12 February 2018 - What's new
12 February 2018
- Last week's Harry Potter Book Day led Bloomsbury to release some amazing figures for the series, which have now exceeded 500 million copies sold worldwide. The figures take into account sales across all versions of the seven books in the series, which began with Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone in 1997, as well as three companion volumes. News Review
- The Caterpillar Poetry Prize 2018, a rare prize for poets writing for children, closes on 31 March. Any adult poet can enter a single unpublished poem written for children. Entry fee €12 and a prize of €1,000.
- Have you got something you'd like to say to our community of writers? My Say gives writers a chance to air their views about writing and the writer's life. So we have Natasha Mostert: "There are few things as satisfying as typing THE END to a manuscript;" Richard Hall: "Write about what you know - does this adage always make sense?" and Jae Watson's Magic formula. Contributions should ideally be 300 to 500 words in length and of general interest. Please email them to us.
- 'What you have to remember about the publishing business is that a young editor or small publisher makes a fortune by finding an unknown writer and making the book into a best seller. That is how you get on in the publishing business. And so if you do write something good, they will be crazy about it and they'll publish it with great enthusiasm. They will also spend money advertising it...' More from Ken Follett, author of The Kingsbridge Series and The Century Trilogy from the Masterclass on his website. Our Comment.
- Our links: I am always most excited to come across a book about writing by an author whose work I already admire, Great Advice From 25 Writing Manuals by Famous Authors | Literary Hub; what do we think about the new Staunch Prize, A prize for thrillers with no violence against women? That's not progressive | Books | The Guardian; from the start my literary ambitions were mixed up with the feeling of being isolated and undervalued, George Orwell Creates a List of the Four Essential Reasons Writers Write | Open Culture; and prize organisers to reverse the change, or risk a "homogenised literary future", Publishers call on Man Booker prize to drop American authors | Books | The Guardian.
- Last year we launched our latest new service, the Writer's edit, a top-level new service for writers who want line-editing as well as copy editing. Does your manuscript need high-level input from an editor to help you get it into the best possible shape for submission or self-publishing? This may be the service for you, offering the kind of editing which publishers' senior editors used to do in-house on their authors' manuscripts - and which is now hard to find. Just one of the services you can find in Which service?
- More links: with the help of software typically used by professors to nab cheating students, Plagiarism Software Unveils a New Source for 11 of Shakespeare's Plays - The New York Times; if you know any writers, you may know that almost everyone hates their own book at some point, 13 Writers Who Grew to Hate Their Own Books | Literary Hub; and a prison directive allowed for five printed pages to arrive in each regular mail envelope. So my friend broke copyright laws and photocopied 300-plus pages, For prisoners like me, books are a lifeline. Don't cut it | Opinion | The Guardian.
- 'The reason that fiction is more interesting than any other form of literature, to those who really like to study people, is that in fiction the author can really tell the truth without humiliating himself.' (Or herself, presumably.) Eleanor Roosevelt in our Writers' Quotes.
