For those of you who don't follow me on Twitter, my user-name there is @hprw and I use this tiny picture of a peacock as my avatar. Remember the picture: it will be important later. A few days ago I encountered a self-published writer on Twitter who had some rather strange views ...
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 ...
Run a writing competition, and attract as many entries as you can: the internet makes it easy to find writers' groups and message boards where you can advertise your competitions for free. You don't even have to charge an entry fee: just get as many entries in, as quickly as you can. You don't need to ...
Remember how so many of us joined forces to fight plagiarism? I've been told that the "writer" who sparked off all that outrage has once again won a prize for a story which seems to owe far too much to someone else's work. And this time, the writer who wrote the original piece might ...
I do not recommend the use of automated submissions services: writers need to target their submissions, and have to check their submissions packages for errors and omissions before they send them off. And yet such services continue to appear, and some of them are extremely pushy in their approach.On Monday I received the ...
Before I start, I have to point out that I don’t want to scare anyone here. Despite the fears of many novice writers, plagiarism doesn't happen often in the professional arena. Very few jobbing writers would ever even consider it as an option, and the odds in favour of a publisher or agent stealing the ...
A few weeks ago I watched a nasty case of plagiarism unfold which involved some writers I’ve had close dealings with over the last few months.One trusted, talented member of an online writing workshopping group went much too far when looking to his colleagues’ writing for inspiration, and ended up in deep and ...
I thought that this novice writer's reaction to a poor review was bad. But last week Alice Hoffman claimed the prize for The Worst Ever Reaction To An Unfavourable Book Review by posting the reviewer's email address and phone number onto Twitter and encouraging her fans to harass the reviewer concerned. In Hoffman's favour she ...
Writers work very hard on their books and if they don't want to waste all that effort, it is essential that they present them in the best way possible. This means they must follow all available submission guidelines to the letter, and be courteous in all subsequent correspondence with the people they’ve submitted to: but ...
When I worked as a full-time editor I was frequently amazed by the submissions that I received. I worked for a book packager which specialised in highly-illustrated esoteric non-fiction: we packaged books about retreat, meditation, religion and myth on behalf of publishers who didn't have the time or the in-house expertise available to produce the ...
Publishing is changing and with it, some of my favourite places have announced big new changes today.Absolute Write has been struggling financially for some time now, and it's hoped that its new association with Twilight and the accompanying merchandising deal will raise enough money to fund it in the months and years ...
This one is going to be good. It's so good I wonder if it's just a staging for an elaborate April Fool's Day Special To Trump All Others. But even so, here it is for your enjoyment just in case it's for real. An unknown writer called Lady Sybilla has announced that her book,
Last week, Editorial Anonymous blogged about a very foolish writer who seemed intent on shooting himself in the foot as many times as he possibly could. And as usual, I have my own version of this story to tell.A few weeks ago a writer complained to me about the lack of ...
Suppose that a customer walks into a bookshop and asks the bookseller to order her a copy of a book that the bookseller has never heard of: and that when the bookseller looks the book up, he finds that it was published by a vanity publisher which is notorious for publishing terrible books at horrible ...
A discussion on Facebook has irritated a few author-friends of mine. I've been sent a link to this ongoing discussion and, while the editors involved think it's funny, not one of the writers who have seen it seem to be laughing.I'm not going to tell you which side I'm on because then ...