firstwriter.com

Writers' Newsletter

Issue #265
April 2025

News

Some of this month's news for writers from around the web.

Top literary agent and businessman Esmond Harmsworth dies at 57

Top literary agent and businessman Esmond Harmsworth dies at 57

dailymail.co.uk – Tuesday April 15, 2025

Esmond Harmsworth, one of North America's leading literary agents for business, entrepreneurship and management books, has died while on holiday in Mauritius. He was 57.

A half uncle of the 4th Viscount Rothermere, chairman of Daily Mail and General Trust plc, Esmond lived in Boston in the US, where he had a hugely successful business representing authors from across the publishing spectrum.

His clients included the New York Times bestseller and the number one Wall Street Journal business bestseller Breakthrough: Secrets of America's Fastest Growing Companies by Keith McFarland; Amanda Ripley's New York Times bestseller The Smartest Kids in the World – And How They Got That Way; and Michelle Hoover's acclaimed 2016 literary novel Bottomland.

[Read the full article]

Respiration by G. Miki Hayden In Book 3 of the Rebirth series, martial arts grandmaster Jay Gardner faces down a Yakuza gangster.

New £10k writing prize launched at Sherborne Travel Writing Festival

New £10k writing prize launched at Sherborne Travel Writing Festival

thebookseller.com – Monday April 14, 2025

A new £10,000 prize for travel writing was unveiled at the Sherborne Travel Writing Festival on Sunday 13th April.

The annual prize will be awarded to a published British or European author whose work “encourages understanding between peoples and across societies, countering the division and isolation of the present day”.

Moreover, “as well as the boldness of the author’s ambition and the quality of writing, emphasis will be placed on books that enable readers to cross borders and so to draw together – on the page at least – our divided worlds”.

Any full-length, non-fiction (including creative non-fiction) travel book written by a British or EU national and published in English in 2024 or 2025 is eligible for the award; entries must be made by the author’s publisher or literary agent.

[Read the full article]

International Copyright Registration

Register your copyright online for instant copyright protection in more than 160 different countries worldwide.

Click here for more information

9 Companies Hiring Remote Freelance Writers In 2025

9 Companies Hiring Remote Freelance Writers In 2025

forbes.com – Sunday April 13, 2025

It’s no secret that one of the easiest side hustles or full-time freelance businesses to pursue, with minimal setup costs or time to launch, is freelance writing.

Freelance writing can be started even if you have minimal experience, and one of its other appeals is that you can get paid top dollar by the world’s leading B2B SaaS companies, all while working from the comfort of your home, as a digital nomad in Bali, or from the beach in the beautiful white sands of the Caribbean islands.

The freelance writing industry is experiencing a boom. Content marketing is a multi-billion-dollar sector, with more companies allocating this highly effective outreach method as part of their marketing budgets. Statista projects that global content marketing spend will almost double in the years between 2022 and 2026, reaching an eye-watering $107 billion next year.

So if you’re skilled in writing long-form content, providing detailed explanations, and contributing subject matter expertise instead of merely writing as a traditional journalist or generalist, then there is plenty of scope for you to build a thriving freelance writing business.

[Read the full article]

Click here for the rest of this month's news >

Writers' Handbook 2025 - Out Now!

  • Over 1,500 markets for writers
  • Includes literary agents, publishers, and magazines
  • Available now in print and as an ebook

Writers' Handbook

Click here to buy it now

Listings

A selection of the new listings added to firstwriter.com this month.

New Magazine Listing: The BSFA Review

New Magazine Listing: The BSFA Review

firstwriter.com – Thursday March 27, 2025

A digital magazine filled with reviews of the latest genre fiction. We aim to cover as much of the SFF field as possible, whether it is traditional or contemporary science fiction and/or fantasy. We are also interested in fiction and non-fiction material that is not directly SFF but may be of related interest to the genre, including themes like horror and war. This means that as well as fiction and non-fiction we also try to feature reviews of comics, graphic novels, spoken word, films, plays, and exhibitions.

[See the full listing]


New Book Publisher Listing: Sourcebooks Horror

New Book Publisher Listing: Sourcebooks Horror

firstwriter.com – Friday March 21, 2025

We are actively acquiring agented and unagented Horror fiction including Own Voices, marginalized voices, inclusive and diverse stories. We’re looking for strong writers of all ethnicities, races, sexualities, gender identities, abilities and ages, whose stories have something fresh to offer in the Horror genre.​

[See the full listing]


New Literary Agent Listing: Lily Dolin

New Literary Agent Listing: Lily Dolin

firstwriter.com – Tuesday April 15, 2025

She represents authors in both fiction and nonfiction, including YA, with books ranging from commercial to literary and everything in between. She is actively looking for novels with strong hooks, propulsive plots, dark and offbeat humor, and nuanced female perspectives. She especially loves sweeping family dramas, strange and unusual women in strange and unusual circumstances, and smart speculative bents. In nonfiction, she is looking for narrative nonfiction, memoirs, or essay collections that are funny, outrageous, shocking, emotional, or all of the above. She particularly loves food stories, true crime, pop culture, and untold history with a feminist angle.

