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'So, what has changed in the world of short stories?
Well, the biggest change is that the internet has made short stories more viable
by creating the possibility of publishing them online and using the internet to
find an audience for them. Because of the brief form, short stories can be read
online or even printed out, which, just like poetry, gives them a head-start
over novels. The short form also suits a time-pressured audience with an
increasingly short attention span.' News Review looks at what's happening.
-
'A recent posting on Publishing Perspectives took
the reader to their article on Pitchapalooza, written by authors David Henry
Sterry and his wife Arielle Eckstut, the duo known as The Book Doctors. The Book
Doctors invented ‘Putting Your Passion Into Print’, now known as
Pitchapalooza. This is an American Idol for books, where writers get
one minute to pitch their books to a panel of book professionals. The panel then
critiques their idea, evaluating everything from character to plot, presentation
to marketing, title to comparative books, befriending booksellers to finding an
agent... ' News Review reports.
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'E-book sales are astonishing'. So, given publishers' latest focus, are readers
switching to e-books at a staggering speed and is the whole market for books set
to change radically within a short space of time? The evidence for this is
actually a bit contradictory. News Review takes a look at the latest
studies.
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'So what’s the situation with the UK’s small funded
literature sector in the light of the enormous cuts which were announced last
week by the new coalition government? Literature is very much the poor relation when it
comes to Arts Council funding, with theatre, music and art all taking very much
larger slices of the pie. Arguing, quite reasonably, that literary fiction is
quite well provided for by commercial publishing houses, most of the literature
money is spent on poetry, with a small amount going to pay for the publication
of literary translations and some to programmes to support and develop writers.'
News Review investigates.
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'The recent Children’s Bookseller Conference in
London focused on a part of the publishing industry in relatively good health.
Children’s book sales have suffered less than adult books as a result of the
recession and they are only down 2% in the UK against an overall figure of 4%.
To be fair, this is partly because the sales of the Stephenie Meyer titles
(which are categorised as young adult) have bumped them up, but there is still a
greater sense of confidence in the children’s sector...' News Review reports.
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'I always look back to that and tell people if I had given up then, if I had said well I tried it and I'm
not good enough, it didn't work out, I would still be practising law right
now... I think so much of whatever we do in life is about hard work and it's
about luck... Emma Giffin, author
of Heart of the Matter in the Bookseller.
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'Fundamentally,
though, the need for publishers endures, even if not in their current form.
Readers will be best served by publishers who can marry the best of what is
sometimes labelled "legacy" publishing to the new means of developing and
delivering what readers want and writers need. And if that marriage is achieved,
then the persistent reporting of the death of old publishing will continue to be
mere exaggeration.’ Stephen Page, MD of Faber and Faber, in the
Guardian blog.
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'Of course, it didn't hurt that we had begun to write
fiction that's hugely enjoyable to read. And maybe that's the key part of the
answer. Maybe our present success has something to do with escaping from the
weight of misery that was at the heart of The Well of Loneliness:
the tradition Radclyffe Hall established of writing about crippled and damaged
lives...' Val McDermid in the Independent on Sunday on making
lesbianism mainstream.
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Poet to crime writer: 'Both have a massive preoccupation with structure. In
a poem, every word has to be in the right relation to every other word. In a
crime novel, if you are going to have a big revelation in chapter 30, you have
to plant the information in chapters three and 11.' Sophie Hannah in the Independent on Sunday
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'I can think of no end
of talented authors who are today poorly or even negligently represented. Is it
fair to deny them the possibility of better representation simply because the
more atherosclerotic parts of our industry consider competition to be
ungentlemanly? The lifeblood of business is competition. Other industries
thrive on it: we can too. Peter Cox of Redhammer Management and Litopia, in the
Bookseller.
‘I will never stop
writing. People often ask when I will retire, but I say it’s none of
their business. Writing defines who I am. I love the feeling of holding
a finished book in my hands, and then I can’t wait to start the great
adventure of writing the next one.’
Barbara Taylor Bradford
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What is bandwidth?
Chas Jones investigates: 'High bandwidth has been
likened to a multi-lane highway. This is a poor physical analogy because the
carrying capacity is increased by packing the digits nose to tail rather than
side by side but it will do.'
