What's New in 2014
- A recent Bookseller interview with Tom Weldon, now CEO of Penguin Random House UKPenguin Random House have more than 50 creative and autonomous imprints, publishing the very best books for all audiences, covering fiction, non-fiction, poetry, children’s books, autobiographies and much more. Click for Random House UK Publishers References listing, suggested that the big publishers have accommodated ebooks and are actually doing quite well. He was positive about maintaining the different imprints, which must be good news for writers: ‘We need to protect and nurture the diverse centres of publishing excellence. We want them to get on and do their own thing...' News Review
- This year's Diagram Prize winner is announced!
- From our Archive there's the serialisation of How Not to Write a Novel: Confessions of a Midlist Author by David Armstrong: 'Every week, agents and publishers receive hundreds of manuscripts from would-be authors. Of these, fewer than 1% will make it into print. David Armstrong was one of these, his first crime novel, Night's Black Agents, was plucked from the slush pile at a major publisher and published to acclaim. So far, so good. But what rapidly became clear to Armstrong was that being a published novelist is not always as glamorous as it seems from the outside...'
- This week's links: a report from the Twitter Fiction Festival BookBrunch - Behind the hashtag - genuine creativity and innovation; an article on those key opening lines of a novel How technology distractions are making novels' first lines even more important - Telegraph; from the New York Times, a look at how poorly children from diverse backgrounds are served in books The Apartheid of Children's Literature - NYTimes.com; the Amazon debate rumbles on Why Book Publishers Need to Think Like Amazon | Publishing Perspectives; and a positive report on Quick Reads Tech gives strugglers the confidence to read more | Books | The Observer.
- A Printer's View 1 is the first in a series of occasional articles looking at self-publishing from the printing perspective. In Self-publishing? How do you prepare your files for print? Andy EdmonsonManaging Director, Purely Digital, a quality digital printing service based in Derby; over 20 years' experience in printing industry; written for various publications including Print Week and popular blog Just Creative, Managing Director at Purely Digital, looks at this central question. 'You've considered the arguments for and against self-publishing and decided that it's the best option for you. Great; you've got over one of the many difficult hurdles of getting your book out to the world, the next step is to transform the files on your computer into a physical printed book.
- 'Dickens is the best example of someone who, I think, did what I do, or what I try to do, which is to take a difficult or contentious moral or social issue and get people to think about it through fiction. You see highbrow reviews of highbrow books that no one has ever heard of. You see what awards are given at the National Book Awards. But I really wonder 500 years from now, or even 100 years from now, what's going to stick around? Is it going to be those books, or is it going to be, as we've seen in the past, what was read widely...' Jodie Piccoult, author of The Storyteller, in The Times., quoted in our Comment column.
- 'Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash.' Leonard Cohen in our Writers' Quotes.
- Maria Maloney is the publisher of Lodestone, a new imprint which offers a broad spectrum of subjects in YA/NA literature: 'Compelling reading, the Teen/Young/New Adult reader is sure to find something edgy, enticing and innovative. From dystopian societies, through a whole range of fantasy, horror, science fiction and paranormal fiction, all the way to the other end of the sphere, historical drama, steam-punk adventure, and everything in between (including crime, coming of age and contemporary romance)...' Talking to Publishers 9, the latest in the series.
- Our Manuscript Polishing service provides a polishing service for the writer who is not a native speaker and anyone who wants additional help to prepare their work for publication. Does your manuscript need improving to get it into shape for submission or self-publishing? Or are you just concerned that your English may not be quite up to producing a publishable manuscript without some assistance from an editor? This service, one step up from Copy editing, might be what you're looking for.
- Three new recently-launched websites show how publishers are trying to get to grips with readers and book-buyers directly. Off the Shelf, which has been set up by the American publisher Simon & Schuster, is intended to revive and publicise backlist books by offering daily reviews, which can be received as an email, of books which are at least a year old. The reviews will be written by S & S staffers and will show the passion they feel for the books they are writing about. What's more, the site will be publisher-agnostic, so it's more about spreading the good news about favourite books than about selling their own titles. News Review - Publishers launch groundbreaking new websites.
