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Log of the weekly changes on the site on 2008
This week's changes 2001
2002 2003
2004
2005
2006 2007 2008
Some of the links are broken when items are archived - Please check the
page address (url) and it should be fairly easy to find the original page
or section. The site search facility on each page is also a great way to
trace articles.
3 March 2008
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Marketing:
how to promote your book is the fourth extract from the ABC Checklist for New Writers,
an indispensable reference for the budding writer. |
| C S Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is the best
children’s book of all time, according to a recent poll conducted by the British charity Booktrust.
News Review looks at
how old favourites live on. |
| Our latest
Links update has refreshed our 21
sections of links reviews and listings, which range from Writers
Organisations to Writers' Web Resources. They've have been updated
with some useful new sites. |
| Peter Carey in The Times on teaching creative writing, quoted in our
Comment column.: 'I tell them to forget about the business… They'll figure it out in the end. If they haven't got talent, you're
not going to give it to them, but they will have it because you've chosen them.'
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| Our new Writing
Opportunity is the Mslexia Women's Poetry Competition,
open to all women, to be judged by Carol Ann Duffy and closing on 25
April. |
| Michael Legat's superb
Factsheets provide a superb brief introduction to writing. From
Revision to Plagiarism and
Copyright to
Plotting the novel. |
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‘I don’t believe in
writers’ block. Plumbers don’t get plumbers’ block. Why should writing be
the only profession that gives a special name to the difficulty of working.’ Philip Pullman, in our
Writers'
Quotes.
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The March
Magazine is ready!
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25 February 2008
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Have you ever wondered whether there’s any
point in Entering
competitions? Someone must be winning, but why is it somehow never
you? Our checklist helps you to review how you approach
competitions, to see if you can achieve a better result. |
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'The recent news of the $300m (£153m) Amazon purchase of Audible, the
digital audiobooks site, has made it the market leader.'
News Review looks at the
implications of Amazon's acquisition and also reports on the smash
success of cellphone novels in Japan. |
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We've updated many of the the 90+ pages about
our self-publishing service,
WritersPrintShop, making this the best online resource for
self-publishers. If you're wondering
whether
self-publishing is for you, this is the place to find out. |
| 'When most books are sold on the net as downloads, how will
this change their content? My hunch is that will finally spell the end of the novel.' Mark Booth
in the Independent on Sunday on how the new literary form will
arise on the Internet. |
| Our Writers'
opportunity this week is the latest in Julia McCutchen's
innovative series of of teleseminar interviews, available
anywhere in the world down the phone. This one deals with How
to Promote Your Writing Online. |
| In case this is all too much new technology, our pages on
Finding an Agent and
Working with an Agent may be what you're looking for. |
| And there's Dorothy Parker in reflective mode, in our
Writers' Quotes:
'Why, after all, should readers never be harrowed? Surely there is
enough happiness in life without having to go to books for it.' |
18 February 2008
| The third of six extracts from The ABC Checklist for New Writers by Lorraine Mace and
Maureen Vincent-Northam
gives essential but unglamorous advice on Keeping Records - why you need to
keep on top of submissions and financial information. |
| 'The e-book arrives - or does it? This week has seen two big publishers announcing initiatives to prepare
for the e-book world. At the same time, battle has been joined on e-book
royalties.' News Review reports. |
| Have you ever thought about setting up your own blog? This week's
Writing Opportunity links
to advice on doing just that. |
| 'You can't mess around - everything has to be plausible and has to have
happened, in some form, in the real world. So, I like my books to be
open-ended.' Stephen Leather, on writing thrillers in our
Comment column. |
| Are you trying to publish your poetry? If so, our
review of 101 Ways to Make
Poems Sell by publisher Chris Hamilton-Emery and our article on
Getting your poetry
published might be what you're looking for. |
| 'Writing well is at one and the same time good thinking, good feeling
and good expression; it is having wit, soul and taste, all together.'
George-Louis Leclerc, Comte du Buffon, in our
Writers' Quotes. |
| Sign up for our free newsletter to
keep up to date with the book world. |
11 February 2008
| Changes in the book
trade is a new series by Chris Holifield
which looks at the book trade and investigates how fundamental changes
in how it works are affecting writers. The first article deals
with Bookselling. |
| 'The writers have fought their corner and established their
importance to the entertainment industry, as well as their key role as
content-originators who must be paid for their contribution.'
