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News Review looks at Amazon's growth and stellar results for
2004 and concludes that the online retailer is unstoppable now.
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Successful authors such as Michelle Paver and 13-year-old
Emma Maree Urquhart make it look easy to make a fortune out of writing for
children - but is it really such a doddle?
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'Children’s books are booming... the children of today are
reaping the benefit of a flowering of children’s writing of all kinds, such as
we have never seen before.'
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News Review looks at World
Book Day plans. 'Current statistics show that there are over five million
adults in the UK who have limited literacy skills. They are effectively excluded
from the pleasures that reading can bring - whether from a novel, a cookery book
or a travel guide.' Gail Rebuck
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'I think one should respect someone like mad while they're alive and write
what you like once they're dead... Books should not be written to be cathartic
for the author but to ring bells with and be entertaining for an audience.' Virginia
Ironside, author of Janey and Me, quoted in the Observer
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''I'll probably be completely forgotten... History is like some giant beast - it simply wriggles its back and
throws off whatever is on it.' Arthur Miller, quoted in the Independent.
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| 'The whole industry is built around writing one book a year,
so the next hardcover comes out with the mass market paperback of your previous
one... It's not enough time to write a good book.' Greg Iles in the
Bookseller |
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'There is something about the contemporary scene that has made
competitiveness, doing the next person down, a central part of the writing
business rather than just a sideshow.' Terence Blacker in the Independent
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'First a mistress you dally and play with,
then she becomes your master and finally your tyrant.'
Winston Churchill on writing a book
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Working through
WritersPrintshop, Chas Jones
of WritersServices has just self-published a
book using their own diaries and recollections to reveal the
extraordinary true story of a group of British rail workers and miners sent
to France right at the beginning of the war.
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Our eleventh excerpt from David Armstrong's entertaining book:
This month the author looks at vanity publishing and self-publishing,
warning writers about the pitfalls of each,
whilst showing that self-publishing has an honourable tradition, having
been practised by authors from Jill Paton Walsh to Virginia Woolf.
'So, if you have a spare few thousand pounds, if
you are desperate to see your book in print and want to give copies to
friends and family and try to sell a few to your mates at the pub or
squash club, then go ahead... ' concluding 'As a last resort; if
you can't get anyone to buy (or even read) your book, consider self- or
vanity-publishing it.
A major review of our recommended links has just added 20 new
ones, including a new listing for
book group links.
Book now for the Masterclasses to be held on 12th and 13 March at
the London Book Fair. Organised in association with English PEN
and involving many well-known authors, these cover:
| How to get published |
| The Daily Mail Book Club Fiction Masterclass |
| How to write Historical Fiction |
| How to write popular poetry |
Here's our new poster in the Writers on Writing series, which
includes gems such as:
'Every time I read a Jane Austen novel, I feel like a bartender at
the gates of heaven.'
Mark Twain
Check out this year's peculiar winner!
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Bob is still recovering from his accident, but, mercifully, has a new
exec producer in charge at EastEnders:
'Can finally reveal I was actually thrown off my last but one episode,
somewhere around the sixth draft, I think, though my memory’s hazy...
(and there's)) a promise that schedules will be back to sensible levels by
April'
This week
Mary Garden shares her experiences with writer's block and how Stephen
King and her anger helped her to overcome it.
Recent figures show that half our newsletter subscribers have been
signed up for two years and over half are 'workers' or in education.
Sign up for our newsletter to get
weekly updates of what's new on the site.
Our latest new survey - see below
Writers' Forum Column
In masterly style, John Jenkins shows you how to use the Da Vinci
Code as a masterclass in writing a blockbuster. The Editor's View, written by the Editor of
Writers' Forum magazine.
Check out the 13 different editorial services we offer, from Reports to
Copy editing, Typing to Contract vetting.
Our design, print and distribution service for self-publishers. The
latest addition to the service is our WritersPrintShop online bookshop,
which will sell your book for you on the Internet as soon as it's published.
A new list, updated to include the 2005 dates for book fairs all
over the world.
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