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30 December 2013 - What's new

30 December 2013
  • 'The latest self-publishing success story comes from the most unlikely place - France. Or perhaps it is not so surprising, since the French publishing world is known for its rigidity and for its success at fighting off change of any kind, leaving the literary establishment firmly in charge. But it is from this unpromising source that the latest publishing sensation has come, with the authors being two Strasbourg librarians and their girl magician heroine bearing a distinct relationship to Harry Potter. J K Rowling has been so phenomenally successful that all attempts to copy her have failed, but that these two authors have successfully come up with a female Potter magician who is far tougher than the original and offers something different...' News Review
  • Our links of the week: BookBrunch - Does book reviewing have a future? Mal Peet: "The Wheat and the Chaff" on children's writing, Entitle launches eBook Subscription Service with Over 100,000 Books and Report from 2013 International Publishers Association Conference | Publishing Perspectives.
  • Thinking about Self-publishing? Our site offers the fullest explanation and guide to what is involved, and a custom self-publishing service.
  • 'Once the world ends, all your worries about your mortgage and your job get shunted off to the sideline. We use genre fiction to tell us what we are; I think with all genre fiction, where it becomes great is when it is saying something about the world we are in...' Mike Carey, author of The Girl with All the Gifts in the Bookseller, quoted in our Comment column.
  • Inside Publishing is a nineteen-part series which helps you to find out what really goes on in publishing. From Advances and Royalties to The English language publishing world and from Subsidiary rights to the Writer/Publisher Financial Relationship, this series gives you the inside story.
  • Our Writing Opportunity this week is the Christopher Tower Poetry Competition 2014, open to all 16-18 year-olds who are in full or part time education in the UK and closing on 28 February.
  • Our listing of Writing Opportunities shows those which are currently still open, in ascending or descending date order, and it's also useful to see what's coming up in the way of annual competitions during during the year, so that you can plan what to enter.
  • ‘New media and new forms of buying and lending are all very interesting, for all kinds of reasons, but one principle remains unchanged: authors must be paid fairly for their work. Any arrangement that doesn't acknowledge that principle is a bad one, and needs to be changed. That is our whole argument.' Bestselling children's author Philip Pullman, in his capacity as President-elect of the UK Society of Authors, in our Writers' Quotes.  If quotes are your thing and you'd like to access our huge collection, try these pages: More Writers Quotes, Writers Quotes and Even More Writers Quotes.
  • Our December Magazine has just been published, providing an overview of the new material on the site in the last month.