A couple of weeks ago an editor asked on Twitter what people wanted to find when they visited publishers’ websites. You can guess what I said: my books, in prime position. But that was no help to the editor concerned who has more to consider than my ego, like attracting new customers, selling more books,…
Category Archives: reading
Lost Book Sales
Here’s an interesting new blog: it asks readers to send in their stories of the books they tried to buy but couldn’t, and to explain why. It’s a sobering read, and for every lost sale which is reported to the site there must be many, many more out there in the wild. I’m not entirely…
The Forest For The Trees
Here’s a charming blog post with lots of talk about cake (I’d much prefer the lemon to the chocolate) which along the way reports about a workshop with Betsy Lerner, an agent of very high repute who wrote one of my favourite books on writing and publishing, The Forest For The Trees. A revised and…
Publishing: Broken Or Not?
Is publishing broken? It depends on your point of view. Publishing funds itself by selling books to readers. Everything it does is designed to maximise those sales because, like supermarkets and bakers and butchers and car manufacturers and shoe-makers and furniture makers and hat-makers, publishing is a business. It has to make lots of sales…
If You’ve Ever Wondered…
…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 competitors feel like.)
Trios: Devil’s Gold, by Julie Korzenco
Congratulations to Eric Stallsworth, whose name has just been pulled out of a virtual hat over at Julie Korzenko’s house. He’ll soon be receiving a copy of Julie’s novel Devil’s Gold, which kicked off my Trios series a few weeks ago. Commiserations to those of you who weren’t lucky this time round: all is not…
Bookselling: Chains vs Independents
As so many of our bookshops are now part of large chains, and the bulk of book buying for those chains is carried out by a central buying office, the stock you see on the shelves has become homogenous and neutral. Stock in an Edinburgh branch of Waterstones is almost identical to stock in the…
Book Review Sites
There are all sorts of book review blogs on the internet, but some are better than others. Dovegreyreader was one of the first and is still very well-regarded; I like her blog but it takes an age to load for me (yes, I’m still on dial-up…) so I don’t read it as often as I…
How Writers Improve
We know that most of the writing in the slush pile is dreadful; and that the less able writers are often simply unable to understand how their writing is bad, or precisely how bad it is. We know that writers’ message boards and peer review sites can be of questionable value when the writers who…
Authonomy, Blurb And Book Army
As I’ve discussed before, HarperCollins’ manuscript display site, Authonomy, contacted a proportion of its members earlier this year to announce that it was adding a new service to its site: it had teamed up with Blurb.com, an American-based POD printer, in order to enable Authonomy members to download their books to Blurb directly from the…
Pitch Party!
Pitch your blog in the comments section here, using no more than twenty five words. If you don’t want to pitch your own blog then you can pitch another blog that you enjoy, so long as it might interest the readers here. You can write more than one pitch for the same blog, or you…
Books That I Love
Sometimes I come across a book so wonderful that moving away from the printed page feels painful: the real world is dislocated from the reality that the book has provided for me, and it feels too cold and shallow compared to the richer, more nuanced and textured world the book creates. The first time it…
Book Army
HarperCollins’ new website for readers, Book Army, is now open to all. Anyone can join and comment on the books that they’ve read, and add links between books. Working on the reasonable premise that someone who enjoyed reading Maggie O’Farrell might also like Sue Gee, it’s hoped that Book Army’s users will create an intricate…
Library Things
Oh, the joys of a librarian’s life. I quite like message number eleven. How Publishing Really Works
Authonomy
In the spring of 2008, HarperCollins opened the doors to Authonomy, its new online manuscript display site. I was one of the first people to test it. Authonomy allows writers to post their writing, and to comment on each other’s work. It’s possible to post anything from a single paragraph to a complete book, although…
Andrew Lownie, Literary Agent
If you’re keen to discover exactly what a literary agent does, take a look at Andrew Lownie’s website. He’s a fabulous agent and has written several very candid articles about his work, in which he discusses his reasons for rejecting submissions, details his daily routines, and reveals his submissions statistics. It’s funny as well as…
On Criticism
1) Criticism of work is not criticism of self. So try to never take it personally. 2) When you’re offered criticism, consider how well-qualified the person making the offer is to criticise your work, and adjust your response accordingly. 3) While you’re not obliged to make any changes to your unpublished work as a result…
Reading Comprehension
If you want to succeed as a writer you have to read widely, read frequently, and read well. Not only do you have to read across many genres; you also have to understand what you’re reading. Those first few points are often discussed: but I’ve rarely heard anyone mention that last one and just lately,…
The Street-Smart Writer, by Jenna Glatzer
Jenna Glatzer is a skilled, knowledgeable writer, and is the founder of AbsoluteWrite, which supports the best writers’ message board on the internet. In 2006, the Nomad Press published The Street-Smart Writer, which Jenna co-wrote with Daniel Steven, a noted publishing attorney. I’ve bought several copies of this book since, and dished it out to…