September 2004 - Writers Magazine

News Review

• The astonishing fact that this year’s favourite for the Booker, David Mitchell’s novel Cloud Atlas (Sceptre) has the hottest bookmaker odds ever (5 to 4) highlights the way in which the Man Booker Prize now commands attention outside the book world.


• What's the point of World Book Day? On World Book Day 2004 the Online Festival had 1.4 million hits from 78 different countries; by the end of March this amounted to 3.3 million hits from 100 countries.


• A European Union survey shows British publishers' turnover has overtaken Germany. ‘Book sales remain resilient, despite the availability of a wide range of other media.’


• ‘Chaos has broken out… in no other major European country is the gap so deep between the language of the people and the language of literature.’ Germans reject 'new spelling'.

Comment

• 'Falling for a subject is more gradual than falling in love, though it soon gains something of the same irrational and fascinated compulsion.'Hattie Ellison on her book Sweetness and Light: the Mysterious History of the Honey Bee


• Talking about publishing for teenagers, 'You have to keep up with the times. There are always 14-year-old girls, but every three or four years, they are going to be completely different.' Brenda Gardner, founder of Piccadilly Press in Publishing News'


• In the past 10 years an axe has been taken to the crime lists of all the biggest publishers... At the same time crime writing has achieved greater credibility among the lit crit brigade, thanks to a new generation of gifted writers working within the genre…’' Danuta Kean in the Bookseller


• '..the closer to the essence of things the writer gets, the closer he edges towards literature.' Justin Cartwright writing in the Independent on Sunday.

Writers' Quotes

• ‘The most crucial thing is to learn the craft: how to string sentences together, how to make your dialogue sound like real people, how to properly pace a story, how to develop interesting characters.’
  Stephen Coonts