16 July 2012 - What's new
16 July 2012
- 'For the first time ever, the prestigious CILIP Carnegie and Greenaway medals were recently awarded to the same book, A Monster Calls. This book has had an extraordinary history which is capped by its double win. The author, Patrick Ness, had taken on the idea of the book from the very talented Siobhan Dowd, who died in 2008 from cancer after herself winning the Carnegie and writing a number of bestsellers...' News Review on children's publishing.
- This week's Writing Opportunity is the Greenhouse Funny Prize for a funny children's project. You'll need to move fast because it closes on 30 July. It's open to unagented British and Irish writers.
- Does your manuscript need Copy editing? Do you know the difference between copy editing and proof-reading? Divided by a common language? - are you wondering about the difference between American and British copy editing? Our new page on Getting your manuscript copy edited provides a useful overview and clarifies a new feature of our service, which enables you to get two versions of your copy edited manuscript, one showing the editor's changes in 'track changes' and one with the changes accepted.
- Our new featured links are especially interesting this week: The Incredible Resilience of Books; Seth Godin's self-publishing experiment is over; Making E-books Is Harder Than It Looks; and $7,000 Fine for Sharing "WordPress For Dummies" on BitTorrent.
- 'I don't like to talk about threats; I like to talk about opportunities, which is a big difference. I think everyone spending time talking about threats is wasting a lot of time and a lot of goodwill. The publishing industry is undergoing epochal changes because of the digital technology, but the digital technology is also affording the publishing world many opportunities that are unprecedented.' Alberto Vitale, former CEO of Random House Inc, in Publishing Perspectives, in our Comment column.
- Our Health Hazards series is a unique 7-part series warning about the dangers to writers of Carpal Tunnel syndrome, eye problems and your working environment.
- 'Why shouldn't truth be stranger than fiction? Fiction, after all, has to make sense.' Mark Twain in our Writers' Quotes.