- Our Publishing Glossary is a really helpful way of finding your way about the business.
- ‘The fantasy arrived when I was 13. I was in Reykjavik for a summer and it never got dark. There was a whole library of English books and I was a great reader. I suddenly had access to books that were too hard for me before. Lots of Dickens. Jane Eyre. Wuthering Heights. Jane Austen. I couldn't stop. I read the abridged version of The Count of Monte Cristo. I read some of Mark Twain. While reading David Copperfield in the middle of the night...' Siri Hustvedt, author of The Blazing World, in The Times, quoted in our Comment column, 'When did you know you were a writer?'
- This week's links: the counterblast to Hugh Howey in Hugh Howey Gives Toxic Advice for Self-Publishers and Paperback Pioneers, a nostalgic trip into the past when the paperback was king from Futurebook.
- If you've got past the need for Finding an Agent, you might be interested in Working with an Agent. Or there's always our agency listings to help with your research.
- 'A great poet, a really great poet, is the most unpoetical of all creatures. But inferior poets are absolutely fascinating.' Oscar Wilde in our Writers' Quotes.
- Do creative writing courses work? 'Following on from Hanif Kureishi's attack on creative writing courses this week, this old chestnut of a question has turned up again. Kureishi has dismissed creative writing courses as "a waste of time" and said he would never have gone on one himself, despite the fact that he currently teaches a writing course at Kingston University.' News Review investigates.
- In Joanne PHillips' fantastically useful WritersServices Guide to Self-publishing we're now up to the eighth article, which deals with EbooksDigital bookstore selling wide range of ebooks in 50 categories from Hildegard of Bingen to How to Write a Dirty Story and showing how the range of ebooks available is growing.: Pricing Strategies for Indie Authors: 'Never has price been a more essential factor in the success or popularity of a particular title. With prices for ebooks ranging from completely free to upwards of £6/$10, ebook pricing is a minefield for the indie author...'
- ‘My initial career conformed to my original notion of authorship. You wrote a book, you struggled to get it published, if you were lucky you found a kindly editor who paid you a bit of money, and later perhaps you'd be paid for another book. And so on. In the meantime you did other things like secretary work or journalism to make a bit more. But then, between 2007 and 2010, everything changed.,. Being a writer stopped being the way it had been for ages - the way I expected it to be - and became something different...'Joanna Kavenna interviewed by Robert McCrum in the Observer for his article From bestseller to bust: is this the end of an author's life? | Books | The Observer in our Comment column.
- WritersServices editor Kay GaleWritersServices editor who has worked for many years as a freelance editor for number of publishers. on The Slush-pile: 'When I started working in publishing over thirty years ago it was part of my job to check through the pile of unsolicited manuscripts that arrived on a daily basis, and like every other enthusiastic young editorial assistant, I dreamed of finding the next bestseller in the ‘slush pile'. I was soon disillusioned..'
- Our links this week: Danuta Kean on why writers should be paid Authors' Licensing and Collecting Society The Price Ain't Right, the director of World Book Day on the brilliant Quick Reads BookBrunch - World Book Day: Helping non-readers to climb their first mountain, Anna Metcalfe's calm and self-effacing article on prizes and Creative Writting BookBrunch - Longlists, shortlists and lists of other kinds and, a much angrier article, Kureishi slams creative writing courses | The Bookseller.
- Our Tips series is an 8-part series which starts with Improve your writing and ends with Submission to agents and publishers.
- Our Writing Opportunity this week is the The CWA Margery Allingham Short Story Competition for Unpublished Stories 2014. You'll need to move fast to get your story into this competition, as it closes on 16 March.
- Garth Gunston, the author of Getting my novel published has further intriguing news - his book has been set up for crowd-funding to raise the money for a film.
- 'To be a writer is to sit down at one's desk in the chill portion of every day, and to write; not waiting for the little jet of the blue flame of genius to start from the breastbone - just plain going at it, in pain and delight. To be a writer is to throw away a great deal, not to be satisfied, to type again, and then again, and once more, and over and over....' John Hersey in our Writers' Quotes.
- 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.