9 December 2013 - What's new
9 December 2013
- 'A very interesting article from Digital Book World explores some fascinating research into writers' different approaches to publishing traditionally and self-publishing. This relates to a study from last year carried out by Digital Book World and Writer's Digest and involving American 5,000 authors. This data has been analysed by the author and social scientist Dana Beth Weinberg...' News Review
- You can now comment on News Review stories if you are registered on the site and logged in. Everyone can read the comments but registering means you can enjoy and use the site even more - for example, you can see at a glance which items are new or updated since you last visited us and you can create your own bookmarks to useful pages on the site. You can also use the RSS Feeds to follow the site as a whole or a particular area of interest. You can also sign up for the newsletter to get an update on what's new on the site - and on the web - for writers.
- Manil Suri's third novel, The City of Devi, has won the most dreaded award in the world of books: the Literary Review Bad Sex Prize. The award was presented by Joan Collins in a ceremony attended by 400 guests at the Naval and Military Club in London, which is generally known as the In & Out. Manil Suri's publishers accepted the bad sex award on his behalf, and urged readers to take the book to bed. The Literary Review Bad Sex Prize 2013
- 'Books are my first love. I started reading seriously at seven or eight, books about myths and legends, the Narnia series... By the time I was 11, I had read all the children's books in my local library, so I moved on to Jane Eyre. What I loved about Jane Eyre was that she didn't rely on her looks but her character. She had a spirit nobody could break...' Malorie Blackman, author of Noble Conflict and many other books, and the Waterstones Children's Laureate for the UK in the Independent on Sunday, quoted in our Comment column.
- Our Category writing series includes Writing Historical Fiction, Writing Crime Fiction, Writing Science Fiction and Fantasy, Writing Romance, Writing Non-fiction and Writing Memoir and Autobiography.
- There are some great links this week: BookBrunch - Prospering in the squeezed middle of publishing, Writing is Facing Up to Reality, say Grossman, Vargas Llosa | Publishing Perspectives, André Schiffrin, Publishing Force and a Founder of New Press, Is Dead at 78 - NYTimes.com, BBC News - Amazon testing drones for deliveries and, the subject of this week's News Review, Self-Publishing Debate: A Social Scientist Separates Fact from Fiction | Digital Book World.
- 'Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such as ting if one were not driven by some demon whom one can neither resist or (sic) understand. For all one knows that demon is the same instinct that makes a baby squall for attention.' George Orwell, quoted by Robert McCrum in the Observer, in our Writers Quotes.