News Review on the end of
the Writers' Guild strike. |
| 'Publishers are suspicious of activities they don't engage in themselves, and
it is increasingly up to the author/agent to prove an unfamiliar market
exists.' Alison Baverstock, author of How to Market Books, in
Publishing News, quoted in our
Comment column. |
| Our WritersBookstall offers over
200 books for writers, so it's a good place to find a book to help you
work on your writing. |
| Our latest Writing
Opportunity is the Peterloo Poetry Competition, open to all and
closing date 1 March 2008. |
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'Writers must fortify themselves with pride and egotism as best
they can. The process is analogous to using sandbags and loose timbers
to protect a house against flood. Writers are vulnerable creatures
like anyone else. For what do they have in reality? Not sandbags, not
timbers. Just a flimsy reputation and a name.' Brian Aldiss,
quoted in our Writers' Quotes. |
4 February 2008
| The second extract from The ABC Checklist for New Writers deals with
Editors - who they are and what they do
and provides a useful summary covering book and magazine editors. |
| The Association of Writers and Writing Programs now has 400 US colleges and
universities as members. News Review
looks at the worldwide boom in creative
writing courses. |
| Following on from last week's article on how to use
Google
placemarks,
Chas Jones shows you how to
add
overlays to Google Earth, using photos or creating a tour of your
chosen location. |
| If you're trying to get your work ready for publication, have a look at
our 16 Services, everything from
Reports
to
Scriptwriitng assessment, from
Copy
editing to Manuscript Polishing. |
| 'Finding an agent can be even harder than finding a publisher...' Mandy Little, MD of Watson Little in the Sunday Times,
quoted in our Comment columm. |
| This week's Writing Opportunity
is the Chapter One Novel Competition, open to UK residents, closing date 29
February. |
|
‘A writer is a maker,
not a man of action: his private life is of no concern to anybody but
himself, his family and his friends.’ W H Auden, discussing literary biography,
in our Writers' Quotes. |
| The February Magazine is
ready! |
28 January 2008
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International Book Fairs
2008 - our newly-updated list of 2008 book fairs around the world.
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Google Placemarks - Google’s wonderful earth
mapping offers you a way to supply a graphic to mark a particular
location, say a venue for an event you are organising, or where you
live. Chas Jones shows you how to use it. |
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'Joan Brady, the distinguished author of Theory of War, which won
the Whitbread Book of the Year in 1993, has made the astonishing claim that the
fumes from a factory next door to her home made her writing more downmarket.'
News Review reports. |
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'For children who have difficulty with reading or just aren't interested,
books based on familiar programming can be the vital hook that turns them into
readers.'
Sally Floyer in the Bookseller on TV tie-ins and reading,
quoted in our Comment
column. |
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Just a reminder that there's still time to enter our own Poetry
Writers' Yearbook
Competition,
closing on 31 January. |
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Our
Reviews section covers many books of interest to writers,
including
our
Review of 101 Ways to Make Poems Sell.
We said: 'A self-help book for poets, providing 101 suggestions about how
develop your career as a poet and sell your work. If you’re
serious about selling your poems, this book is a must.'
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Our latest
Writing
Opportunity is the Crime Writers' Association Debut Dagger
Competition 2008, open to all and closing on 15 February. |
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'You who write, choose a subject suited to your abilities and think
long and hard on what your powers are equal to and what they are
unable to perform.' Horace, in our
Writers' Quotes. |
21 January 2008
| This week we feature the first of six extracts
from a useful new book,
The ABC Checklist for New Writers: How
to Open Doors and Get Noticed the First Time Around
by Lorraine Mace and
Maureen Vincent-Northam:
Agents - When and how to approach
them |
| The latest figures show growth in indie booksellers and their sales.
The Independent Alliance has shown a way forward for smaller publishers.
