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Copyright ©
2001-08
WritersServices.com
| |
Check what's changed and when:
 | The site is normally updated every Monday (London dateline). |
The email newsletter keeps you informed about what's new
in the WritersServices site.
| If you 'subscribe' - it's free -
we send you the update and links each week. |
| This month's online Magazine is another way of catching
up with what's new on the site. |
14 July 2008
| Read our
Review of The Self-Publishing
Magazine
in which our reviewer concluded:
'You wouldn’t really compare it to the other magazines reviewed here, but for
anyone who is thinking about self-publishing it provides advice and
reassurance.’ |
| 'The stand-off between the Internet retailing giant, Amazon, and the
biggest trade (general) publisher in the UK, Hachette, is continuing.'
News Review looks at Amazon's
plans and how they affect authors. |
| Our latest My Say is Timothy
Hallinan's 'The Writing Session', which offers 6 tips on how to approach
your writing: 'The universe has a vast amount of material to offer
you, free of charge, for your book. If you write regularly, you’ll recognize
that material when it comes along. It could, ultimately, be the thing that
either saves your book or takes it to a higher level.' |
| Robert McCrum in the Observer, quoted in our
Comment column: ‘What I have described are the birth pangs of a golden age. The
market for the printed book is now global; the opportunities for the digital
book are almost unimaginable. To be a writer in the English language today
is to be one of the luckiest people alive.' |
| From our Archive: you can
read the 12 extracts from David
Armstrong's delightfully cynical How Not to Write a Novel: Confessions of a
Midlist Author. |
| 'Nobody asks you to do this. The world out there is not panting after
another novelist. We choose it.'
Paul Auster in our Writers' Quotes. |
7 July 2008
| The sixth article
in our series Changes in the
Book Trade looks at copyright under pressure, as two developments
- digitisation and the Internet concept of everything being free
online - challenge authors' key control of their intellectual
property. |
| In this week's News Review
we look at how the 2007 Cape Town Book Fair shows dynamic growth, but elsewhere in Africa
Book Aid needs support from all of us to deliver books to school-children and
students. |
| This week's Writing
Opportunity is the newly inaugurated Manchester Poetry Prize,
open to poets throughout the world and offering a handsome prize of
£10,000. Closing date 1 August. |
| We all need a bit of positive news in the midst of economic gloom
and this week it's provided by our
Comment from Luke Johnson, CEO of Borders UK: 'There are more books sold than ever before, the market is growing and more
people are reading...
I think the trade should be confident and optimistic.' |
| If you're thinking of getting some help from WritersServices,
Choosing a Service might
help to work out what you want, but if you're ready to submit
Your Submission Package and
Preparing your Manuscript might be what you need. |
| 'Writing a novel without being asked seems a bit like
having a baby when you have nowhere to live.'
Lucy Ellman in our Writers' Quotes. |
30 June 2008
| Wikipedia's 683 million visitors give it a head start against
new competitor Citizendium. News
Review reports on how they're slugging it out. |
| We've carried out a links update and added many new
links of special interest to writers. |
| 'In adult literature there seems to be this pressure to ‘say’
something, especially something that’s ‘never been said before’ but I found I really enjoyed myself when I started to do
it for children.’ Emma Clayton, author of the The Roar, in
Publishing News,
quoted in our Comment
column. |
| If you've been preparing your work for submission, have a
look at our Services to see how we
can help you get
your work in good shape to send out, or look through the hundreds of pages
listed in our Advice for
Writers. |
| Our Writing Opportunity
this week is the Peter Ustinov Screenwriting Award, open to
all non-US writers under the age of 30 and closing on 15 July. |
| 'Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as
much as you please.' Oliver Goldsmith, quoted in our
Writers' Quotes.
|
23 June 2008
| Rights tussles dominate the news, as American publishers look
towards international and e-books for expansion in a declining market.
