June 2005 - Writers Magazine

News Review

• News Review looks at the forthcoming big bonanza of Harry Potter sales, other bestselling children's authors and the new competition for a children's novel.
• News Review looks at two BookExpo panels discussing corporate synergies and world right deals.  Stephen Page of Faber thinks: ‘I want to take a big baseball bat to the idea of global publishing. It is fantasy.’
• At BookExpo ‘There's a lot of schmoozing going on, but real work gets done and you can really set up books coming down the pike.’ But new titles in the US soared last year to 195,000.
• News Review looks at the success of a children's author who is already well-know for her writing: 'We can look forward to a splendid sequence of films – and to the chance to read the books which have now been plucked from the obscurity of the backlist.'
• Visa International recently estimated that global e-commerce sales grew last year by a whopping 56% to £79 billion ($150 billion). News Review looks at how this affects books.

Comment

• 'Ordinarily it is the dumbest business on the planet, taking nine months to a year - or more - to shepherd a manuscript through editing and production' Jonathan Yardley's views on publishing, in the Washington Post
• ‘My advice to budding authors is always the same: go the distance on the story. Work over it again and again. Hone your writing until it flows like running water...  Above all, develop your own voice.'  Tom Bowler in Writers' Forum
• 'There's never been a better time for publishers, authors and the book trade... Yet I can't help feeling the industry is still dragging its feet and slow to embrace new ideas.'  David Freeman in the Bookseller on why publishers are not using their most powerful marketing tool.
• 'Writing a novel, I discovered then, in that initial fumbling stage, is a test of absolute faith and absolute endurance.'  Diana Evans, on writing her first novel 26a, in the Observer
• 'Libraries' biggest problem is the neglect of their core area: books. The public library service now holds fewer than two copies for every UK resident, and spends just 9p in the pound on books.' Bookseller editorial

Writers' Quotes

''Writing is a strange synthesis between the two parts of your mind: the analytical side and the side that knows nothing at all, and you have to allow the dreaming side free rein.’
Rose Tremain