2 March 2015 - What's new
2 March 2015
- 'Do publishing imprints matter? The excellent article by Philip Jones, editor of the Bookseller, in this week's Futurebook, is an interesting examination of imprints and their importance within the publishing business. But it does seem that most authors will be indifferent to the imprint and in a way they're right...' News Review
- The amazing shortlist for the 2015 Diagram Prize for the Oddest Book title of the Year has just been announced - now's your chance to vote for the winner.
- ‘Just because you write a poem, it doesn't mean you have to publish it. If I'm just writing because I happen to have had an idea, I'm completely free to write it, fiddle around with it, take as long as I like, and then I can decide quite a long time afterwards what I want to do with it. There's a freedom in that.' Wendy Cope, author of Family Values and Life, Love and the Archers, in the Observer magazine, quoted in our Comment column.
- Getting Your Poetry Published has some suggestions on how to get started with this. 'Don't even try to approach publishers until you have a collection-length amount of material to offer. Your chances will be much better even then if you can point to publication of your poems in magazines. Don't waste any time trying to get a literary agent to represent you... You may feel that it is better to hedge your options by going the self-publishing route. Fortunately this is now very much cheaper than it used to be and the final result is much more satisfactory...'
- This week's Writing Opportunity is the Tinder Press open submission, closing on 16 March and open to short stories as well as novels. This is a rare chance to submit direct to a literary publisher.
- ‘Twenty years as a teacher, ten years in educational research and five years of directing an educational charity, and in all that time, I hadn't published any fiction or poetry at all. I'd always had a feeling that if life ever did allow me a clear run at creative writing, I might just be able to do something with it. But by 2004, with the charity going nowhere fast, I decided to make my own opportunities rather than wait for them to come to me...' Bruce Harris's Writing Short Fiction: A Personal Journey is about how he worked his way towards setting up the fantastic new website Writing Short Fiction.
- Getting ready to publish your book? Do you want to self-publish your work? WritersServices offers a suite of services which help writers get their work into shape before they self-publish. From Copy editing to Blurb-writing with much else as well.
- Our links of the week: a strong argument for authors who are being traditionally published knowing about the publishing process, Why Writers Need to Know the Publishing Business; is 50 Shades of Grey acceptable in copyright terms, as well as being a very successful book and film? 50 Shades of Copyright Infringement? and daring to tell it like it is, Why all writers are vain | Books | The Guardian.
- More links: How much do writers get paid for their work? You might be surprised to learn that it is often more than the editors who make that work possible, Kickstarter on How to Pay Writers; do imprints matter and why? The imprint of meaningful things | The Bookseller; and how a pan-African writers' collective is "re-imagining African fiction publishing interesting ways", African Publishing Through African Eyes - Publishing Perspectives.
- 'Exercise the writing muscle every day, even if it is only a letter, notes, a title list, a character sketch, a journal entry. Writers are like dancers, like athletes. Without that exercise, the muscles seize up.' Jane Yolen in our Writers' Quotes.