News Review on the
changing picture. |
| Our latest Writer's
Success story is Jhumpa Lahiri, whose latest collection
Unaccustomed Earth went straight to the top of the American
bestseller lists, even though it is both literary and a collection of
short stories. |
| On the same theme, in our
Comment section: 'Literary fiction gets you the accolades and awards but no
marketing budget, a small print run, and no one can find your books in a
bookstore. Commercial fiction has marketing, advertising, larger print
runs, and you are reaching people which, ultimately, was what I wanted to do.' Jodi Piccoult in the Independent on Sunday. |
| Have you tried our page on
Using the
web as a research tool? There's also
Advanced
Searching to help you make the most of this wonderful resource. |
| There's still just time to enter your story or poem in the
Bridport International Creative Writing Competition
in our latest Writing
Opportunity (closing 30 June). Entry open to all writers over
18 around the world, entry fee £6. |
| Our software reviews
recommend (or don't recommend) a wide range of software specially
designed for writers. |
| And in our Writers' Quotes:
'Without words, without writing and without books there would be no
history, there could be no concept of humanity.' Hermann Hesse |
16 June 2008
| Writers' routes to
their audiences is the fifth article in our new series
Changes in the book trade.
This one explores the difficulties in getting published and offers new
hope through self-publishing and the Internet. |
| Children’s authors have staged a stunning rebellion against age-ranging on
children’s books. More than 50 British authors, led by Philip Pullman and all
five children’s laureates... have launched an extraordinary campaign.
News Review investigates. |
| Our Writing Opportunity
this week is the tempting Daily Mail/Transworld First Novel
Competition, open to UK and Irish residents only and closing on 2
July. |
| 'One of the things you notice is that when you switch on the
television and a student has gone mad with a machine gun on a campus
in America, it's always a writing student...' Hanif Kureishi in
provocative mode at the Hay Festival, quoted in our
Comment column. |
| Are you writing a biography or autobiography? Chas Jones's
article suggests how to approach it. |
| Last call for the Poetry Writers' Yearbook's own
competition, closing on 30 June.
Our page includes last year's winning poem and there's an
article by the judge, Gordon Kerr, and another article from the
book on
Epoety and Ezines. |
| 'The way British publishing works is that you go from not being
published no matter how good you are, to being published no matter how
bad you are.'
Tibor Fischer, in our Writers'
Quotes. |
9 June 2008
| Writing for the web is
quite different from writing for the printed page. Our latest checklist shows
you how to write web pages to attract and keep visitors. |
| News Review has the latest
despatch from the Turf Wars, as corporations flex their muscles and US
publishers demand global e-book rights in American authors. |
| 'So why is it that publishers seem to ignore the natural evolutionary
step of adapting their own novels to penetrate an increasingly lucrative
market? It’s down to a clash of cultures.' Andy Briggs on graphic novels
in Publishing News, quoted in our
Comment column. |
| We have two Opportunities ,
mostly for UK writers, this week literaturetraining's bulletin and a writing
course at Godmersham Park, a beautiful house where Jane Austen's brother
lived. |
| Are you trying to get your poetry published?
Our
Review of 101 Ways to Make Poems Sell by Chris Hamilton-Emery of
Salt Publishing said: 'A self-help book for poets... If you’re
serious about selling your poems, this book is a must.'
Books
we've reviewed. |
| Stephen King's advice on writing is: 'If you want to be a writer, you
must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot...reading is
the creative center of a writer's life...you cannot hope to sweep someone else
away by the force of your writing until it has been done to you.' In our Writers' Quotes.
Stephen King |
2 June 2008
| Sherry Rifkin offers
Five Tips for Promoting Your Book Online. She shows you how to
be thoroughly tech-savvy and gives a quick guide to what you can do to
promote your book around the world. |
| ‘Heavy readers’ are changing. Book covers do influence purchase. Three
recent reports relating to book consumers paint a striking picture of changes in
book purchasing. News Review
reports on some striking new trends. |
| Our Writing Opportunity
this week is Sharps, the BBC writersroom TV script-writing
competition, open to residents of UK and Eire and closing on 16 June. |
| If you're trying to get your work ready for publication, have a look at
our 16 Services,
everything from
Reports
to
Scriptwriitng assessment, from
Copy
editing to
Manuscript Polishing. |
| 'Fiction and non-fiction are shelved in separate sections of a bookshop
for good reason. However imaginative its variations, fiction conforms to
amazingly strict narrative criteria.' Lionel Shriver on the
Madeleine McCann case, writing in the Sunday Telegraph,
in our Comment column. |
| From our archive, you can still read excerpts from Evan Marshall's
useful book,
Novel
Writing: 16 Steps to Success, published by A & C Black. |
| 'Out of the quarrel with others we make rhetoric; out of the quarrel
with ourselves we make poetry.' W B Yeats in our
Writers' Quotes. |
| The June Magazine is ready! |
26 May 2008
| Is self-publishing 'really great' or career suicide? The
fourth article in
our series Changes in the
book trade looks at the advantages and pitfalls involved in
self-publishing. |
| 'Book lovers are financially astute. They have
appropriate levels of borrowing and have kept their credit cards under
control.' Polly Jaffe at the London Book Fair, in the
Bookseller, quoted in our
Comment column. |
| The Journal of a
Virtually Unpublished Writer, Bob Ritchie's despatches from the
front line, started in 2001
and come right up to late last
year. They make addictive reading. |
| 'Amazon has dominated the headlines in the book trade press over the last
few months, as it has taken a more aggressive approach to its plans for growth.'
