What's New in 2015
- You'll have to move fast to get involved in National Novel Writing Month 2015, which starts on Sunday 1 November and finishes on 30 November, and is this week's Writing Opportunity. NaNoWriMo is a thoroughly international writers' event which challenges you to write a 50,000 word novel in one month - and thousands of writers accept the challenge every year! Is it for you?
- '...Downton has been a big thing for me. It's been a worldwide sensation to a degree that is unknown in most careers. I consider myself lucky to have had one; I would be astonished if there was another.' Julian Fellowes, creator and writer of Downton Abbey, in the Sunday Times provides this week's Comment.
- Tom Chalmers of IPR has written two articles about rights for self-publishers, Self-publishing - the rights way and How to get your book in the hands of an international audience. 'It's a fact that most self-published authors understand the process that takes them from a written manuscript to a published book, but few realise the additional elements that make publishing a profitable business. Rights licensing is arguably the most vital element in this equation. Whether it's selling translation rights, audio rights or optioning the film rights, these all help balance the book's books...'
- Two of our links this week relate to AmazonCrossing's announcement of $10m to be spent on publishing translations, an impressive figure which shows how much translations are entering the mainstream. Whatever your view about Amazon's initiative, there's no doubt that translations in general are garnering much more international attention than they used to. News Review
- 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' The Business of Writing for Self-publishing authors offers terrific advice for all writers: 'Self-publishing authors - also known as ‘indie' authors or author-publishers - have had a steep learning curve these past few years. Getting to grips with the various sales channels available to them, producing top quality ebooks and paperbacks, and finding a place in mainstream outlets have left many writers struggling to keep up with the paperwork. What follows is a brief guide to the essentials your self-publishing business needs - because it is a business, even if you only publish one book!'
- Some links from this week: For publishers, sending authors on tour is expensive - they have to cover transport, meals, and nice hotels. And perhaps more importantly, touring doesn't necessarily translate into better book sales, What Book Tours Are Like in the 21st Century - The Atlantic; a new survey shows that young adults 18-29 were more likely to have a read a book over the past year than their older counterparts, New Pew Survey Finds Kids Reading More Than Adults; more on Amazon and translations, Amazon Commits $10 Million to Translations, Prompting Questions - Publishing Perspectives; and a long and thoughtful article considering the issue, America's Biggest Publisher of Literature In Translation is Amazon | The New Republic.
- Do you want to self-publish your work? WritersServices offers a suite of services which help writers get their work into shape before they self-publish.
- More links: When it comes to reading books, the kids are all right. But the rest of us have some work to do, Fewer Americans are reading books, but don't blame the millennials - LA Times; the first of two articles on the burgeoning Indian book market, Nielsen Values Indian Publishing at $3.9 Billion - Publishing Perspectives; and, moe about th epublishing, Jo Henry reports on some of the findings of the Nielsen India Book Market Report 2015, launched last week at the Frankfurt Book FairWorld's largest trade fair for books; held annually mid-October at Frankfurt Trade Fair, Germany; First three days exclusively for trade visitors; general public can attend last two., BookBrunch - India: Huge possibilities and challenges.
- 'Writing a novel is actually searching for victims. As I write I keep looking for casualties. The stories uncover the casualties.' John Irving in our Writers' Quotes.
- 'We had intended to report on the Frankfurt Book FairWorld's largest trade fair for books; held annually mid-October at Frankfurt Trade Fair, Germany; First three days exclusively for trade visitors; general public can attend last two. this week, but all we have been able to glean so far is that it was a busy fair, with a great many successful rights deals, and the new layout of the Fair was generally liked. Salman Rushdie spoke at the opening ceremony, saying freedom of speech is not just a human right but a "universal of the human race" which must be defended...' News Review
- The Times / Chicken House Children's Fiction Competition 2016 is open to all writers of 18 and over internationally. The wonderful prize is a worldwide publishing deal with Chicken House with an advance of £10,000, a great start for a new children's writer. Our Writing Opportunity.
