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3 December 2012 - What's new

3 December 2012
  • 'Audiobooks have long been the Cinderellas of the publishing business, with many anticipated new dawns which have failed to produce much bigger sales...' News Review investigates the audiobook world.
  • Our new feature links to interesting blogs or articles posted online, which will help keep you up to date with what's going on in the book world. This week's been particularly interesting: How Mergermania Is Destroying Book Publishing, The Victims of the Penguin & Random House Merger: Literary Agents and We must protect and reinvent our local libraries.
  • Check out Advice for Writers for links to over 65 useful pages on the site. Try The Ins and Outs of Indexing, How to market your writing services online, Writing for the web, Top Ten Tips for nonfiction writers, Choosing a Service, Getting your manuscript copy edited and Getting your poetry published.
  • Philip Pullman's advice to writers: 'Read. But assuming they are already people who can't sit down at breakfast without reading the cereal packet, then I would say write the sort of things you like to read. Don't write what anybody else tells you is popular...' Quoted in our Comment column.
  • Do you enjoy reading what authors have had to say about the writing life? Our fantastic current series of Writers' Quotes is a feast of interesting and often amusing quotes.
  • For this week we have a gleeful Clive James poem, to be found in our Writers' Quotes:

    'The book of my enemy has been remaindered

    And I rejoice...

    What avail him now his awards and prizes,

    The praise expended upon his meticulous technique,

    His individual new voice?