News Review has the (quite
alarming) story. |
| Our latest Writing
Opportunity is the new Edwin Morgan International Poetry
Competition, open to all and closing on 2 June, which has a first
prize of £5,000. |
| Will your book have illustrations? Find out how
Picture Libraries work and
browse our list of some of the best ones, with
notes on their special areas. |
| 'To be a well-favoured man is the gift of fortune; but to write
and read comes by nature.' William Shakespeare in our
Writers' Quotes. |
19 May 2008
| How will the digital future affect book publishing? The
second of two articles
completes our report on the seminars on Digitisation at the London
Book Fair. The first article. |
| News Review looks
at Susie Dent's forthcoming Words of the Year, which highlights
new words, and concludes that: 'Writers for whom English is their
native language have a huge advantage in reaching a worldwide market'. |
| This week's Writing
Opportunity is the Rod Hall Memorial Award for a play, worth
£5,000. It's open to UK writers only and closes on 1 June. |
| ‘I try to write so much a day. I set myself a small target, ie
to write for an hour or perhaps 250 words and not to do anything else.
You find once you start that you’ve written for hours or 1,000 words.' Celia Rees, author of Sovay in the Bookseller,
quoted in our Comment
column. |
| Looking for an agent? Use our searchable database to find
the right one for you.
UK,
US
and
International agents are all listed. |
| 'A bad book is as much of a labour to write as a good one; it
comes as sincerely from the author's soul.'
Aldous Huxley in Point Counter Point, quoted in our
Writers' Quotes. |
12 May 2008
 | What is the digital future?
Digitisation at the London Book Fair is a report on the excellent LBF
seminars on digitisation, the subject of the moment as far as the book world
is concerned. The first of two articles focusing on issues most relevant to
writers. |
|
| 'When it comes to women's fiction, critics have a condescension
chromosome. The demeaning label chick-lit says it all.'
Kathy Lette in The Times,
quoted in our
Comment
column. |
|
| Are print encyclopedias dead? It rather looks as if they might be.
News Review looks at Brockhaus and
Britannica. |
|
| Are you thinking about taking out a subscription to a magazine for
writers?
Our magazine review section
can help you decide which one to go for. |
|
| Our latest new pages cover
Getting your poetry published and putting together
Your
submission package. |
|
| ‘But those who cannot write, and those who can,
All rhyme, and scrawl, and scribble, to a man.’
Alexander Pope from our listing of
Writers' Quotes. |
5 May 2008
|
| J K Rowling's recent appearance in court to protect her
copyright raises key issues relating to copyright infringement and
'passing off'. News
Review investigates. |
|
| Our latest
Success story looks at Colin Cotterill's unusual route to
authorship and his entertaining website, featuring ‘The Writing Chappy’,
‘The Cartooning Chappy’ and ‘The normal having a life Chappy’. |
|
| ‘All prizes have eligibility criteria: nationality, or ethnic origin, or
language, or country of residence, or subject matter, or religion. For those who
see the world in negative terms, prizes celebrate the achievements of one group
at the expense of another.' Kate Mosse defends the Orange Broadband Prize
for Fiction. Quoted in our Comment
column. |
|
| An Editor's Advice
is a new series is based on the advice Maureen Kincaid Speller, a
long-serving WritersServices freelance editor, has given writers over the years.
The series covers
Dialogue,
doing further
drafts, genre writing,
planning,
points of
view, autobiography and travel and
manuscript presentation. |
|
| Our latest Writing
opportunity is the slightly elusive 2nd Annual RBA
International Crime Fiction Award, which offers a
substantial125,000 euros (£97,718 or $192,739) in prize money for the
winning crime novel as an advance against publication. |
|
| 'Writing is a dog's
life, but the only life worth living.'
