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25 June 2012 - What's new

25 June 2012
  • 'The Fifty Shades of Grey phenomenon seems unstoppable. The paperback and ebook editions have sold in excess of 2.75m copies, breaking all previous records, in the UK alone and the ebook is reckoned to have sold 4m copies worldwide. US sales are over 10m...' News Review reports.
  • This week's Writing Opportunity is a Mills and Boon and Harlequin competition for a romance, So You think you Can Write. Check it out now to make sure you have plenty of time to enter.
  • 'While no author's chosen subject matter should be dictated by a ruthless appraisal of what might sell books, it's always nice when a topic springs to mind that, on closer consideration, chimes with one's perception of the public mood. Payback Time focuses on a group of friends taking revenge on a bank they blame for their friend's suicide... Geraint Anderson, author of Payback Time in Bookbrunch, quoted in our Comment column.
  • Suzanne Joinson, who's just about to publish her first book, offers her tips to writers in advance of her session at the Writers and Artists How to Get Published conference.
  • Links of the week: Indies continue to decline on high street, Going to the Very Edge of the Known Writing Universe, Why the Waterstones/Amazon Deal is "Like Vichy France" and What Can Trade Publishers Learn from Fanfiction?
  • Rotten Rejections lists the famous writers who had their work rejected: The Diary of Anne Frank ('The girl doesn't, it seems to me, have a special perception or feeling which would lift that book above the "curiosity" level.') and Lust for Life by Irving Stone (which was rejected 16 times, but found a publisher and went on to sell about 25 million copies) was pronounced: ' A long, dull novel about an artist.'
  • 'I have been successful probably because I have always realized that I knew nothing about writing and have merely tried to tell an interesting story entertainingly.' Edgar Rice Burroughs in our Writers' Quotes.