What's New in 2014
- The fourth and final part of Suzy Jenvey's The Essential Guide to Writing for Children is about Submitting Your Work to Agents and Editors: ' In my 26 years in publishing, I have read thousands of manuscript submissions. The way they were presented varied enormously. My main tip is to let your writing do the talking; the editor or agent is ONLY interested in how good your writing is, and unusual presentation ideas aren't going to make an unoriginal idea original, or a weak writer strong. The previous articles dealt with Which age group should I write for?, Before You Write: What is My Story Going to be? and Starting to Write.
- 'This week's Bookseller reports that E L James made £33m before tax in the year to the end of September 2013, more than three times her pre-tax earnings from the year before. This astonishing amount of money shows how very much an internationalyl bestselling author can make, especially when it's actually a trilogy. Fifty Shades Ltd said it ‘had a very successful year, during which it secured royalty agreements with numerous international publishing houses and licensing agreements with other organisations'. This week's News Review is on Bestsellers.
- Joanne PhillipsUK-based freelance writer and ghostwriter. She has had articles published in national writing magazines, and has ghostwritten books on subjects as diverse as hairdressing and keeping chickens. Visit her at www.joannephillips.co.uk is the author of the ten-part WritersServices Guide to Self-pubishing and other articles on the site and she's just pubished her sixth novel Cupid's Way, a romantic comedy about Evie's attempts to help save her grandparents' home from destruction for redevelopment. You can check it out on her website.
- Do you want a professional assessment of your work? As well as specialist Children's reports, we also offer three grades of report, the substantial Editor's Report, the briefer Reader's Report and the most detailed of the three, the Editor's Report Plus.
- Our Writing Opportunity this week is the MslexiaStylish and lively site for quarterly UK literary magazine read by 12,000 'committed' women writers. Good range of quality writing, information and advice with news, reviews, competitions and interviews, all presented in a friendly fashion. Praised by Helen Dunmore as 'astute, invigorating and above all an excellent read.' www.mslexia.co.uk Women's Memoir Competition 2014. Women from any country who have not published a memoir, but may have published something else, are eligible. Entry fee £25 and the Prize is £5,000.Closing on 22 September.
- 'I'm amazingly fortunate to have a chance to write a second book that people will be interested in reading because they liked the first. It would be awfully pessimistic if an author with enthusiastic potential readers sat around in anguish... The book has your chromosomes all the way through it, you feel squeamish about someone critiquing your inner life...' Tom Rachman, author of The Imperfectionists and The Rise and Fall of Great Powers, in the Evening Standard, quoted in our Comment column.
- Our links this week: are we at the beginnings of a backlash against big tech? Philip Jones asks some fundamental questions - They might be giants | FutureBook; Literary agent Juliet Mushenson How To Become A Literary Agent | Marie Claire; what is the Poetry Book SocietySpecialist book club founded by T S Eliot in 1953, which aims to offer the best new poetry published in the UK and Ireland. Members buy at 25% discount. The PBS has a handsome new website at www.poetrybooks.co.uk - BookBrunch - Putting poets first.
- Preparing for Publication - Have you managed to find a publisher for your work and are now enjoying the thrill of knowing that your book will soon be published? If you're wondering what happens next, here is an outline of the processes involved.
- 'Honest criticism is hard to take, particularly from a relative, a friend, an acquaintance, or a stranger.' Franklin Jones in our Writers' Quotes.
- Richard Hall, author of Theatres of War, chooses in his My Say to ask the question: "Write about what you know" - does this adage always make sense? 'For those planning a contemporary novel it may be sound advice to write about what you know. But what about writers of historical novels? They cannot have personal knowledge of anything before the recent past...' Other columns from writers in our My Say series. If you have something you'd like share with us about your writing, please send your article to us.
- Our Blurb-writing service is just what you want if you're a self-publisher struggling to write your own. Our Synopsis-writing service may be able to help when you've got stuck trying to put together your synopsis. Or perhaps you'de like a report on your screenplay, tv script or play from our Scriptwriting Assessment service?