- ‘Twenty years as a teacher, ten years in educational research and five years of directing an educational charity, and in all that time, I hadn't published any fiction or poetry at all. I'd always had a feeling that if life ever did allow me a clear run at creative writing, I might just be able to do something with it...' Bruce Harris's Writing Short Fiction: A Personal Journey is about how he worked his way towards setting up the fantastic website Writing Short Fiction. In spite of problems with the site, it still has some wonderful material but do visit it now.
- Authors often find it difficult to write their own synopsis for submission to publishers, which is where our Synopsis-writing service can help. If you're preparing to self-publish and having difficulty with your blurb, our Blurb-writing service might be what you need. There are eighteen other services if this isn't what you're looking for.
- Our links: today's writers have never had a more global reach; ebooks and digital distribution have made it easier for authors to find readers in other countries as well as their own, How Authors Can Find Their Ideal Reading Audience | Jane Friedman; this Manifesto is about letting writers be writers and bridging the gap betwenn traditionally published and self-published, A manifesto for all writers | The Bookseller; the first bit of the investigation which turned into the fake reviews scandal, Amazon fake reviews bought for £3 | The Bookseller; and as self-publishing shrugs off its "vanity press" stigma and becomes recognized as a bona fide and lucrative option, more and more authors are finding that going indie just makes more sense, Why Traditionally Published Authors Are Choosing to Go Indie.
- From our Archive, in the first excerpt from the excellent Writing Biography & Autobiography by Brian D Osborn, he makes a valuable point: 'The novelist L P Hartley wrote in The Go-Between: ‘The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.' This is a great and important truth, awareness of which should always be with us when writing biographies; and making proper allowance for that truth is one of the core skills that the biographer has to learn...'
- More links: after polling 1,674 Guild members, Mary Rasenberger, executive editor at the Authors Guild, created a splash a few weeks ago by claiming that most of its members' annual earnings were below the federal poverty level of $11,670 but Publishers, Amazon Not to Blame for Author Poverty Wages; the phenomenal success of vloggers, Video killed the book star? The rise of the YouTuber author | Children's books | The Guardian; and Emma Barnes says "I want to work in a flourishing industry known for its competence, kindness, innovation and creativity", A manifesto for skills | The Bookseller.
- 'If you can tell stories, create characters, devise incidents, and have sincerity and passion, it doesn't matter a damn how you write.' Somerset Maugham in our Writers' Quotes.
- This week's story was to have been on the rise in support for short stories, until, that is, Marlon James had his stunning Man Booker Prize win last night. It might have been expected that an American would win this year for the first time since the Prize was opened to novels in English from across the world... News Review on how it's gone to ‘an uncompromising and exhilarating Man Booker winner'.
- 'Read voraciously and read forensically, whether it's stories you admire or stories you detest. There is a lesson in every one, tricks to steal, potholes to avoid. Treat every story like a crime scene. Take it to pieces. How many adverbs are there? How much does the narrator know? How long are the sentences?...' Mark Haddon, nominated for the 2015 BBC Short Story Award for Bunny is this week's Comment.
- Our ten-part WritersServices Self-Publishing Guide by 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 takes you through the process step-by-step. 'Self-publishing has changed so much over the past few years it's hard to believe it was once looked down upon by the publishing industry as the last resort of the vain and desperate. At the time of writing many self-publishing authors are identifying with the term ‘indie author', which acknowledges that to professionally publish today, you don't actually have to do everything yourself!...'
- We're coming up to the 31 October closing date for the National Poetry Competition 2015. Open to poets across the world, this prestigious and valuable prize offers a first prize of £5,000 and nearly £6,000 in other prizes for a single poem. This week's Writing Opportunity.
- Another closing date looming now on 19 October is for the Troubadour International Poetry Prize, a less well-known prize with the same top prize money.
- Have you translated your work into English? Now you need to make sure it's good enough to publish, or send to a publisher. Our new Translation Editing service provides a polishing service for non-native English speakers who want to publish their work in English.
