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Non-fiction

London Book Fair buoyant

9 April 2018

This week's London Book Fair has been a buzzy and optimistic occasion, as publishers from around the world gathered to sell rights to the international market. Second only to the Frankfurt Book FairWorld's largest trade fair for books; held annually mid-October at Frankfurt Trade Fair, Germany; First three days exclusively for trade visitors; general public can attend last two., the LBF punches above its weight in terms of its usefulness to publishers.  Read more

Ebook sales down but SF and Fantasy booming

13 June 2016

Recent US figures released by Nielsen show that print sales are up and ebook sales down in the US. EbooksDigital bookstore selling wide range of ebooks in 50 categories from Hildegard of Bingen to How to Write a Dirty Story and showing how the range of ebooks available is growing. http://www.ebooks.com/' share of the total market slipped from 27% in 2014 to 24% last year, although e-book consumption via smartphone grew from 7.6% in 2014 to 14.3% in 2015.  Read more

Writing genre fiction

4 May 2015

If you're writing genre fiction, or planning to, it's important to understand what's working in the market and what's already out there. This is the sort of information you can only get by a close study of publishers' genre lists and by reading as many books in your chosen genre as you can.  Read more

Funding literary writers

26 May 2014

In an article in the print edition of the Bookseller, Philip Gwyn Jones offered a clear-sighted analysis of the current model of funding literary writing. He is the former publisher of Granta, a very highly-regarded editor with masses of experience in this area and the independence currently to call it like it is.  Read more

Bestselling trends

11 November 2013

A recent investigation by USA Today into their bestseller lists of the last thirty years throws an interesting light on changes in bestsellerdom and background changes in the way in which books are bought and sold.  Read more

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4 January 2021 - What's new

January 2021
  • ‘The thing I like about novels is that they are a more forgiving form. You can make missteps. It's harder to write a really good short story - I'm more aware of the flaws in my short stories.
  Read more

The 2021 International Book and Pamphlet Competition

Information

Closing date: 
1 March 2021
Entry: 
Open internationally. Entry fee £28, £25 to subscribers to The North
Prize: 
Publication by Smith|Doorstop Books; a share of £2,000 cash; a launch reading; publication in the North magazine; book vouchers from Inpress Books

The 2021 International Book & Pamphlet Competition is now open for entries

Judged by Daljit Nagra & Pascale Petit

DEADLINE: last post on Monday 1st March 2021, or midnight on Monday 1st March 2021 for online entrants.

ENTRY FEE: £28, or £25 for North subscribers, Friends of the Poetry Business and members of the Poetry Society.  Read more

'People have many cruel expectations from writers. People expect novelists to live on a hill with three kids and a spouse, people expect children's story writers to never have sex, and people expect all great poets to be dead. And these are all very difficult expectations to fulfill, I think.'

— C. JoyBell C.

'I have to know where I'm going'

4 January 2021

‘When I'm putting together a novel, I leave all the doors and windows open so the characters can come in and just as easily leave. I don't take notes. Once I start writing things down, I feel like I'm nailing the story in place. When I rely on my faulty memory, the pieces are free to move.  Read more

28 December 2020 - What's new

December 2020
  • ‘No one reads your book as closely as a translator does, which is something you learn very quickly. I'm in such awe of them. They also read beneath it and around it. They make me consider things I thought I knew the meaning of because I use those words in everyday dialect and that's how the characters express themselves.
  Read more