- 'A week or two back we linked to a recent article in Publishing Perspectives, Yawn No More: Americans and the Market for Foreign Fiction, about the annual BEABookExpo America, commonly referred to within the book publishing industry as BEA. The largest annual book trade fair in the United States Global Market Forum, this year focusing on books in translation. It showed that progress is being made to overcome American publishers' traditional reluctance to take on translated work from the rest of the world. Various different publishing models are being tried, which is important since the extra costs of translation have to be recouped somewhere...' News Review - at last, a mini-boom in translations.
- Our Writing Opportunity this week is the exciting New Children's Author Prize 2015, set up by the National Literacy TrustUK-based organisation which has campaigned since 1993 to improve literacy standards across all age groups. Excellent research information and details of the many initiatives the charity is currently involved in. www.literacytrust.org.uk. It also has a useful page of news stories on UK literacy, which links to newsletter http://www.readitswapit.co.uk/TheLibrary.aspx and Bloomsbury Children's Publishing. You need to be a UK citizen and the closing date is 30 September, although entries received by 30 June need only pay a £15 entry fee.The Prize is a publishing contract with Bloomsbury, along with an advance of £5,000 and an exclusive print run of the new author's work.
- Our 19-part Inside Publishing series gives you an insider's take on the publishing world, covering everything from subsidiary rights to the world Engllish language market, from advances and royalties to what the sales department does.
- This week's links: Author Tim Parks on the uncertain future of long novels, firstly in his blog which sparked it off, Reading: The Struggle by Tim Parks | NYRblog | The New York Review of Books and then in an article in the Independent, Internet spells end of long, complex literary novels, says author Tim Parks - News - Books - The Independent. Then there's Molly Flatt's thoughtful report from Writing in a Digital Age, BookBrunch - Shaping the twenty-first century writing life; more on Amazon-Hachette, Amazon is not your best friend: Why self-published authors should side with Hachette - Salon.com; the international story on Wattpad, How Developing Markets Fuel Wattpad's Explosive Growth | Publishing Perspectives; and 6 Reasons Why English Writers Should Self-publish in Germany | Publishing Perspectives.
- ‘I never wanted to be a writer. At first I wanted to be a violinist but I just wasn't good enough. My love of stories came, I suppose, from my father, who used to read books to me like King Solomon's Mines. I've loved adventure books ever since. Writing historical fiction means I do lots of research, so my study's covered in notes and bits of paper. It helps me get under the skin of my subjects...' Kate Mosse, author of Labyrinth, Sepulchre and Citadel in The Times, quoted in our Comment column.
- Our page of New Articles on the site helps you make sure you've seen the new material we've put up, but you can also find it on the Magazine page.
- 'This manuscript of yours that has just come back from another editor is a precious package. Don't consider it rejected. Consider that you've addressed it 'to the editor who can appreciate my work' and it has simply come back stamped "Not at this address". Just keep looking for the right address.' Barbara Kingsolver in our Writers Quotes.
- This week we have some entertaining additions to Rotten Rejections, a look at the opening of a big new bookshop on London's famous Charing Cross Road, an interesting Comment from Khaled Hosseini and the Foyle Young Poets, plus a good range of links to stories of the week.
- The opening of the wonderful new Foyles bookshop in Charing Cross Road in London has shown a tremendous act of faith in bricks and mortar bookselling. The iconic bookstore has been suffering badly due to a drop in footfall relating to the building of Crossrail, a major new east-west underground line cutting through the heart of London's West End. It will though also benefit markedly when the line opens in 2018. It's hard to take the long view, but Foyle's is in a good position to do so. This bookstore has endured in private ownership for 111 years but the move to two doors away, whilst tremendously encouraging, is also very risky at a time when the book trade is in a state of upheaval and bookshops seem under particular threat from Amazon and the supermarkets...' News Review
- Our Writing Opportunity this week is The Foyle Young Poets Award 2014, the biggest international competition for young poets aged eleven to seventeen. It closes on 31 July and entries in English are accepted from anywhere in the world, so make sure that all young poets of your acquaintance get the chance to enter.