- Our links of the week: Andy Mulligan, novelist, screenwriter, and playwright, reflects on the differences and similarities between the crafts, BookBrunch - The excitement of getting lost; the gatekeepers have always been publishers, book retailers and the media but now DBW claims that Authors Are the New Gatekeepers to Large Audiences | Digital Book World; Egmont publisher Cally Poplak's take is that although children are increasingly discovering books through digital and new media brands, books still matter, Children's Conference: 'Old-fashioned' publishing skills 'still relevant' | The Bookseller; and the blurb in all its different meanings, including book cover copy and endorsement, The Curious Case Of The Book Blurb (And Why It Exists) : NPR.
- Under 24 different headings we have hundreds of recommended links to sites, including Interesting Literature, a new one, and Writers Online Services. Share with us any new links you'd recommend.
- More links: is it a wrong turning for publishers to make editors an endangered species? Why the End of Editors in Digital Publishing is a Mistake - Publishing Perspectives; Waterstones has taken Kindle devices off most of its shelves due to "pitiful" sales, Is it now the time for something completely different? | The Bookseller; and a thoughtful article which throws light not just on celebrity bio pubishing but on publishers' profits on these potentially blockbusting books, Is an Amy Schumer Essay Collection Worth $10 Million? | The New Republic.
- 'What makes an exceptional poem/poet? DNA, luck, reading a lot, independence of mind, solitude, silence, curiosity, patience, pride, humility' Glyn Maxwell, judge of the National Poetry Competition in Ask the Judge, quoted in our Writers' Quotes.
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- ''If I can make people think while also being accessible, and possibly make them laugh and cry a bit at the same time, then, frankly, I don't care what they call me. I'd like to be the Puccini of fiction...' Jojo Moyes, author of Me Before You and After You in the Observer, provides this week's Comment.
- 'The announcement that the subscription service Oyster is to close down has prompted a lot of ruminating on the subject of how these services work. Simon Dunlop, CEO of the competing business Bookmate, said that Oyster had a flawed business model because of publishers' indifference towards the idea. In fact they were worse than indifferent and seem to have been hoping it would fail...' Oyster hits the rocks in our News Review.
- First-time author Garth Gunston took two accidental steps which made the difference between attracting a ‘proper publisher' and having to self- publish. 'Whatever happened, the advice to get professional advice had proved invaluable. This had happened ‘by accident' and it was a second ‘accident' which proved equally significant. I had been looking for the magic bullet and had been approved for publication by a Texas-based operation...' Getting my novel published.
- Closing on 16 October, this week's Writing Opportunity is the C21 Drama Series Script Competition, which is open to all and offers £10,000 of development funding, time in a writers' room on a current series and assistance in taking their drama project to series as the prizes.
- Your submission package - 'given the difficulty of getting agents and publishers to take on your work, it's really important to make sure that you present it in the best possible way. Less is more, so don't send a full manuscript, as it's very unlikely to be read. Far better to tempt them with a submission package that will leave them wanting to see the rest of the manuscript'.
- Our links this week: what do Hard Times, Middlemarch, Crime and Punishment, War and Peace, and many more of the greatest novels ever published have in common? When they were first published, they were not published as books. They were published serially. A manifesto for serial publishing | The Bookseller; a rather dull report but essential reading for children's authors, 3 Key Takeaways from the Nielsen Children's Book Summit - Publishing Perspectives; more literary authors, from David Mitchell to Jennifer Egan, are turning to Twitter to publish fiction, a form that mimics both poetry and serialization, Can One Write Serious Twitter Fiction? and a tough UK editor's view on acquisition, When Acquiring Debut Authors, Ask If They Can Compete - Publishing Perspectives.
- Our Children's Editorial Services can help you get your work ready for publication or self-publishing. Have you found it difficult to get expert editorial input on your work ? Do you want to know if it has real commercial potential? Or are you planning to self-publish? Two reports and copy editing are available from skilled children's editors.
- More links: growing research data suggests that people are not reading the ebooks they buy, People are Not Reading the e-Books they Buy Anymore; the extraordinary power of the internationally famous literary agent, Publishing Colleagues Share Admiration for Carmen Balcells; and there's a tendency to think of self-published books as a bit of a joke but maybe not their covers, Why Self-Published Book Covers Are Better Than You Think - Publishing Perspectives.
- 'If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking' Haruki Murakami in our Writers' Quotes.
- We've just published our July Magazine, so you can browse back through recent content.
