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'Amazon has been much in the news this last week.
After the announcement of it first big purchase for its new publishing arm at
the Frankfurt Book Fair, which sent tremors through the publishing world, it is
now consolidating its position on e-books. The deal in question may have
garnered the book for Amazon because of the high ebook royalty offered. But the
question is going to be whether the company can get the book into the book trade
– or will Amazon sales be enough? News Review reports.
-
'There is an increasing trend for older people to
write their own memoir and then to self-publish it, sometimes in a nice gift
edition. For many people looking back over their lives, the
motivation for this is to set it all down for the family, particularly the
grand-children, so that the story of their lives will not be lost but can be
passed down through the generations. To have a handsome volume to give to your
relatives is one thing, but for your own personal slice of family history to be
preserved for the future is also a great motivator.' News Review looks at
the trend.
-
‘On the
surface, there is little to distinguish this year’s Frankfurt Book Fair
from any other but beneath the frantic meetings, crowded aisles and
over-priced hotels the subtle shades of digital are stealing across the
landscape… a new global market in English-language e-books is fast
developing as the growing number of English-speaking readers worldwide
opt to buy the cheaper English variant instead of the more expensive
local-language product,’ says Publishing Perspectives Editor-in-Chief Ed
Nawotka. News Review at the Frankfurt Book Fair.
-
'The Historical Writers’ Association, which we
reported on last year, seems to have marked the coming of age of the genre of
historical fiction... It is strange
how genres come and go, with no obvious explanation, although sometimes the
success of one or two books can have a knock-on effect, reviving the market for
other similar books. News Review reports.
'A new Harris poll has
revealed that the number of Americans reading ebooks has doubled in the
last year. One in six Americans who do not have an ebook reader are
planning to buy one in the next year.'
News Review reports on the latest
developments in ebooks.
'Last week saw the unusual spectacle of an author
leaving her publisher because she thought the covers they put on her new book
were inappropriate. Polly Courtney said the image was too racy – and
she wanted her novel to be taken more seriously. 'News Review
reports.
- 'There's just too much stress on
authors. The business model seems to be that publishers want a book a
year. I wanted to spend time on my novels, but that isn't economically
viable...
Steph Swainston, fantasy author, who is abandoning
writing to become a chemistry teacher, in the Independent on Sunday.
- 'Peter (Kravitz - her editor) said to me,
I'll give you money for this. It had never occurred to me that anyone would
give you money for writing: I thought writers were wealthy people who just
wrote things out of the goodness of their heart and gave them as gifts. Janice Galloway, author of
All Made Up, in the Guardian
-
'Here’s the flat truth of it, my friends:
If you
are a midlist writer and you sign a traditional publishing contract with most
modern terms, and you do so with an agent—and not an IP attorney—negotiating for
you, you will not make any more than your advance on that book. And the
advance is not enough to live on. Kristine Kathryn Rusch
-
‘The next time you parachute a non-editor into a
commissioning role, take your best real editor and promote them to - let’s call
it - Structural Editor and pay them most of what you are going to pay the
commissioning editor in lieu of the kudos (and the rest of the salary); let them
work hand in hand with the commissioning editor and take care of the editorial
work that the commissioning editor isn’t really qualified to do.' Advice to
publishers from
Stephen Guise, former editor at Mitchell Beazley, Cassell and at Little,
Brown.
-
'One child in Edinburgh asked me who my main
competitors were. If Julia Donaldson didn't exist and her books didn't
exist, then I wouldn't have the readers. If I didn't exist then Anthony Horowitz
and Jo Rowling wouldn't have their readers. Children need lots of different
books. Adult writers are a lot more competitive, but with children you need this
vast amount... Francesca Simon, author of the Horrid Henry books, in
the Independent on Sunday
-
'The big debate for anyone at the moment is where
does publishing provide value? What is our role? In my view what we do is we
select, we nurture, we position, we promote, we leverage - but author care,
editorial expertise, design excellence - those things are absolutely critical...
Tom Weldon, CEO of Penguin UK in the Bookseller
'If booksellers wanted to be
millionaires, they'd be in another line of business.'
Godfrey Smith
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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.
Help for Writers
Use this page as a springboard to over 2,000
pages on the site.
Did you know – as you sit at your
state-of-the-art computer – that Qwerty has been going virtually unchanged for
around 140 years? Not many such useful inventions last that long without some
idiot trying to change them.
It’s a classic case of -- it works don’t fix it. These letters are now fixed
into the brains of millions of users and operate on millions of computers across
the world.
