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12 November 2018 - What's new

12 November 2018
  • 'I was a lot dumber when I was writing the novel. I felt like a worse writer ... I would come home every day from my office and say, ‘Well, I still really like the story, I just wish it was better written.' At that point, I didn't realise I was writing a first draft. And the first draft was the hardest part. From there, it was comparatively easy...' Miranda July, film director and author of The First Bad Man and three other books, provides our Comment.
  • The Lucy Cavendish Fiction Prize 2019 is open to unpublished female writers, aged 21 or over, who live in the UK or Ireland. The entry fee is £12. The winner gets £1,500 and all shortlisted entrants receive a half-hour one-to-one consultation, with the competition sponsors PFDRepresents authors of fiction and non-fiction, children's writers, screenwriters, playwrights, documentary makers, technicians, presenters and public speakers throughout the world. Has 85 years of international experience in all media. PDF now have a POD section. Some good advice for those seeking a representative.. Closing 8 February.
  • Other live Writing opportunities.
  • From our nineteen-part Inside Publishing series, you can read up on Advances and royalties: 'Publishers usually offer to pay authors advances against royalties. How do you work out how much money you might earn from your book? You need to understand for yourself how advances and royalties work and what they mean for you...'
  • From the same series, Copy editing and proof-reading explains the difference between the two. Copy editing is the painstaking job of going through a manuscript line by line to correct the spelling, grammar and punctuation. Proof-reading at a later stage is a separate check through the book when it is set up in pages, before it goes to press or is finalised for ebook publishing.
  • We have an eclectic bunch of links this week: a deeper, more thoughtful form of engagement with ideas and for that - thankfully - there's still no better medium than a book, Desperate for nuance, no wonder we are turning to the nonfiction shelves | Stephanie Merritt | Opinion | The Guardian; why is it that some self-published authors have sold millions of books while others spend thousands of dollars and only manage to sell 122 copies - mostly to friends, acquaintances, and their mom? Three Keys to Self-Publishing Success; over six decades of work like The Incredible Hulk and The Amazing Spider-Man, Marvel Comics' Stan Lee Dies At 95: NPR; and book sales are up, and they're up because a few people are buying more books, not because a lot of people are buying some books. And that is a symptom of an industry in dramatic decline, Seth Godin's mini-guide to publishing, selling and marketing books now | The Bookseller.
  • Are you looking for an assessment of your book? Which Report? helps you work out which of our three reports might be the right one for you. Or do contact us, we'd be glad to advise.
  • More links: in the rollercoaster boom and bust of publishing, in Ireland and elsewhere, most publishers survived for only a few years, David and Goliath, piracy and censorship: the history of Irish publishing; a rare concerted uprising against any part of Amazon by any of its millions of suppliers, leading to an even rarer capitulation, After Protest, Booksellers Are Victorious Against Amazon Subsidiary - The New York Times; ‘Publishers aren't the greedy sharks they're sometimes portrayed to be.' Richard Charkin: Why Do Authors Feel Hard Done By? A writer of unfettered imagination and undeterred ambition with a career spanning three-and-a-half decades has broken new ground with seven novels and a collection of interlinked stories, Kazuo Ishiguro: A writer of the floating world.
  • Rotten Rejections provides a note of the things publishers wish they'd never said: Animal Farm by George Orwell ‘It is impossible to sell animal stories in the USA' and Carrie by Stephen King 'We are not interested in science fiction which deals with negative utopias. They do not sell.'
  • From our Writers' Quotes: 'Hitler's original title for Mein Kampf was Four and a Half Years of Struggle Against Lies, Stupidity and Cowardice. Everyone needs an editor.' is from Tim Foote, editor & journalist.