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24 August 2015 - What's new

24 August 2015
  • Have you translated your work into English? Or do you have a translation that someone else has done? Now you need to make sure it's good enough to publish, or send to a publisher. If you need help to get your work into perfect condition, our new service, Translation Editing, is for you. Acknowledging the growth of world English, this new service is designed for the many non-native English speakers throughout the world who want to publish their work in English.
  • 'I've learned that despite all the new bells and whistles, there's no substitute for giving the bookselling community time enough to read a book and get behind it... It starts with the book no matter what. Without that it doesn't matter how much you tweet. You'll get one wave of publicity and then it's over.' Dawn Davis, founder of 37 Ink, in Poets and Writers magazine, quoted in our Comment column.
  • First excerpt - How to Open Doors and Get Noticed the First Time Around is from The ABC Checklist for New Writers, the first of a six-part series of extracts from this useful book by Lorraine Mace and Maureen Vincent-Northam. 'Plenty of authors have sold their books directly to a publisher, but there are a number of benefits in acquiring the services of an agent. Agents are well informed about market trends, able to assess your work and offer it to the most suitable publisher. They will advise, check over your publishing contract and negotiate the best terms on your behalf. So when is the right time to approach an agent and how do you go about it?...'
  • You'd better be quick to catch this week's Writing Opportunity, which is the 2015 Oxford Brookes International Poetry Competition, closing on 31 August. There are two prizes of £1,000 and the second one is for poets for whom English is a second language.
  • Your Submission Package helps with getting your package exactly right: 'Given the difficulty of getting agents and publishers to take on your work, it's really important to make sure that you present it in the best possible way...'
  • Our links this week: a new term for opportunities which are 'in the cracks', Interstitial Publishing | The Scholarly Kitchen; the New York Times investigation of Amazon's white collar workforce culture reveals that the company may be on the road to its own eventual demise, says Edward Nawotka, Editor in Chief of PP, in a thoughtful article, Is Amazon Eating Itself Alive? - Publishing Perspectives; one of Scotland's leading authors is bitter about publishers and publishing and where is new thinking in the publishing world coming from, Publisher or Author? Whose Job Is it to Innovate Anyway? - Publishing Perspectives.
  • Authors often find it difficult to write their own synopsis for submission to publishers, which is where our Synopsis-writing service can help. If you're preparing to self-publish and having difficulty with your blurb, our Blurb-writing service might be what you need.
  • More links: author Diana Kimpton presents A manifesto for author-publisher relations | The Bookseller; we're especially afraid of data deciding what gets published; Booktrack and Audible are becoming very successful but We're Spending $10 Billion On Kids' Classroom Technology-But Does It Help Them Learn? | Fast Company | Business + Innovation
  • 'One of the conditions for reading what is good is that we must not read what is bad; for life is short and time and energy are limited.' Arthur Schopenhauer in our Writers' Quotes.