What's New in 2016
- 'It's a slightly demanding read, but Mike Shatzkin's latest post on The Shatzkin Files is essential reading if you want to understand the contemporary bookselling scene and how it is increasingly controlled and shaped by the huge conglomerates which dominate the web...' This week's News Review.
- An Editor's Advice is a series of seven articles by one of our editors on really useful subjects for writers such as Dialogue, Manuscript presentation and Doing further drafts: 'I have just finished writing a report on a novel. I've pinpointed various areas of weakness and made various suggestions that the writer may or may not wish to follow. But the nub of the report is a recommendation that the writer produce a further draft of the novel rather than trying to submit it to a publisher now. I wonder sometimes how writers feel when they get my reports and see that recommendation...'
- ‘From our positions as individual creators, whether of fiction or non-fiction, we authors see a landscape occupied by several large interests, some of them gathering profits in the billions, some of them displaying a questionable attitude to paying tax, some of them colonising the internet with projects whose reach is limitless and whose attitude to creators' rights is roughly that of the steamroller to the ant...' Philip Pullman, author of His Dark Materials and many other children's books and President of the UK Society of authors, in the Bookseller provides this week's Comment - 'The steamroller to the ant'.
- Why your book contract needs vetting - 'You are a first-time author without an agent and you receive a contract to publish your book - just how do you evaluate it? Is it fair or biased against the author by prevailing industry standards? Is your publisher looking out for your interests as well as his own - or wording the clauses in a way only advantageous to the company? Would you, for example, know which rights to grant - for how long and on what terms...' Our contracts expert on why contract vetting is essential if you don't have an agent.
- Our links this week: arguing that writers could soon be "an endangered species" if publishers fail to deliver on fairer terms, Philip Pullman condemns publishers who 'steamroller' authors | The Bookseller; a curious story, one that raises interesting questions about who "owns" ideas and who - if anyone - copied whom, Ladybird Book Parody Sparks a Trend in UK Publishing; and an interesting Huffington Post story about how writers benefit from being involved in screen-writing, From the Box Office to the Books: How Movies Create Better Writers | Mycah Hazel.
- More links: book publishing has always adapted to an environment shaped by larger forces. That hasn't changed, Book publishing lives in an environment shaped by larger forces and always has - The Shatzkin Files The Shatzkin Files; from a magazine to a poetry press, how one venture battled the odds facing poetry publishers, uHlanga: On the Birth of a South African Poetry Press - Publishing Perspectives; American popular history is a "male preserve", according to new research from the US online journal Slate, with three-quarters of works published last year written by men - and history experts believe the playing field is just as "heavily gendered" in the UK, Popular history writing remains a male preserve, publishing study finds | Books | The Guardian.
- The web as a research tool is a useful page showing you what a great research tool the web is for writers.
- ‘In a writer there must always be two people - the writer and the critic.' Leo Tolstoy, in our Writers' Quotes.
- 'Getting published is a major preoccupation for many writers. How do you get an agent? How do you self-publish? And how do you decide which to do - and when to give up on agents and go for self-publishing? These are the questions which reverberate around writers' heads. Most writers can hugely improve what they've written with the right advice, and then they stand a much better chance...' News Review on Publishing your book.
- We covered Tina Seskis, see below, in our Success Stories series: '...an irresistible subject for a Success Story because she lives just up the road from WritersServices in north London and the reasons for her success as a writer are like a textbook illustration of how to do it. After university, she went on to work in marketing and advertising for more than 20 years and it was this experience which stood her in good stead when she found herself with a book to market...' There's also Gillian Flynn and Jessie Burton.
- ‘Once I get an idea in my head it's an adrenaline rush, and I'm racing to get to the end. I think fast and write fast. It sounds uncreative, but I write from 9-5, four days a week. I have two kids and have had to be very structured. I start a book every January, it's due in June, I edit during the summer and it's published during the autumn...' Cecelia Ahern, author of PS I love You and The Marble Collector in the Telegraph's Stella provides this week's Comment.
- 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. Our page of Services for Self-publishers includes Copy editing, Blurb-writing, Poetry Collection editing and Translation editing.
