What's New in 2014
- In the seventh part of the WritersServices Self-publishing Guide 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 deals with Print on Demand for Indies: 'Print On Demand - or POD - is exactly that: a service whereby your book is printed only when it has been ordered, either by a bookshop or an online retailer. POD is an alternative to offset printing, where it is usually only economical to print large quantities of books. If a publisher, or author, is certain they can sell thousands of copies in a short space of time, a book will be printed in bulk and shipped out to distributors ready to be sold in bookshops or via online stores. But if there is not this immediate demand - as is often the case with self-published titles - POD is used instead...'
- There's been a wide-ranging debate this week sparked off by Hugh Howey's report on authors' earnings from ebooks, including an article by Mark Coker in Publishers WeeklyInternational news website of book publishing and bookselling including business news, reviews, bestseller lists, commentaries http://www.publishersweekly.com/ Hugh Howey and the Indie Author Revolt. Can Hugh Howey lead an indie author revolt? Based on Amazon's hourly ebook bestseller lists, Howey has made some large claims about the shift to self-publishing and the end of big publishers' control of the publishing model. But Howey's argument is based on the figures Amazon releases and these are essentially a marketing tool, controlled by the site and intended to sell as may ebooks as possible and to further Amazon's aims of increasing the share of Kindle Direct Publishing and Amazon's own publishing lists...' News Review
- 'Fiction springs irresponsible and unfettered from every soil. A novel is an entertainment, worked over, calculated, staged, shaped. Yet its genesis is always in the writer's real pleasures, enthusiasms, griefs and confusions. Writing one is quite unlike journalism. In earlier novels the rags of my real preoccupations kept surfacing unexpectedly, interwoven into brand new garments. Threads come in from all directions: the sea, the spiritual poverty of modern education, variety artistes, idealistic organic farmers, the modern military, unrequited love, Venice, Transsexualism, late Shakespeare. So it was probably inevitable that the most intense and disastrous experience of all would provoke a fictional mother and a fictional grief: both real and unreal...' Our Comment this week is from Libby Purves, author of Shadow Child and Acting Up, in The Times.
- Our links this week are firstly the two Hugh Howey articles mentioned in News Review - The 7k Report - Author Earnings and Hugh Howey and the Indie Author Revolt - Self-publishing: is it killing the mainstream? | Books | theguardian.com, more on self-publishign from Anne Charnock, BookBrunch - A calculated risk led to success for A Calculated Life, another author setting up her own rights-seller Lynda La Plante forms own rights company | The Bookseller, Cornerstone buys four from self-published Tracy Bloom | The Bookseller and an interesting perspective from Futurebook, The fall of the house of books | FutureBook.
- Ten Top Tips for Nonfiction writers from Julie Wainwright is a helpful checklist.
- 'Times are bad. Children no longer obey their parents and everyone is writing a book.' Cicero, circa 43 BC, in our Writers' Quotes.
- Getting my novel published by Garth Garston: 'I had done all the textbook advice actions - buying and studying The Writers' and Artists' Yearbook, writing a submission cover letter and synopsis plus my first three chapters, and getting my manuscript seriously proof-read. I had had my first rejection after a friend had recommended my first novel to top UK literary agency Curtis BrownSee Curtis Brown listing...'
- 'The shortlist for the first Folio Prize has caused quite a stir, highlighting various changes in the ecology of prizes. It set out to be different from the Man Booker and more literary, and seems to have achieved its intention. In doing this it has provided a challenge to the cosy hegemony of the Booker, no doubt influencing Booker's decision to make its own eligibility guidelines the same - novels written in English published in the UK but by authors from all over the world, including the US. Many would feel that this is a change too slow in the coming - and that in this time of increasing globalisation it's no good to have a continuing approach which only admits British and Commonwealth writers. News Review
- Do you want to self-publish your work? WritersServices offers a suite of services which help writers get their work into shape before they self-publish. New to the site, our page of Services for Self-publishers.
- A new entry to our endorsement page: ‘The site covers EVERYTHING a new writer, established writer, or a wannabe writer could possibly want or need to know.' Hester Mundis, author many books, including My Chimp Friday, Heart Songs For Animal Lovers and The Vitamin Bible.
- If you are looking for copy editing online, it is difficult to ensure that you are getting a professional copy editor who will do a good job on your manuscript. Our page on Getting your manuscript copy edited may help.
- Top Ten Tips for non-fiction writers is a helpful checklist for writers, compiled by a Creative Wriitng tutor.
