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Log of the weekly changes on the site on 2003
This week's changes 2001
2002 2003
2004 2005
2006 2007
22 December 2003
 | In Bob
Ritchie's Journal
he ruminates on novels he's read this year: 'Realise I’m going
through a bad patch with novels. No longer sure why I read them. Way
past the age when still believed they could change my life.' |
| News Review looks at
authors' agencies as big businesses: 'The agent community contains
its share of predators and eccentrics, but most agents work hard and do
a professional job for their clients.' |
| We've updated our Review of Ann
Hoffman's Research for Writers 'The seventh edition confirms the
supremacy of Research for Writers. It is an excellent tool for all
writers who need to research in any field.' |
| Benjamin Disraeli in dismissive mode in our
Writers' Quotes: 'Books are
fatal: they are the curse of the human race... The greatest
misfortune that ever befell man was the invention of printing.' |
| 'The Big Read … was a revolting act of patronage from our most
powerful medium... There's no harm done to books. We can all pick up any
book we like, the next minute, without thinking of The Big Read. But
harm has been done - to the standing of the BBC.’ David Sexton in
the Evening Standard, quoted in our
Comment column. |
| Season's greetings and best wishes for 2004 to all our visitors.
|
15 December 2003
|
My Say is a new feature launched this
week which gives writers the chance to air their own views on a subject
of interest to other writers. Send us your contributions! The
first My Say is from Lynda Finn on the plight of New Zealand writers. |
| This week News Review looks at
bestsellers and Big Reads: 'the Big Read has had a terrific effect on
sales and reading, with many readers rediscovering the classics and scores
of new reading groups being formed.' |
| The bizarre 2003 Diagram Prize
has been awarded. Will it be 227 Secrets Your Snake Wants
You To Know or Hot Topics in Urology? |
| 'We have this marvellous language, and we are so lucky it gives us a
huge audience. If we were writing in high Norwegian we'd have mostly
reindeer for readers.' Shirley Hazard at the National Book Awards on
literature versus commerce quoted in our
Comment column. |
| Lynne Truss's Eats Shoots and Leaves,
reviewed last week, has now soared to
number one in the UK bestseller lists and has over half a million copies
in print. Not bad for a book on punctuation! |
| Gore Vidal on writing in our
Writers' Quotes: 'Some writers take to drink, others take to
audiences.' |
8 December 2003
| Our reviewer said of
Lynne Truss's surprise bestseller, Eats Shoots and Leaves: The
Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation: 'Obsessive, entertaining,
passionate, this book is a delight and a must-read for anyone interested
in the future – and the past - of the language.' |
| This week in Bob's Journal
he laments the fact that everyone thinks they can write: 'In my
experience the entire population is divided into two camps: those who
have just written something, and those who would write something if only
they could get around to it.' |
| In our Comment column Tobias Hill on the difference between writing
poems and short stories, and novels: 'with a novel you need to get down
to it and have a place where you can do it, with piles of books around you
for research.' |
| We've produced a recommended
Writers' Reference Shelf. Check
it out to see if you agree and to see whether you've got all the books
you need. |
| This week News Review
investigates open access, which is beginning to look as if it
will transform online journal publishing. |
| See our WritersBookstall for a host
of good ideas of what you'd like for Christmas - or treat yourself.
Amazon are offering free delivery on orders over £25 in the UK and free
super saver shipping in the US.. |
| And finally, A N Wilson in waspish mood in our
Writers' Quotes: 'I’m not
saying all publishers have to be literary, but some interest in books
would help.’ |
1 December 2003
| The shortlist for the
Bookseller's 2003 Diagram Prize for the Oddest Title of the Year is announced
to an incredulous world. So will it be 227 Secrets Your Snake
Wants You To Know or Hot Topics in Urology, or even
The Voodoo Revenge Book: An Anger Management Program You can Really Stick
With? |
| The Invisible Web, part one
in a new series, Quality v Quantity, investigates the vast number
of pages on the web which are 'invisible' to you. |
| This week News Review
investigates Amazon's mega-deal with the British Library, which
will give it the right to use the Library’s massive bibliographic
catalogue, which contains 2.55 million books. |
| Our new Accessibility statement
shows how we have designed the site for users with
disabilities in accordance with the ISO guidelines. |
| Writers' Forum editor, John Jenkins', new
column tackles punctuation and
blacklisting - and much more. |
| Comment quotes Victoria
Barnsley, CEO of HarperCollins UK:We are
creating a whole new generation of book buyers who see books as very
cheap.' |
| In these highly political times, it's still true that: 'No
regime has ever loved great writers, only minor ones.'