- We've just added some new gems to Rotten Rejections, our page of awful rejections suffered by writers and administered mostly by publishers.
- ‘After publication, nothing much happened for over a year. I didn't have much hope. Then I began to notice people reading it - even on aeroplanes when I was travelling. It was everywhere, it was surreal. I was proud of it yet it was so dark and its central character so spineless and set in a country people in the US knew little about... I didn't think this was what bestsellers were about...' Khaled Hosseini, author of And the Mountains Echoed and The Kite Runner, in the Observer, quoted in our Comment column.
- Our links this week, HarperCollins SF and fanstasy imprint increases its publishing of new authors in ebook after a successful open submission, Harper Voyager Expands Digital-First Publishing; a look at two important and contrasting book markets, Global Book Market Snapshots: France and Germany | Publishing Perspectives; contrasting critical views, Why Are Literary Critics Dismayed by Donna Tartt's The Goldfinch and Its Success? | Vanity Fair; more on the market for translations, Yawn No More: Americans and the Market for Foreign Fiction | Publishing Perspectives; and a clarification of the economics of ebook publishing, Dr. Syntax: Why Are Publishers Telling Us E-Books Are So Profitable? Another Book-Business Fallacy.
- First excerpt - How to Open Doors and Get Noticed the First Time Around - The ABC Checklist for New Writers is a six part series of extracts from this useful book by Lorraine Mace and Maureen Vincent-Northam, from our Archive.
- 'I went for years not finishing anything. Because, of course, when you finish something you can be judged...I had poems which were re-written so many times I suspect it was just a way of avoiding sending them out.' Erica Jong in our Writers' Quotes.
- First we take a look at the extraordinary Eimear McBride - and a very encouraging story for writers. Then there's The Moth International Story Competition 2014 and a Comment from Matt Carr, a children's author who turned reluctantly to self-publishing. We've got several links of the week, still on the Amazon/Hachette story but with new angles, and Poetry International on poetry in translation.
- Eimear McBride's A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing is having an extraordinary impact. Now that it's won the new Bailey Women's Prize (successor to last year's Women's Fiction Prize and the Orange Prize), there seems to be no stopping the author... But it took her nine years to find a publisher and then it was a tiny start-up, Galley Beggar Press, which quickly set up the book as a co-publication on the paperback and ebook rights with Faber, once it was shortlisted for the Folio Prize. News Review
- Our Writing Opportunity this week is The Moth International Short Story Prize 2014, closing on 30 June and open to all.
- Are you interested in Getting Your Manuscript Copy Edited? As well as this article we have one from Inside Publishing about Copy editing and proof-reading and we offer a Copy editing service, as well as Proof-reading and Manuscript Polishing, which involves more intensive work, 'polishing' and improving the text, and correcting the English if you are writing in English as a second language.
- 'I never thought I'd self-publish a book, because for me it has all the hallmarks of delusional desperation. But after my children's book, The Tale of Russell the Sacred Crow, was rejected a few times for one reason or another, I had some commission from my printer and I thought I might as well have a go. Nowadays you really don't need to self-publish a novel or biography, you can just whack it up on the internet for the whole world to see, but a children's picture book is different.' Matt Carr writing about his his self-publishing experience in the Bookseller, quoted in our Comment column.
- On getting published: The long and winding road - Colin Murray
Colin joined Penguin Books after university. He has over the years worked for a number of the major publishing houses in senior editorial positions. His particular interests, apart from sailing, are science fiction, fantasy, crime and thrillers., WritersServices freelance editor, reflects on the tortuous path to publication of his first novel: 'Of course I should have known better. I'm a grown man who has spent a large part of his adult life in publishing watching the excitement and enthusiasm bleed from the young and talented as disappointments and rejections follow hard upon each other. I have even added to those rejections and disappointments, and watched the bright-eyed and smiling become morose and world weary...'
