Comment from the book world in January 2024

‘You can offend somebody in the 21st century with something you said in 1970... By the end of the process I was questioning myself, that was the problem. I wrote innocently and I wrote to make people laugh but when I read the book through I thought, gosh really is this offensive? And that? And that? Am I all these things?

Then I began to think to myself, well how do I know I am not causing offence? And that therefore led me to the conclusion that perhaps it might be better to stick to adult books.

I am being honest with you and open. I am just saying that these are the sorts of doubts that this atmosphere raises. I have an Alex Rider out... but it's quite possible that it's just time to pull up the drawbridge and stop...'

Anthony Horowitz, who juggles writing books, TV series, films, plays and journalism and has written over 52 books, including the Alex Rider series for children, Sherlock Holmes and James Bond novels commissioned by the authors' estates and his own murder mysteries for adult readers, including Magpie Murders, in the Evening Standard.

https://anthonyhorowitz.com/

‘Many people write a non-fiction book and then meet a wall of frustration and delay as they attempt to attract interest from an agent or a publisher. This often drives an author into the arms of a burgeoning self-publishing industry. To the person who has spent years acquiring their knowledge, then more years writing their book, the self-publishing industry can be attractive. They can finally hold their book in their hands, show it to friends and say, "Look what I did. I'm published."

But there are drawbacks and one of the biggest is distribution. Having your book ‘published' and listed on a few websites, (usually as eBooks or Print On Demand) means you buy a few copies yourself, just to keep, then you are working hard (and paying fees) to sell other copies.

What I do is work with non-fiction authors, if they have a solid idea, to take them through the steps of giving their manuscript the best chance of attracting a reputable agent or publisher and, with that, get their book into more mainstream distribution channels, including onto the shelves of bookshops and libraries. One of the first things to be recognised in this process is that non-fiction books are not marketed the same as fiction. Fiction authors usually build a following for their books, so the author's name on the cover is a large part of the marketing...'

Jeff Maynard is an Australian author and documentary maker. His books include Niagara's Gold, Divers in Time and The Letterbox War of Kamarooka Street. Jeff has written widely for television and contributed articles to magazines around the world.

https://www.andrewlownie.co.uk/2019/04/01/selfie-to-shelfie

‘I've been thinking for some time that science fiction, as a genre, is finished. The world it once imagined has arrived, and interest in the future and new technologies is widespread. Instead of appealing only to a niche audience, sci-fi has been absorbed into the mainstream of fiction. And as fantasy enjoys a boom in popularity - the "Romantasy" subgenre in particular - much of what is now published as science fiction has a fantasy element to it: space opera, alternate histories, sagas set on alien worlds.

Cyberpunk was perhaps the most important trend in science fiction in the 1980s and 90s, but since then it's often reduced in memory to a particular aesthetic of future-noir thriller represented by Ridley Scott's Blade Runner. So The Big Book of Cyberpunk, edited by Jared Shurin is a huge, eye-opening, mind-blowing surprise. Two fat volumes with more than 100 stories, by authors from at least two dozen different countries (some published here in English for the first time), ranging from proto-cyberpunk stories from the 1950s and 60s through genre-defining tales by William Gibson, Pat Cadigan, Neal Stephenson and many newer names, right up to 2021 with a post-cyberpunk story written in collaboration with AI.'

Lisa Tuttle, author of 18 novels for adults and children, including My Death, A Nest of Nightmares, The Mysteries, The Bone and The Flute, Dolphin Diaries, a series for children, various short story collections and several works of non-fiction, in the Guardian.

'How do you become a writer? Answer: you write.

It's amazing how much resentment and disgust and evasion this answer can arouse. Even among writers, believe me. It is one of those Horrible Truths one would rather not face.

The most frequent evasive tactic is for the would-be writer to say, But before I have anything to say, I must get experience.

Well, yes; if you want to be a journalist. But I don't know anything about journalism, I'm talking about fiction. And of course fiction is made out of experience, your whole life from infancy on, everything you've thought and done and seen and read and dreamed. But experience isn't something you go and get-it's a gift, and the only prerequisite for receiving it is that you be open to it. A closed soul can have the most immense adventures, go through a civil war or a trip to the moon, and have nothing to show for all that "experience"; whereas the open soul can do wonders with nothing.

I invite you to meditate on a pair of sisters. Emily and Charlotte. Their life experience was an isolated vicarage in a small, dreary English village, a couple of bad years at a girls' school, another year or two in Brussels, which is surely the dullest city in all Europe, and a lot of housework. Out of that seething mass of raw, vital, brutal, gutsy Experience they made two of the greatest novels ever written: Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights...

Now, of course they were writing from experience; writing about what they knew, which is what people always tell you to do; but what was their experience? What was it they knew? Very little about "life." They knew their own souls, they knew their own minds and hearts; and it was not a knowledge lightly or easily gained. From the time they were seven or eight years old, they wrote, and thought, and learned the landscape of their own being, and how to describe it. They wrote with the imagination, which is the tool of the farmer, the plow you plow your own soul with. They wrote from inside, from as deep inside as they could get by using all their strength and courage and intelligence. And that is where books come from. The novelist writes from inside.

I'm rather sensitive on this point, because I write science fiction, or fantasy, or about imaginary countries, mostly-stuff that, by definition, involves times, places, events that I could not possibly experience in my own life. So when I was young and would submit one of these things about space voyages to Orion or dragons or something, I was told, at extremely regular intervals, "You should try to write about things you know about." And I would say, But I do; I know about Orion, and dragons, and imaginary countries. Who do you think knows about my own imaginary countries, if I don't?

OK, how do you go about getting at that truth? You want to tell the truth. You want to be a writer. So what do you do?

You write.'

Ursula K Le Guin, author of several famous SF novels, including The Left Hand of Darkness, A Wizard of Earthsea and The Dispossessed.

Lit Hub

‘My settings of Europe and English visitors weren't really doing it for them, so we decided Scotland would be good. I thought an island would be great, because it's a small community, and it's an opportunity for my main character to get away from it all. The team at HarperCollins have been so supportive and enthusiastic...

I'm very reassuringly honest. It's a job as well as a calling. It's my living - I'm the chief breadwinner in my house. My husband is retired, he supported me through the two decades while I wasn't making enough to live on, and was doing all kinds of things to do with writing to survive - judging competitions, running workshops, appraising manuscripts. When he wanted to retire, I was very happy to change places - it all worked out well. I work for a big publisher, Avon is a very commercial imprint. When I first started talking to my agent [Juliet Pickering at Blake Friedmann], she said: What are you hoping for? And I told her I really wanted a publisher that would get right behind me, and get me in supermarkets. And that's exactly what happened...

It's got to be a good decision for my domestic publishing, my world English publishing, which includes North America and Australia, and also for my translations - I'm currently translated into 12 languages. Juliet and I wouldn't make a non-commercial decision for any of those publishers if we could help it. There's always a careful conversation about the setting...'

Sue Moorcroft, the bestselling author of 25 romantic fiction titles, including One Summer in Italy, The Christmas Promise, A Summer to Remember, Starting Over and Is This Love? and president of the UK Romantic Novelists' Association, in Bookbrunch

https://www.suemoorcroft.com/