Alexander Solzhenitsyn in The First Circle, in our
Writers Quotes. |
| The December Magazine is ready! |
24 November 2003
| This week in his Journal
Bob is 'quietly
confident. Crisis of major story change behind me. Feel sure nothing can
go wrong now.' But it was to prove only the calm before the storm... |
| Our Comment column we quote A C
Grayling's views on what makes the novel different:: 'A novel is all
present at once, and can be gone over and back, re-entered, skimmed,
sampled or devoured, just as required...' |
| We've carried out a major update of our
Links section, with
over 30 new links to recommended sites. |
| News Review looks at the
book famine in our schools and how children are failing to develop the
reading habit. |
| 'All books are divisible into two classes: the books of the hour,
and the books of all time.' John Ruskin's thoughts in our
Writers' Quotes. |
| Starting to think about Christmas? Why not browse
through our WritersBookstall to make sure
you can tell everyone what you'd really like? |
17 November 2003
| Our big launch this week is
our newly updated agents' listings,
bringing you hundreds of
detailed listings of UK and US agents, together with UK literary scouts
and bursaries.
Easily accessible and searchable, the listings provide detailed
information on what kinds of books the agencies deal with, the agents
who work there and how to submit to them. |
|
'Without me the literary industry would not exist:
the publishers, the agents, the sub-agents, the sub-sub agents... all this
vast and proliferating edifice is because of this small,
patronised, put-down and underpaid person.'
Read Doris Lessing's wonderful writers'
manifesto in full in our Writers'
Quotes. |
| A brand-new feature this week is our
Problem page. Now you can write in to WritersServices
about your problems with getting published - and share the answer with
other writers. |
| This week News
Review looks at how authors are using the web in innovative ways to
help them get published and to publicise their work. |
| 'I think there is something much deeper at work: a snobbish
distaste for popular writing full stop.' Isobel Woolf on attitudes
to chick-lit in our Comment
column. |
10 November 2003
| Bob writes in in his
latest Journal entry on
shooting his EastEnders script and offers more ruminations on the
Big Read. 'It occurs to me that spelling, in its comforting
certainty and its preoccupation with competitive accumulation...
is something that appeals to the childish mind.' |
| ‘Perhaps one reason the publishing industry is enjoying only slow
growth is that we do not listen closely enough to the market, because we
read too far apart from the mainstream of the market…' Jeff Zaleski
in Publishers Weekly, quoted in our Comment column. |
| News Review looks at the
media frenzy surrounding Paul Burrell's book and contrasts it with
the censorship of Hilary Clinton's Living History by the Chinese. |
| ‘Writers and politicians are natural rivals.
Both groups try to make the world in their own images; they fight for
the same territory.' Salman Rushdie in our Writers' Quotes. |
| Have you looked at our
self-publishing service,
WritersPrintShop? We offer a full
service to support you in publishing your own work at a reasonable cost. |
3 November 2003
| This week News Review looks
at the Big Read - trashy TV or reinstating great books? 'The
Big Read has given books new prominence and coverage in the media.
