10 September 2018 - What's new
10 September 2018
- ‘Given that some very big and powerful companies dominate the UK books business, it is logical for other businesses to join together to shore up their profitability and influence in the market. I hope that these two well-loved booksellers find renewed strength and creative energy together... As an agent, my concern in a books industry dominated by big companies is that - as well as needing a healthy and profitable bookselling and publishing business - we also need to ensure that authors' economic needs are met. Authors can't club together into bigger more powerful entities to protect their profitability in the way other parts of the business are...' Lizzy Kremer of David Higham AssociatesAgents for the negotiation of all rights in fiction, general non-fiction, children's fiction and picture books, plays, film and TV scripts (home 15%, USA/translation 20%, scripts 10%). Represented in all foreign markets. Preliminary letter and return postage. All adult submissions should be typed with double line spacing on one side only of A4 paper and pages should be numbered. Be sure to include a covering letter; a full plot synopsis of the proposed book; the first two or three chapters of the book; a CV and a stamped addressed envelope. Founded 1935, currently president of the Association of Authors Agents, commenting on the Waterstones acquisition of long-established bookseller Foyles in the Bookseller. Our Comment.
- The LoveReading Very Short Story Award 2019 is for unpublished stories by writers from all over the world and there's no entry fee. The winning story will be read by a professional actor on The LoveReading Podcast, and published on the LoveReading website. Closing 31 October.
- Literary magazines with one week's response time is Sandeep Kumar Mishra's useful list, which we added to the site. They range from literary fiction to non-fiction and include science fiction and fantasy, popular non-fiction, politics, flash fiction, reviews, humour, social issues, the economy, lifestyle, horror, artwork and much more. If you've ever despaired at how long magazine submissions can take, or wanted to extend your range, this is the list you need.
- Get some professional help. If you're self-publishing, you need good quality copy for the cover. Our Blurb-writing service can provide a professionally written piece of cover copy. Submitting to agents but finding it difficult to write your own synopsis? Commission a synopsis which will present your manuscript in the best possible light for submission.
- Just launched, the July Magazine, which provided links to some interesting articles - How to Self-Publish a Poetry Book - 10 Steps, Films based on books take 44% more at the box office, The Changing Face of Romance Novels and Do Great Writers Really steal? On Plagiarism and Publishing.
- How to market your writing services online is a useful article from Joanne PhillipsUK-based freelance writer and ghostwriter. She has had articles published in national writing magazines, and has ghostwritten books on subjects as diverse as hairdressing and keeping chickens. Visit her at www.joannephillips.co.uk about selling yourself as a writer. 'Recently someone commented to me that I seem to be doing a pretty good job of promoting my writing services on the internet. I was touched by the observation - we writers get so many rejections that a little praise is especially gratifying. And I began to wonder - what does it take to market yourself successfully as a jobbing writer today?...'
- Our links: there's nothing like writing and publishing a book to bring out the dormant diva who lives inside every aspiring author, Reframing Publishing Success; an author's view of the sale of Foyles, Waterstones buying Foyles isn't a bad thing - at least it's not Sports Direct | James Smythe | Books | The Guardian; a contrary view, Waterstone's Buying Foyles Is All About Bricks & | Iain Dale; and John Boyne gave voice to The Boy in the Striped Pajamas in a breathless two and a half days, but in the real world, How Long Should It Take to Write a Book? | Jane Friedman.
- Are you getting ready to publish your book - perhaps planning to self-publish? WritersServices offers a suite of nine services which help writers get their work into shape before they self-publish. Services for Self-publishers.
- More links: this week, the site published the anthology Worlds Seen in Passing - 10 Years of Tor.com Short Fiction, which celebrates the best of the site's fiction in the decade that it's been in operation, How Tor.com went from website to publisher of sci-fi's most innovative stories - The Verge; these days I feel that finding time to write is more like purse-snatching than any other activity, Writing Advice From Lydia Millet; veteran children's publisher looks back at his career, Call the Midwife: Fickling reveals advice that has shaped his four-decade career | The Bookseller; and two great champions of reading for pleasure return to remind us of its importance - and that libraries create literate citizens, Neil Gaiman and Chris Riddell on why we need libraries - an essay in pictures | Books | The Guardian.
- An unusually long quote from Tom Wolfe in our Writers' Quotes: 'I think I am starving for publication: I love to get published; it maddens me not to get published. I feel at times like getting every publisher in the world by the scruff of the neck, forcing his jaws open, and cramming the Mss down his throat - 'God-damn you, here it is - I will and must be published... You know what it means - you're a writer and you understand it. It's not just 'the satisfaction of being published.' Great God! It's the satisfaction of getting it out, or having that, so far as you're concerned, gone through with it! That good or ill, for better or for worse, it's over, done with, finished, out of your life forever and that, come what may, you can at least, as far as this thing is concerned, get the merciful damned easement of oblivion and forgetfulness.'
