3 April 2017 - What's new
3 April 2017
- ‘My experience of becoming a writer... I was a little too late to the game. I wrote when I was younger but I could never get anything to really cohere, so for me the big revelation, before my first book... was that I had to really restrict myself. I had to really constrain myself and write in a very narrow vein - comic, very contemporary, maybe a little futuristic...' George Saunders, author of just-published Lincoln in the Bardo and Tenth of December, which won the inaugural Folio Prize in 2014, in the Bookseller. Our Comment.
- Closing on 5 May, here's a really attractive competition, although only for UK residents unfortunately, the Daily Mail/Penguin Random House New Crime Novel Competition. No entry fee and the prize is a £20,000 advance and a publishing contract with Century, an imprint of Penguin Random House UKPenguin Random House have more than 50 creative and autonomous imprints, publishing the very best books for all audiences, covering fiction, non-fiction, poetry, children’s books, autobiographies and much more. Click for Random House UK Publishers References listing, and the services of literary agent Luigi Bonomi. Other Writing Opportunities.
- A must-read for children's authors - Suzy Jenvey's special series for WritersServices, the four-part Essential Guide to Writing for Children. The first article looks at the all-important question of age groups and what you should be aware of in writing for each one. The second part is - Before You Write: What is My Story Going to be? The third part deals with Starting to Write and the fourth part is about Submitting Your Work to Agents and Editors.
- The Bologna Children's Book FairThe Bologna Children's Book Fair or La fiera del libro per ragazzi is the leading professional fair for children's books in the world. this week has been attracting a good number of visitors and there is ever-increasing interest from outside the publishing word, from media and film companies. Reflecting the solid growth and current stability of children's publishing, the Fair offers an opportunity for everyone involved in children's publishing to gather for the biggest annual bash. This week's News Review.
- Have you ever wondered why you don't win any of those competitions? Our check-list gives you tips on Entering Competitions.
- Our links: very simply, people publish because they can. Anyone can, Going it alone: Why there has never been a better time to be a self-published author | The Bookseller; six years after it won the Man Booker prize, The Sense of an Ending is being told again, courtesy of a plush new BBC Films adaptation, Julian Barnes: 'I told the film-makers to throw my book against a wall' | Film | The Guardian; many of the writers I work with now I have been working with for what seems like centuries. It's probably more like 20 years, My advice to writers? Glue yourself to an editor who is also starting out; and "Nobody makes money self-publishing, it's basically an ego trip. Sad!" Fake News! In Self-Publishing - The Book Designer.
- Our February Magazine is now ready, providing access to a whole month's news, links and Comments to browse through.
- More links: sales of books (touchy feely books) have increased by 4% year on year, Why the paperback fought back... and what's next in digital marketing | The Bookseller; and a short digest of the Author Earnings Report, Should Authors Go Exclusive with Amazon? The full deal - and therefore a bit indigestible - February 2017 Big, Bad, Wide & International Report: covering Amazon, Apple, B&N, and Kobo ebook sales in the US, UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand - Author Earnings; and Indexers are like badgers: they are seldom sighted in the wild, they do their work in the darkness, and when you see one it's usually because they've been run over by an 18-wheeler, In our Google era, indexers are the unsung heroes of the publishing world | Books | The Guardian.
- We recently launched our unique 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.
- 'By its very looseness, by its way of evoking rather than defining, suggesting rather than saying, English is a magnificent vehicle for emotional poetry.' Max Beerbohm in our Writers' Quotes.