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More debate on ‘Writers for Hire’

9 September 2002

More debate on 'Writers for Hire'

'Stories are a good way of looking at complex issues because they don't polarise the argument... We leave the arguments open-ended because it works best, although we would rewrite if asked to. We hope we are writing rattling good yarns in the popular style. We are not talking about the great modern novel.'

Simon Gibson and Adam Lury, British authors of Need to Know, the story of an anti-globalisation Internet campaigner, which was commissioned by the Foreign Policy Centre (a Labour think-tank).

'It depends on the motives and how it's done. All writers have to earn a living but if the book is part of a drive to socially engineer that is not right. When I did it I wasn't trying to sell anything; I was just accepting a commission and someone who commissions you often gives you more freedom than a publisher or an agent.'

Fay Weldon, who last year accepted Bulgari's sponsorship for her book The Bulgari Connection

All quoted in an article in the London Observer (see News Review 2 September 2002)