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11 November 2013 - What's new

11 November 2013
  • In the fourth part of our WritersServices Self-publishing Guide, Joanne PhillipsUK-based freelance writer and ghostwriter. She has had articles published in national writing magazines, and has ghostwritten books on subjects as diverse as hairdressing and keeping chickens. Visit her at www.joannephillips.co.uk looks at EbooksDigital bookstore selling wide range of ebooks in 50 categories from Hildegard of Bingen to How to Write a Dirty Story and showing how the range of ebooks available is growing.: Formatting for Kindle:' Last time we looked at KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing) and how self-publishing authors can upload their books to Amazon directly. Now we're going to focus on one key thing: formatting your book for Kindle.' The series to date.A recent investigation by USA Today into their bestseller lists of the last thirty years throws an interesting light on changes in bestsellerdom and background changes in the way in which books are bought and sold.
  • 'A recent investigation by USA Today into their bestseller lists of the last thirty years throws an interesting light on changes in bestsellerdom and background changes in the way in which books are bought and sold.In the years 1993-98, John Grisham dominated the fiction bestsellers but the list as a whole was full of big non-fiction bestsellers, mostly self-help, such as Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus, Don't' Sweat the Small Stuff... And it's all Small Stuff and Chicken Soup for the Soul. This was an era when books were still bought in retail stores, especially bookstores, and the big book chains were dominant...' News Review
  • What's going on in the business of publishing? Ebooks and discounts drive 98 publishers out of business | Books | theguardian.com, What's Driving UK Publishers Out of Business? | Publishing Perspectives and How Has Twitter Changed the Role of the Literary Critic? - NYTimes.com.
  • If you want editorial input from our professional editors, have a look at our Services, especially our Copy editing, Submission Critique, Manuscript Typing and our latest addition, Blurb-writing.
  • Women should write from the heart, and because they can't not write. I don't think that there is a chick-lit formula: you come across some heroines like Bridget Jones, but mine tend to be bitches. Entertain yourself and don't ever imagine your mother reading your book.' Adele Parks in The Times, quoted in our Comment column.
  • This week's Writing Opportunity is a new oone, The CWA Margery Allingham Short Story Competition 2013, open to all with a closing date of 16 March 2014."Writers aren't like plumbers. If you're a plumber, you fix one person's boiler in the morning, then you go and fix another in the afternoon. I didn't want to write a book unless I had something new to say - and it was good to live a little in between."