April 2008
The website for writers
News Review
- News Review on the Bologna and London Book Fairs: 'In summary, these were two lively and upbeat book fairs, showing that the global book business is in surprisingly strong shape.'
- Agent Pat Kavanagh: 'You can’t be thinking about what’s happening to the share price, or whether shareholders are going to be cross with you. All that matters is doing the right job for your writers, even if it means turning something down that’s very lucrative.’ News Review focuses on the agency world.
- The Friday Project goes into liquidation and Borders US puts itself up for sale. News Review looks at the latest bad news from the book world.
- Won’t anyone stick to what they’re good at? London literary agency PFD is setting up an agreement with print on demand printer Lightning Source to bring their authors’ work back into print. News Review reports.
- Less successful writers’ income is under increasing pressure from the focus on bestsellers and the Internet. News Review finds some more positive trends.
Comment
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'Done badly, fantasy is more risible than any other genre, perhaps because there is such a fine line between heroic endeavour and bathos.' Amanda Craig in The Times
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'Malorie Blackman and Benjamin Zephaniah may entice a more ethnically mixed audience, but the answer can’t be black writers for black kids and white for white. We cannot be cosy about the debate any more.’ Anthony Horowitz, author of Snakehead in the Bookseller.
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‘I was in the airport lounge at Heathrow, wanting something big and juicy for the sun lounger and looking in the commercial women’s fiction section.' Tasmina Perry in The Times on why she's contributing to the return of the bonkbuster.
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'Skellig was taken by the first publisher to read it, won a string of prizes, and has been published in 30 languages. I was an overnight success after almost 20 years.' David Almond in The Times
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'My aim, as a poet in the community, is always the same: to make people go away thinking ‘Is that what poetry is? I can do that!’' Ian McMillan in his article on The Poet in the Community: A little adventure on 57 Productions’ website.
Writers' Quote
'Literature, with a capital L, unless preserved by Time, has always been in a bad way, but books considered as merchandise have not.'
Denys Val Baker in The Author
Help for Writers
Check out this page to find links to the huge number of useful articles on this site.
Our Editorial Services for writers
Check out the 16 different editorial services we offer, from Reports to Copy editing, Typing to Rewriting.
Top Ten Tips for nonfiction writers
Julie Wheelwright, programme director, MA Creative Writing Nonfiction, City University, London gives a helpful checklist for nonfiction writers.
The ABC Checklist for New Writers: Professionalism
This the last of six extracts from The ABC Checklist for New Writers: How to Open Doors and Get Noticed the First Time Around by Lorraine Mace and Maureen Vincent-Northam, published by Orana Publishing. This useful book gives succinct answers to the many problems writers face, making it an indispensable reference for the budding writer.
This week - the authors look at titles and why they matter: 'The title of your work is the first thing the editor will read and, if it doesn’t grab her attention, she may put down your submission in favour of one more intriguingly titled.'
1 Agents - when and how to approach them
2 Editors: Who they are and what they do
National Poetry Competition winner
Sinead Morrissey is the winner of this year's Competition. Read the winning poem here.
Links update
Our 21 sections of links reviews and listings - from Writers Organisations to Writers' Web Resources - have been updated with some useful new sites.
An Editor's Advice
This new series is based on the advice Maureen Kincaid Speller, a long-serving WritersServices freelance editor, has given writers over the years. The series covers dialogue, doing further drafts, genre writing, planning, points of view, autobiography and presentation.
We Watch the web for writers
Our huge section on technology and the web, and how writers can make use of them.
Choosing a Service
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.
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 third article deals with Print on demand and the Long Tail. It looks at how POD is changing the economics of publishing, enabling backlist to be kept in print and book buyers to source a vast range of books.
The first article is on Bookselling, the second on Publishing.
Rotten Rejections
We've added some new quotes from publishers' rejections to this record of how they got it wrong. On Jack Kerouac:
'His frenetic and scrambled prose perfectly express the feverish travels of the Beat Generation. But is that enough? I don't think so.'
Creative Commons explained
When WritersServices first covered Creative Commons in Inside Publishing, we felt that we hadn't explained how it worked as clearly as we'd hoped to do. Now Frances Pinter, who works as a consultant on the project, explains this highly significant new approach to the licensing of rights.
Writer's success story
Russell Ash's entertaining book Potty, Fartwell and Knob, Extraordinary but True Names of British People has been promoted by a website which shows how the admittedly amusing material in the book can be used to good effect online.
The 2007 Diagram Prize
Here is the announcement of the winner for the oddest book title of the year - a barmy winner from a vintage crop.
Entering competitions
Have you ever wondered whether there’s any point in entering competitions? Someone must be winning, but why is it somehow never you? Our checklist helps you to review how you approach competitions, to see if you can achieve a better result.
Bob's Journal goes into its 8th volume
Bob's last column for WritersServices reflects on writing and the Internet:
'Still haven’t broken through my writer’s block. No longer even sure I want to. Why write? What’s writing for? Have absolutely no idea. How can one add anything worthwhile to the work of writers like Oscar Wilde? Yet the internet grows more vast by the minute with the words of the millions who are certain their opinions are worth airing.'
WritersPrintShop
We have revamped our WritersPrintShop website with lots more information. 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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WritersServices.com Magazine April 2008