News Review looks at the good news and how it affects writers. |
| In our latest My Say shortly-to-be-published American author
Wendy Walker
on her path to the writer's life as a stay-home mom:
'How was I going to write an entire novel in the midst of the sleepless nights
and frenetic days that constituted my life? It was, ironically, from this
core-shaking doubt that the four characters in my first novel were born.' |
| 'The sorry fact is that the conventional publishing industry is currently
running round like a headless chicken, giving readers what they think it
wants, and getting it wrong, and losing money hand over fist. ' Fay
Weldon castigating publishers in Writing and Education, quoted in our
Comment column. |
| Sign up for our free newsletter to
keep in touch with what's new on the site and the latest news from the book
world. |
| And Gunter Grass, in our Writers'
Quotes, has the last word: 'Even bad books are books and therefore
sacred.' |
14 January 2008
|
| 'The current controversy surrounding cuts in grants to regularly-funded
organisations by Arts Council England has raised the interesting question of
whether publishing should be publicly funded.'
News Review investigates state
funding for literature. |
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Our
competition sponsored by the Poetry Writers' Yearbook is still running
till 31st January. |
|
| A & C Black are running
their own competition
related to the book. |
|
| You can also read the excellent poem by last year's winner and
an article by the
judge, the book's editor Gordon Kerr, on entering competitions. |
|
| 'It is the storyteller, the dream-maker, that is our phoenix, that
represents us at our best, and at our most creative.' Doris Lessing, in her Nobel Laureate's address,
quoted in our
Comment
column. |
|
| Hot off the press,
the
winner of the T S Eliot Prize for Poetry, chosen on 14th January
from nearly a hundred poetry collections published during the year. |
|
| 'Writing is not a job description. A great deal of it is luck.
Don't do it if you are not a gambler because a lot of people devote many
years of their lives to it (for little reward). I think people become
writers because they are compulsive wordsmiths.' Margaret Atwood in
The Times, quoted in our
Writers' Quotes. |
7 January 2008
| Bob's last column for
WritersServices reflects on writing and the Internet: 'Still haven’t
broken through my writer’s block. No longer even sure I want to. Why
write? What’s writing for? Have absolutely no idea. How can one add
anything worthwhile to the work of writers like Oscar Wilde? Yet the
internet grows more vast by the minute with the words of the millions who
are certain their opinions are worth airing.' In his
Journal. |
| 'Christmas 2007 was not the
disaster that had been feared in the book trade.'
News Review looks at how books
might fare in a recession. |
| Our second Writer's
Success Story is Janey Jones' Princess Poppy series of children's
books. |
| 'At the beginning there were people who said "She only got this deal
because she's his daughter." Cecelia Ahern, daughter of the Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern,
on having a famous father, in the
Bookseller. In our Comment
column. |
| Are you a creative writing tutor or student? Our
Education
Resource Centre contains nearly 80 pages
formatted ready for use as handouts or in course material, freely
available as downloads from the site. |
|
'I have nothing to declare except my genius.' Oscar Wilde, on
passing through the New York Customs House, in our
Writers' Quotes. |
1 January 2008
| Bob wanders round London,
thinking about the British Library and comes up with a Big Idea: 'Any
individual who requires ID must simply memorize a single unique publication
from the British Library... Literacy will, of necessity, become universal.'
In his Journal. |
| News Review looks at the ongoing
hunger for books and the success of Book Aid International, BookCrossings
and BookMooch. |
| We've added some new entries to our Rotten Rejections, which show how
famous authors' books were initially rejected by publishers. On Carrie by Stephen King:'We are not interested in science fiction which deals with negative
utopias. They do not sell.' |
| 'There are four wars raging today that are changing the nature of
publishing and putting us in the driver's seat: discoverability, print on demand (PoD), repositories,
and e-ink readers. Evan Schnittman of OUP in Publishing News, quoted
in our Comment column. |
| This week's Writing
Opportunity is Chapter One Promotions Novel Writing
Competition, closing date 29 February 2008. |
| If you've been working on your book over the holiday and are now
ready to submit, here are some guidelines on
Preparing Your Manuscript and putting together
Your
Submission Package. |
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'When you read a book,
you're totally lost in your own private world, and society says that's a
good and a wonderful thing. But if you play a game by yourself, it's this
weird, f***ed-up socially damaging activity.' Douglas Coupland, in our
Writers'
Quotes. |
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