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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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'Australia breaks into the international publishing
news less often than it should, but last week government minister Nick Sherry
hit the headlines when he said: ‘I think in five years, other than a few
specialist booksellers in capital cities we will not see a bookstore, they will
cease to exist.’ He believes it is ‘inevitable’ that
online shopping would wipe out general bookstores within five years, leaving
only specialist shops in capital cities.' News Review reports on events down
under.
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'An article in last week’s Bookseller looks at
the long-heralded death of the mid-list. Discussions about this have been going
on as long as anyone in the business can remember, but this time it really does
look as if we’re on to the last rites. The economics of contemporary publishing dictate that
it’s more efficient for publishers to publish fiction at a higher level and to
focus on new authors, rather than going for the long slow build, as they used to
do. This means a bigger up-front investment in a new author, in terms of both
advance and promotion, to build them into an instant bestseller. The reason for
this seemingly risky strategy on the part of publishers is the way the book
trade will support or not support the author in question.' News Review
investigates.
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'Never has there been a time when so much is
changing so fast in the world of books. Seminars and discussion from Book Expo
America last week underlined the way things are going, and it’s a scary prospect
for people who have spent their lives in publishing or bookselling.' News
Review reports on the scrum.
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'Other news stories had to be shelved with the news
yesterday that Waterstone’s has been bought by Russian oligarch Alexander
Mamut’s A&NN Group. Although this negotiation has been a bit long drawn-out, the
news has been well-received and is in contrast to the situation in the United
States, where Borders continues to teeter on the brink. The troubled HMV group
has only raised £53m in the sale, considerably less than they had originally
hoped for.' News Review on the latest news.
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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
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‘A few weeks ago, I was talking to a group
of writers online. The subject was what an author can do for herself if
her book isn’t chosen to get the "big love" from her publisher. We all
knew what she meant: each season, it seems like some books are selected
for star treatment — often, but not always, debut novels — and all the
rest are left to take off, or more likely, fade into obscurity, without
much support... '
Lisa Tucker, author of The Promised World in Publishing Perspectives.
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Writing biographies: ‘If you get to hate them you
should give up the book! But it is a bit like being married. You have
days when you feel fed up and days when you feel passionately in love.
Dickens did terrible things in his life. But a good thing about being
old is that you’ve seen it, you’ve done it. You know we all do terrible
things… Claire Tomalin, author of nine biographies, with
Charles Dickens : A Life coming later this year.
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‘The inevitable disappearance of the vast
majority of bookshops will remove a main marketing channel and will
seriously undermine the power of publishers. It will also increase the scary dominance of
Amazon. Book printers will, sadly, mostly go out of business, and physical books
will become more expensive as a consequence of reduced economies of scale.
Public libraries, as repositories of physical volumes, will disappear…
UK investor Luke Johnson, former Chairman of Borders UK, in Publishers’ Lunch.
'If you have other
things in your life - family, friends, good productive day work - then
these can interact with your writing and the sum will be all the
richer.'
David Brin
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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.
Historical Writers' Association
Novelist Manda Scott has formed the Historical
Writers’ Association as a forum for writers and to promote the genre. The
internet-based group already boasts around 100 members including authors, agents
and editors, and is open to writers of historical fiction and non-fiction.
Poetry Book
Society fights Arts Council England funding withdrawal
The tiny Poetry Book
Society is fighting back against the Art's Council's shocking decision to remove
its funding completely in one year's time.
Carol Ann Duffy, the UK
Poet Laureate, was widely quoted in the press last week: "This news goes beyond
shocking and touches the realms of the disgusting. The PBS was established by T
S Eliot in 1953 and is one of poetry's most sacred churches with an influence
and reach far beyond its membership. This fatal cut is a national shame and a
scandal and I urge everyone who cares about poetry to join the PBS as a matter
of urgency."
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:
May
April
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. |
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.
Ideas for stories begin in many different places:
A snatch of dialogue
A character
A title
Sometimes from a news fragment from TV or
newspapers.
Whatever the start point, the crucial question –
whether from Aristotle to Shakespeare or Sam Goldwyn to Stephen Spielberg is:
What’s the big idea?
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
Check out this page to find links to the huge number of useful articles on this site,
including Finding an Agent
and Making Submissions.
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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