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19 March 2012 - What's new

19 March 2012
  • 'It’s a sign of the times that previously unknown British author E L James has topped the New York Times bestseller list with an erotic romance, Fifty Shades of Grey. The book was published in a print edition but the vast majority of sales were in ebook. Vintage US are releasing new ebook versions of the trilogy on Monday while their first print in paperback will be 750,000.' News Review has the story.
  • Does your manuscript need Copy editing?  Our new page on Getting your manuscript copy edited provides a useful overview and clarifies a new feature of our service, which enables you to get two versions of your copy edited manuscript, one showing the editor's changes in 'track changes' and one with the changes accepted. If you're not a native English speaker, you might be interested in our Manuscript Polishing service, which helps you make sure that your written English is correct.
  • This week's links to stories of the week include the Department of Justice’s confusing lawsuit against the five of the Big Six publishing companies and Apple Inc, a Huffington Post story from the UK about why libraries are worth saving and after analysing 5,750,000 books on Goodreads, Otis Chandler shares his insights on the evolving nature of book discovery.
  • 'The bit between the writer and reader is called publishing. We need to think of copyright in an imaginative way. Publishers are very creative about formats for books, through covers and marketing campaigns, but we are not that creative about the product. The creativity there seems to go on before we receive the product. We can think what we might make from the copyright and from the brilliance of working with an author.' Stephen Page, MD of Faber and FaberClick for Faber and Faber Publishers References listing, at the Bookseller's Futurebook conference, in our Comment column.
  • What does it take to market yourself successfully as a jobbing writer today? Joanne Phillips provides the answer, which is that the internet is a fertile ground for writers. You just need to know how to make it work for you...
  • Our Writing Opportunity this week is the Wasafiri New Writing Prizeopen to anyone worldwide who has not published a complete book  for creative submissions in one of three categories: Poetry, Fiction or Life Writing.
  • 'All writers are vain, selfish and lazy, and at the very bottom of their motives there lies a mystery. Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon which one can neither resist nor understand.' George Orwell in our Writers' Quotes.