When I read this story in the Daily Mail online last April I assumed it was some sort of hoax: a writer left her manuscript on Richard and Judy's doorstep in the hope of getting herself a book deal and as if by magic, she ...
When I read this story in the Daily Mail online last April I assumed it was some sort of hoax: a writer left her manuscript on Richard and Judy's doorstep in the hope of getting herself a book deal and as if by magic, she ...
A few weeks ago I spotted a link on Twitter to an article by David Rozansky, publisher of Flying Pen Press. He had written about literary agent Andew Wylie's new publishing venture, Odyssey Editions. I disagreed with a lot of what he’d written, and said so; and along came Mr Rozansky to ask ...
Last Friday, Twitter was awash with links to this story in the Mirror, which described how six-year-old Leo Hunter had landed an amazing twenty-three book deal. I was immediately suspicious, as was Victoria Strauss of Writer Beware, Lynn Price of Behler Publications, and many other writers and bloggers. No one gets twenty-three book ...
This is the final part of the talk I gave at this year’s Edinburgh International Book Festival. You can read part I here, and part II here. The Writing Business 44) So, once you’re sure your writing is as good as it can be, you have to work out where to submit it. How can ...
This is part two of the talk I gave at the Edinburgh International Book Festival this week. You can read the first part here, and the final part will appear tomorrow. The Writing Business 25) How hard is it to get an agent? Let’s look at some statistics. 26) At her talk at the Romantic ...
Two days ago I spoke at the Edinburgh International Book Festival (get me!), on the subject of The Writing Business. I'd never done anything like this before, so I was very lucky to share the stage with Keith Charters of Strident Publishing and to have the event chaired by the writer Eric ...
A few weeks ago the London-based literary agent Andrew Wylie announced that he was forming his own publishing company named Odyssey Editions in order to publish the agency’s clients in electronic book format; and that Odyssey had signed an exclusive deal with Amazon, so that those e-books would only be available for the ...
Every year the Book Trade Charity raises funds through its action week which this year runs from 7 to 11 June. Publishing's great and good take part, and this year is no exception: cake bakes, a pub quiz, and a spelling ...
Good literary agents earn their living through commissions on the sales that they make to legitimate publishers, while less scrupulous agents earn by charging fees to the writers that they “represent”. So, if an agency doesn’t charge its writers up-front fees, you’d expect them to be legitimate. Sadly that’s not always the case: the notorious ...
I'm pleased to welcome M G Harris, my Twitter-friend and author of The Joshua Files series, who concludes her Zero Moment blog-tour here. Ten Things That Helped Me Get Published 1 Writing Fan Fiction In the mid-1990s I took up writing as a hobby. ...
In fiction and in life there are often gatekeepers who guard the entrance to the castle or the enchanted kingdom. Consider St Peter, standing guard at the pearly gates, or those big blokes in dark glasses and wash ’n’ wear suits who stand outside the nightclubs and only let the pretty girls in. In both ...
A couple of weeks ago, a thread began at Absolute Write about a new and as-yet unproved agent. Said agent rocked up; questions were asked; a magnificent bun-fight ensued. After a few frustrating days the uproar moved to a part of Aboslute Write's forum which is not Google-cached (I doubt that the agent ...
...what reading slush for months on end does to your mind, then just read this.It is a bloody brilliant blog and I wish I'd written it.(I wish I'd discovered the blog, too, but have to admit that Janet Reid got to it first. Now I know what her ...
Ann Crispin and Victoria Strauss today announced that Robert Fletcher of the Writers' Literary Agency has not only lost the lawsuit he took out against them and James Macdonald eighteen months ago: Robert Fletcher's suit has been deemed frivolous in the judge's findings, and his business habits have been labelled fraudulent. ...
Publishing is a business which produces books in order to sell them. It depends on writers, agents, editors, designers, illustrators, copy-editors and printers to produce those books; and on marketing staff, publicists, sales agents, wholesalers, distributors, bookshops and booksellers to sell those books.All of the people who are involved in the production and ...