Writing Magazine May 2022

Do it your own way! As I survey the contents of yet another packed issue of WM this month, that’s the overriding message. And we’ve got some big names saying so. Star interview author Tom Cox has created his own sub-genre by pitching himself somewhere between Alan Moore, Donovan and Bill Bryson, and attracted an audience entirely his own; The Artist’s Way guru Julia Cameron encourages getting the most out of Morning Pages by doing just what feels right to you; Nikesh Shukla stresses the importance of establishing what your voice is to find out what it is you really ought to be writing; and our own Gary Dalkin points out in tackling Shiny New Idea Syndrome that one writer’s distraction could be another’s commission goldmine. So by all means…

In what many industry watchers are considering a game-changer, selfprofessed showman and bestselling fantasy novelist Brandon Sanderson (the Cosmere novels – including the Mistborn and Stormlight Archive series) astonished the literary world with a video on YouTube in March which ended up with the biggest Kickstarter ever. In the 16-minute video presentation Sanderson explained that during the time he had saved by not going on the road promoting his work in the two years of the pandemic – time he estimated amounting to 100-110 days a year – he had written four new novels and a novella. These books were in addition to titles he already had scheduled to come out with Tor and Delacorte Press. Rather than publish these extra books traditionally, Sanderson said, he had decided to self-publish them…

Immediately the Russian invasion of, and genocidal war against, Ukraine began, PEN International organised a letter signed by over 1,000 leading writers from all around the world expressing solidarity with the people of Ukraine. The letter included: We, writers around the world, are appalled by the violence unleashed by Russian forces against Ukraine and urgently call for an end to the bloodshed. We stand united in condemnation of a senseless war, waged by President Putin’s refusal to accept the rights of Ukraine’s people to debate their future allegiance and history without Moscow’s interference. We stand united in support of writers, journalists, artists, and all the people of Ukraine, who are living through their darkest hours. We stand by you and feel your pain. All individuals have a right to peace, free expression, and free…

Given Amazon is widely reviled in some quarters for putting physical bookshops out of business, it always seemed odd when, in 2015, the company began opening actual physical bookshops of its own. By this year there were 68 such shops split between the US and UK, though this number also included ‘pop up shops’ and ‘4-star’ stores which sold toys and other goods which received high customer ratings on Amazon. It was therefore not unironic that in March Amazon announced that it was closing all its bookstores. Perhaps competition from itself put them out of business? The online behemoth hasn’t given up on physical stores completely though, saying that it is going to concentrate on grocery stores and a new department store ‘concept’. The latter itself also seems commercially dubious:…

STAR LETTER PERSISTENCE PAYS OFF I once read that if you are serious about having a story or novel published you should make at least fifty submissions. I have now experienced the truth of this observation for myself. I originally wrote my fantasy short story The House in the Forest as an exercise on a creative writing course in January 2021. I was pleased with how it turned out and started to enter it into competitions. It was shortlisted in The Mighty Pens Winter Short Story Competition and longlisted in the Farnham Flash Fiction Awards 2021 which was very encouraging to me as a new writer. I persevered in submitting it to a variety of magazines and journals for publication. Each time I presented the text according to their requirements and kept a…

So, you’ve written a book, gone through the editing process, and have now either signed with an agent and got a publishing deal, or decided to self-publish. Now comes the difficult part, selling the book. When we’re talking about marketing a book, really, we’re talking about how to get it noticed. There are entire courses on this, and how you, as an author, go about doing it will in part depend on whether you are self-published or traditionally published. If the latter, you will have a team of people working on your book at the publishing house, including a publicist and a marketeer. (Broadly speaking, a publicist is someone who is generating ‘free’ coverage – features, reviews, radio interviews, events, etc – and a marketeer looks at paid-for promotions, such as…