- Our links of the week: the rather astonishing Publishers Want to Bring Binge Consumption to Books - The Wire, the latest view of the giant online retailer - Amazon: Game Changer or Whipping Boy?, a challenging view of the children's book world - the Muchamore criticises 'negative' children's sector | The Bookseller and interesting research into audiobooks. Your Brain On Audio Books: Distracted, Forgetful, And Bored | Co.Design | business + design.
- For the Scots among us, or those with Scottish connections, this week's Wriitng Opportunity is the Edwin Morgan Poetry Award 2014, closing on 3 March and worth £20,000.
- 'An artist's sensitivity to criticism is, at least in part, an effort to keep unimpaired the zest, or confidence, or arrogance, which he needs to make creation possible; or an instinct to climb through his problems in his own way as he should, and must.' Christopher Fry in our Writers' Quotes.
- 'Online communities are the way things are going. Publishers have been trying to establish communities of readers to sell books to for some time, but now an author blogger has called for them to set up communities of writers too, and perhaps even communities of publishers and freelances as well. Publishers have been thinking about communities of readers for some time, as they try to develop relationships direct with their consumers...' News Review
- An Editor's Advice is a seven-part series from Maureen Kincaid Speller
a reviewer, writer, editor and former librarian, is our book reviewer and also works for WritersServices as a freelance editor., a longstanding WritersServices freelance editor. Starting with Dialogue and moving on to Another draft, this very practical series ends with Presentation.
- The late Norman Mailer in our Comment column: 'It's very bad to write a novel by act of will. I can do a book of nonfiction that way - just sign the contract and do the book because, provided the topic has some meaning for me, I know I can do it. A novel is more like falling in love...'
- 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 latest article in her very practical ten-part WritersServies Guide to Self-publishing deals with Ebooks: Distributing to Other Eretailers 'Now we've explored how to format your book for Kindle and upload to the Amazon KDP platform, it's time to look at the virtual shelves of other eretailers. There are two options here: upload to each eretailer direct, or use a distributor like Smashwords to do it for you...'
- Our links of the week: first something quite way out: Sensory Fiction: Books That Let You Feel What The Characters Do | WUWF, India's Buoyant Book Market Attracts More Foreign Deals | Publishing Perspectives, the quite worrying news that Adobe has Killed e-Readers | Good E-Reader - eBook and Digital Publishing News and, a new twist on Creative Writing courses - First self-publishing MA offers DIY education | Books | theguardian.com.
- We're delighted that our Writing Opportunity thiis week is the unique and newly set up 2014 Manchester Writing for Children Prize for poets trying to make thier way in this genre. Hurry because it closes on 28 February. Open to all, with a £12 entry fee.
- To go alongside our new Poetry Collection Editing service, and our Poetry Critique, there's Getting your Poetry published and 101 ways to make poems sell.
- 'The historian records, but the novelist creates.' E M Forster's magisterial words in our Writers' Quotes.
- WritersServices Guide to Self-publishing 5 is about 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.: Distributing to Other Eretailers. 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: 'Now we've explored how to format your book for Kindle and upload to the Amazon KDP platform, it's time to look at the virtual shelves of other eretailers. There are two options here: upload to each eretailer direct, or use a distributor like Smashwords to do it for you. Why Sell Across Other Platforms? Amazon is not the only fruit! Although the Kindle ereader and Kindle apps do seem to be taking the lion's share of the market, many readers are using the Nook or Kobo devices instead, or are reading on their iPads and iPhones via the iBooks app on the Apple store. If you make your book available to Kindle users only, you are missing out on a section of the market...' The series to date.
- News Review asks: Are brands in decline? 'As recent figures have shown, this last year has shown the lowest sales for brand name authors for five years. It's easy to assume from this figure that it's all over for the big brands, in print at least, but the truth is that they have shown their durability over many years. Brands do come and go and no-one stays at the top forever. New authors come to the forefront and, although the older brands may not be so visible, they do still provide the mainstay of many publishers' lists. Every time a brand-name author has a new book, their whole backlist - backlist which may consist of a great many titles - gets a boost...'
- Our listing of 2014 International Book Fairs is invaluable if you're planning a visit to one near you.
- Our Writing Opportunity this week is the 2014 Cardiff International Poetry Competition, which offers one of the largest monetary prizes for a poetry competition of its kind. First prize is £5,000, there's an entry fee of £15 and it closes on 14 March.
