Writing for Money: Tips for Planning Your Next Article Pitch
sitepoint.com – Saturday November 19, 2016
If you have expertise with web technologies, there’s good money to be made writing for online publications like SitePoint.
Don’t worry if you feel you’re not a great writer. The most important thing is your knowledge and enthusiasm for your subject.
As an editor for SitePoint, I’ve compiled a list of the most important things to consider when planning and pitching your article idea.
Ruth Padel: ‘Writing needs connection to the outside world: a lot of it seems to get done when you’re simply living’
theguardian.com – Saturday November 19, 2016
All days are different; what’s the same is that I spend hardly any time in my study. It’s tiny. I love its turquoise walls and the window looking at flats across the road, but there are piles of paper on the floor and waves of guilt from unanswered letters and I’m rarely there except to use the printer. I write at the kitchen table, on a sofa, in a traffic jam, or in bed, looking out at the garden. Writing needs connection to the outside world and a lot of it seems to get done when you’re simply living. Research is just a grand name for things you’d do anyway because you need to know. My new book is dedicated to the wonderful, desperately needed Focus Homeless Outreach team in Camden, north London, where I live. I went round Camden’s homeless hostels, and haunted St Pancras Old church, one of the first sites of Christianity in England.
Tyndale Expands Its Children’s and YA Publishing Program
publishersweekly.com – Saturday November 19, 2016
In an effort to boost its children’s and young adult division, Tyndale House Publishers has expanded the staff at Tyndale Kids and is making a series of acquisitions.
Changes to the staff at Tyndale Kids include the promotion of Tyndale Kids’ acquisitions director Linda Howard to associate publisher. Further, Jesse Doogan moved from Tyndale’s digital deployment and marketing area to Tyndale Kids as acquisitions editor, and Kristi Gravemann, formerly in marketing and product development at Awana, has joined as marketing manager. Lastly, Nancy Clausen has taken the expanded role of senior marketing director at Tyndale, overseeing the marketing for adult nonfiction titles as well as children’s.
How Publishers Can Build on Self-Publishing’s Victories
digitalbookworld.com – Thursday November 17, 2016
In recent articles, I have pointed with optimism to the green-shoots of recovery for the book industry after a bruising and challenging seven years.
Print sales are on the way up, or at least finally not falling, depending on whom you speak to. Consumer ebook sales are dropping, but likely to be stabilizing against their huge initial growth, and non-consumer ebook sales are on the rise. The threat of the super-markets are no longer as strong as they look increasingly elsewhere. We have finally accepted digitization, and it is now a core part of most publishers’ businesses. The often acrimonious divide between self- and traditional publishing has quietened, as they sit, with caution, alongside each other. And with Amazon—though still challenging—we understand the pros and cons and are learning to work with or around them.
New Magazine Listing
firstwriter.com – Thursday November 17, 2016
Publishes: Fiction; Nonfiction; Poetry;
Areas include: Autobiography; Humour; Short Stories;
Markets: Adult;
Preferred styles: Literary; Satirical
Free online journal. Accepts submissions by email only. Send 3-5 poems, personal essays up to 3,000 words, fiction or humour (including satire and humorous short stories) up to 4,000 words, or memoir between 900 and 2,000 words. See website for specific submission email addresses and full submission guidelines.
Amazon launches writing competition to reinvent Twas Night Before Christmas
thebookseller.com – Wednesday November 16, 2016
Amazon is launching a nationwide writing competition in search of a modern day version of popular poem "Twas Night Before Christmas".
The competition will see a new take on the 200-year-old classic turned into a book and shared with a potential audience of millions, since it will be made available for free on Kindle devices, as well the Kindle reading app for iOS and Android, in a five-day giveaway this Christmas.
Will Sci-Fi Bots Write the Next Great Dystopian Novel?
livescience.com – Wednesday November 16, 2016
OAKLAND, Calif. — William Faulkner kept the words flowing with a steady drip of whiskey. Laurence Sterne conquered writer's block by shaving his beard. Ernest Hemingway stopped writing just when the story got good, so he'd always know where to pick up the next day.
But perhaps the next generation of writers may get a boost from robots that do the hard work for them. An idea, put forth by an American author, is to use artificial intelligence to fill in parts of a story, an email or other document when a writer is searching for the best way to express him or herself. Programs that use neural networks (machines modeled after the brain) or so-called deep learning may be especially useful, Robin Sloan, the author of "Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore" (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2012), said here at the Real Future Fair yesterday (Nov. 15). [Super-Intelligent Machines: 7 Robotic Futures]
The Daily Writing Habits Of 10 Famous Authors
bustle.com – Tuesday November 15, 2016
Deep breaths, NaNoWriMo people (NaNoWriMoers?). One page at a time. You can do it. And even if you're not a caffeine-addled writer trying to frantically crank out an entire novel in a month, you can find a way to balance regular writing with eating, sleeping, and perhaps even socializing. Many authors before you have managed it—even if a lot of them had somewhat... unique writing habits. So here are a few accomplished author's daily writing routines, to inspire you to stick with that writing schedule.
Nick Earls successfully takes on dark art of digital publishing with novella experiment
abc.net.au – Monday November 14, 2016
Brisbane author Nick Earls says his multi-platform experiment, publishing five novellas in five months, seems to have proved a risk worth taking.
With the help of boutique Australian publisher Inkerman and Blunt, Earls this year released the novellas simultaneously in print, as ebooks and as audiobooks — embracing online publishing in a way most traditional publishers have scrupulously avoided until now.
We Can All Help Children Unlock The Joys Of Writing
huffingtonpost.co.uk – Friday November 11, 2016
In recent years, reading for enjoyment has been prioritised in schools, across government policy and through third sector initiatives, reaping huge rewards for children. Indeed, our research shows that year-on-year, growing numbers of pupils are reading for pleasure and enjoying reading.
With writing for enjoyment receiving nowhere near the same level of cross-sector support, it is perhaps unsurprising that our latest research, Children and Young People’s Writing in 2015, revealed that pupils are enjoying writing far less than reading and do not write outside of school as often as they read.
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