November 2014 - Writers Magazine

News Review

• 'Two interesting pieces of news from the last week show that publishing - of both the traditional and the new variety - is stronger than you might think. In China the second Shanghai International Children's Book Fair has attracted 250 exhibitors from 25 countries, with 6,000 Chinese and international business visitors and 20,000 Chinese consumers expected to attend This new Fair offers a real challenge to the international children's rights fair in Bologna...'
• 'It's a great relief to all parties that Hachette and Amazon have come to an amicable settlement after many months of wrangling in a dispute which has been very much in the public eye, even though it was never made public exactly what the argument was about... News Review this week covers the good news of Amazon and Hachette burying the hatchet...'
• 'Latest figures from the States suggest that readers are not parting with their print books, in spite of the growth in ebook sales, which have reached $8.5 billion in value worldwide. In the US the figures show that 23% of all male adult readers and 33% of females ones read ebooks. But global print still stands at $53.9 billion so there's a lot of catching up for ebooks to do to overtake, let alone wipe out, print books. News Review on why American readers are loyal to print...'
• 'The growth of literary prizes of one kind and another seems unending, although it's a pity from the point of view of unpublished writers that so many of them are restricted to books which have come from traditional publishers. WritersServices doesn't usually feature these, on the basis that they already get plenty of publicity and it is usually publishers rather than writers who have to do the submission...' News Review on Prizes, prizes and competitions...'
• 'Some encouraging publishing-related figures have emerged this week. The number of books published worldwide in 2013 was an astounding 28 million, raising the question of whether there are enough readers - and buyers - for them all. In the US there were 390,000 ISBNs for self-published books and 300,000 for trade (general) books...'

Comment

• ‘Beginners' failures are often the result of trying to work with strong feelings and ideas without having found the images to embody them, or without even knowing how to find the words and string them together. Ignorance of English vocabulary and grammar is a considerable liability to a writer of English. The best cure for it is, I believe, reading. Ursula K Le Guin , author of the classic The Left Hand of Darkness and Dancing at the Edge of the World on Brain Picking.
• ‘I'm very conscious that as I get older, I think less nimbly and feel more keenly than I used to. Fingersmith, with its very complicated plot and its big twist, had an energy to it. I don't think I could write a book like that any more. Not that I'd especially want to. What I enjoyed about The Paying Guests was the depth of emotion in it. It was very heartfelt, wrenching to write but satisfying...' This week's Comment is from Sarah Waters, author of Fingersmith and The Paying Guests, in the Observer.
• ‘My audience is someone similar to who I was when I got started with serious reading: a young person - I was 19 - who can simply read... My students at Columbia I teach to read. If you can be a good reader and can think that reading and literature are great pursuits, you can perhaps teach yourself to write. This week's Comment is from Richard Ford, author of Let Me Be Frank With You in the Observer.
• ‘That thing of treating the writer like a famous boxer or a rock star has harmed writers, because one of the ingredients most essential for writing is that you have to be solitary. You can't be gregarious. You can't do both. The brain won't take it. That is why poor Mrs Woolf went off her rocker. Too many people, too much outside life...' Edna O'Brien, author of The Country Girls and Country Girl (an autobiography) in the Independent on Sunday.
• ‘Young writers, if they're meant to be writers, they will write. There's nothing that can stop them. It may kill them. They may not be able to stand the terrible indignities, humiliations, privations, shocks that attend the life of an American writer...' Tennessee Williams in Writers at Work
• 'Publishing is the process of getting an author's thoughts and ideas to the mind of a reader. Book publishing was carried out in the traditional manner for so long that everyone began to believe that publishers, agents, publicists and bookshops were essential to the process. The multiplicity of options brought about by the digital age remind us that there are only two constants in the process: the author and the reader...' Nicola Solomon, CEO of the UK Society of Authors in the Bookseller
• 'I think I will write, in my 70s, more novellas. I love the idea of sitting down to read something in three hours - about the length of an opera, or a long movie, or a play where all of its structure can be held in the mind. A novella is a great length, and it's a demanding genre in which things have to be settled quickly.' Ian McEwan, author of The Children Act, in the Observer.

Quote

‘Authors like cats because they are such quiet, lovable, wise creatures, and cats like authors for the same reasons.'

Robertson Davies