July 2004

News Review

This year the Edinburgh International Book Festival celebrates its 21st anniversary with over 650 events involving 550 authors, and expects to sell more than 185,000 tickets.
Reading at Risk, the NEA study shows that: 'Less than half of American adults now read literature, but the steepest and most worrying decline is amongst younger age groups, where the decline is 28%.'
The boom in second-hand books: ‘Used books are to consumer books as Napster was to the music industry.’ Lorraine Shanley
Hodder Headline on the block, as troubles at high street giant W H Smith force it to consider selling its publishing arm to plug a hole in the pension fund.

Comment

'You can have deep, interesting ideas, but the story must be there... No one reads anything without a story to carry them through... ' Nicola Morgan
'It's only 25 years ago, but go back to the British book trade of 1979 and you find London dotted with dozens of small, independent imprints run by strong-minded mavericks.' Robert McCrum, the Observer
‘Literary criticism as a discourse available for, and even attractive to, the common reader has all but disappeared.' James Wood
In a novel or biography: 'its author can tap the reader on the shoulder, take us aside and share with us his or her own thoughts about the meaning of what is taking place.' Matthew Parris

Writers' Quotes

‘The sole end of literature should be to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.' Samuel Johnson

Poster

This month's new poster deals with Experts - who needs them?

How Not to Write a Novel; Confessions of a Midlist Author

Our fourth excerpt from David Armstrong's entertaining book:

Well over 100,000 novels were published last year in the UK, and it often seems that only 9,999 of them are available in any bookshop that you enter.

Report from the Annual Writers' conference in Winchester

‘To be serious writers we must be disciplined, and make sacrifices.'

Bob's Journal goes into its 4th volume

Bob's now on his seventh EastEnders script.

'Tell myself having my brilliantly original ideas chewed to pieces is all part of the collective process of creating a good script.'

This week

Inside Publishing

A new article in this series deals with copyright and how to protect your writing.

Reviews

The second in our new series focusing on writers' magazines looks at Writer's Digest.

Writers' Forum Column

'To be a writer you must be published', but here's another lawyer turned writer who is making it into the big time and challenging John Grisham.

The Editor's View from the Editor of Writers' Forum magazine.

Our latest article deals with the alarming subject of hoaxes and tells you how to identify both the same old one and the dangerous new one associated with the 'netsky' virus.

Check out article is about dealing with slow computers.

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