Author Anthony Horowitz has said it's wrong "writers are running scared" due to a fear of offending, elaborating on comments he made earlier this year at Hay Festival.
On 5 July Picador, which is part of the Pan MacmillanOne of largest fiction and non-fiction book publishers in UK; includes imprints of Pan, Picador and Macmillan Children’s Books conglomerate, announced that its publishing director, Philip Gwyn Jones, was stepping down "by mutual agreement" after two years in the role. Gwyn Jones, a respected publisher with long experience, had been criticised for his handling of a row over Kate Clanchy's memoir, Some Kids I Taught and What They Taught Me. Read more
Kate Clanchy's memoir about teaching won the Orwell prize. Then, a year later, it became the centre of a storm that would engulf the lives of the author, her critics and dozens of people in the book trade. So what happened?
Since my debut novel, Other People's Children, was published last April, I've been thinking a lot about who gets to tell which stories. Some of my readers don't seem to think that I should have been allowed to write the book that I wrote.
What did the sensitivity readers say? And did I care? Of all the aspects of the recent attempt to cancel my work, the one that seems to fascinate most people is the moment when my publishers sent my Orwell Prize-winning memoir, Some Kids I Taught and What They Taught Me, to be assessed by experts who would detect and reform its problematic racism and ableism.
American dirt was supposed to be a major book of the year. Jeanine Cummins's novel, which follows a Mexican bookseller and her son as they dodge cartel violence and attempt to cross the border into the United States, had all the makings of a blockbuster. Read more
Late last month, the author Kosoko Jackson withdrew the publication of his début young-adult novel, "A Place for Wolves," which had been slated for a March 26th release. Read more
Lionel Shriver, the author of We Need To Talk About Kevin, has warned that "politically correct censorship" risks turning the world of fiction into a "timid, homogeneous, and dreary" place, and called on her fellow novelists to take a stand against it.
In 2013, when Keira Drake sat down to write her debut young-adult fantasy novel, The Continent, she wanted to write about privilege, about the way that those who have it can so easily turn a blind eye to the suffering of those who don't. Read more
"Why isn't there more sex in your books?" I get this question a lot. In my DMs. In my email. In Zoom book club meetings, bookstore signings, and festival events. This, more than any other, seems to be the question my enthusiastic (and apparently thirsty) fans are burning to ask. Written inquiries are usually punctuated with fire emojis, or more commonly, a string of bright red chili peppers. Read more
I write dark fantasy stories for adults that explore survival after sexual trauma and war. My work focuses on the aftermath of sexual violence and the way my protagonists stubbornly live well after the unthinkable. There are no on-page depictions of SA in my work. Read more
I write a historical fiction series set in World War Two London. My protagonist is a Scotland Yard detective called Frank Merlin. I place great importance on being historically accurate in my books. I take the view that as I am attempting to transport my readers to a very different time and place, accuracy is a key element to doing that successfully. Read more
Booksellers report that more customers are switching to paperbacks as household budgets tighten, with agents and publishers also predicting a shift towards the cheaper format. Read more
A decade ago fiction was said to be migrating to digital-but in 2022 adult fiction sales were £164m greater than its 2014 low, propelling the market to a strong total in the past 12 months.
HarperCollins, which laid off a "small number" of workers last fall, is taking more drastic steps to reduce its workforce, and plans to cut 5% of its employees in North America by the end of the current fiscal year, which ends June 30. Some jobs were eliminated today.
For the first time since 2019, Nielsen was able to report data for the full year-and it seems most publishers have been reaping the reward of a bountiful few years, with a number posting all-time highs.
The backlist boom which surged during the pandemic continued with a mighty push from TikTok in 2022, as nearly two-thirds (£1.19bn) of Nielsen BookScan revenue last year came from editions published in 2021. This is the second-highest share of revenue for a TCM 12-month period coming from titles released prior to the beginning of that year.
'Go for broke. Always try and do too much. Dispense with safety nets. Take a deep breath before you begin talking. Aim for the stars. Keep grinning. Be bloody-minded. Argue with the world. Read more
'By the time I am nearing the end of a story, the first part will have been reread and altered and corrected at least one hundred and fifty times. I am suspicious of both facility and speed. Good writing is essentially rewriting. I am positive of this.'
Culture is a slippery concept; it's one of those terms we all know the meaning of until we actually think about it. For the writer, culture can be a two-edged sword: ignore it and your story lacks depth, colour and context; focus too much on it and you risk bamboozling - or worse, boring - your reader into putting the book down. Read more
Unpublished authors 18 years old or over resident in the UK.
Entry fee £8
Prize:
Book contract with HQ with advance of £7,500 and agent representation
The Primadonna Prize for unsigned and un-agented authors will, for the first time, offer the winner a book contract with HQ with an advance of £7,500 for world English rights. Read more
'Occasionally, there arises a writing situation where you see an alternative to what you are doing, a mad, wild gamble of a way for handling something, which may leave you looking stupid, ridiculous or brilliant - you just don't know which. You can play it safe there, too, and proceed along the route you'd mapped out for yourself. Read more
'Go for broke'
'Go for broke. Always try and do too much. Dispense with safety nets. Take a deep breath before you begin talking. Aim for the stars. Keep grinning. Be bloody-minded. Argue with the world. Read more