A surge in their sales has taken several backlist titles into the
bestseller lists.' |
| John Jenkins' latest column
from Writers Forum magazine on the idea of removing prices
from books and one self-publisher's route to success. |
| Our latest poster takes a
cynical look at Teamwork. |
| 'Publishing is a business and therefore what is wanted is books
that will sell. The difference between the commercial writer and
others is the former writes for a readership and others often just
for themselves.' Agent Andrew Lownie, quoted in our
Comment column. |
| ‘The only reason for being a professional writer is
that you just can't help it.' is Leo Rosten's view in our
Writers' quotes. |
| The November Magazine is here! |
27 October 2003
| Bob's Journal offers his
scathing but witty thoughts on the BBC's Big Read:
'After Catch-22 no one should have any problem understanding war,
capitalism, religion, famine, violence, greed, inequality, the
worthlessness of fast food, the election of Arnold Schwarzenegger or the
awful state of Saturday night television.' |
| News Review looks at the
latest news: Amazon’s new 'Search inside the Book' feature opens up a
vision of their future as a giant electronic archive and eventually a
repository of books awaiting POD orders. |
| In our latest
software review Muse names is described as 'Fun to
install, fun to use and fun to discover those new slants on familiar and
new names.' |
| Check out the 2003 Ig
Nobel prizes, including the Psychology winner for a study of
Politicians' Uniquely Simple Personalities and the Medicine
winner for presenting evidence that the brains of London taxi
drivers are more highly developed than those of their fellow citizens.
|
| In our Comment column: 'I
love taking the prosaic and making it extraordinary. Writers don’t get
enough credit for that…' Julie Myerson, author of Something Might
Happen. |
| ‘Writing is not like painting where you add. It is
not what you put on the canvas that the reader sees. Writing is more
like a sculpture where you remove, you eliminate in order to make the work
visible.' Elie Wiesel in our
Writers' Quotes |
20 October 2003
| Check out our review of
How to Market Books. Chris Holifield says:
'the book as a whole is highly recommended for all self-publishers,
authors and marketeers in publishing, or anyone who wants to develop
their book promotion skills.' |
| In our Comment
column Bookshops have never been this good at selling books.
Not in living memory has the public profile of books been this high.'
David
Blow in Publishing News' |
| Our WritersPrintShop for
self-publishers has new guidelines on what to put on
your end pages. |
| ‘A writer’s ambition should be to trade 100
contemporary readers for 10 readers in 10 years’ time and for one in 100
years’ is Arthur Koestler's view in our
Writers' Quotes. |
| This week's
News Review looks at the how second-hand books have taken off: 'Abebooks
is a book collector’s dream – access to 45 million titles which can be
tracked down and purchased instantly and easily.' |
13 October 2003
| Carole Blake discusses the issues of
dealing with rejection in the
latest extract from her book
From Pitch to Publication. |
| News Review The Frankfurt Book Fair, just drawing to a close,
is still the biggest international book fair by some considerable
margin, but there are signs that its pre-eminence is being challenged by
smaller fairs. |
| "At the best of moments I feel as if I draw, like the storytelling
parents do, on ancient energies" Children’s writer David Almond in The Times.
Comment column. |
| 'It’s a common tactic on such occasions to leave a tiny loophole
through which a character can if necessary crawl back into the limelight.'
Bob muses on the return of
'Dirty Den' in his
Journal of a Virtually Unpublished Writer. |
| We 'list the lists' of
competitions for new writers. But read the small print before you
part with an 'entry fee'. |
| We have just overhauled the 15,000+ links on the site. If you want
to explore the world beyond WritersServices
check out the links - But please come back! |
| If you want to be considered a poet, you will have to show mastery of
the petrarchan
sonnet form or the sestina. Your musical efforts must begin with
well-formed fugues. There is no substitute for craft... Art begins with
craft, and there is no art until craft has been mastered.'
Anthony Burgess in our
Writers Quotations |
6 October 2003
| News Review In an
interesting coda to last week’s story on the progress being made by
e-books, some sudden changes of personnel and policy have followed on
from a switch in ownership at a key e-book operation. |
| Reflections on poetry for National Poetry Day - '...a lot of
poetry's not getting any coverage because a lot is being skewed towards
these intellectually minded male poets..'. Neil Astley, MD of Bloodaxe in Publishing News
Comment column. |
| John Jenkins' monthly column from
Writers' Forum magazine |
| The October magazine is ready.
Including some posters in a
print-friendly format. The
experts don't always get it right. |
| ‘Literature nowadays is a trade… the successful man of letters is
your skilful tradesman. He thinks first and foremost of the markets.’
George Gissing, writing in New Grub Street in 1895 in our
Writers Quotations |
29 September 2003
| Bob contemplate the derivation
of the 'Life of Pi'. "Yann Martel may be able to name his hero after
the French for swimming pool and get away with it." See where this leads you!
