8 Newsletters Demystifying the Publishing Industry
electricliterature.com – Monday January 6, 2025
The publishing industry can feel like an opaque, black box to aspiring authors, with countless gatekeepers—agents, editors, publicists, book buyers and more—shaping the process behind the scenes. Even established authors can find the sector confusing as they attempt to read the tea leaves behind changing advance sizes, varying levels of publicity support and shifting print run amounts.
Fortunately, there are now dozens of newsletters that aim to demystify the publishing business. I’ve been fortunate enough to have found many of them through my book recommendation newsletter, What To Read If, and now love seeing their names pop up in my email. (Given the state of my inbox, this is the ultimate compliment.)
From publishers and publicists to authors and reviewers, the eight newsletters below provide valuable insights and analysis to anyone looking to get smarter about—or to survive in—the publishing world.
The 13 secrets to writing a really good novel
inews.co.uk – Sunday January 5, 2025
One would imagine that the glamour professions of today – YouTuber, influencer, star athlete, crypto millionaire – would not include the humble old novelist. But guess what? “Writer” often storms to the top of dream career surveys, and it seems that the multitudes still believe they have a novel in them, and not only a video game or an OnlyFans site.
Writing fiction, if taken seriously, is a compulsion, and many who want to complete a whole novel end up living a lifetime of frustration. There are a couple of issues here. Firstly, they think that publication will solve all their problems. It won’t. And secondly, they are often stymied by the same mistakes, both technical and psychological. There are ways around some of these.
Can creative writing be taught? Yes and no. Pure talent cannot. Most of the rest of it really can. As a novelist, literary critic and creative writing tutor, I’ve taught for more than 20 years, and I’ve seen the same problems emerging through my time at Arvon, Birkbeck, City University, and, for the past 14 years, Faber Academy, a writing school which nurtures hundreds of students through its six-month Writing A Novel programme, and has also seen more than 200 of those students’ novels published – including plenty of bestsellers.
So here, I offer a few insights.
8 Craft Books to Inspire Your New Year’s Writing Resolutions
electricliterature.com – Thursday January 2, 2025
Many New Year’s Resolutions are health-centric—a promise to eat healthier, exercise more, or finally quit smoking. But for writers, caring for your creativity is just as central to your wellbeing.
To give you some extra motivation, we’ve rounded up books on writing that are filled with new ways of approaching the craft and practical advice from well-known authors. Whether you’re looking to start a new writing practice or finally get to work on the novel idea you’ve been chewing on for the past few months, these books will give you the inspiration you need to begin.
On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King
With more than 70 books under his belt, Stephen King is a pop culture icon. On Writing is a memoir of his writing career, beginning with his childhood in Maine, where he would submit short stories to science fiction and horror magazines; to publishing his first novel, Carrie; to surviving a car accident that nearly killed him.
The revolution in Irish literary journals
rte.ie – Tuesday December 31, 2024
One of the most frustrating things about trying to break into the writing game is having to listen to the advice of people who have already made it.
They'll tell you to be patient. They’ll tell you that with talent, persistence and a little luck, anyone determined enough will eventually have their day. All of which is fine and may actually be true, though it trivialises for many what can often be incredibly difficult in the moment. Not all of us have the luxury to be persistent, and there are a myriad of reasons why this should be so: Financial pressures, the responsibilities of being a parent, disabilities which take up so much of our time and energy that devoting ourselves wholly to the pursuit of one thing is not only undesirable, it seems nigh on impossible.
What those writers miss, therefore—well-meaning as their advice may be—is that support structures need to be in place to facilitate that necessary persistence. Funding from public bodies is one crucial strand of this. Being able to plug into a network of like-minded artists and writers who are struggling with the same thing is another. But perhaps one that doesn’t get talked about enough is the role of literary magazines; those places we submit to when we’re finally ready to share our writing with other people, which give us the ego-boost we need that we’re on the right track.
A reminder of how good writing happens
poynter.org – Saturday December 28, 2024
Call in the metaphor squad and other writing tips from Poynter's Beat Academy
ew York Times reporter Jeanna Smialek was stalled on a story. She wanted to describe how people of her generation — millennials — were distorting the economy, and all she knew for sure was there was an image she didn’t want to use: the snake and the egg.
“The snake metaphor was gross,” Smialek said. “You don’t want to talk about food moving through a snake in a nut graph. And I’m like, that’s the energy I want to go for, but less disgusting.”
What she came up with was similar, and better. She compared her generation’s economic impact to a person “squeezing into a too-small sweater.”
“At every life stage, it has stretched a system that was often too small to accommodate it, leaving it somewhat flabby and misshapen in its wake.”
We can pause to appreciate the line, but for us at Beat Academy, the real take-home lesson is how Smialek found it.
“If you could only see the hours of time and debate that went into the sweater metaphor,” she said. “I probably made 16 people talk about metaphors with me before I finally came upon one that worked.”
On resisting the pressures of the market
thecreativeindependent.com – Tuesday December 24, 2024
Writer and literary agent Jaclyn Gilbert on resisting easy categorization, honoring the gray areas, and sustainably incorporating feedback.
You are the founder of Driftless Literary, an agenting collective committed to helping authors develop experimental or genre-bending work. What was your vision for the agency and what did it take to get it up and running?
I started Driftless in 2021, when I was in the wake of a lot of transition, spiritually, professionally, as a new parent and as a writer. In my early twenties, I went to a program called the Columbia Publishing Course in New York, and that was basically how I landed my first job in the industry. But after many years of committing to that path, I realized how unsustainable it was for me, not only financially, but creatively. In 2013, when I left publishing to get my MFA, and afterward—when I published my first novel in 2018—I came to see my path through an entirely new lens, a kind of double lens as both an editor/writer.
Moving forward, I knew I wanted to provide authors with the care and attention most agents are unable to provide around the writing process, focused as they are on bringing in sizable commissions around a future book sale. This incentivizes agents to make edits that serve the market, not based on what the work is asking for at its core, and I wanted to be able to offer this as an agent, to carve out a particular niche for this focus.
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