October 2008 - Writers Magazine

News Review

• News Review looks at this year's winner and the tradition of controversy surrounding the Booker - plus its increasingly global reach.
• 'In the midst of all the gloom and doom, the Frankfurt Book Fair has been pretty much business as usual. Writing on the last day of the Fair, visitor figures are so far up 8.1% on last year, although there has been a slight drop in exhibitor numbers'. News Review's report shows how Frankfurt is going global.
• Amidst plunging publishers' and booksellers' share prices, are book sales holding up? News Review looks at the figures on the eve of the Frankfurt Book Fair.
• 'The launch of a new website which encourages everyone to upload videos of themselves delivering their own definitions of their favourite words could offer freedom from the dead hand of the past or be the last straw for pedants, depending on your point of view.' News Review reports on the launch of Wordia.com.

Comment

• 'At the end of the day, the writer herself is a more valuable brand than the publishing house and it's time for writers to wake up to this fact.' Kate Pullinger on Guardian Online
• 'In such times it is much better to be selling books than higher ticket items...  As domestic budgets are squeezed, books benefit from being an inexpensive form of recreation and indeed a necessity for priorities like education.  Alan Giles, former CEO of HMV, in the Bookseller
• 'First, is the writing truly brilliant?  Second, will the market be accepting of it?  And, finally, am I the right person to make the connections for the book? Simon Trewin in the Bookseller on what makes an agent say yes.
• 'Publishing has always been accused of being desperately inefficient and often that it's run like a summer fete, but there is something to be said for the entrepreneurial spirit of the likes of Peter Usborne and Brenda Gardner, and Barry Cunningham - without whose eye for a good story, of course, this would be a very different business.' Graham Marks on the Potter phenomenon in the final issue of Publishing News.
• 'In literary fiction, the big awards definitely translate to sales...  If you win the Booker, the Costa or the Orange, your name will be known.  But for some reason the Nobel doesn't sell books.' Matt Bates, W H Smith Fiction Buyer, in Writers' Forum

Writers' Quote

'Let other pens dwell on guilt and misery. I quit such odious subjects as soon as I can.'
Jane Austen