World of Books joins with Society of Authors to launch £5k writing award
thebookseller.com – Tuesday April 6, 2021
Used book retailer the World of Books Group has partnered with the Society of Authors to launch a £5,000 award for writers to inspire progressive behaviour change.
The World of Books Impact Award will be granted twice a year to writers working on books focusing on social impact, sustainability or education. It will offer the winning author a sum of £5,000 to support them as they complete their work. The award criteria is linked to World of Books' own guiding values and aligned with the UN sustainability goals of Responsible Consumption and Production, Climate Action and Quality Education.
Applications for the first World of Books Impact Award are open from now until July, with the first award due to be granted in October 2021.
Jacqueline Wilson's guide to getting started writing children's books
stylist.co.uk – Monday April 5, 2021
Children may have a world of technology at their feet nowadays and they countless ways to find entertainment online – but they are still reading. In fact, they are using many technological resources to do so. Research by the Publisher’s Association found that sales of digital children’s books in the UK rose by 50% in 2020 and a survey of 58,346 children undertaken by the National Literacy Trust found that more than a quarter of children and young people said they were enjoying reading more because of lockdown.
So, if you have always wanted to write for children, now is as good a time as any to start – and Jacqueline Wilson would agree. Although she wrote her first book at the age of nine in 1954, she has now written 112 novels for children and her most recent novel, The Runaway Girls, was released only last month. “I cannot imagine not having a book in my mind all the time,” Jacqueline says. “It would feel so peculiar and empty.”
Jacqueline has sold over 40 million books in the UK and her most well-known novel, The Story of Tracy Beaker, has inspired three spin-off series on CBBC since its publication 30 years ago.
It’s safe to say, then, that Jacqueline Wilson knows a thing or two about writing children’s books and she has some advice for aspiring children’s authors – from how to structure a novel to how to get a publisher, to dealing with complex issues in a way that is accessible to children. Here, she give Stylist’s Curiosity Academy the inside track on getting going.
New Literary Agent Listing: Tanusri Prasanna
firstwriter.com – Thursday April 1, 2021
Looks for accessible and wide-reaching, narrative nonfiction set against themes in social justice and representation; memoirs that speak to these issues with authenticity, humor, and heart; and select fiction featuring diverse perspectives, experiences, and even storytelling styles. For YA and middle-grade, she gravitates towards contemporary coming-of-age stories, and ambitious, world-building fantasies. She’s drawn to charming and relatable romances, well-plotted and voice-driven suspense, and stories set in schools or interesting neighborhoods. In the picture book space, she loves wry humor and twisty endings, as well as meaningful, concept-driven texts. She also represents children’s nonfiction that excites the imagination and curiosity of young readers.
Melissa Febos on Her Literary Inspirations, Writing Habits, and Notebook Fetish
interviewmagazine.com – Wednesday March 31, 2021
This is First Draft, in which our favorite writers get to the bottom of their own craft. From preferred writing drinks to whether or not you really need to carry a notebook, we find out all the ways they beat writer’s block and do the work. Before curling up with Girlhood, Melissa Febos’s new collection of personal essays, discover all the elements that helped her get it done.
New Literary Agent Listing: Millie Hoskins
firstwriter.com – Wednesday March 31, 2021
Wants to find exciting new writers of fiction - commercial and literary - and narrative non-fiction.
Finding Ideas To Write About
By Marcella Simmons
Freelance Writer
firstwriter.com – Monday March 29, 2021
Ideas are everywhere. They are in your home, your car, at your work - you can find ideas at the park, the grocery store, the doctor's office, at school or in your bed. Ideas happen everyday, non-stop and you can use them in both fiction and nonfiction as well as poetry. Look around you.
Tips To Start And Enhance Your Own Poetry Writing For Aspiring Poets
studybreaks.com – Sunday March 28, 2021
Writing poetry sounds intimidating. It brings to mind the genius of tortured poets like Sylvia Plath or Henry David Thoreau, who famously retreated into the woods to write secluded in nature. Thankfully, writing (and submitting) modern poetry has a much simpler process. Anyone can become a poet — all you need is an idea, story or message you want to tell, and you’re off to a great start!
Here’s how to start, if you have never written poetry before:
Hagens Berman: Booksellers Sue Amazon and Big Five Publishers for Alleged Monopoly Price-Fixing the U.S. Print Book Market
businesswire.com – Friday March 26, 2021
NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Retail booksellers today hit Amazon.com and publishing companies with a class-action lawsuit alleging a massive price-fixing scheme to intentionally constrain the bookselling market and inflate the wholesale price of print books, according to Hagens Berman and its co-counsel Sperling & Slater P.C.
The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York on Mar. 25, 2021, and states that Amazon colluded with the Big Five U.S. book publishers – Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster – to restrain competition in the sale of print trade books, or non-academic texts such as fiction and non-fiction material.
The Big Five publishers control 80% of the trade book market, and Amazon accounts for about half of all books sold, including 90% of all print books sold online. Attorneys say these factors and more make this market ripe for price-fixing through the highly restrictive most-favored-nation clauses (MFNs) in their distribution agreements. The lawsuit states these anticompetitive provisions fix the wholesale price of books and prevent Amazon’s competitors from competing on price or product availability.
Scrivener 3 for Windows Launches #1 Writing App Receives Major Update: UI Refresh and Many New Features
prnewswire.co.uk – Wednesday March 24, 2021
TRURO, England, March 24, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Literature & Latte Ltd, (L&L) creators of productivity software for writers of all types from novelists and screenwriters to academics and journalists announce the release of Scrivener 3.0 for Windows.
Scrivener unites everything needed to write, research and arrange long documents in a single, powerful app. At its heart is a simple ring-binder metaphor that allows users to gather material and flick between different parts of their manuscript, notes and references with ease. Long documents can be broken into shorter, more manageable sections which are edited in isolation or as a whole using Scrivener's innovative "Scrivenings" mode.
Let’s Get Lit-erary: How an idea turns into a book
dailycampus.com – Wednesday March 24, 2021
So you have an idea, but how exactly do you turn it into a fully-fledged novel? What does it take to see your idea unfold and make its way to a bookstore? The process can be long and grueling, but certainly worth the investments of time and money. The road to publishing is easier for established authors, but, of course, they too were once rookies. So here’s a guide to getting your book written and published, from someone who has yet to do either of these things, but spends her free time aspiring to be a novelist.
The first step is to write a manuscript — essentially a polished draft. Now, this is easier said than done. Different writers have different approaches to tackling a manuscript. Some are plotters, others consider themselves pantsers. A plotter goes through the different acts of their story before even delving into writing it. Developing a clear outline guides plotters as they type their tale, preventing it from straying off track and minimizing revision time. Pantsers, on the other hand, prefer to let ideas come to them as they write, allowing more freedom than an outline might provide. Other writers do a mixture of both, creating general guidelines beforehand, but diverging as they feel fit.
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