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26 March 2012 - What's new

26 March 2012
  • 'I’m afraid we can’t escape Amazon in the news at the moment. In Publishing Perspectives Bryce Milligan, the publisher of small American indie Wings Press, asks whether Amazon’s philanthropic grants are not just helping along their company aim of overwhelming the competition. The independent Publishers Group of small publishers is currently engaged in a battle with the Internet giant. The options don’t look good – either trade with Amazon at a discount, which means the publisher will actually lose money, or don’t trade with them at all...' News Review reports.
  • Links to stories of the weekOur new feature links to interesting blogs or articles posted online, which will help keep you up to date with what's going on in the book world: The New Press - 20 years of publishing in the public interest and now they have a bestseller and Sourcebooks announces Agile model, which allows for the rapid and interactive development of work by its authors, where the content evolves through a partnership between the author and their community.
  • Real Time Web for Old Time Books: the Benefit of Social Media for Publishers and Authors - Fauzia Burke explores the online activities you can do in real time -- from status updates on Facebook, to microblogging on Twitter to uploading photos and videos on other social media sites. If you want to explore how social networking can help you market your book, her article provides a starting-point.
  • ‘One reason why first-time novelists are frequently turned down by agents and publishers is because they tend to regard freedom of expression as a permit to waffle on, page after page, about nothing in particular. Their manuscripts lack rigour and economy, and this reveals a common failing in the creative mind-set of beginners: too much allowance is made for the gratification of every expressive urge that springs to mind...' Roland Vernon, quoted in our Comment column.
  • Our Writing Opportunity this week is the Authors' Foundation awards from the Society of Authors, in nine categories, open to British writers who fulfil the criteria.
  • 'I've always believed in writing without a collaborator, because when two people are writing the same book, each believes he gets all the worries and only half the royalties.' Agatha Christie in our  Writers' Quotes.