- Our links: the Guardian's review of Sarah Howe's wonderful debut collection, Loop of Jade by Sarah Howe review - the winner of the TS Eliot prize | Books | The Guardian; in the year of the 400th anniversary, a journalist explores his own obsession, My Shakespeare Obsession: A Question of Character; and swearing off Amazon and the pleasures that returned, A New Year's resolution worth keeping: support bookshops instead of Amazon - Spectator Blogs.
- Top Ten Tips for non-fiction writers is a helpful checklist for writers, compiled by a Creative Writing tutor.
- More links: more from Tina Seskis: 'five and a half years ago, I had an idea for a story. It was so out-of-the-blue and exciting to me that I just started writing it down...', Getting Published: What To Do If You Can't Get An Agent; should authors be paid for festival appearances, Philip Pullman resigns as Oxford literary festival patron over lack of pay for authors | Books | The Guardian; and an erudite overview of the differences between US and British children's writers, Harry Potter vs. Huckleberry Finn: Why the British Tell Better Children's Stories Than Americans - The Atlantic.
- 'I shall live badly if I do not write, and I shall write badly if I do not live.' Françoise Sagan in our Writers Quotes.
- 'In an extraordinary and unprecedented display of concerted action, authors' organisations have joined together to present a simultaneous major challenge to publishers. In the US the Authors Guild has issued a challenge to publishers, the UK's Society of Authors has done the same, with the Authors Licensing and Collecting Society (ALCS), the Irish Writers Union and more than two dozen writer-advocacy organisations from Europe, Africa, Australia, North America joining with them...' This week's News Review is on how Authors' organisations have challenged publishers, using concerted action for the first time.
- Our Writing Opportunity is Open House 2016 - The Interpreter's House Poetry Competition is open to all poets over 18 with an entry fee of £4 per poem. It closes on 31 January.
- Also still open till the end of the month is the rather splendid new Deborah Rogers Foundation Writers' Award 2016, set up in memory of the late literary agent and offering literary novelists residing in the British Commonwealth and Eire the chance to win £10,000.
- '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. In theory, this is a relatively straightforward process - get the files ready, find someone to print the book, send it to them and get it printed. Unsurprisingly, it's not as simple as might seem and there are certain tips to bear in mind which will make your life a lot easier as you commence your self-publishing journey...' A Printer's View guides you through printing as a self-publisher.
- ‘As Taylor makes clear, over the past century the exigencies of making a living have never been enough to stop writers and commentators from debating, noisily and disputatiously, about the direction of literature, its distance from popular taste and which self-appointed minority is fit to interpret and pass judgement on it. These are questions that matter to Taylor too because the vibrancy of our literature, summed up in this wide-ranging, entertaining and thoughtful survey, is a marker of our wider cultural health... Our Comment is from Michael Prodger's review of D J Taylor's widely-praised The Prose Factory: Literary Life in Britain Since 1918 in The Times.
- Our links this week: Robert McCrum's masterly summary of the publishing world: 'For a nail-biting decade it was said that e-reading would spell death to the traditional book. Actually, the reverse has been true...' Print survives as a new literature is born | Robert McCrum | Opinion | The Guardian; your chance to take part in the Costa Short Story Award Public Vote but you need to act by 13 January, and to get reading immediately - Public vote opens for Costa Short Story Award | The Bookseller; and a regular crystal ball- gazing article looks at the forthcoming year, 5 Predictions for Trade Publishing in 2016 : Publishing Technology.
- Which Report? gives the details of the three reports we offer: the full Editor's Report, the basic Reader's Report and the most substantial Editor's Report Plus. There's also our specialist Children's reports, part of our Children's Editorial Services. If you want a professional editor's assessmen of your work, here's the place to start.
- The rest of our links: anxiety expressed about a decline in some authors' income, Solomon: 'once well-known authors now struggling' | The Bookseller; looking forward at the coming year, 10 Industry Predictions for 2016 | Digital Book World; and fiction is sometimes stranger than truth - using a novel as a template for a big robbery, Hatton Garden: Book found detailed 'similar heist' - BBC News.
- 'People often ask whether my journalism interferes with my serious writing. As a matter of fact, my journalism is serious writing.' Brigid Brophy in our Writers' Quotes.
- The October Magazine is ready! If you want to look back through a mass of fantastic recent material, this is the place.