Journal of a Virtually Unpublished Writer |
| News Review examines the evidence that Ebooks is growing. In the first half of 2003 alone, ebook sales revenues are up by
30% and unit sales up 40%, which compares well with an annual growth
rate of 5% in traditional publishing. |
| 'A lot of modern fiction tends to be "slice of life" stuff in
which a story has no apparent ending to it. The reader reaches the end
and says "Huh?" ' Elizabeth George in Publishing News in our Comment column. |
| 'It's a delicious thing to write. To be no longer
yourself but to move in an entire universe of your own creating.' Gustave Flaubert in our
Writers Quotations |
| Competition The last
week to win a free report. It's open to writers around the globe -
All you need is access to email. |
22 September 2003
| Our latest new service is
Manuscript typing, which will
get your handwritten manuscripts, messy typescripts or audio tapes into
good shape for reworking, submission or publication. |
| News Review looks at a
startling Man Booker shortlist, book awards and bestsellers: 'A
giant killers’ year in the Man Booker. Three first novels and only one
big name left’ is what John Carey, chair of the judges, had
to say. |
| 'The most important thing for a writer is to have read absolutely
everything you can get your hands on at an early age' Kate Atkinson in
the Guardian in our Comment column. |
| If all the recent publicity about hackers getting into computers has
made you nervous about protecting your work, check out our revised page
on Your own privacy policy.
|
|
‘No one can do without some semblance of
immortality, and even less will they deny themselves the right to seek
it out in the form of this or that reputation, starting with the
literary… Since death has come to be accepted by all as the absolute
end, everyone writes.’ Romanian
philosopher Emil Cioran in our
Writers Quotations |
|
Our WritersPrintShop is
attracting many writers who want to publish their own work and retain
control using cost-effective Print
on Demand. Have you checked out our service yet?
|
15 September 2003
|
Bob confronts us with a new
dilemma. 'For the first time in my life I
realise I am actually earning from writing just about enough to live on.
Can I consider myself a professional writer yet? Well, yes, at long last,
I think I can.' How can we go on calling his diary the Journal of a
Virtually Unpublished Writer? Read the latest exciting
entry! |
| News Review is in reflective
mode this week: 'writers may come from the most unexpected places and
achieve their goal through all sorts of different means, self-publishing
being one of them. Determination is the key.' |
| The latest addition to our do-it-yourself series Computing on the
Cheap is part 3,
Cleaning your computer. |
| 'At the keyboard I find myself trapped in a labyrinth of facts, each
sentence with its own nugget of information.' Scientist Steve Jones,
author of The Descent of Man, in our
Comment column, quoted in the Guardian on how scientists
approach their writing. |
| Don't forget to check out our WritersForum
discussion group for a lively debate on agents and other
subjects of interest to writers. |
|
‘The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,/Moves on: nor all thy Piety not Wit/Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,/Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.'
From The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam in our
Writers' Quotations.
|
8 September 2003
| A handy new service for writers with old typescripts!
Check out Scanning in our
Services
section. We can put old material onto disk and email it to you,
so you can work on it on your computer, to prepare for submission or
publication. |
| Franklin Delano Roosevelt from the perspective of 1942: ‘We all
know that books burn - yet we have the greater knowledge that books
cannot be killed by fire. People die, but books never die. No man and
no force can abolish memory... In this war, we know, books are weapons.'
In our Writers Quotes |
| Check out John Johnson's column
from the September issue of
Writers' Forum for news from the writers' world and a summary of why
writers take up writing, |
| News Review looks at
success for generic book promotion - Australia's Books Alive
campaign stimulated an increase in total book sales during the period of
23%. |
| Film director Alan Parker, soon to publish his first novel,
contrasts the film and book worlds in the Bookseller:
‘Publishing is an infinitely more civilised world with infinitely more
gracious people than the film industry'. In our
Comment column. |
| Check out our September Magazine. |
1 September 2003
18 August 2003
| Bob gets back to normal - rewriting EastEnders scripts
and ruminating that: 'punctuation marks are the roundabouts on
the route through the road network of our words'. In his
Journal. |
| News Review opts for
the silly season, looking at a study on the links between books and
personality, and reflecting on books and friendship. |
| We've been on holiday and so have you! Our Services have been
run off their feet by writers sending us their manuscripts. Now's
the time to explore all 1100 pages of the site, read up on
Inside Publishing and use our
Advice for Writers to get
your manuscript ready for
submission. |
| 'This is a country in which, if you are old, you become
invisible.' Francis King, just longlisted for the Man Booker Prize
for his novel The Nick of Time, on the fate of older writers,
quoted in our Comment column. |
|
‘A word is not a crystal, transparent and
unchanged, it is the skin of a living thought and may vary greatly in
color and content according to the circumstances in which it is used.’