Gustave Flaubert's conclusion can be found in our
Writers' Quotes, along with
hundreds of other interesting remarks. |
|
| The May magazine is
ready! |
21 April 2008
| Top Ten Tips for
nonfiction writers from Julie
Wheelwright, programme director, MA Creative Writing Nonfiction provides a
helpful checklist for all writers. |
| News Review on the Bologna
and London Book Fairs: 'In summary, these were two lively and upbeat book
fairs, showing that the global book business is in surprisingly strong shape.' |
| We've added some new quotes to
Rotten Rejections On Jack Kerouac: 'His frenetic and scrambled prose perfectly express the feverish travels of
the Beat Generation. But is that enough? I don't think so.' |
| Are you considering getting your work copy edited or proof-read?
This article explains the difference. |
| 'Done badly, fantasy is more risible than any other genre, perhaps because
there is such a fine line between heroic endeavour and bathos.' Amanda Craig
in The Times, quoted in our Comment
column. |
| Have you ever thought of setting up your own small business? Ros Jay's
The Golden
Rules of Starting a Small Business is from our archives and is just as
useful now a it was when we first published it. |
|
'Literature, with a capital L, unless preserved by Time, has always been
in a bad way, but books considered as merchandise have not.' Denys Val
Baker in The Author, in our
Writers' Quotes. |
14 April 2008
| The third article in our series Changes in the book trade deals with Print
on demand and the Long Tail, looking at how they are changing the
economics of publishing, enabling backlist to be kept in print and
book buyers to source a vast range of books. |
| Earlier articles dealt with
Bookselling and
Publishing. |
| News Review focuses
on the agency world. Agent Pat Kavanagh says: 'You can’t be
thinking about what’s happening to the share price, or whether
shareholders are going to be cross with you. All that matters is doing
the right job for your writers, even if it means turning something
down that’s very lucrative.’ |
| 'Malorie Blackman and Benjamin Zephaniah may entice a more ethnically mixed
audience, but the answer can’t be black writers for black kids and white for
white. We cannot be cosy about the debate any more.’ Anthony Horowitz, author of Snakehead in the
Bookseller,
quoted in our Comment
column. |
| There's still time to seize our latest
Writing Opportunity,
which is the Templar Poetry Pamphlet & Collection Competition 2008,
open to all poets writing in English and closing on 30 April. |
| If you're trying to get your work ready for publication, have a look at
our 16 Services, everything from
Reports
to
Scriptwriitng assessment, from
Copy
editing to Manuscript Polishing
and including work intended for
Children. |
|
'I've been reading reviews of my stories for twenty-five years, and
can't remember a single useful point in any of them, or the slightest
good advice. The only reviewer who ever made an impression on me was
Skabichevsky, who prophesied that I would die drunk in the bottom of a
ditch.' Anton Chekhov, in our
Writers' Quotes. |
7 April 2008
|
The last extract from The
ABC Checklist for New Writers deals with titles and why they
matter:
'The title of your work is the first thing the editor will read and,
if it doesn’t grab her attention, she may put down your submission in
favour of one more intriguingly titled.' |
| The five earlier extracts deal with
Agents,
Editors,
Keeping
records,
Marketing and
Professionalism. The book
provides an essential guide for writers. |
| The Friday Project goes into liquidation and Borders US puts
itself up for sale. News Review
looks at the latest bad news from the book world. |
| Competing against 8,000 anonymous entries, the Poetry Society's
National Poetry
Competition was won this year by Sinead Morrissey, with a superb
poem, which you can find on this page. |
| Do you need to carry out research for your writing? Here's
how to use
the web as
a research tool, or you could read
our
review of Ann Hoffmann's excellent Research for Writers. |
| ‘I was in the airport lounge at Heathrow, wanting something big and juicy
for the sun lounger and looking in the commercial women’s fiction section.' Novelist Tasmina Perry in The Times
on why she's contributing to the return of the bonkbuster, in our
Comment column. |
| Sign up for our weekly
newsletter to get an update of what's new on the site. |
|
As Goethe wrote: 'The world is so great and rich, and life so full
of variety, that you can never lack occasions for poems.' Find
this and hundreds of interesting thoughts in our
Writers' Quotes. |
31 March 2008
| What is Creative Commons?
