3 March 2014 - What's new
3 March 2014
- Kerry Wilkinson's blog, Self-publishing changed my life, but my publisher grew my sales, is a useful corrective to the view that publishing is dead and the counter-view that self-publishing is rubbish. Everything is changing very rapidly and that offers many new opportunities for writers, who need to navigate their way through the shifting sands... From Robert McCrum in the Observer, there's a sad story of two authors, Rupert Thomson and Joanna Kavanna, who used to make a decent living out of being writers but don't do so any longer. News Review
- As usual, the shortlist for the 2014 Diagram Prize for the Oddest Book Title of the Year contains plenty of extraordinary front-runners. Join in the fun by voting for your own favourite.
- We've added a page listing New articles on the site, which you can use to find recently published individual pieces which have been aded to the WritersServices site in the last few weeks.
- 'The technical side of writing a novel is fascinating. You can strip a novel down like a car and see how it works. They are beautiful machines if they purr nicely. I like to write a book that is so utterly compelling that you want to read on, and in all my novels I try to build that motor energy in it..' Our Comment this week is from William Boyd author of Waiting for Sunrise in the Bookseller.
- Getting your manuscript copy edited is a useful page about why you need to do this. Our copy editing service uses professional editors to make sure you get a good result.
- This is an especially strong week for links to topical stories. First there are the links to the stories discussed in this week's News Review, Self-publishing changed my life, but my publisher grew my sales | FutureBook and From bestseller to bust: is this the end of an author's life? | Books | The Observer. Then there's Do book awards bring out our inner hipsters? » MobyLives, Is this a golden age for Australian debut novelists? | Culture | theguardian.com and Why Huge Publishing Advances can be Huge Steps Backwards | FutureBook.
- Our Writing Opportunity this week is the Mslexia 2014 Women's Short Story Competition, open to previously unpublished stories of up to 2,200 words by women writers. Entry fee £10. Prize £2,00, but hurry because it's closing on 17 March.
- Writing for Children by Linda Strachan is a 3-part serialisation from our Archive of a fantastic book on tackling children's writing.
- And finally words from the master: 'It's none of their business that you have to learn to write. Let them think you were born that way.' Ernest Hemingway in our Writers' Quotes.