Oliver Wendell Holmes in our
Writers' Quotes. |
4 August 2003
| Why do we have so many and strangely named
book sizes? In the
WritersPrintShop. |
| The relentless pace at which publishing houses are bought and
sold on the international scene has slowed recently, as anti-monopoly
rulings are brought to bear on proposed acquisitions discussed in
our News Review |
| Real life drama - So Bob's diary arrived late and you
might have missed it. Read on.. |
| '.....every time we were beginning to form up in teams, we would
be re-organised.' Another poster
to print. |
| 'Writers need fantasies' writes Sarah Dunant in The Times in our
Comment column. |
| ‘Some books are undeservedly forgotten; none is undeservedly
remembered.’ W H Auden in our
Writers Quotations. |
28 July 2003
| Our new Proof-reading
service is launched this week, joining our 12 other editorial and
publishing services for writers.
It's especially recommended for self-publishers planning to use
WritersPrintShop. |
| Amazon has continued to surge ahead with sales growth backed by
new initiatives - but the stock is still hugely overvalued. See
News Review |
| Flat on his back, Bob is rushed to hospital. 'When I told her one of the
things I did was write for EastEnders, it was as if she’d suddenly
discovered royalty.' Read on.. |
| ‘A new brand of literature has arisen to feed the
20-something guys’ need to read…' The Toronto Star in our
Comment column. |
| ‘Writing a book is an adventure. To begin with, it is a toy and
an amusement. Then it becomes a mistress, then it becomes a master,
then it becomes a tyrant...' Winston Churchill on writing in our
Writers Quotations. |
21 July 2003
| This week we have an excerpt from Neil Bromage
How I became a highly-paid writer:
'What I always try to
ensure is that my ideas have "legs", that they are not going to be
static, one-off ideas that go no further than the first magazine I
approach.' |
| For the second year running the 'African Booker', the Caine
prize for African writing has gone to an Kenyan writer, Yvonne
Adhiambo Owuor. See
News Review |
| Check out the Editor's column from
Writers'
Forum magazine and a free offer. |
| 'You can read a book as and when you like...any book which
truly lives, lives beyond its author and reaches readers not yet
present, entirely unforeseen.’ David Sexton in the London
Evening Standard in our Comment
column. |
| In WritersPrintShop there's a new page on
Preparing your own artwork and text, which gives you
guidelines for doing it yourself. |
| ‘A book is so much a part of oneself that in delivering it
to the public one feels as if one were pushing one’s own child out
into the traffic.’ Quentin Bell in our
Writers Quotations. |
| And we've added several new pages to our
Education
Resource Centre for students and course organisers to bring it
up to date with all the new material on the site. |
14 July 2003
| Bob's
Journal: The BIG DAY has arrived and he is off to Elstree
Studio to watch the filming of his EastEnders script...... |
| If you want to check out e-books, this could be a good time to give
them a try. Microsoft have a free offer to attract users for their
reader but there are alternatives.
News review |
| 'The great thing about fiction-writing is that you are licensed to
lie.' Victoria Glendinning in the Guardian
|
| ‘What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure.’