When WritersServices first covered Creative Commons in
Inside Publishing, we felt we hadn't explained how it worked as
clearly as we'd hoped to do. Now Frances Pinter, who works as a
consultant on the project, explains this highly significant new
approach to the licensing of rights. |
| 'Skellig was
taken by the first publisher to read it, won a string of prizes, and has been
published in 30 languages. I was an overnight success after almost 20 years.' David Almond in The Times,
quoted in our Comment
column. |
| The
2007 Diagram Prize winner of the prize for the oddest book title of the year -
a barmy winner from a
vintage crop. |
| Won’t anyone stick to what they’re good at? London literary agency PFD
is setting up an agreement with print on demand printer Lightning Source to bring
their authors’ work back into print. News Review
reports. |
| Having problems with Repetitive Strain Injury? Check your
symptoms in our
Health
Hazards series before they get any worse. |
|
‘There’s a lot of
tasteful writing out there – nice, tidy, clean – but sometimes it’s excess,
rawness and the unpolished that work.’ Dan Vyleta, author of Pavel & I,
quoted in our Writers' Quotes. |
24 March 2008
| Less successful writers’ income is under increasing pressure
from the focus on bestsellers and the Internet.
News Review finds some
more positive trends. |
| Our latest success
story shows how Russell Ash's website for his title
Potty, Fartwell and Knob, Extraordinary but True Names of British
People has helped to create a buzz and make it into a bestseller. |
| 'My aim, as a poet in the community, is always the same: to make people go away
thinking ‘Is that what poetry is? I can do that!’' Ian McMillan's article on The Poet in the
Community: A little adventure on 57 Productions’ website, is quoted from in
our Comment column. |
| Our Writing Opportunity
this week is the Dylan Thomas Prize for Young Writers who for a fee of
£100 can submit commercially published work in a number of genres for
the £60,000 prize. |
| If you've been brushing up your work over the break, have a
look at our Services to help you get
your work ready for submission or look through the hundreds of pages
listed in our Advice for
Writers. |
|
And the last word goes to Francois-Rene, Vicomte de Chateaubriand, in
our Writers' Quotes: An
original writer is not one who imitates nobody, but one whom nobody
can imitate.'
|
17 March 2008
|
Professionalism is the
subject of the fourth extract from the ABC Checklist for New Writers,
an indispensable reference for every writer. |
| Half of all book sales in the UK are at a discount but 6% more
books were sold in 2007 than in 2006.
News Review also has good news
on book sales and the Internet. |
| The shortlist for the wonderful
Diagram Prize for 2007 has been announced, giving us a whacky selection of the
oddest titles of the year. |
| 'Why pay £16.99 ($35) for a novel by
someone you've never heard of when you could buy three or four paperbacks for
the same price?' Scott Pack of the Friday Project on the hardback/paperback
debate in the Bookseller, quoted in our
Comment column. |
| Two opportunities directed to UK Black and Minority ethnic
writers are the focus of this week's
Writing Opportunities. |
| The 19-part Inside Publishing
series gives you an insight to what's going on in publishing. From
Advances and royalties to
Copyright, this is the place to
find the inside story on publishing. |
|
'I dislike modern
memoirs. They are generally written by people who have either entirely lost
their memories, or have never done anything worth remembering.' Oscar Wilde
in our Writers' Quotes. |
10 March 2008
| The second article in our new series
Changes in the
book trade deals with
Publishing. Chris Holifield looks at the book trade and
investigates how fundamental changes in how it works are affecting
writers. |
| Do reading promotions work?
News Review looks at the UK's World Book Day and the National Year
of Reading and examines some figures which show that Quick Reads have
changed attitudes to books. |
| Sign up for our newsletter
to keep up to date with new stuff on the site. |
| 'We whine a lot, but it's not so hard. You stay in fancy
hotels, and go to signings where people buy your books and want your
autograph and tell you lots of nice things…' Harlan Coben on
authors on the road in Publishing News, quoted in our
Comment column. |
| Open to all unpublished writers writing in English, the fiendishly
complicated Bookhabit Competition provides our latest
Writing Opportunity. |
| Are you looking for a book to help with your writing? Our
WritersBookStall lists over 200 titles, indexed by subject and available from Amazon, which
could help you on your way. |
|
Jane Austen on the novel: 'Oh it is only a novel... In
short, only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are
displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the
happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit
and humour, are conveyed to the world in the best chosen language.' In our Writers' Quotes. |
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