9 March 2015 - What's new
9 March 2015
- A link to an article on how to make money through sponsorship, the launch of a German challenge to Amazon and a Comment on the writing habits of classic children's author Roald Dahl.
- 'So what are the chances of the just-launched German online book retailer and e-reader, backed by bookstore chains Thalia, Weltbild and Hugendubel, Deutsche Telekom, and giant German publisher Bertelsmann, providing a real challenge to Amazon?' This week's News Review looks at what's happening - is it a challlenge to Amazon at last?
- From our Archive, Writing for Children: Rule Number One - Read More than You Write by Sarah Taylor-Fergusson: 'Author opinion falls into two camps on this one, with some writers maintaining that reading fiction while writing is a very bad thing. To this I might say that if you have been working for years as a published author, and you have that degree of sophistication, dexterity and confidence, then maybe sometimes yes. But for the majority of us who are not at that level...'
- ‘He tended to make light of his work. He didn't like to talk about it and there was nothing of the pained artist about him. The archive shows that in fact he was absolutely painstaking. The archive shows the honing process, the hard graft of writing...' Amanda Conquy, director of the Dahl estate, on Roald Dahl's approach to writing in our Comment column.
- We have a series of seven articles on writing in different categories, covering SF and Fantasy, Crime Fiction, Romance, Historical Fiction, Non-fiction and Memoir, to provide some background on how to approach different genres.
- Links of the week: an affectionate account of first meeting Douglas Adams, 'a very tall man with a big smile and a big slightly crooked nose, all gawky and coltish, as if despite his ridiculous size he was still growing...', Douglas Adams made me a writer: Neil Gaiman salutes his friend and inspiration | Books | The Guardian; a new book which suggests how you can proceed if you really want to make money from your writing, Want to Profit as an Author? Think About Sponsorships; and why ISBN numbers are so important to authors in the long run, Indie Authors Are to Blame for Lack of Meaningful e-Book Data.
- More links: why has it become so fashionable in literary circles to have an unnamed narrator, The Rise of the Nameless Narrator - The New Yorker; nine reasons why print is still preferred over ebooks, Sorry, Ebooks. These 9 Studies Show Why Print Is Better; and a surprise challenge to Amazon from German booksellers and publishers, Germany launches an Amazon competitor » MobyLives.
- Authors often find it difficult to write their own synopsis for submission to publishers, which is where our Synopsis-writing service can help. If you're preparing to self-publish and having difficulty with your blurb, our Blurb-writing service might be what you need.
- 'When starting to think about any novel, part of the motive is: I'm going to show them, this time.' Kingsley Amis in our Writers' Quotes.