Samuel Johnson |
7 July 2003
| 'Finding the words' - a report from
the 23rd Annual Writers' Conference in Winchester, UK, includes Beryl
Bainbridge's encouragement to writers: ‘finding the words can often
mean finding ourselves’. |
| The latest excerpt
from Carole Blake's From Pitch to
Publication tells you how to get editorial criticism:
'If we were to prepare editorial reports for the
manuscripts we have to reject every day, we would, quite simply, never
have time to work for the clients we do actually represent.' |
| ‘Things don’t change as much as we
grow into what we’ve always been. As bad as the lives we’ve had, we
wouldn’t be the people we are today without them' is James Lee Burke's
Comment on the writer's life. |
| Our new Book Review is for
Raymond Frensham's
Screenwriting: 'if you think you’d like to try your hand at
screenwriting and are not sure what’s involved, this is probably the
best book to start with.' |
| News Review on how
'heavy discounting has pushed down the average selling price of books
sold in the UK General Retail Market from £7.51 in 2001 to £7.33 in
2002.' |
| ‘Soundbite and
slogan, strapline and headline, at every turn we meet hyperbole.
The soaring inflation of the English language is more urgently in need
of control than the economic variety.' Trevor Nunn's view In our
Quotations. |
| The July Magazine is ready. |
30 June 2003
| Bob's latest diary entry:
'How do I let the reader know who my hero is if he gets no more
air-time than anyone else?... He may not be the hero of this novel, but
he could be the star of the next…' |
| News Review reports
on how 'the aftershock of the fastest-selling
book in history is running through the book trade worldwide.' |
| In WritersPrintShop, our self-publishing service for writers, a new
page fills you in on
readability scores. Check out the Fog Index and the Flesch
Reading Ease Score to find out how your work measures up. |
| ‘Why did I become a writer? I can’t
really come up with any antecedent for it. I’m certainly not from the
classic unhappy childhood.' Graham Swift
quoted in our Comment
column. |
| ‘Every novel is an
attempt to capture time, to weave something solid out of air. The
author knows it is an impossible task - that is why he keeps on trying.' David Beaty in our
Writers'
Quotations. |
23 June 2003
| The latest article in our Inside Publishing
series focuses on Direct selling
and how it affects the author. |
| 'The original writer is the one who creates a new genre instead
of repeating the last.' Margaret Drabble in the
Independent on Sunday quoted in our
|
| Are you out of
print? WritersPrintshop now offers an inexpensive way of reprinting your own book - or any other
title you may want to get back into print. |
| News Review reports
on a conundrum: why can't fiction writers get published when 125,390
titles were published in the UK in 2002, an increase of 5% on the
previous year? |
| ‘No passion in the world is equal to the passion to alter someone
else's draft.' H G Wells in our
Writers'
Quotations. |
| Please note that our server is being updated during the week of
21-28 June and we regret that you may experience short interruptions
to services. |
16 June 2003
| Bob reflects on how much he has learnt: from working on
EastEnders 'Six months ago I would
have cut the arm off anyone who had the temerity to suggest a single
change.' In his Journal. |
| ‘The funny thing is that the more you say no to Hollywood the
more it wants you.' Harlan Coben
on Hollywood in our
Comment column.
|
| Find out about everything you ever wanted to know about
Looking after your mouse
in our latest new Web How-to
page. |
| News Review reports
on the biggest book of the year. ' By publication there will be 13
million copies of ‘Harry 5’ in print', but could sales be slowing? |
| Our revised page on picture
technologies is now bang-up-to-date. Find out why images take up
prodigious amounts of digital space on the web. |
| New Writer magazine has just announced its 2003 Poetry
and Prose prizes - see
their
listing in our Links section. |
| ‘Without knowing the force of words, it is impossible to know
men. 'Confucius
in our Writers' Quotations. |
9 June 2003
| If you're working on a non-fiction book, our new
software
review looks at Indexing
Software, showing you how the various packages can help. |
| 'It seems to me a reader should expect a novel to take her
outside the tight circle of her own knowledge and concerns.' Hilary
Mantel's enlightening views in our Comment
column.
|
| We've extended our Links section with reviews of 15 more wonderful
poetry
sites. |
| News Review reports
on Amazon, E-books and Saga: Amazon has produced 'some amazing
behind-the scene achievements too, not least a stock-turn of 20 times
a year'. |
| Thinking about
self-publishing? We've
added a page on choosing your publication date. |
| ‘The attributes you need to be a
travel writer are somewhat contradictory. For travel you need to be
tough and resilient and to write you must be sensitive and sympathetic.’
