Skip to Content

21 May 2018 - What's new

21 May 2018
  • 'Amid the avalanche of titles published each year, promoting a book now seems to demand almost as much work as writing it... This may sound a bit spoilt, especially when I know how incredibly lucky I have been, but life is not simple when it comes to promoting foreign translations as well as the British and American editions. For a start you need to banish any hope of working on a future book for at least half a year to nine months. It may be good for your stash of air miles, but some seventeen overseas trips in a year does not help continuity of concentration.' Antony Beevor, author of just-published Arnhem - The Battle for the Bridges 1944, as well as Stalingrad, The Second World War and many other distinguished military histories in Bookbrunch. Our Comment.
  • Closing on 8 June, The Sunday Times/PFD Young Writer of the Year 2018 is open to writers of published fiction, non-fiction and poetry between the ages of 18 and 35 in the UK and Ireland, both published and self-published. There's no entry fee but a First Prize of £5,000 plus a 10 week residency and a year of mentoring, three runners-up get £500.
  • Three other attractive Writing Opportunities are still live.
  • The January Magazine has some useful links - Ten Tips for Autopilot E-book Marketing and Paying to Play: On Submission Fees in Poetry Publishing, as well as some intriguing ones - Sue Grafton Was a Master at Subverting the Detective Novel, My Last Conversation with Ursula K. Le Guin and If It Wasn't For My Corporate Office Job, I Couldn't Be a Novelist.
  • From our Endorsements page: 'Today I only want to say, "thank you". DM has done a truly great job. I have worked with her suggestions which have brought clarity and depth to my subject. Her work on my punctuation is brilliant. As I read through the manuscript now, it is like gliding on silk.' Helena Dodds
  • A must-read for children's authors is Suzy Jenvey's special series for WritersServices, the four-part Essential Guide to Writing for Children. The first article looks at the all-important question of age groups and what you should be aware of in writing for each one. The second part is - Before You Write: What is My Story Going to be? The third part deals with Starting to Write and the fourth part is about Submitting Your Work to Agents and Editors. This series by a hugely experienced children's editorial director and agent helps you get started on your own story or develop what you're already working on.
  • If you need some help with this, our Children's Editorial Services provide reports and copy editing from experienced children's editors.
  • Our links: recent weeks have seen a flurry of conversation about factchecking in the publishing industry, Fact or friction: the problem with factchecking in the book world | Books | The Guardian; a few tips about getting yourself an agent, Ask the Editor: Finding an Agent (or there's our page Finding an Agent with the same title); and Philip Roth, Towering Novelist Who Explored Lust, Jewish Life and America, Dies at 85 - The New York Times. We had hoped to have an interview with Elena Ferrante from the L A Times, but unfortunately the paper's website isn't currently able to deliver its pages in Europe - we'll keep looking for this.
  • Do you want some help with your writing but don't quite know what you want - or even if you need any help? Are you a bit puzzled by the various services on offer, and not sure what to go for? Choosing a service can help you work out which service is right for you.
  • More links: the e-book landscape is shifting and authors who stay current will find rich opportunities, What Every Indie Author Needs to Know About E-Books; Ebook sales are dying. 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. are insanely popular. If the short definition of cognitive dissonance is holding two contradictory ideas to be true, ebooks are about as dissonant as digital content gets, Traditional publishers' ebook sales drop as indie authors and Amazon take off - GeekWire; what you learn from writing a book is how to write that book, Writing Advice from Ann Packer; Amazon has been fighting fake reviews since at least 2012. They have deleted scads of reviews, banned paid reviews, filed suit against several batches of fake review perpetrators, and even forbidden authors from having any type of relationship with reviewers, Authors Are Taking Friendly Fire in Amazon's War on Fake Reviews | The Digital Reader.
  • 'Writing is the only thing that, when I do it, I don't feel I should be doing something else.' Gloria Steinem in our Writers' Quotes.