July 2006 - Writers Magazine

News Review

• 'As affluence has increased readers’ ability to buy the books they want to read, the libraries’ ageing stock has relegated them to a lower level of use for readers, many of whom will only use a library if they have to.' News Review reports on the continuing decline in the libraries


• 'After the dotcom boom and bust it was easy for the book trade to think it could go back to business as usual. It has taken six years for the huge potential of the Internet to become apparent to everyone – and to smash that thinking to pieces.' News Review looks at poor sales from the chains.


• Random House UKPenguin Random House have more than 50 creative and autonomous imprints, publishing the very best books for all audiences, covering fiction, non-fiction, poetry, children’s books, autobiographies and much more. Click for Random House UK Publishers References listing's acquisition of a majority holding in BBC Books brings its market share to only 0.7% behind that of Hachette Livre.  But what about the US?  And what price profitability in corporate publishing?  News Review investigates.


• Emma Darwin is about to get published. But her first novel, The Mathematics of Love isn’t actually the first she’s written, but the seventh.  News Review looks at her success and at how Macmillan's New Writing list gives writers a chance.


• The success of the inaugural Cape Town Book Fair has provided an encouraging signal for the book world. News Review looks at Celebrating Africa and the growing dynamism of black  publishing.

Comment

• 'The facts are brutal: unless you produce the kind of assured bestsellers that will encourage your publishers to pay for chain-store promotions, you have no guaranteed sales... if an author wants his to find its readers, he has to go out there and grab them.' Will Self in the Sunday Telegraph's Seven


• 'A novel has an energy of its own.  In that sense, it is like riding a horse.  It talks back to you.  It isn't always transient. Sometimes, you wrestle with it.' Jane Smiley, author of 13 Ways of Looking at a Novel in the Observer


• 'A good agent guides his or her client confidently through mine-fields such as foreign rights, audio, film, radio and TV, the weasel clauses in contracts that may strip authors of rights they need to retain... Self-employed authors live tightrope lives, their careers often poorly paid and wildly erratic.' Helen Dunmore, Chair of the Society of Authors in the Bookseller on why authors' payments to their agents should be treated as a business expense.


• 'The ensuing challenge is one that all book-lovers should light on with something approaching glee. You know you want something good, something engrossing, something that will hold your attention. You might know, broadly, the kind of things you like, but you're also beset by other imperatives.' Alex Clark in the Observer on holiday reading.


• 'It's possible to punch above your size and weight and get the kind of coverage much larger houses receive. 'Philip Gwyn Jones of new UK publisher Portabello on small publisher power.

Writers' Quote

• 'I suppose in the world of publication 40 million buyers cannot be wrong.'
  Mr Justice Peter Smith, comprehensively dismissing Baigent and Leigh's case that Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code had infringed their copyright in The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail. (The authors are now taking their case to the Court of Appeal.)

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