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'There have been a series of events on the
bookselling front which may mark a seismic shift. In the States, Borders have
gone into liquidation after what seems like months - or even years - of
teetering on the brink. And in the UK Amazon has swooped on its successful
competitor, The Book Depository, buying out the competition. News Review
reports.
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'Do you want to find out how to publish your work as
an ebook? This is something you may be thinking about, in view of the rapid
growth in ebook sales. Many authors are suffering from a big contraction in
their earnings. Midlist authors have found it increasingly difficult to get
their books published by mainstream publishers and may be looking for the the
chance to go it alone with ebook versions of their books.' News Review
investigates.
-
'It looks as if the campaign against closing
libraries in the UK has just scored a significant victory. Since the Culture
Minister Ed Vaizey, has failed to intervene to assert the statutory right to a
library service, campaigners all over the country have rallied to challenge the
closures being put in place by local authorities. Up to 500 libraries in the
UK are at risk as a result of the UK government’s current
austerity drive.' News Review reports on the campaign.
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'Rather to the amazement of the publishing world, J
K Rowling, long a bye-word for her loyalty to her agent and publishers, has cut
out her publisher Bloomsbury and set up a new site to sell ebook versions of her
books direct to her readers... Even more surprisingly, Rowling has announced that
she has left her agent of 16 years, Christopher Little,
and moving to a new agency, The Blair Partnership, set up by Neil Blair, the
lawyer who worked with her at the Christopher Little Agency.' News
Review reports on the latest surprising news.
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'The British Library and Google have just announced
a partnership to digitise 250,000 out-of-copyright books from the Library’s
collections. Opening up access to one of the greatest collections of books in
the world, this demonstrates the Library’s commitment to increase access to
anyone who wants to do research. ' News Review reports.
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The novelists' task: 'To find an adequate
narrative vehicle for the most difficult stuff at the core of me, in the
hope that that might resonate with the reader who otherwise has been
feeling alone with those deep, difficult feelings...' Jonathan
Franzen in the Sunday Telegraph's Seven
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'Actually, there's hardly a mainstream genre
(fiction, history, children's books, poetry) that's not undergoing significant
change, attributable to the liberation of the new technology, from ebook to
Kindle: poets developing apps, J K Rowling linking Harry Potter to cyberspace,
would-be novelists launching their work as
ebooks.' Robert McCrum in the Observer
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'When I'm writing a picture book, I automatically
think "I don't need to say that" because the pictures will say it. Or better
still, "I'll say this and the pictures will say that, which contradicts it.' Allan Ahlberg in the
Guardian
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'I always say "Please edit me", because I
don't want to write those big, flabby books where the writer's making
loads of money and nobody wants to tell them that it's crap. You know
who I'm talking about. You have to take your ego out of it and say, do I
want people to be obsequious to me or do I want to write good books?'
Denise Mina, author of The End of the Wasp Season, in
the Independent on Sunday
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'Although it is hard for many of us to emotionally
detach ourselves from the book as an incredible medium, what with all its
historical contributions to humanity, we must admit that the concept of the book
as the best delivery system for knowledge and information is, in fact, dead.' Julius Wiedemann
of Taschen, in the Huffington Post.
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'Writing for television is such a strange world, you
have to write up to 25 episodes of a programme each year and you need to create
a lot of drama. You end up thinking: "Have we done this before and if we
have, will anyone notice?"' John Stephens, author of The Emerald Atlas
in the Bookseller
'I have been successful probably because I
have always realized that I knew nothing about writing and have merely tried
to tell an interesting story entertainingly.'
Edgar Rice Burroughs
Help for Writers
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Blurb-writing
Our new service is for anyone who is having
difficulty producing their cover of 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.
John Jenkins' July
column
John introduces Dr
Bernard Lam's Guarding the Queen's English, which he
can 'recommend to all writers and would be
writers, particularly those bewildered by me and I, who and whom, it’s and its,
that and which, who’s and whose.'
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.
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 new article by Chris Holifield offers advice on what to go for,
depending on what stage you are at with your writing.
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:
Magazine index
Our book review section
Our Editorial
Services for writers
Check out the 17 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. |
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.
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.
John's latest column is entitled 'A new
chapter for publishers' and deals with the vast changes sweeping through the
publishing world as the ebook rapidly gains a large audience - to his regret.
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 has just
been 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.
Improving your writing, Learning on the job, New
technology and the Internet,
Self-publishing - is it for you?,
Promoting your writing (and yourself), Other kinds of writing, Keep up to date
and Submission to
publishers and agents
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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