Mark Charan Newton

From the Wall Street Journal: With e-reader prices dropping like a stone and major tech players jumping into the book retail business, what room is left for publishers’ profits? The surprising answer: ads. They’re coming soon to a book near you. I’m not giving Rupert Murdoch any more money, so I’m not paying to see [...]

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First, my next Amazon.com post is online, where I talk about the similarities of mystery and fantasy fiction. Feel free to jump in with your thoughts. Now to business. I thought I’d share the graph of my web stats, month by month over the last couples of years. Pretty cool, isn’t it? Yes I’ve covered [...]

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Some random thoughts on writing and age. But first, you’re never too old to get a book deal: An 82-year-old grandmother is celebrating after landing a book deal for her debut novel… Myrrha Stanford-Smith, a teacher and theatre director, said she was ”gobsmacked” to be handed the three-book agreement, which saw her first work The [...]

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Try being a literary fiction debut: The contraction of the high street and the dynamics of online retailing are putting extra pressure on literary publishers, with subscriptions plummeting to less than half their previous figures. With Waterstone’s the only high street chain with a literary profile and Amazon working to a sales model with low [...]

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In the Guardian: Nobody writes letters any more: at least not the kind of erudite, humorous missives that are the hallmark of great correspondence. As we are so often told, we live in the digital age. Like the rest of us, authors now largely correspond with their agents, friends, contemporaries and, occasionally, fans through email, [...]

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This arrived today, a lovely bottle of Laphroaig Quarter Cask, in celebration of publication, courtesy of the lovely Team Tor. How nice! None of this champagne nonsense – Julie Crisp is all about the hard stuff. And now to business. Do you fancy getting your hands on a SIGNED ARC of the US edition of Nights [...]

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Dear struggling writers. What’s the best way of getting your fantasy novel published? Well, the obvious route would be to spend several years pouting up and down catwalks and generally selling your soul to the fashion and media gods. Just like Tyra Banks did. I’m so EXCITED!! I said I was going to do it, [...]

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Amusing little article in The Atlantic: no, I’m talking about straight how-to books, most of which claimed to offer shortcut advice, practical instructions on “writing your say the genre,” and even in some cases “secrets” of the novelist’s or story writer’s or poet’s trade. That day, with Delores, I stood among the titles, amazed. Stack [...]

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I find some of this incredible, so I’ll highlight a big chunk: In the heyday of pulp fiction, writers churned their books out at a great rate, usually to earn enough money to live on. Prentiss Ingraham wrote more than 600 books, 200 of them on Buffalo Bill. Occasionally, he wrote a 35,000-word book overnight. [...]

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I just wanted to post a note on tie-in fiction, because Graham McNeill’s Empire has been shortlisted on the online poll for the David Gemmell Legend Award. It very much has my backing to win, not only because Graham is a good chap, but because it’s about time the world acknowledged tie-in fiction as proper [...]

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Author wins publishing deal after leaving manuscript on Richard and Judy’s doorstep: A struggling author landed a major publishing deal for her first novel after leaving a draft copy on the doorstep of television presenters Richard and Judy… The college tutor sent the manuscript to several publishing houses but had no reply and was on [...]

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Huzzah for the changes at Waterstone’s: Waterstone’s managing director Dominic Myers has made his first structural change in how the business operates, since taking over in January, moving away from a category management system of book buying while giving stores back some of their buying power. The moves come ahead of an analyst and press [...]

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