Death of a publishing dream: how the Unbound revolution became untethered
observer.co.uk – Sunday August 10, 2025
The literary disrupters enjoyed great success with their crowdfunding model, signing authors that other publishers overlooked. And then the money ran out…
The revolution started in a small writer’s shed in 2011, amid the deck chairs, tents and bunting of the Hay festival, the highlight of the literary calendar. The talk was of shooting a rocket through the world of publishing.
Three friends – John Mitchinson, Justin Pollard and Dan Kieran – were launching a new company, one that they hoped would “democratise the book commissioning process”, with authors pitching their ideas directly to readers, who would choose whether or not to invest. Writers would crowdfund and profits would be split 50:50 between publisher and author – far more generous terms than the 10% royalties usually offered by others.
It would be author-led, author-first, the founders said. It would be a way for books that would otherwise be passed over by the old-school editors in traditional publishing houses to find their audience, and fly.
I’m a best-selling children’s author – this is how to write a good book for kids
inews.co.uk – Saturday August 9, 2025
When I meet someone new, the conversation often goes like this: “What do you do?” “I’m a children’s book writer.” “Oh, I have a great idea for a book… a toaster who wants to be a pop star!”
But despite what people think, it’s surprisingly difficult to write a good picture book. With a standard length of just 32 pages and around 1,000 words to play with, you must weave a satisfying story that is concise, engaging and entertaining enough for an audience who are forever tempted by one more episode of Bluey. How do you write a story that will stand out on a crowded bookshelf? Where do you even start?
My journey into children’s book writing was slightly accidental. When I graduated, I just knew I wanted to do “something creative”. Luckily, a supportive friend weighed in with a suggestion, presumably inspired by watching me spend the past three years knitting, painting and learning the ukulele rather than going to English lectures. “You’re basically a child – have you considered children’s book publishing?”
The authors who make millions through self-publishing
telegraph.co.uk – Friday August 8, 2025
Tens of millions of books have been self-published online since Amazon first made it possible in November 2007. Many languish in obscurity with zero sales, so writing a bestseller is anything but straightforward. But the rewards for getting it right are enormous.
“It felt like winning the lottery,” says Simon McCleave, 55, a crime novelist whose debut novel, The Snowdonia Killings, has sold half-a-million copies since he published it in 2020.
“I’d written a book that thousands of people wanted to buy and they were asking for another one,” he adds. “I thought, ‘Can I give up my job?’” A thought that doesn’t often occur to debut authors who publish through traditional channels, controlled by agents and publishers.
Bronte Festival of Women's Writing announces line-up
greatbritishlife.co.uk – Wednesday August 6, 2025
THE director of the new Wuthering Heights film, starring Margot Robbie, will be a guest at this year’s Bronte Women’s Writing Festival.
Taking place in Haworth, the festival will celebrate novelists and the North, with a focus on Bradford, in its year as UK City of Culture, as the home of the Brontes.
Actor, writer and film-maker Emerald Fennell, who wrote and directed cult hit Saltburn, will discuss her much-anticipated big screen version of Wuthering Heights, filmed in the Yorkshire Dales this year and set for release early 2026.
Other guests include best-selling author Tracy Chevalier, who wrote Girl with a Pearl Earring, and Australian author and TV presenter Holly Ringland, reflecting on how their writing has been shaped by the Brontes’ legacy.
This year’s festival theme is Writers From and Based in the North, with a focus on stories shaped by northern landscapes and the influences of the Bronte sisters, and showcasing new work from northern publishers.
The Spec Script
bbc.co.uk – Wednesday August 6, 2025
As the dates for our next annual Open Call will be announced very soon, we turned to Script Consultant Philip Shelley to outline some of the key things you should be thinking about if you are considering entering your script.
What is a Spec Script and Why is it Important? Will it get made?
‘Spec’ as in speculative. Also known as a ‘calling card’ script, 'specimen' script or ‘writing sample’.
For new screenwriters looking to break into the industry – indeed even for experienced writers looking to refresh / relaunch themselves – spec scripts are absolutely fundamental. They are your currency as a writer. Everything good will come from a promising spec script. And without it, potential employers won’t be able to engage with you as a serious proposition.
The Channel 4 screenwriting course is all about the spec script. Initially we choose 12 writers largely based on the script they have submitted. The main purpose of the course is for them to then write another script. So, by the end of the course, they should all have two outstanding spec scripts.
