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'Never has there been a time when so much is
changing so fast in the world of books. Seminars and discussion from Book Expo
America last week underlined the way things are going, and it’s a scary prospect
for people who have spent their lives in publishing or bookselling.' News
Review reports on the scrum.
-
'Other news stories had to be shelved with the news
yesterday that Waterstone’s has been bought by Russian oligarch Alexander
Mamut’s A&NN Group. Although this negotiation has been a bit long drawn-out, the
news has been well-received and is in contrast to the situation in the United
States, where Borders continues to teeter on the brink. The troubled HMV group
has only raised £53m in the sale, considerably less than they had originally
hoped for.' News Review on the latest news.
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"The shortlist for the £10,000 2011
Caine Prize for African Writing
–
the twelfth
“African Booker” - has just been announced.
Libyan novelist Hisham Matar, Chair of the judges, said that
"choosing a shortlist out of nearly 130 entries was not an easy task –
one made more difficult and yet more enjoyable by the varied tastes of
the judges – but we have arrived at a list of five stories that excel in
quality and ambition. Together they represent a portrait of today’s
African short story: its wit and intelligence, its concerns and
preoccupations.” News Review reports.
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'Readers of this column may be tiring of all the
talk about ebooks, but it should be said in our defence that the news has been
full of nothing else for many weeks now. Take comfort however, because in
the midst of this obsessive concentration on digital developments, publishing
– and writing – is still going on as normal...
A major trend at present is the increase in the number of books published.'
News Review looks at the figures.
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'A recent article in Teleread questioned the way
publishers bring out the premium edition, the hardback, and then make readers
wait for the mass market paperback, which is available at a lower price which
most people can afford... But if books are valued down to nothing, or almost
nothing, as they are being right now in the Amazon Kindle store, doesn’t the
consumer get used to the idea that books, like many other things, should be free
or nearly so? And how do writers make an income from their writing if that is
the prevailing view? News Review reports.
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'The two big spring book fairs in Europe, Bologna
and London, have both gone rather well, with packed aisles and a lot of solid
business being done. This is all the more surprising because the book
business internationally is in something of a crisis. The two big English
language markets are both down on book sales, the UK by 3% and the US by a
worrying 9%. Although sales of ebooks are growing, especially in the States,
this is not yet compensating for the lost print sales.' News Review
reports.
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Writing biographies: ‘If you get to hate them you
should give up the book! But it is a bit like being married. You have
days when you feel fed up and days when you feel passionately in love.
Dickens did terrible things in his life. But a good thing about being
old is that you’ve seen it, you’ve done it. You know we all do terrible
things… Claire Tomalin, author of nine biographies, with
Charles Dickens : A Life coming later this year.
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‘The inevitable disappearance of the vast
majority of bookshops will remove a main marketing channel and will
seriously undermine the power of publishers. It will also increase the scary dominance of
Amazon. Book printers will, sadly, mostly go out of business, and physical books
will become more expensive as a consequence of reduced economies of scale.
Public libraries, as repositories of physical volumes, will disappear…
UK investor Luke Johnson, former Chairman of Borders UK, in Publishers’ Lunch.
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'I've always had uneasy loyalties about the
relevance of the term 'work' to the activities I perform every day, and
which occupy the hours when most other people are in fact "working". I
write novels and stories and essays for a living. And while I fairly
mindlessly refer to what I do as "work"... it's hard for me to think
that work is what I really do.' Richard Ford in the Guardian.
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'How do you choose your subject matter? Indeed, do
you choose it or does it choose you? Should you follow the adage "write what you
know", or should a writer engage with the world beyond their back-yard?
How
important is research? Are you "allowed" to write a story that doesn't "belong"
to you, for reasons of race, class, gender and so on? Is it possible to "own"
any story, even the story of your life, given that others who intersect with it
(your parents, your lover) will have a different "truth" to tell?...'
Monica Ali on writing Untold Story,
her novel about Princess Diana, in the Bookseller.
'In science there is a dictum: don't add an experiment to an experiment.
Don't make things unnecessarily complicated. In writing fiction, the
more fantastic the tale, the plainer the prose should be. Don't ask your
reader to admire your words when you want them to believe your story.'
Ben Bova
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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.
Historical Writers' Association
Novelist Manda Scott has formed the Historical
Writers’ Association as a forum for writers and to promote the genre. The
internet-based group already boasts around 100 members including authors, agents
and editors, and is open to writers of historical fiction and non-fiction.
Poetry Book
Society fights Arts Council England funding withdrawal
The tiny Poetry Book
Society is fighting back against the Art's Council's shocking decision to remove
its funding completely in one year's time.
Carol Ann Duffy, the UK
Poet Laureate, was widely quoted in the press last week: "This news goes beyond
shocking and touches the realms of the disgusting. The PBS was established by T
S Eliot in 1953 and is one of poetry's most sacred churches with an influence
and reach far beyond its membership. This fatal cut is a national shame and a
scandal and I urge everyone who cares about poetry to join the PBS as a matter
of urgency."
The Creative Process
'We came close to inventing a quantum theory of
creativity during a poetry reading by Professor Philip Gross of Glamorgan
University at Kellogg College, Oxford.
Rather like Schrodinger’s cat, the debate that
followed suggested how the creative process was changed, if not actually killed
off, when it is examined. Does the keeping of notebooks, for example, change the
quality of the creative impulse that the words try to capture?'
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.
Writing Memoir and
Autobiography
Writing
Historical Fiction
Writing Romance
Writing Science Fiction and Fantasy
Writing Crime Fiction
Writing non-fiction
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 huge section on technology and the web, and how writers can make use of
them, takes you from beginner-level articles to advanced technology.
Our Editorial
Services for writers
Check out the 17 different editorial services we offer, from Reports to
Copy editing, Typing to Rewriting. Previous magazines:
April
March
February
Magazine index
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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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.
Ideas for stories begin in many different places:
A snatch of dialogue
A character
A title
Sometimes from a news fragment from TV or
newspapers.
Whatever the start point, the crucial question –
whether from Aristotle to Shakespeare or Sam Goldwyn to Stephen Spielberg is:
What’s the big idea?
And here's this year's winner.
Here's the shortlist for the 2010 Diagram Prize.
It looks like it's going to be another strong year.
My favourite competition of the year is run by columnist Horace Bent in the
Bookseller (the UK book trade weekly) with input from dedicated odd title
hunters from all over the world.
The prize, set up in association with the
Diagram Group, has been running since 1978 and is a joyous celebration of the
barmy side of publishing.
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.
Agents'
listings
Our 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.
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
Previous magazines:
Magazine index
Check out this page to find links to the huge number of useful articles on this site,
including Finding an Agent
and Making Submissions.
Our book review section
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