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16 May 2016 - What's new

16 May 2016
  • 'A notable recent trend in publishing houses is to set up imprints for favoured editors and then, in theory at least, to give the editors free rein. Mostly they're quite commercial and give the editor the chance to concentrate on acquiring and editing a small list of books which will give them a better chance of publishing a few books which do extremely well...' News Review
  • Our article on How to get your book translated into English (without it costing the earth) asks writers with a manuscript which needs translating: "if your English is good enough, what about translating your book yourself, and then getting your translation polished and copy edited by a professional editor who is a native English speaker?" This could be a cost-effective way of reaching the international English-speaking market.
  • ‘I love historical fiction. There are all sorts of historical continuities in life, but the past is always strange. My new novel (Donoghue's first since 2010's Room) is about a little girl in Ireland in the 1850s who doesn't eat, before anorexia was identified. Back then if you had a kid who wasn't eating, all sorts of theories would swirl around her...' Emma Donoghue, author of Room and five other novels, in the Observer magazine. This week's Comment.
  • Our Talking to Publishers series is a loosely connected series of articles and interviews in which editors and other publishing people share their insights about publishing and tell us what they're looking for.
  • For instance there's Chronos Books - 'History is back in fashion! With TV serialisations of periods like The Tudors and The Borgias, history is stepping out of the realms of dustiness and into the imagination of the general public. We want to capture history for a new generation of readers and have created a new imprint, Chronos Books, to provide great books for history lovers...'
  • Our links: bestselling writer and illustrator Susan Branch tested the self-publishing waters three years ago, Susan Branch's 'Fine Romance' with Self-Publishing; publishers are never short of problems. But perhaps the biggest problem is one we rarely talk about... The problem is this: there are far, far too many books, BookBrunch - The real problem in publishing; in the shrewdly competitive world of publishing and publicity, the story behind a novel is often as important as the story between its covers. Like superheroes, modern writers stalk through the media trailing their origin myths behind them, Andrew Michael Hurley on how his debut novel The Loney took the publishing world by storm; and here we have the shortlist for the Caine Prize - and the stories themselves for you to read - The Shortlist - Caine Prize.
  • How to market your writing services online is a useful article from 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 about selling yourself as a writer. 'Recently someone commented to me that I seem to be doing a pretty good job of promoting my writing services on the internet. I was touched by the observation - we writers get so many rejections that a little praise is especially gratifying. And I began to wonder - what does it take to market yourself successfully as a jobbing writer today?...'
  • More links: some interesting new figures about the growth in translations, The Man Booker International prize: a celebration of translation | Books | The Guardian; the Vida Count, men still dominate science fiction reviewing, Sci-fi media coverage dominated by men, survey shows | Books | The Guardian; and Jo Henry reports on how 'older female millennials' are driving the boom areas in publishing, BookBrunch - Harry Potter's girls grow up.
  • 'Who wants to become a writer? And why? Because it's the answer to everything. ... It's the streaming reason for living. To note, to pin down, to build up, to create, to be astonished at nothing, to cherish the oddities, to let nothing go down the drain, to make something, to make a great flower out of life, even if it's a cactus.' Enid Bagnold in our Writers' Quotes.