I have witnessed these scripts kickstarting and indeed sustaining careers over many years. That’s the very good news. The less good news is that while, over the years, many of these projects have been optioned by production companies and taken into active, paid development, they pretty much never seem to end up getting made. What they do instead is get you in the door, initiate conversations and relationships with the producers and development executives who have the power to commission you to write your next scripts.
New Writing North | Channel 4 Northern Talent Network: Script Hubs
bbc.co.uk – Tuesday August 5, 2025
In partnership with Channel 4, New Writing North's Script Hubs provide peer support and networking to writers across the North looking to take their career in TV forward.
Their next application window is open to all writers living in Cumbria and members of the global majority across the North of England.
Over a five-month period, ten writers in each Script Hub collaborate on a series of peer group sessions and professional development workshops. Each group is led by an experienced facilitator writer, with the workshops featuring guest writers, producers, and other broadcast professionals.
New Literary Agency Listing: Featherstone Cairns
firstwriter.com – Tuesday August 5, 2025
Welcomes submissions. We mainly represent adult nonfiction, and we occasionally represent fiction and children’s. We are always looking for dynamic new voices and original ideas.
Writing What You Want to Learn: The Joy of Real-World Research When Crafting a Novel
crimereads.com – Monday August 4, 2025
I have never believed in the adage Write What You Know. How boring is that? Frankly, my life’s just not that interesting. Instead, I prefer to write what I want to learn.
Case in point, I travelled to Yorkshire, England to do location research for Tea with Jam and Dread, the newest Tea by the Sea mystery. I’ve been to London several times but never to Yorkshire. In earlier books in the series it was mentioned that the grandmother character, Rose Campbell, had been a kitchen maid at a grand manor house near Halifax in her youth before marrying a visiting American, and moving to his country.
When I decided I wanted to take Rose back to Thornecroft Castle House, which is now a hotel, for the hundredth birthday celebrations of Elizabeth, the Dowager Countess of Frockmorton, I knew right away I’d have to make the trip myself before I could take my characters there.
These days you can do an enormous amount of research on the internet. Examine historical records, check up on the weather and the climate, study other people’s tourist photos, follow the layout of roads and streets on maps and zoom in at the level of an individual house or pan out to see the spread of the coastline.
The end of the road? What The Salt Path scandal means for the nature memoir
theguardian.com – Saturday August 2, 2025
When The Salt Path came out in 2018, it was a publishing phenomenon, going on to sell more than 2m copies globally. As even those who haven’t read it are likely to know by now, the book charted Raynor Winn and her husband Moth’s emotionally and physically transformative long-distance walk along the South West Coast Path in the wake of utter disaster: a financial collapse that cost them their home, and Moth’s diagnosis with an incurable neurological disorder. Winn followed it with two further books in a similar vein, The Wild Silence and Landlines, also bestsellers. Earlier this year came a film of The Salt Path, starring Gillian Anderson and Jason Isaacs. That original book by a first-time writer had become what writers, editors and booksellers all dream of: a bestselling, spin-off generating brand.
But it wasn’t the first nature memoir to top the charts, by any means. In 2012, Wild by Cheryl Strayed described the 26-year‑old’s hike across the west coast of America in the wake of her mother’s death and the end of her marriage, and after soaring up the book charts it was made into a film starring Reese Witherspoon two years later. That same year, H Is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald was a surprise bestseller, telling the story of a year spent training a Eurasian goshawk as a journey through grief after the death of their father. In 2016, Amy Liptrot’s The Outrun saw her return to the sheep farm on Orkney where she’d grown up in order to recover from addiction through contact with nature; it was also recently filmed, with Saoirse Ronan in the lead role. Meanwhile, in last year’s bestselling Raising Hare, foreign policy adviser Chloe Dalton describes moving to the countryside, rescuing a leveret and rediscovering her relationship with the land.
Nero New Writers Prize
brunel.ac.uk – Friday August 1, 2025
Brunel University of London and premium coffee house Caffè Nero have jointly opened submissions for the Nero New Writers Prize, a bold new award searching for the best original short stories from unpublished and aspiring writers from the UK and Ireland.
Entries must be an original, unpublished short story of up to 5,000 words in either fiction or non-fiction, and the Prize is open to adults who are citizens of, or resident in, the UK and Ireland.
Submissions will be judged anonymously on the quality of prose and readability by a panel chaired by author and journalist Sophie Elmhirst, winner of the 2024 Nero Gold Prize for Maurice and Maralyn. She is joined by two of Brunel’s Creative Writing faculty, Bernardine Evaristo, bestselling author and Professor of Creative Writing, and novelist and academic Helen Cullen, Reader in Creative Writing.
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