Colin Hebron in the Independent on Sunday in our
Writers'
Quotations. |
2 June 2003
| Bob's
Journal: Bob's latest diary entry on EastEnders:
'Late afternoon Laura emails to say Louise wants us to completely rework
at least two of the main stories in my episode.' |
|
'A gap has emerged in the market for enterprising independents
that do not have to trade basic bookshop efficiency for institutional
shareholder satisfaction.' David Blow writing in Publishing
News. In our Comment column.
|
| Our new Competition: answer the three questions correctly to
go into the draw for copies of
The Writer's Handbook Guide to Crime
Writing. |
| Our new Review this month
is for The Writer's Handbook Guide to Crime Writing:
'This may be a slim book but it’s packed with detail.
Every aspiring crime writer should have a copy close at hand.' |
| In News Review Bowker figures show US title output
increasing by 5.86% to a whopping 150,00 new titles and editions in 2002. |
| In our June extract from
From Pitch to Publication
you'll find Carole's extremely useful checklist of the
things you should be looking for when choosing an agent, 'Time spent in reconnaissance is seldom wasted'. |
| ‘Just how difficult it is to write biography can be reckoned by
anybody who sits down and considers just how many people know the real
truth about his or her love affairs.' Rebecca West in our
Writers'
Quotations. |
26 May 2003
| What is PEN?
Find out about the international writers' organisation that
fights for freedom of expression all over the world. |
| By special arrangement with Writers' Forum magazine,
WritersServices will feature
the editor's monthly
column. Hot off the press, John Jenkins' column from the June
issue. |
| In News
Review the purchase of BertelsmannSpringer by buyout specialists
Candover and Cinven has brought about another seismic shift in the
rapidly-changing world of scientific and academic publishing. |
| Also reprinted from Writers' Forum magazine,
Chris Holifield's article
about the history of WritersServices. In our
Media Centre. |
| 'A writer's problem does not
change... It is always how to write truly and having found what is
true, to project it is such a way that it becomes a part of the
experience of the person who reads it.'
Ernest Hemingway in our
Writers'
Quotations. |
| ‘My job is to write as honestly as I know how, whether it’s
fiction or non-fiction' is the view of bestselling writer Stephen
King. In our Comment
column. |
| English PEN are running an International Writers' Day in London
on 7 June. Find out more and book for this mini-festival at
www.englishpen.org/events. |
| You can still sign
up for our weekly newsletter. |
19 May 2003
| Inside Publishing 11 looks at
the topical subject of book clubs and
mail order: 'You can’t altogether blame the bookshops for
resenting the idea that the big new book of the season is being widely
‘sold’ for 25p or 25 cents'. |
| Bob makes progress with EastEnders scripts:
'She’s much less brutal with this one – because it’s much better, why
else?' In his Journal. |
| The Big Read finds the best-loved books: 'James Joyce
vies with Jeffrey Archer, Lord of the Flies with Lord of the Rings...
but how can books fail to benefit from this huge publicity
bonanza? In News Review. |
| ‘To be a well-favoured man is the gift of fortune; but to write
and read comes by nature.' William Shakespeare
in our Writers'
Quotations. |
| The Annual Writers Conference in Winchester at the end of June is
Britain's biggest. Make your booking now. |
| In updating our Web How-to, there are new pages on
looking after your keyboard and
useful keystrokes. |
| 'Even after writing 29 novels, I hate the loneliness, the doubt.'
Bestselling novelist Wilbur Smith on being a writer. In our
Comment column. |
12 May 2003
| In a major revamp of our WritersBookstall,
we've just added 60 more titles, so now you can find over 200 specially
selected books for writers, categorised so it's easy to track down
what you want. |
| We've just added a new page to
Preparing an Index in WritersPrintShop, showing how to
Make an
Index using Word®. |
| The little guys see off the big battalions. Overlook
Press acquires Duckworth. Perseus looks likely to buy Time Warner
Books. In
News Review. |
| ‘All fiction is for me a kind of
magic and trickery - a confidence trick, trying to make people believe
something is true that isn't.' In our
Writers'
Quotations. |
| The third article in Computing on the
Cheap takes you | |
