Get off Twitter — and write your novel — with advice from these Charlotte authors (The Charlotte Observer)
Write about the thing that you’re afraid to write about. Research some, but don’t get stuck in the research phase. Focus on your writing. Write when you feel your creative juices flowing, but also carve out time to allow for those creative moments to happen,” Crumpton said. “And if self-doubt ever creeps in, remember why you started to write in the first place. Keep pushing through.
Pandemic drives ebook and audiobook sales by UK publishers to all-time high (The Guardian)
The pandemic has revived the fortunes of the consumer ebook. The format once touted as the future of reading has suffered six straight years of sales declines since peaking in 2014 but this year has been different, with sales home and abroad up 17% to £144m in the first half. UK publishers can now expect consumer ebooks to enjoy their best year since 2015, when sales were just under £300m. The ebook market has also received a boost thanks to the government scrapping the so-called “reading tax” of 20% VAT charged on digital titles, which Amazon then cut from the price of Kindle ebooks on 1 May, to bring them in line with physical equivalents, which have always been zero-rated.
Penguin, Bloomsbury, Juggernaut can wait—Twitter is the new fiction publisher (The Print)
Move over Bloomsbury, Penguin, and Juggernaut — Twitter is now the premier fiction publisher in the era of coronavirus. When Twitter user Shiv Ramdas wrote a lengthy thread about his brother-in-law buying a truck of rice, his posts received 77,000 retweets and 3 lakh likes within days. That’s how starved people are for a quick, interesting read on social media.
Why the funniest books are also the most serious (BBC)
But the problem is even more deeply entrenched than that: it’s not just that comic fiction is rarely taken seriously, but when serious writers are funny, it’s overlooked. Last year saw the centenary of Iris Murdoch’s birth, and a resurgence of interest in her work. For years I avoided reading her novels, assuming them by reputation to be fussy, worthy and po-faced. But when I did, I was bowled over: in books such as The Black Prince and The Sea, The Sea, Murdoch is a very funny writer: and I don’t mean witty exchanges at dinner parties – there is a bit of that – but slapstick, farce and the comedy of madness and mayhem unleashed. From kidnapping movie-star dogs to games of sexual musical chairs, no behaviour is too daft for her characters.
Indie Success: “The Best of All Possible Worlds” (Publishers Weekly)
Despite his frequent forays into traditional publishing, Howey’s reputation for uplifting and collaborating with fellow indie authors is unparalleled. Fredric Shernoff, author of the Atlantic Island series, contributed to 2014’s Wool Gathering, an indie anthology of stories based on the Silo books. “Not only did Hugh graciously allow me to write in his Wool universe but he actively supported my work,” Shernoff says. “His efforts helped remove the stigma around self-publishing and changed the game for so many aspiring authors.”
Waking Writer 