Writers Magazine 2009

Keep up to date

1. To improve your chances of becoming a published writer it’s important to keep up with what is happening in the book world. The machinations of big publishers, the state of health of bookselling chains and the economic conditions affecting the book business may seem remote from you sitting at your computer, but all of these are going to have an impact on your writing career. Our weekly News Review and free newsletter are an immediate source of information and try also our series such as Changes in the book trade. Beyond that you could consider subscribing to the Bookseller in the UK or Publishers’ Weekly in the US, or checking out whether they’re available in your local library. Publishers Lunch (US) and Bookbrunch (UK) offer daily online news updates.
2. Keep a close eye on your favoured genre. If you’re writing fantasy or crime fiction it’s obviously important to know who’s selling and what the new trends are, but the same is equally true for non-fiction, where you may suddenly find that someone else has published a book on a subject you’ve been working on. It used to be rather laborious to get hold of publishers’ catalogues but now they are online, so it’s very much easier to do your research. Browse in bookshops too and see what else is out there.
3. It’s well worth considering a subscription to a writers’ magazine. Our Writers’ Magazine Reviews will help you find the right one for you, whether it’s Mslexia for serious women writers, the more mainstream Writers’ Forum and Writers’ News in the UK, Writer’s Digest in the US, ScriptWriter magazine or The Self-Publishing Magazine. We carry reviews of all of these on our site, so you can work out which one would be right for you.
4. Don’t underestimate the amount of useful information stored in writers’ reference books. There’s the listings of course, some of which can be found online (as in our own Writers’ and Artists’ Yearbook agents’ listings). But some of these books also have a mass of useful articles from real authorities in the field, many of whom are bestselling authors – and again we’d recommend the Writers’ and Artists’ Yearbook and its excellent sister publication, the Children’s Writers’ and Artists’ Yearbook.
5. Consider also the many books for writers. Most of these concentrate on advising on how to improve your writing, but there are some that take a wider approach to the book business. Track them down and buy them through a large bookshop or online through our WritersBookstall.
6. The web is a huge source of information and by tracking down interesting blogs, as well as sites for writers and publishers’ websites, you can find out a great deal about what is going on.
7. Use the huge resources on the WritersServices site to build up your knowledge of the book world and to find out how you can improve your writing. Go to Advice for Writers to find links to what is available.
8. The result of all this will be that you have a clearer idea of what is going on in the book world and will be able to make better informed decisions about what to write and how to go about getting it published or deciding to go for self-publishing.