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26 June 2017 - What's new

26 June 2017
  • 'Good news all round this week, with spectacular audiobook sales increases in the US and surprising figures showing that Millennials are the most likely generation of Americans to use public libraries. In the UK children's titles are continuing to outperform the market...' News Review
  • The fabulous and highly prestigious Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award 2017 is open to everyone aged 11 - 17 on 31st July, when it closes. Spread the word to any teenage poets you know! There's no entry fee and the top 15 winning poets will have their poems published in an anthology and are also invited to attend a week's residential creative writing course with Arvon or receive a poet residency in their school.
  • From our 19-part Inside Publishing series, Subsidiary Rights: 'My first job in publishing was in a subsidiary rights department. I'm ashamed to admit that I accepted the job without having much idea what subsidiary rights were. Many writers may feel just as vague about this part of publishing, so here's a quick breakdown...' and Vanity Publishing: 'It is natural for writers to be eager to get published but it pays to be wary of the vanity publishers who will take your money and give you very little in return...' Vanity publishing is quite distinct from Self-publishing, you need to be aware of the differences.
  • 'The real world is full of wild, outlandish coincidences that we can't use because fiction has to be realistic. There's nothing realistic about the world now, politics-wise, everything-wise. You couldn't make it up - it's a problem for fiction writers.' Ian Rankin, author of Rather be the Devil, Knots and Crosses and many other novels, in the Sunday Telegraph, provides this week's Comment.
  • Do you want some help with your writing but don't quite know what you want - or even if you need any help? Are you a bit puzzled by the various services on offer, and not sure what to go for? Choosing a service can help you work out which service is right for you.
  • Our links, heralding in the summer season in the northern hemisphere: although it has synonyms - vacation book, summer read - the beach read has no single, standard definition, which is precisely part of what makes it such a fabulous marketing term, When Totally Normal Books About Girls Turned into 'Beach Reads' - Broadly; crafting fictional narratives starring their idols has been a foundational fangirl activity for decades... but now the practice has made the transition to the YA genre proper, One Direction Fanfiction Is Having a Moment in YA Books | Pitchfork; starting a blog can be overwhelming. Too much technical terminology and lots of unnecessary social media statistics may put you off forever, Nine practical tips for new bloggers on the block | The Media; Online retail wars, legal battles and vibrating broomsticks ... two decades of JK Rowling's boy wizard, Twenty years of Harry Potter - the 20 things we have learned | Books | The Guardian.
  • 'Discovering our authentic voice, writing with lasting impact, and standing out from the crowd are high priorities for most of us who write. But how do we go about achieving these intentions? Conscious Writing is a new approach to deep writing with full awareness which takes us into the core of what we're really here to write, and in the process, opens the way for us to realise our true potential as authors in the world...' Julia McCutchenJulia McCutchen is an intuitive creator, writer and mentor who guides people to share their unique gifts through creating, writing and living from a conscious and vibrant connection to Truth. A former international publisher, Julia experienced a life-changing accident in 1999 which triggered a series of major quantum leaps in her spiritual awakening. She subsequently developed a tried and tested holistic approach to access the present and aligned state required for original creative expression in all areas of life, especially writing. She is the founder and creative director of the International Association of Conscious & Creative Writers (IACCW) and the author of two books including, Conscious Writing: Discover Your True Voice Through Mindfulness and More (Hay House). For more information and a free video series visit www.JuliaMcCutchen.com and www.iaccw.com on Conscious Writing.
  • More links: this family we make -  a branching original family tree  -  is where many of us turn when reckoning with The Big Questions, Literature's Great Alternative Families - Electric Literature; a Twitter storm erupted last week over the lack of people of colour speaking at the Chalke Valley History Festival, Controversy as author pulls out of history festival in diversity protest | The Bookseller; with a different view, on Friday, while most of the country was settling down to watch Radiohead perform in a field in Somerset, a row was breaking out in another field in Wiltshire, History should never be exclusively white and male | David Olusoga | Opinion | The Guardian; and the US edition of journalist Naomi Klein's latest book, No Is Not Enough: Resisting Trump's Shock Politics and Winning the World We Need (June), bears Haymarket Books's logo instead of one from the bigger houses that typically publish her books, How a Small Press Landed a Big Fish in Naomi Klein.
  • Your submission package - '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. Less is more, so don't send a full manuscript, as it's very unlikely to be read. Far better to tempt them with a submission package that will leave them wanting to see the rest of the manuscript'.
  • 'Being a writer is a very peculiar sort of a job: it's always you versus a blank sheet of paper (or a blank screen) and quite often the blank piece of paper wins.' Neil Gaiman's contribution to our Writers' Quotes.