, e-books will mean smaller rewards for many authors. The "winner takes all"
and "long tail" forces of the hi-tech cultural industries generally mean
feast for the few, and famine for the many – but also new markets, and new
audiences, for "niche" literature old and new. Boyd Tonkin, Literary Editor, in the Independent.
-
The novelists' task: 'To find an adequate
narrative vehicle for the most difficult stuff at the core of me, in the
hope that that might resonate with the reader who otherwise has been
feeling alone with those deep, difficult feelings...' Jonathan
Franzen in the Sunday Telegraph's Seven
-
'Actually, there's hardly a mainstream genre
(fiction, history, children's books, poetry) that's not undergoing significant
change, attributable to the liberation of the new technology, from ebook to
Kindle: poets developing apps, J K Rowling linking Harry Potter to cyberspace,
would-be novelists launching their work as
ebooks.' Robert McCrum in the Observer
'F*** this, I've had enough of
writing. I don't like the book world. I don't like most books,
even. I don't like sitting on my own in a room for hours on end.'
Alex Garland on writing your second novel (which took him nearly ten
years)
Are you having difficulty deciding which service might be right for you?
This useful new article by Chris Holifield offers advice on what to go for,
depending on what stage you are at with your writing.
|
Our new service is for anyone who is having
difficulty producing their cover of jacket copy and may be especially helpful
for self-publishers. Let our skilled editor/writers do the job for you, so that
you end up with a professional blurb.
The winner of the 2011 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction
Contest is Sue Fondrie, an associate professor of Curriculum and Instruction
at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh.
Professor Fondrie is the 29th grand prize
winner of the contest that that began at San Jose State University in 1982. At
26 words, her submission is the shortest grand prize winner ever.
Given annually since 1982, the
competition, sponsored by the English department at the University, is inspired
by the melodramatic first line of Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton's 1830 novel Paul
Clifford.we
John Jenkins' July
column
John introduces Dr
Bernard Lamb's Guarding the Queen's English, which he
can 'recommend to all writers and would-be
writers, particularly those bewildered by me and I, who and whom, it’s and its,
that and which, who’s and whose.'
Set up your
own blog
In order to be in the best position to promote
yourself and your writing, it’s well worth setting up a blog. In case you find
this idea a bit alien, here’s why you should take the trouble to do this.
A blog offers you the
opportunity to start building an audience for your work and the chance to
experiment with writing about yourself and with different kinds of writing.
Many successful writers’ blogs start with a small readership of family and
friends, but build a good audience over the years. Relax and just write what
comes naturally, it makes sense for your blog to be more informal, more personal
than a standard piece of non-fiction writing and more lively than a slice of
autobiography, as there are no conventions that go with it.
Help get your book ready for
publication with an editorial service
Marti Norberg, who has worked as a reporter and
managing editor for several Colorado newspapers, advises on how to use an
editorial service (such as WritersServices)
to get your book ready.
Great review of WritersServices
We're complimented by Stuart Aken's review of our site in his blog:
'It is the Resources pages that really make this site stand out from the
crowd. Here you’ll find reviews of books and software, listings of agents,
self-publishing facts, educational matters, health and safety advice, and
there’s a new feature, reviewing writing magazines. You’ll see there is a
great deal of information on this site. It’s well presented and easily
navigated, which is as well, considering the number of pages. It’s a site I
browse often and I think you’ll benefit from a good look at this one.'
Read more.
Our huge section on technology and the web, and how writers can make use of
them, takes you from beginner-level articles to advanced technology.
Previous magazines:
Magazine index
Our book review section
Writing Memoir and
Autobiography
Writing
Historical Fiction
Writing Romance
Writing Science Fiction and Fantasy
Writing Crime Fiction
Writing non-fiction
|
Our latest new contribution: 'One agent wrote
to say my titles were so uncommercial that reading my synopsis made him laugh
and that he couldn't sell any of my titles to a publisher even if he had a
million years to try.'
John provides a lively and rather cynical
view of this year's Booker shortlist.
Do you want to find out how to publish your
work as an ebook? Chas Jones's new series guides you through the process. The
first article provides a practical introduction to ebook publishing.
The second
article looks at metadata and explains the importance of getting the
metadata right.
The third article in Chas Jones's series
about ebook publishing deals with
Ebook
conversion and what you should think about before starting your own ebook
conversion, with an overview of the software.
The fourth article deals with
Preparing files for e-book conversion.
The final article is entitled
Selling and
Marketing Your Ebook and covers marketing through Amazon, Google and Ingrams,
being your own supplier, print and payment, and other marketing.
Help for Writers
Update to our links
Our 23 lists of recommended links have just been
updated with many new links to sites of special interest to writers. these range
from
Writers Online
Services to
Picture libraries
and from Software for writers
to
Writers Magazines & Sites.
If you are
looking for copy editing online, it is difficult to ensure that you are getting
a professional copy editor who will do a good job on your manuscript.
WritersServices has now made its copy editing
service unique, as it will offer as standard two versions of your script, one
prepared using 'track changes' and one with all the changes accepted.
Writing
Historical Fiction
Our revised article on Writing Historical
Fiction brings this subject up to date.
Other articles cover
Writing Crime Fiction,
Writing Science Fiction and
Fantasy, Writing Romance,
Writing Non-fiction
and
Writing Memoir and
Autobiography.
Inside Publishing
series
This extremely useful 19-part series has just
been revised to take account of changes in the publishing world. The
introduction, How the publishing business
works,
Advances and royalties,
The Relationship between agents and
publishers,
Subsidiary rights,
The English-speaking publishing
world and
The Marketing
department have all just been brought up-to-date.
This second week we covered
The Frankfurt Book Fair,
the Sales Department,
the Production Department,
Pricing and
Distribution.
And the third week it was
Books clubs and
Direct selling.
The fourth covered Creative Commons
and the fifth
The Financial
relationship between writers and publishers. This completes the update
of the whole series.
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.
Our Editorial
Services for writers
Check out the 17 different editorial services we offer, from Reports to
Copy editing, Typing to Rewriting. Check out this page to find links to the huge number of useful articles on this site,
including Finding an Agent
and Making Submissions.
|
