Mark Charan Newton

Despite the impression we authors like to give, publishing isn’t just about us. There are people who work behind the scenes and they work extremely hard in producing novels each month, and what’s more, they get little acknowledgement. These are the people who help shape careers, as well as an industry, yet they don’t often [...]

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Americans! Feast your eyes on this. Fresh from the offices of Bantam Spectra, we have the advance reading copies of the US debut of Nights of Villjamur. Always exciting to share a picture or two.

Incidentally, the typewriter in the background is purely ornamental, and I couldn’t actually find a free space to pile the [...]

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I said to Julie that I would send cake to Tor UK in order to celebrate the new novel deal for books three and four, and I am a man of my word. I recommend writers sending a cupcake with every submission to a publisher. Cake makes them happy.

Share: [...]

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Fascinating article in the Globe and Mail about advice writing. (Via Bookninja.)
The market for fiction shrinks every year, the attention paid to novels by the media diminishes monthly, booksellers demand ever-lower prices, everybody in the industry says it’s the worst it’s ever been. And yet more academic or private creative-writing programs are created every year, [...]

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If you’re looking to get funding to write a book, one option is to use Kickstarter, which was pointed out to me in the comments of a previous post.

I’m sure by linking to this, it’s going to annoy the hell out of some writers – those who think we’ve a god-given right to be doing [...]

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Now here’s a novel idea:

It’s the unusual approach taken by Deanna Zandt, an American “media technologist and consultant to key progressive media organisations”. Last summer she issued a plea on her blog for donations to support her while she spent three months writing a book about social networking as a tool for social change and [...]

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I notice that Strange Horizons is getting to grips with some of the shortlisted titles from last year’s Gemmell Award:
The question that presents itself, obviously, is: how easily can any of these books be judged on their own merits? This, certainly, is what the DGLA administrators are aiming for, as noted on their website: “[P]lease [...]

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Don’t get me wrong, I love writing books, and wouldn’t want to stop doing it. You’ll have to take this MacBook from my cold dead hands. But the medium of writing is a curious one, and there are some parts about the process which I really dislike.
1) I don’t like that you can’t improvise with [...]

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I hate giving writing advice.
There’s something distinctly awkward about it. I dislike the fact that some people can dictate any one system for writing. You have to do what works for you. That said, continuing the Tips series of posting, here are some things that come from the old editorial/bookselling side of my brain. [...]

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Continuing from the previous post, here are some more rough notes. This time, on submitting to agents and what kind of things to put in a synopsis.
The submission stage

• Use professionalism, first and foremost. Treat this like you would other business – that means, be polite to people.
• Lose your ego! You’d be surprised at [...]

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This is me talking as an ex-bookseller, one-time editor with a mass market SFF imprint, and a fantasy writer with a commercial deal. This is not me spouting rubbish about how to write, because, well, there’s something distinctly awkward about giving such advice. You do what you have to do.
So I sometimes use these notes [...]

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The last post proved popular. Here are a few other things I didn’t quite know about being a writer. Perhaps I’ll be a little more open. You might not like what’s said.
1) Spin matters more than you think. Sometimes it matters which major magazine or newspaper reviewer is given your book. Like a lot in [...]

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