- Our links this week mostly seem to centre on the ongoing Amazon/Hachette battle and the ramifications for publishers and authors: on the important enemies Amazon has made of some major authors, Amazon's New, Powerful Enemies; the contrary view The war on Amazon is Big Publishing's 1% moment. What about other writers? | Barry Eisler | Commentisfree | The Guardian; and the effect this book world fight is having on authors Authors Getting Screwed by Amazon-Hachette Showdown | Digital Book World. For lighter relief there's a humourous article on the new Penguin Random House logo, complete with a poem, PRH's New Identity: Goodbye to Some Famous Bricks and Mortar | Publishing Perspectives and a short piece from Poetry International, just starting now in Rotterdam, giving links to other material on their site, Poetry in translation - Poetry International.
- Poet Michael Symmons Roberts in our Writers' Quotes: 'Any good writer is a good reader first. There's no substitute for being steeped in the great work of the past, and reading the work of your contemporaries. It's an obvious piece of advice, but no less true for that.'
- This week there's a heavy focus on the story which is gripping the book world - the fight going on between Amazon and Hachette. We've also got the thrid part of Suzy Jenvey's series, of interest to children's writers, and a new Horror Prize as our Writing Opportunity. All that and an insightful Comment and characteristic quote from Ionesco.
- The third part of Suzy Jenvey's The Essential Guide to Writing for Children deals with Starting to Write: 'Once you have started writing, never lose sight of that fact that your readers are children; your narrative and description should be different in certain aspects from adult writing.' Part 1 deals with Which age group should I write for? and Part 2 Before You Write: What is My Story Going to be?
- ‘Content is king, and it will remain king - tech will come and go... It's not I don't believe in tech, I do. But I also know that content is king. Not to quote Rupert Murdoch, but he used to say: ‘You have to own the pipes, but if you don't have anything flowing through it, what are the pipes going to do? ' We developed technology to market and sell our content, but the technology doesn't come first. You got to have the content and then get the technology behind it...' Jane Friedman, CEO of backlist ebook publisher Open Road Media, quoted in our Comment column.
- We're delighted that Richard Hall's Theatres of War was announced as the winner of The People's Book Prize (Fiction) 2013/14 at the awards ceremony last week. This is a highly competitive prize and we're really thrilled by his success. Richard came to WritersServices as an author with an earlier draft of Theatres of War and we helped advise him on further work on his novel and his submission package.
- 'The book world is poised on a knife-edge as the dispute between Amazon and Hachette continues, with no end in sight. It provided an oppressive feeling at BookExpo AmericaBookExpo America, commonly referred to within the book publishing industry as BEA. The largest annual book trade fair in the United States, just ended in New York. American Booksellers Association chief executive Oren Teicher, at the organisation's general meeting, said unequivocally that the industry was 'being held hostage by a company far more interested in selling flat-screen TVs, diapers and groceries... prepared to sacrifice a diverse publishing ecosystem to achieve retail dominance. That's not good for anyone...' News Review
- The James Herbert Award for Horror Writing 2014 is an new prize in this genre. Although it is only open to horror novels written in English and published in the UK between 1st January 2014 and 31st December 2014. (Self-published novels are not eligible) we thought its unique focus made it worth mentioning, in spite of our usual policy of only listing prizes which are open to unpublishied writers.
- An Editor's Advice is a series of seven articles on really useful subjects for writers such as Dialogue, Doing further drafts and Manuscript presentation.
- This week's bumper crop of links relate especially to the Amazon/Hachette story: Smashwords: Amazon's Hachette Dispute Foreshadows What's Next for Indie Authors, How the Amazon-Hachette Fight Could Shape the Future of Ideas - Jeremy Greenfield - The Atlantic and Read four of the most important paragraphs I'll ever write. | The Official James Patterson Website. Then there's Rights Sales as Soft Power | Publishing Perspectives, On Crowdfunding Books: When People Vote with Their Money | Publishing Perspectives and, translation being a favourite focus at the moment - When It Comes to Translation, It's a Small World After All | Publishing Perspectives.
- 'A writer never has a vacation. For a writer life consists of either writing or thinking about writing.' Eugene Ionesco in our Writers' Quotes.