Crowd-sourcing
'The idea of turning a blog into a story is not
original but the idea of bloggers getting together to co-operate on the story
did seem to be original, combining the contributions, whether they are art work,
a soundscape, or a few words, which are brought together by an editor: or is the
editor really the author...?'
Chas Jones on crowd-sourcing 'one of the most
exciting ideas as the Frankfurt Book Fair.
Epub: Version 3
The business of international standards is not
normally the most exciting story in the world. But there was an infectious buzz
at the meeting where the latest version of Epub was being discussed at the
Frankfurt Book Fair 2010. Chas Jones' latest report from the Frankfurt Book Fair
looks at thisimportant new standard and what it means.
What is a
widget?
Chas Jones looks at how writers can use widgets to
promote their work and how viral marketing works.
What is metadata?
In this second article Chas Jones shows how
metadata is data about other pieces of data, how you can add your metadata and
how image metadata works.
Matera Women's
Fiction Festival: Writing historical fiction
Elizabeth Edmonson gave a masterclass at the Matera
Women’s Fiction Festival 2010.
Her opening point was that
'you must know yourself... creating a historical fiction
requires an extra dose of confidence, plus a real feel for the period and
subject. The challenge for the writer is to generate the complete,
imaginative environment for the reader which often means that they have to
distance them from their familiar frame of reference.'
'It is a brave person who stands up in front of an
audience of writers and creative people to tell them how to communicate. Writers
tend to believe it is one thing that they are good at! But that that is exactly
what Jesse Ponce did at the Matera Women's Fiction Festival 2010 when he talked
about making a pitch.
Like all good communicators he had one message that he wanted to convey in the
time allotted for this presentation. His message was ‘make sure you define your
objective’.'
Chas Jones reports.
John
Jenkins' October column
John's column recounts how he won the heart of his
prospective mother-in-law through a volume of Bryon's poems and provides a
glowing review of a travel book which takes you in the footsteps of the poet.
Screenplay assessment fictionalised
story
'Sarah had always been
fascinated by the cinema. As a little girl going to see a film was her favourite
treat and she was also interested in how movies got to be made. Her own
favourites were the films with really good stories, like Titantic and Avatar,
but she also liked the ones which were based on books, like Lord of the Rings
and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo...'
Our fictionalised stories of how our services
have helped writers give you some idea of what they can do.
Great review of WritersServices
We're complimented by Stuart Aken's review of our site in his blog
for 27 July:
'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
|
John Jenkins' November
column This month John has put
together a hilarious collection of howlers, ranging from
'Man kills self before shooting wife and daughter' to 'College dropouts cut in
half'.
Inside Publishing
series
This extremely useful 19-part series is in the
midst of being 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're on to
The Frankfurt Book Fair,
the Sales Department,
the Production Department,
Pricing and
Distribution.
And the third week it's
Books clubs and
Direct selling.
Our agents'
listings have been compiled from agents' own websites and other
information they publish about what they're looking for. You can use
them to research which agents to submit to.
The listings cover UK and US agents,
with separate listings for children's agents in the UK, and
international agents from all over the world.
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
Previous magazines:
August 2010
July 2010
Magazine index
Check out this page to find links to the huge number of useful articles on this site,
including Finding an Agent
and Making Submissions.
Our reviewer Maureen Kincaid Speller
concluded that: 'This is an unconventional book about writing,
inspirational as much as it is practical, and focusing on an aspect of
the writing process that isn’t much discussed. It would, I think, prove
a valuable addition to the writing bookshelf if you are at all
interested in the workshopping process and what it involves.'
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.
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.
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.
Our book review section
Reaching new poetry audiences
The Poetry Book Society has just announced the launch of two major new websites,
www.poetrybookshoponline.com and
www.poetrybooks.co.uk, which will provide a substantial way for poetry
readers to find out about poetry and to buy poetry books and CDs. It’s becoming
ever harder to find a decent selection of poetry in bookshops, so these new
sites offer a good way of finding out about the latest new poetry - and much
more - and buying it.
Our Editorial
Services for writers
Check out the 17 different editorial services we offer, from Reports to
Copy editing, Typing to Rewriting. |
