Earning a living as a writer is as likely as winning the lottery. Instead of writing books and persuading others to buy them, find out what people want to write, then do it for themPhilip Pullman: professional writers set to become ‘an endangered species’ due to low wagesI left school with a burning urge to lead the life of a writer: travelling like Byron, feted like Wilde before his fall, creating laughter like Wodehouse and crafting sentences like Nabokov. I had no professional contacts, so I wrote my masterpieces speculatively, and every path I went down ended with a rejection slip or total silence. The perceived wisdom then, as now, was that earning a living as a writer was about as likely as winning a lottery.Then I discovered the secret of marketing: instead of writing things and trying to persuade people to buy them, I would find out what writing services people needed and offer to provide them. So, at the same time as begging publishers and editors for commissions, I made myself available to anyone who might want to write an article or a book but did not feel able to do it for themselves. Continue reading... Continue reading at 'The Guardian'
[ The Guardian | 2016-01-06 00:00:00 UTC ]
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You should watch Euphoria, a friend told me while we were on a walk during our young daughters’ dance class. I wasn’t sure why she would suggest this. Particularly in the context of our conversation: I was confiding in her about the anxiety that felt like it had been boiling inside of me for... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2022-12-13 12:05:00 UTC ]
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Independent book store Book Keeper will continue to hold Drag Queen Story Time after protests. Continue reading at CBC
[ CBC | 2022-12-13 09:00:00 UTC ]
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More than 500 authors have signed a letter standing with the HarperCollins union as they reach of month of being on strike. Continue reading at Book Riot
[ Book Riot | 2022-12-12 18:27:00 UTC ]
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You can read ebooks, write notes, or mark up PDFs on this new slate, but your wallet will feel a lot lighter. Continue reading at Wired
[ Wired | 2022-12-08 14:00:00 UTC ]
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I’m a daily runner. When I run varies, depending on the day’s contours, but I always lace up and head out. Earbuds in, audiobook on, running app ready to track my slow miles along semi-rural roads. Often, I don’t want to go. No matter how much I practice, I find running difficult. When I was […] Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2022-12-08 09:53:23 UTC ]
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As a cultivated writing praxis, creative nonfiction allows for a broader panorama of experience than a genre restricted to the empirical. It is one which permits dreams to presage and queer bodies to serve as repositories of memory. With the best of intentions, I believe Waiting in the Wings, my... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2022-12-07 09:51:50 UTC ]
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Jane Smiley is a master of plot, with multiple awards for her novels, including the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Critics Circle award for A Thousand Acres (King Lear as set on an Iowa farm circa 1979). She’s also distilled her years of teaching and cultural criticism into a superb writing... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2022-12-06 09:53:58 UTC ]
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Brina will appear in conversation with Elizabeth Joseph of New Rochelle Public Library. The live stream is set for Tuesday, December 6th at 1 p.m. ET. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2022-12-02 05:00:00 UTC ]
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The winners of the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators' inaugural Russell Freedman Award for Nonfiction for a Better World were announced on November 29. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2022-12-01 05:00:00 UTC ]
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In days of yore—that is, my childhood in the paper-mill town of Mexico, Maine—a labor strike looked like an ugly affair. Picketing men in steel-toed boots screamed themselves hoarse at every shift change, their righteous anger rising into a sky thick with the sulfurous clouds of... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2022-11-23 16:38:06 UTC ]
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BookTrust research shows, however, that the overall picture ‘remains far from representative’ with some writers and illustrators reporting tokenismNew research has found that 11.7% of children’s book creators published in the UK in 2021 were people of colour, up from 5.6% in 2017.Despite the big... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2022-11-23 06:01:50 UTC ]
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The Miami Book Fair began as a two-day event in November 1984, when a small group of determined individuals—including educators from Miami Dade College, independent booksellers, and librarians—founded Miami Book Fair International. In the nearly 40 years since, Miami Book Fair has grown into one... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2022-11-22 09:51:48 UTC ]
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The writer and illustrator on turning her ‘weird hobby’ into a bestselling YA series and Netflix hit, the importance of asexual representation and lessons from her fans on love bitesAt 28, the author and illustrator Alice Oseman recently achieved what so many of her peers cannot: she bought a... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2022-11-19 09:00:53 UTC ]
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If you’re a literary genius, you’ve got it easy—right? Wrong. Even Jane Austen, indisputably one of the greatest novelists in the English language, spent years struggling to be published and became so dispirited that there were moments when she almost walked away. The story begins with an... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2022-11-18 09:54:04 UTC ]
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Female authors reveal honest stories of trauma, the challenges of motherhood, sexual dysfunction, and other rarely-talked about topics in new religion and spirituality books for women. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2022-11-18 05:00:00 UTC ]
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Celebrated children's author Marcus Sedgwick, who was nominated for more than 30 awards, has passed away unexpectedly. Continue reading at Book Riot
[ Book Riot | 2022-11-17 17:42:32 UTC ]
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Tributes have flooded in for the much-loved writer, who wrote more than 40 books for children and adults including the recent Be the Change handbooksAuthor Marcus Sedgwick, who wrote more than 40 books for children and adults, has died aged 54. His literary agency RCW has confirmed his death,... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2022-11-17 13:02:14 UTC ]
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My clearest memory of my freshman year of college takes place in the emergency room of Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, where I was studying English Literature at Boston University and living on the eighteenth floor of Warren Towers, in Tower C, in a room with southern exposure. Despite... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2022-11-17 09:53:52 UTC ]
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Two Russian nationals are now facing criminal charges in the U.S. for their role in running Z-Library, one of the world's most notorious e-book pirate sites before its domains were seized by U.S. officials earlier this fall. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2022-11-17 05:00:00 UTC ]
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Book sales fell 9% in August compared to a year ago at the 1,367 publishers who report data to AAP’s StatShot program. All segments had declines in the month, with sales of adult books down 9.3% and sales of children’s/young adult book declining 10.9%. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2022-11-16 05:00:00 UTC ]
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