- 'This is certainly not the writer's life I anticipated when I opened that first acceptance latter, when I first met someone who'd read me. This isn't what I aimed for when I sneaked out short stories between working in all kinds of centres and hospitals and facilities. The workshops taught me that you move beyond your fears, find the words to name yourself, make demands, celebrate joys, protest pains, then you can start to move your world. I grew up as a writer seeing that language is a monumental force, that it constantly works upon us, for good and ill, that it can redefine us, rehearse the changes we want, establish our humanity...' A L Kennedy, author of What Becomes? in The Times, quoted in our Comment column.
- Links of the week: after a surprise First Novel win, Costa Book Prize 2013: Why Nathan Filer deserves his win - Telegraph, in Bread and Roses | Hugh Howey stands up for writers, the social networks tell it like it is in Quill & Quire » Twitter trend declares 2014 the year of reading women and where are we all going? Issues on the Ether: Profit-Sharing Authors | Publishing Perspectives.
- Writing Biography & Autobriography is a serialisation from our Archives of the book by Brian D Osborne published by A & C BlackClick for A & C Black Publishers Publishers References listing. In the first excerpt, Managing the matters of truth and objectivity, the author says: 'Just as you need to remember that letters, reports, census forms, legal documents and so forth were not created simply for our convenience, so you also need to remember that what is written in them may not be true...'
- 'There is an element of autobiography in all fiction in that pain or distress, or pleasure, is based on the author's own. But in my case that is as far as it goes. My fiction may, now and again, illuminate aspects of the human condition, but I do not consciously set out to do so, I am a storyteller.' William Trevor in our Writers' Quotes.
- WritersServices Guide to Self-publishing 5 is about 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.: Distributing to Other Eretailers. 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: 'Now we've explored how to format your book for Kindle and upload to the Amazon KDP platform, it's time to look at the virtual shelves of other eretailers. There are two options here: upload to each eretailer direct, or use a distributor like Smashwords to do it for you. Why Sell Across Other Platforms? Amazon is not the only fruit! Although the Kindle ereader and Kindle apps do seem to be taking the lion's share of the market, many readers are using the Nook or Kobo devices instead, or are reading on their iPads and iPhones via the iBooks app on the Apple store. If you make your book available to Kindle users only, you are missing out on a section of the market...' The series to date.
- News Review asks: Are brands in decline? 'As recent figures have shown, this last year has shown the lowest sales for brand name authors for five years. It's easy to assume from this figure that it's all over for the big brands, in print at least, but the truth is that they have shown their durability over many years. Brands do come and go and no-one stays at the top forever. New authors come to the forefront and, although the older brands may not be so visible, they do still provide the mainstay of many publishers' lists. Every time a brand-name author has a new book, their whole backlist - backlist which may consist of a great many titles - gets a boost...'
- Our listing of 2014 International Book Fairs is invaluable if you're planning a visit to one near you.
- Our Writing Opportunity this week is the 2014 Cardiff International Poetry Competition, which offers one of the largest monetary prizes for a poetry competition of its kind. First prize is £5,000, there's an entry fee of £15 and it closes on 14 March.
- 'This is certainly not the writer's life I anticipated when I opened that first acceptance latter, when I first met someone who'd read me. This isn't what I aimed for when I sneaked out short stories between working in all kinds of centres and hospitals and facilities. The workshops taught me that you move beyond your fears, find the words to name yourself, make demands, celebrate joys, protest pains, then you can start to move your world. I grew up as a writer seeing that language is a monumental force, that it constantly works upon us, for good and ill, that it can redefine us, rehearse the changes we want, establish our humanity...' A L Kennedy, author of What Becomes? in The Times, quoted in our Comment column.
- Links of the week: after a surprise First Novel win, Costa Book Prize 2013: Why Nathan Filer deserves his win - Telegraph, in Bread and Roses | Hugh Howey stands up for writers, the social networks tell it like it is in Quill & Quire » Twitter trend declares 2014 the year of reading women and where are we all going? Issues on the Ether: Profit-Sharing Authors | Publishing Perspectives.
- Writing Biography & Autobiography is a serialisation from our Archives of the book by Brian D Osborne published by A & C BlackClick for A & C Black Publishers Publishers References listing. In the first excerpt, Managing the matters of truth and objectivity, the author says: 'Just as you need to remember that letters, reports, census forms, legal documents and so forth were not created simply for our convenience, so you also need to remember that what is written in them may not be true...'
- 'There is an element of autobiography in all fiction in that pain or distress, or pleasure, is based on the author's own. But in my case that is as far as it goes. My fiction may, now and again, illuminate aspects of the human condition, but I do not consciously set out to do so, I am a storyteller.' William Trevor in our Writers' Quotes.
