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December 2006 - Writers Magazine

News Review



  • 'The competition amongst publishers for these big celebrity memoirs is ferocious, meaning that they carry a high price tag.'News Review investigates the celebrity book market.

  • The Guardian First Book Award boosts short stories with Chinese writer Yiyun Li’s collection A Thousand Years of Good Prayers.News Review reports.

  • 'His Alfie’s Adventures series, which follow the time-travelling adventures of seven-year-old Alfie and his dog, has already sold 320,000 copies, largely due to a deal with Virgin Airlines.' News Review looks at successes in children's writing.

  • 'Covered in blood' - News Review looks at O J Simpson's If I Did It and the media storm it caused.

  • The last week has seen the sale announced of Blackwell and Readers Digest in an ongoing frenzy of acquisitions.  News Review reports.

Comment



  • 'I like reading thrillers and I don't know why the literary world is sometimes snobbish about them. Vikram Chandra, author ofSacred Games in the Bookseller

  •  'But please, if you're reading a book that's killing you, put it down and read something else, just as you would reach for the remote if you weren't enjoying a television programme.  Nick Hornby in the Sunday Telegraph

  • 'Academic publishing may not look particularly sexy, but in a richer, better-educated world it is no bad place to be.' Bookseller editorial

  • 'Books transported me to a place that was filled with endless possibilities, and it was all so much better than whatever it was I was doing in real life.' Jennifer Kaufman, author of Book Lover, in Stella

  • 'I could not have written Equinox had it not been for those 25 non-fiction titles that preceded it.' Michael White in Publishing News

Writers' Quote


'That was the chief difference between literature and life. In books, the proportion of exceptional to commonplace people is high; in reality, very low.'
Aldous Huxley

The view from a publisher's desk


This is the fourth in a series of articles by Tom Chalmers, MD of Legend Press, giving a publisher's view of the submission process and what a publisher is looking for.


This month: The changing face of publishing:



'Writers shouldn’t be deluded into thinking they can just write a good thriller, send it around and they will get an offer to get it published over lunch with an editor.'





Magazine - rotation


Vanity publishing



The latest in the Inside Publishing series deals with how to avoid being conned by the vanity publishers.


Our Editorial Services for writers


Check out the 15 different editorial services we offer, from Reports to Copy editing, Typing to Contract vetting. Our latest new service is Coaching.

Bob's Journal goes into its 6th volume


Bob's on broadband at last! Resisting the temptations of the surfing the net, he's making progress on his thriller too:

'Having good week on TV thriller. Writing four or five pages a day on average... have finally trained myself not to go back over scenes already written, but just to keep going doggedly on.'


This week


Writers' ForumBritish writers' magazine which is highly recommended for all writers. It features wide range of news and articles which help writers to improve their work and get published: www.writers-forum.com Column


John Jenkins on the short story and Alice Munro's new collection, freedom of speech and a warning about 'participatory media' or 'citizen journalism':



Shakespeare, Tolstoy and Flaubert were pretty good at it.'



Writers' and Artists' Yearbook 2007



This is the 100th edition of this extremely useful book, which the Society of Authors calls 'A must for established and aspiring writers.'



 


 


 


 



The Editor's View


The Editor's View, written by the Editor of Writers' Forum magazine.



See also Making submissions for how to approach publishers and agents.