[See the full listing]


Click here for more of this month's new listings >

Articles

Some of this month's articles for writers from around the web.

‘Balancing Output with Input’: Margaret Rogerson on Writing Fantasy, Taking Breaks, and Balancing Inspiration and Hard Work

‘Balancing Output with Input’: Margaret Rogerson on Writing Fantasy, Taking Breaks, and Balancing Inspiration and Hard Work

thecrimson.com – Tuesday April 15, 2025

When a reader opens the pages of a fantasy novel, they might relish in anticipation of entering a new, imaginative world and a thrilling and delightful reading experience. But, what does writing fantasy novels look like? What is the journey and the daily routine of an author who creates these fantastical universes, traveling between foreign places from one novel to another?

While such questions might seem abstract and difficult to answer, sitting down and talking to the authors who have experienced them offers exciting insights. This column, “The Daily Desk,” strives to answer these questions: What is an author’s daily routine, and what can we learn from their writing experiences?

“A hug in book form”

A New York Times and internationally bestselling author, Margaret Rogerson began her career with the young adult fantasy standalone “An Enchantment of Ravens” in 2017, continuing with “Sorcery of Thorns” in 2019 and “Vespertine” in 2021.

[Read the full article]

Taking Humor Writing Seriously

Taking Humor Writing Seriously

sfwa.org – Tuesday April 15, 2025

A few years ago, I was on a panel on Humorous SF at a convention (an occupational hazard, given what I write). I opened with well-rehearsed remarks about how there seemed to be a resistance to my beloved subgenre among major publishers. Before I could get very far, a person in the audience stood up and said, “Isn’t it true that there aren’t a lot of humorous sci-fi stories because they’re hard to write?”

Hmm…

I can’t argue with that. I view writing humor as drama+: A comic story must do everything a dramatic story does (it has to have characters the reader cares about and an engaging story), plus it has to make the reader laugh. Humorous genre writing can be considered drama++: It has to do everything a dramatic story does, plus make the reader laugh, plus contain genre tropes (aliens or robots for science fiction, magic systems for fantasy, dread for horror, and so on). I write satire, which adds another layer onto this formula—by now, I’m sure you can do the creative math.

[Read the full article]

Why AI can’t take over creative writing

Why AI can’t take over creative writing

theconversation.com – Wednesday April 2, 2025

In 1948, the founder of information theory, Claude Shannon, proposed modelling language in terms of the probability of the next word in a sentence given the previous words. These types of probabilistic language models were largely derided, most famously by linguist Noam Chomsky: “The notion of ‘probability of a sentence’ is an entirely useless one.”

In 2022, 74 years after Shannon’s proposal, ChatGPT appeared, which caught the attention of the public, with some even suggesting it was a gateway to super-human intelligence. Going from Shannon’s proposal to ChatGPT took so long because the amount of data and computing time used was unimaginable even a few years before.

ChatGPT is a large language model (LLM) learned from a huge corpus of text from the internet. It predicts the probability of the next word given the context: a prompt and the previously generated words.

ChatGPT uses this model to generate language by choosing the next word according to the probabilistic prediction. Think about drawing words from a hat, where the words predicted to have a higher probability have more copies in the hat. ChatGPT produces text that seems intelligent.

There is a lot of controversy about how these tools can help or hinder learning and practising creative writing. As a professor of computer science who has authored hundreds of works on artificial intelligence (AI), including AI textbooks that cover the social impact of large language models, I think understanding how the models work can help writers and educators consider the limitations and potential uses of AI for what might be called “creative” writing.

[Read the full article]

Click here for the rest of this month's articles >

About

Information about this newsletter and the firstwriter.com site.

Resources for writers

Go to firstwriter.com for the following invaluable resources for writers:

Advertise

To advertise on this newsletter for as little as $30 / £20 click here

Submit

To submit articles, news items, press releases, or any other items of interest to writers, click here

This newsletter has been compiled by firstwriter.com and is protected by copyright. It may not be copied, forwarded, or otherwise distributed in whole or in part without firstwriter.com's written consent.

While every effort is made to ensure that all information contained within this newsletter is accurate, readers are reminded that this information is provided only as a list of potential leads that the reader should follow up with his or her own investigations. Unless otherwise stated, firstwriter.com is not associated with and does not endorse, recommend, or provide any assurances relating to any of the organisations, events, persons or promotions contained within this newsletter, and cannot be held responsible for any loss incurred due to actions taken in relation to information provided. Inclusion does not constitute recommendation.

Please do not reply to this email. The address from which this has been sent is not capable of receiving emails and sending an email to it may cause your subscription to stop. If you have any queries or require any assistance please contact us by going to https://www.firstwriter.com/contactus/

© firstwriter.com 2025