Skip to Content

5 October 2015 - What's new

5 October 2015
  • ''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.