January 2005 - Writers Magazine

News Review

• News Review looks at Amazon's growth and stellar results for 2004 and concludes that the online retailer is unstoppable now.
• Successful authors such as Michelle Paver and 13-year-old Emma Maree Urquhart make it look easy to make a fortune out of writing for children - but is it really such a doddle?
• 'Children’s books are booming... the children of today are reaping the benefit of a flowering of children’s writing of all kinds, such as we have never seen before.'
• News Review looks at World Book Day plans. 'Current statistics show that there are over five million adults in the UK who have limited literacy skills. They are effectively excluded from the pleasures that reading can bring - whether from a novel, a cookery book or a travel guide.' Gail Rebuck

Comment

• 'I think one should respect someone like mad while they're alive and write what you like once they're dead... Books should not be written to be cathartic for the author but to ring bells with and be entertaining for an audience.' Virginia Ironside, author of Janey and Me, quoted in the Observer
• ''I'll probably be completely forgotten...  History is like some giant beast - it simply wriggles its back and throws off whatever is on it.'  Arthur Miller, quoted in the Independent.
• 'The whole industry is built around writing one book a year, so the next hardcover comes out with the mass market paperback of your previous one... It's not enough time to write a good book.'  Greg Iles in the Bookseller
• 'There is something about the contemporary scene that has made competitiveness, doing the next person down, a central part of the writing business rather than just a sideshow.' Terence Blacker in the Independent

Writers' Quotes

'First a mistress you dally and play with, then she becomes your master and finally your tyrant.' Winston Churchill on writing a book