18 January 2021 - What's new
18 January 2021
- ‘My father was a playwright so I grew up with reverence for writing. The sound of his typewriter clacking was one I grew to love. What I didn't know was how disappointed he was by the failure of his work to reach the West End. Later, I realised not all writing careers end in disappointment, and it was worth trying to make mine a success... Rose Tremain, author of The Colour, Restoration, The Road Home, Music and Silence, Merivel and 14 other novels, in the Telegraph's Stella.
- Are you hoping to submit your book to publishers? Will you plan to do this through an agent? Finding an agent shows you how to go about this: 'Many writers see being taken on by an agent as the first step in getting taken on by a publisher, because it is so difficult to get publishers to pay attention to unagented writers...'
- Or perhaps you want to self-publish your work? WritersServices offers a suite of services which help writers get their work into shape before they self-publish. Services for Self-publishers.
- Links from the publishing world: it's very topical this week of the inauguration, Writers sign letter to stop Trump administration book deals - Los Angeles Times; maybe not book-burning per se, but it's certainly the 21st-century, polite-society equivalent of it, Josh Hawley and the new world of book cancellations | The Spectator; textbook publishers had been trying to shift from paper to digital for years, but now Pandemic helps push audience for textbook publishers into the digital age; and a major project to republish books by black British writers that generally disappeared without trace before they could receive the recognition they deserved, Booker winner's mission to put UK's forgotten black writers back in print | Bernardine Evaristo | The Guardian.
- Our 19 Factsheets from the legendary Michael Legat are full of tips for the new writer or anyone who is trying to get their book published. From Literary agents to Copyright, from Libel to Submissions, this series is full of essential background information.
- Links about writers and their books: eight of her novels are to be made into TV dramas after the author secured a major deal with independent film company The Forge, Barbara Taylor Bradford novels slated for TV | The Bookseller; is this your problem - not knowing the answers to crucial questions, and not knowing which questions were which in the first place, Is Your Writer's Block Really Writer's Indecision? | Jane Friedman; Women ‘are routinely overlooked for awards,' Melinda Gates Donates US$250,000 to New Carol Shields Prize for Fiction; and more books being filmed, Dune And 14 Other Book-To-Movie Adaptations Coming In 2021 - CINEMABLEND.
- Get some professional help. If you're self-publishing, you need good quality copy for the cover. Our Blurb-writing service can provide a professionally written piece of cover copy. Submitting to agents but finding it difficult to write your own synopsis? Commission a Synopsis which will present your manuscript in the best possible light for submission.
- Miscellaneous links: Amazon and the Pandemic, COVID-19 and Book Publishing: Impacts and Insights for 2021; over the weekend fanfiction website Archive of our Own went down, People Are Reading So Much Fanfiction It's Crashing the Biggest Fanfic Website; Naver is the leading search engine and digital tools and services provider, a platform akin to Google, South Korea's Naver to Acquire Wattpad for $600 Million; and the Pandemic strikes again with move to streaming this Sunday, UK: TS Eliot Prize's Shortlisted Poets Set for Digital Readings.
- We have a new page which gives an editor's take on using pdfs, So what's wrong with PDFs? 'If you need your file to be edited, PDF is not the ideal format; in fact, it is practically the worst format you can choose. Why? Precisely because PDFs are designed not to be tampered with or changed. When you stop to think about it, editing is no more or less than a process of changing - and correcting - your file...'
- If you were thinking of entering The Times/Chicken House Children's Fiction Competition 2020, the closing date has been moved to 15 May, so there's plenty of time.
- In our Writers' Quotes: 'No author dislikes to be edited as much as he dislikes not to be published.' Russell Lynes