29 June 2015 - What's new
29 June 2015
- 'When John Spurling won the £25,000 Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction recently with The Ten Thousand Things it was much more than a good win against a formidable shortlist, which included Martin Amis, Helen Dunmore, Adam Foulds and Kamila Shamsie. The subject was obscure perhaps to a western audience, the story of Wang Meng, one of his era's great masters of painting and the novel was Spurling's fourth, although it had taken him 15 years to write...' This week's News Review
- 'Becoming a writer is like changing your gender. When I was young, my identity was as a Paki, a mixed-race mongrel boy from nowhere. The idea of having another identity as a writer seemed like a splendid solution to that. My place in the world was different. It created a future for me...' Hanif Kureishi in The Times magazine provides our Comment.
- Our 19-part Inside Publishing series gives you a really useful insider's take on the publishing world, covering everything from subsidiary rights to the world English language market, from advances and royalties to the writer/publisher financial relationship.
- The 2015 Manchester Writing Prize: The Manchester Fiction Prize is our Writing Opportunity this week. Open to all writers across the world aged 16 and over, the prize is £10,000 and there's an entry fee of £17.50. Closing on 25 September. Other Writing Opportunities which are still open.
- Authors often find it difficult to write their own synopsis for submission to publishers, which is where our Synopsis-writing service can help. If you're preparing to self-publish and having difficulty with your blurb, our Blurb-writing service might be what you need.
- Our links this week: Andy Weir, author of the wildly popular sci-fi novel "The Martian," is living the publishing dream, How Andy Weir's The Martian became so successful - Business Insider; Michael Bhaskar asks whether, after all the talk about ebook subscription services, they may be on the point of working, BookBrunch - Subscriptions: a recap, a forecast; an interesting interview with outgoing UK Children's Laureate, Malorie Blackman, Authors' Licensing and Collecting Society The ALCS News Interview: Malorie Blackman; and, from a highly respected guru on author's book marketing, AuthorBuzz Founder M.J. Rose on Book Marketing.
- The web as a research tool is a useful page showing you what a great research tool the web is for writers, helping you find a great many sites packed with information.
- More links: Lucinda Hawksley, great great great granddaughter of Charles Dickens, reflects on copyright law, then and now, Authors' Licensing and Collecting Society Charles Dickens, Copyright Pioneer; after a decade of closures, independent booksellers are optimistic they can turn the page on a story of decline, Indie revival: high street bookshops upbeat about next chapter in story | Books | The Guardian; and Publishing has a new question to ponder this week: what could Taylor Swift do for us? Swift's triumph: she got a tech giant to change its mind. Publishing's Swiftian future | The Bookseller.
- A new addition to our endorsements: 'Today I only want to say, "thank you". DM has done a truly great job. I have worked with her suggestions which have brought clarity and depth to my subject. Her work on my punctuation is brilliant. As I read through the manuscript now, it is like gliding on silk.' Helena Dodds
- 'Life being so short and the quiet hours of it few, we ought to waste none of them in reading valueless books.' John Ruskin in our Writers' Quotes.
- The May Magazine is ready!
