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June 2009
The website for writers
News Review
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News Review looks at the latest prize announcements, the Carnegie, won posthumously by Siobhan Dowd, and the innovative new Michael Marks Awards for Poetry Pamphlets.
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'Two-thirds of book-buyers in the US are 43 and older.' This stark statistic was revealed in the recent Book Industry Study Group study. Younger people are reading less than their parents did. News Review investigates.
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'The announcement of the sixth UK children’s Laureate this week was greeted with great enthusiasm. Andrew Motion, the Chair of the Children’s Laureate Panel, said: ‘Anthony Browne is an absolutely distinctive and extraordinarily skilled artist – someone whose work entrances children and has influenced an entire generation of illustrators.’ News Review reports
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J D Salinger is suing an author who is publishing a sequel to The Catcher in the Rye. The notoriously secretive author is charging in court that this is ‘a rip-off pure and simple’. News Review has the story.
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'This weekend the Javits Center in New York has been thronged with the thousands of people attending BookExpo, the biggest annual book show in North America.' But for how much longer will the Fair continue? News Review investigates.
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'Astonishing new figures just released by Bowker in the States show that US book production declined by 3% in 2008 but print on demand publishing almost doubled. ' News Review looks at print on the latest figures from the States.
Comment
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‘Every agent has their own style. Ed Victor goes to a party and signs up someone. Luigi Bonomi goes and talks to a film company or football agent. But I like doing it this way (through his website) because it brings in interesting books, often ordinary people doing extraordinary things. I love the range and serendipity…' Andrew Lownie in the Bookseller
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‘It's a colossal irony to have the guys and gals of Amazon, Google and their ilk lusting for free book "content" as premium material on which to stake their enlarged claims to commercial riches. For these clever mathematicians and engineers who are shaping the electronic business of our time and the archives of the future, these baby-faced young entrepreneurs, have risen to their mercantile eminence without encountering books, and don't think they need to. Veteran American editor Elisabeth Sifton of Farrar, Straus & Giroux in The Nation
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'Poetry waves a flower in the face of a highly utilitarian age... But poetry sings the song of itself, and offers a musical gratuity. Just as no one should have to justify, in pragmatic terms, playing the piano or listening to Bach, so no one should have to justify reading Keats or Wallace Stevens.' James Wood, the critic for The New Yorker, at the recent Griffin Poetry awards
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'A screenplay is really just a set of instructions, it doesn’t actually have any value of itself. You can read a screenplay and be entertained by it but unless it’s made, it’s worthless... Writing fiction is inevitably much more personal.' David Nicholls, author of One Day and many TV scripts, in the Bookseller
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'Should we, who read books and believe that books and the stories within them contain such power, be surprised that kids read, that books survive? Of course not. We should be celebrating these facts.’ David Almond, author of Skellig, in The Times
Writers' Quote
'I don't know much about creative writing programs. But they're not telling the truth if they don't teach, one, that writing is hard work, and, two, that you have to give up a great deal of life, your personal life, to be a writer.'
Doris Lessing
Synopsis-writing service story
Danny found that WritersServices' Synopsis-writing service was just what he needed to get his submission package ready to go out to agents.
Here's our index of fictionalised stories, which explain how the services work and what they might be able to do for you. Ranging from the Editor's Report to Private Publishing, these provide a different picture of what the services can do for you.
Review of The Weekend Novelist Redrafts the Novel
by Robert J Ray
Maureen Kincaid Speller reviews this new book from the author of The Weekend Novelist, concluding that:
'For the first-time redrafter, Ray’s methods provide a good foundation, and most importantly, they use a clear timetable. Over eighteen weekends (that is, four and a half months), a writer can carry out the work necessary for an effective rewrite of a novel, and have the manuscript ready to go.'
3rd Report from the London Book Fair
Chas Jones's final report from the LBF looks at academic publishing, where the author's wish to publish quickly may conflict with the publisher's preference for the slow and considered approach.
2nd Report from the London Book Fair
Chas Jones reports on ebooks, where the focus was on the adoption of an ebook design standard, which will offer publishers inter-operability between present and future hardware platforms.
1st Report from the London Book Fair
Reports on Twenty twenty vision - a view of the future, a future which will be fundamentally altered by digitisation.
Latest changes in the book trade
Bookselling
Chris Holifield gives an update on recent changes in the bookselling world, including the effects of recession and an even greater focus on bestsellers.
London Book Fair Masterclass 2009
Here's our report from the 2009 Masterclass at the London Book Fair, where a packed audience listened intently to a varied group of speakers in a session chaired by journalist Danuta Kean. Bill Swainson, senior editor at Bloomsbury and Simon Trewin, co-head of the book department at new agency United Agents, were joined by authors Kate Mosse, Lola Joye and Gareth Sibson.
Writing for Children 1
Writing for Children 2
Two extracts from Linda Strachan's Writing for Children:
'One of the most exciting things about writing for children is the sheer diversity. You have different ages to choose from; you can write picture books, easy readers, short books for more confident readers, or novels – each quite different in length and often in content.'
Poetry: Notes from a passionate poet
Benjamin Zephaniah describes his fascinating route to being published in an excerpt from the Writers and Artists’ Yearbook 2009.
Help for Writers
Check out this page to find links to the huge number of useful articles on this site, including Finding an Agent and Making Submissions.
Review of Writers’ Market UK and Ireland 2010
Our reviewer's view was that: 'This packs a lot of information into its 976 pages and is very good value for money at £12.99... The result is a useful handbook for any writer, which delivers a great deal of useful information in an easily accessible form.'
Salt's Just One Book campaign.
Kate Mosse's advice to unpublished writers
'There’s only one difference between published and unpublished writers and it is this – the first group see their work in print on the shelves of Waterstone’s or Tesco or online at Amazon; the second group are yet to have physical evidence of the hours, weeks, years spent fashioning words into their patterns. You are already a writer.' From the Foreword to the Writers and Artists' Yearbook 2009.
New Categories series
Writing Romance
This is the third article in a new series by Chris Holifield which will cover the major writing genres. It looks at romance, which is dominated in the UK and the US by Mills and Boon Harlequin, which brings out 120 books a month. Study their guidelines before you get started or at least before you submit to them.
Writing Science Fiction and Fantasy
Agents' Listings
The agents' listings from the 2009 Writers' and Artists' Yearbook can be searched and provide the most up-to-date information about literary agents across the world:
Agents from the rest of the world
Our Editorial Services for writers
Check out the 16 different editorial services we offer, from Reports to Copy editing, Typing to Rewriting.
WritersPrintShop
If you're thinking about self-publishing, this is the place to find out what's involved. If you're ready to go ahead, our high quality service is second to none and there's an economy version for those who want to tackle some of the work themselves. You can estimate the cost for yourself.
We Watch the web for writers
Our huge section on technology and the web, and how writers can make use of them, takes you from beginner-level articles to advanced technology.
WritersServices editor Kay Gale has many years of experience dealing with the slush-pile. Here are her tips on how to get your submission through it.
Tips for Writers
Our new series for writers:
New technology and the Internet
Self-publishing - is it for you?
Promoting your writing (and yourself)
Submission to publishers and agents
Choosing a Service
Are you having difficulty deciding which service might be right for you? This useful new article by Chris Holifield offers advice on what to go for, depending on what stage you are at with your writing.
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WritersServices.com Magazine June 2009