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4 November 2013 - What's new

4 November 2013
  • Last week's news of the departure of Larry Kirshbaum, the respected and successful publisher turned agent who Amazon hired to head up their trade publishing venture, was greeted with a certain amount of glee amongst all those who are fearful of the giant online retailer. But what does it really mean? News Review
  • Talking to Publishers 5 is about a new non-fiction history imprint. '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.' says Sarah-Beth Watkins. There are four other articles in the Talking to Publishers series.
  • 'The nice thing about agenting is that you can carry on until you annoy everyone. I'm going to do it until I don't enjoy it. And I do enjoy it, not every single minute, but more than 90% of it. Even the negotiating is good fun up to a point. And that moment you get your authors' new manuscripts, and your heart is in your mouth because you want to be able to love it - that's still the most exciting part... Publishers as people aren't risk averse, as corporations they are. Often editors would like to buy books that they aren't allowed to.' Carole Blake of agency Blake Friedmann in the Bookseller, quoted in our Comment column.
  • Our Tips for writers series is an 8-part series which starts with Improve your writing and ends with Submission to agents and publishers.
  • Our Writing Opportunity this month is National Novel Writing Month, which is part of a partnership with Wattpad and offers a prize of $2,000.  But are you up to wriitng a whole 50,000 word novel in just one month? Now's your chance to test yourself.
  • The links this week are Shatzkin: Why Competing With Amazon Is So Difficult | Digital Book World and Jane Austen 'airbrushed' on new £10 note, claims biographer
  • ‘Books say: she did this because life says: she did this. Books are where things are explained to you; life is where things aren't. I'm not surprised some people prefer books. Books make sense of life. The only problem is that the lives they make sense of are other people's lives, never your own,' Julian Barnes in Flaubert's Parrot, in our Writers' Quotes.