9 July 2012 - What's new
- 'New figures suggest that self-publishing output has played a significant part in the first growth in US title output in four years. Bowker figures project that print book output increased by 6% last year over the previous year, to an astonishing 328,259 titles, but if the self-publishing contribution is removed the market was flat...' News Review reports.
- Links to this week's top stories Our new feature links to interesting blogs or articles posted online, which will help keep you up to date with what's going on in the book world: E-books are for porn but real books will survive, says award-winning author; 'Open access' move puts thousands of UK jobs at risk; Authors Guild Sees Return of Predatory Pricing if DoJ Deal Stands; and The Way Books Used to Be Sold by Tim Waterstone.
- 'The writing itself has always felt like a bit of a compulsion. It's what I do, why I exist. My motivation in general is I can do this and I want to be able to take care of myself, my friends and family. That keeps me going - the idea that I can have career stability and I can look after people I care about… Amanda Hocking, bestselling self-published author of the Trylle Trilogy and the upcoming Watersong series, quoted in our Comment column.
- Why do non-fiction books need an index? In The Ins and Outs of Indexing Joanne Phillips provides an answer, explains why it's a specialist job and why computers can't achieve the same result as a skilled indexer.
- Success story - Darren Shan's first book, Ayuamarca, was published in 1999 by Orion and didn't have much impact. The sequel, Hell's Horizon, sold fewer copies than the first. But in January 2000, Shan released Cirque du Freak, the first book of The Saga of Darren Shan series in the UK and Ireland and this was the beginning of his tremendous success and as a YA (and, more recently, adult) horror writer.
- 'The short story is as diverse and exciting a form as the novel, offering the condensed satisfaction of a good poem.' Sean O'Brien in our Writers' Quotes.
There's just time to enter the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award, Britain's most prestigious prize for poets aged 11-17, closing on 31 July.
