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9 June 2014 - What's new

9 June 2014
  • First we take a look at the extraordinary Eimear McBride - and a very encouraging story for writers. Then there's The Moth International Story Competition 2014 and a Comment from Matt Carr, a children's author who turned reluctantly to self-publishing. We've got several links of the week, still on the Amazon/Hachette story but with new angles, and Poetry International on poetry in translation.
  • Eimear McBride's A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing is having an extraordinary impact. Now that it's won the new Bailey Women's Prize (successor to last year's Women's Fiction Prize and the Orange Prize), there seems to be no stopping the author... But it took her nine years to find a publisher and then it was a tiny start-up, Galley Beggar Press, which quickly set up the book as a co-publication on the paperback and ebook rights with Faber, once it was shortlisted for the Folio Prize. News Review
  • Our Writing Opportunity this week is The Moth International Short Story Prize 2014, closing on 30 June and open to all.
  • Are you interested in Getting Your Manuscript Copy Edited? As well as this article we have one from Inside Publishing about Copy editing and proof-reading and we offer a Copy editing service, as well as Proof-reading and Manuscript Polishing, which involves more intensive work, 'polishing' and improving the text, and correcting the English if you are writing in English as a second language.
  • 'I never thought I'd self-publish a book, because for me it has all the hallmarks of delusional desperation. But after my children's book, The Tale of Russell the Sacred Crow, was rejected a few times for one reason or another, I had some commission from my printer and I thought I might as well have a go. Nowadays you really don't need to self-publish a novel or biography, you can just whack it up on the internet for the whole world to see, but a children's picture book is different.' Matt Carr writing about his his self-publishing experience in the Bookseller, quoted in our Comment column.
  • On getting published: The long and winding road - Colin MurrayColin MurrayColin joined Penguin Books after university. He has over the years worked for a number of the major publishing houses in senior editorial positions. His particular interests, apart from sailing, are science fiction, fantasy, crime and thrillers., WritersServices freelance editor, reflects on the tortuous path to publication of his first novel: 'Of course I should have known better. I'm a grown man who has spent a large part of his adult life in publishing watching the excitement and enthusiasm bleed from the young and talented as disappointments and rejections follow hard upon each other. I have even added to those rejections and disappointments, and watched the bright-eyed and smiling become morose and world weary...'
  • Our links this week mostly seem to centre on the ongoing Amazon/Hachette battle and the ramifications for publishers and authors: on the important enemies Amazon has made of some major authors, Amazon's New, Powerful Enemies; the contrary view The war on Amazon is Big Publishing's 1% moment. What about other writers? | Barry Eisler | Commentisfree | The Guardian; and the effect this book world fight is having on authors Authors Getting Screwed by Amazon-Hachette Showdown | Digital Book World. For lighter relief there's a humourous article on the new Penguin Random House logo, complete with a poem, PRH's New Identity: Goodbye to Some Famous Bricks and Mortar | Publishing Perspectives and a short piece from Poetry International, just starting now in Rotterdam, giving links to other material on their site, Poetry in translation - Poetry International.
  • Poet Michael Symmons Roberts in our Writers' Quotes: 'Any good writer is a good reader first. There's no substitute for being steeped in the great work of the past, and reading the work of your contemporaries. It's an obvious piece of advice, but no less true for that.'