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4 January 2016 - What's new

4 January 2016
  • 'In an extraordinary and unprecedented display of concerted action, authors' organisations have joined together to present a simultaneous major challenge to publishers. In the US the Authors Guild has issued a challenge to publishers, the UK's Society of Authors has done the same, with the Authors Licensing and Collecting Society (ALCS), the Irish Writers Union and more than two dozen writer-advocacy organisations from Europe, Africa, Australia, North America joining with them...' This week's News Review is on how Authors' organisations have challenged publishers, using concerted action for the first time.
  • Our Writing Opportunity is Open House 2016 - The Interpreter's House Poetry Competition is open to all poets over 18 with an entry fee of £4 per poem. It closes on 31 January.
  • Also still open till the end of the month is the rather splendid new Deborah Rogers Foundation Writers' Award 2016, set up in memory of the late literary agent and offering literary novelists residing in the British Commonwealth and Eire the chance to win £10,000.
  • 'You've considered the arguments for and against self-publishing and decided that it's the best option for you. Great; you've got over one of the many difficult hurdles of getting your book out to the world, the next step is to transform the files on your computer into a physical printed book. In theory, this is a relatively straightforward process - get the files ready, find someone to print the book, send it to them and get it printed. Unsurprisingly, it's not as simple as might seem and there are certain tips to bear in mind which will make your life a lot easier as you commence your self-publishing journey...' A Printer's View guides you through printing as a self-publisher.
  • ‘As Taylor makes clear, over the past century the exigencies of making a living have never been enough to stop writers and commentators from debating, noisily and disputatiously, about the direction of literature, its distance from popular taste and which self-appointed minority is fit to interpret and pass judgement on it. These are questions that matter to Taylor too because the vibrancy of our literature, summed up in this wide-ranging, entertaining and thoughtful survey, is a marker of our wider cultural health... Our Comment is from Michael Prodger's review of D J Taylor's widely-praised The Prose Factory: Literary Life in Britain Since 1918 in The Times.
  • Our links this week: Robert McCrum's masterly summary of the publishing world: 'For a nail-biting decade it was said that e-reading would spell death to the traditional book. Actually, the reverse has been true...' Print survives as a new literature is born | Robert McCrum | Opinion | The Guardian; your chance to take part in the Costa Short Story Award Public Vote but you need to act by 13 January, and to get reading immediately - Public vote opens for Costa Short Story Award | The Bookseller; and a regular crystal ball- gazing article looks at the forthcoming year, 5 Predictions for Trade Publishing in 2016 : Publishing Technology.
  • Which Report? gives the details of the three reports we offer: the full Editor's Report, the basic Reader's Report and the most substantial Editor's Report Plus. There's also our specialist Children's reports, part of our Children's Editorial Services. If you want a professional editor's assessmen of your work, here's the place to start.
  • The rest of our links: anxiety expressed about a decline in some authors' income, Solomon: 'once well-known authors now struggling' | The Bookseller; looking forward at the coming year, 10 Industry Predictions for 2016 | Digital Book World; and fiction is sometimes stranger than truth - using a novel as a template for a big robbery, Hatton Garden: Book found detailed 'similar heist' - BBC News.
  • 'People often ask whether my journalism interferes with my serious writing. As a matter of fact, my journalism is serious writing.' Brigid Brophy in our Writers' Quotes.
  • The October Magazine is ready! If you want to look back through a mass of fantastic recent material, this is the place.