Set up your
own blog
In order to be in the best position to promote
yourself and your writing, it’s well worth setting up a blog. In case you find
this idea a bit alien, here’s why you should take the trouble to do this.
A blog offers you the
opportunity to start building an audience for your work and the chance to
experiment with writing about yourself and with different kinds of writing.
Many successful writers’ blogs start with a small readership of family and
friends, but build a good audience over the years. Relax and just write what
comes naturally, it makes sense for your blog to be more informal, more personal
than a standard piece of non-fiction writing and more lively than a slice of
autobiography, as there are no conventions that go with it.
Help get your book ready for
publication with an editorial service
Marti Norberg, who has worked as a reporter and
managing editor for several Colorado newspapers, advises on how to use an
editorial service (such as WritersServices)
to get your book ready.
Great review of WritersServices
We're complimented by Stuart Aken's review of our site in his blog:
'It is the Resources pages that really make this site stand out from the
crowd. Here you’ll find reviews of books and software, listings of agents,
self-publishing facts, educational matters, health and safety advice, and
there’s a new feature, reviewing writing magazines. You’ll see there is a
great deal of information on this site. It’s well presented and easily
navigated, which is as well, considering the number of pages. It’s a site I
browse often and I think you’ll benefit from a good look at this one.'
Read more.
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.
Previous magazines:
September
August
Magazine index
Our book review section
Writing Memoir and
Autobiography
Writing
Historical Fiction
Writing Romance
Writing Science Fiction and Fantasy
Writing Crime Fiction
Writing non-fiction
Are you having difficulty deciding which service might be right for you?
This useful article by Chris Holifield offers advice on what to go for,
depending on what stage you are at with your writing.
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.
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Our new service is for anyone who is having
difficulty producing their cover or jacket copy and may be especially helpful
for self-publishers. Let our skilled editor/writers do the job for you, so that
you end up with a professional blurb.
'Every biography begins with a single
sentence -
'Have you ever fancied writing your life story?
There is always a
market for biographies. Your story is equally exciting – a piece of social
history, fascinating to your family and perhaps a wider audience if you go about
it in the right way.'
Our latest new contribution: 'One agent wrote
to say my titles were so uncommercial that reading my synopsis made him laugh
and that he couldn't sell any of my titles to a publisher even if he had a
million years to try.'
Do you want to find out how to publish your
work as an ebook? Chas Jones's new series guides you through the process. The
first article provides a practical introduction to ebook publishing.
The second
article looks at metadata and explains the importance of getting the
metadata right.
The third article in Chas Jones's series
about ebook publishing deals with
Ebook
conversion and what you should think about before starting your own ebook
conversion, with an overview of the software.
The fourth article deals with
Preparing files for e-book conversion.
The final article is entitled
Selling and
Marketing Your Ebook and covers marketing through Amazon, Google and Ingrams,
being your own supplier, print and payment, and other marketing.
Update to our links
Our 23 lists of recommended links have just been
updated with many new links to sites of special interest to writers. these range
from
Writers Online
Services to
Picture libraries
and from Software for writers
to
Writers Magazines & Sites.
If you are
looking for copy editing online, it is difficult to ensure that you are getting
a professional copy editor who will do a good job on your manuscript.
WritersServices has now made its copy editing
service unique, as it will offer as standard two versions of your script, one
prepared using 'track changes' and one with all the changes accepted.
Writing
Historical Fiction
Our revised article on Writing Historical
Fiction brings this subject up to date.
Other articles cover
Writing Crime Fiction,
Writing Science Fiction and
Fantasy, Writing Romance,
Writing Non-fiction
and
Writing Memoir and
Autobiography.
Inside Publishing
series
This extremely useful 19-part series was
recently revised to take account of changes in the publishing world. The
introduction, How the publishing business
works,
Advances and royalties,
The Relationship between agents and
publishers,
Subsidiary rights,
The English-speaking publishing
world and
The Marketing
department have all just been brought up-to-date.
This second week we covered
The Frankfurt Book Fair,
the Sales Department,
the Production Department,
Pricing and
Distribution.
And the third week it was
Books clubs and
Direct selling.
The fourth covered Creative Commons
and the fifth
The Financial
relationship between writers and publishers. This completes the update
of the whole series.
Our Editorial
Services for writers
Check out the 18 different editorial services we offer, from Reports to
Copy editing, Typing to Rewriting. Check out this page to find links to the huge number of useful articles on this site,
including Finding an Agent
and Making Submissions.
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