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15 October 2012 - What's new

15 October 2012
  • Driven to Distraction: Writers and Social Media - Jonathan Franzen famously wrote that, 'it's doubtful that anyone with an internet connection is writing good fiction', and many writers are open about blocking sites that harm their productivity. But with eight out of ten people in Britain now having access to the internet, and social media sites growing at an alarming rate, social media can be an effective and useful tool for writers to promote themselves. This article highlights ways in which writers can utilise the two main social media sites, and reach out to an ever growing creative online community without it getting in the way of the writing itself.'
  • 'Reports from 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. are quite mixed, although many concede that publishers are looking beyond the smokescreen of erotica to see other trends emerging. Iain Pears' new novel Arcadia will be published by Faber as an app six months before the print edition comes out...' News Review reports on the Frankfurt Book Fair.
  • The Oxford English Dictionary needs you! OED Appeals has launched major online initiative The Oxford English Dictionary has announced the launch of OED Appeals, a major online initiative set to involve the public in tracing the history of English words. Editors are soliciting help in unearthing new information about the history and usage of English, including the earliest examples of particular words.
  • 'Spies allow a novelist to heighten what all novels do anyway, which is control the flow of information. They allow limitless possibilities of tangled plot; they carry with them a hint of danger, which I think we rather love, from the perspective of our rather safe lives. Historically, we are safer than we've ever been. It's my theory that the reason we're getting such amazing thrillers from the social democracies of Scandinavia is because they've got such low crime rates... Ian McEwan, whose latest novel is Sweet Tooth, in The Times, quoted in our Comment column.
  • 'Books aren't written, they're rewritten. Including your own. It is one of the hardest things to accept, especially after the seventh rewrite hasn't quite done it...' Michael Crichton in our Writers' Quotes.