Someone on Facebook recently posted to ask me about how to restructure an entire book if it needs a bit of an overhaul. This is something I work with authors on at Avon, and it's also something I had to do for my own book, so I do have a few tips on the best way to approach this. Read more
Will Self is the author of 10 novels, five collections of short stories and several works of nonfiction, including The Quantity Theory of Insanity, Dorian and Walking to Hollywood. Phone is the final instalment of the trilogy that began with Umbrella and Shark and is out now in paperback (Viking, £8.99).
I do not think it is a coincidence that the novel as a form reaches maturity at the same point as the bourgeoisie as a class are ascendant. Although the novel has its forerunners and predecessors - Boccaccio, Rabelais, Cervantes, de la Fayette - it gets into its stride with affluent, middle-class white men: Richardson, Fielding, Sterne, Smollett.
Many years ago, when I had just started writing books about philosophy, I got talking to two of my newly acquired peers. I asked one what he was currently working on, which as conversational gambits go is about as original as asking a novelist where she gets her ideas from. Having heard his answer, I perhaps tactlessly noted that quite a lot of books had recently appeared on this subject. Read more
Emily Dickinson said, over a century ago, that "There is no frigate like a book to take us Lands away," and it's true. When we pick up a book, turn on the TV, or watch a movie, we are carried away down the currents of story into a world of imagination. And when we land, once more, on a shore that is both new and familiar, something strange happens. Stepping onto the shore, we're changed. Read more
I'm tired of reading about the death of the book. It's not true, in the first place, and in the second, it's a lazy signifier, a way of addressing cultural import (or risk) that's not really justified. Read more
The days of slowly introducing a reader to a novel are over. Authors now believe that their first sentence is crucial if they are going to hold their reader's attention because they are so easily distracted by modern technology such as iPads. Read more
In a well-informed article on the Authors' Licensing and Collecting Society site, Danuta Kean asks if Google is doing enough to deal with the copyright infringements of file-sharing sites.
As Hilary Mantel carries off the Costa to add to her second Booker win, Sameer Rahim in the Telegraph comments: 'The richness of its language and psychological penetration cannot hide the fact that Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies can be read as posh Philippa Gregory.'
'I'm very reassuringly honest. It's a job as well as a calling. It's my living - I'm the chief breadwinner in my house. My husband is retired, he supported me through the two decades while I wasn't making enough to live on, and was doing all kinds of things to do with writing to survive - judging competitions, running workshops, appraising manuscripts.
‘My settings of Europe and English visitors weren't really doing it for them, so we decided Scotland would be good. I thought an island would be great, because it's a small community, and it's an opportunity for my main character to get away from it all. The team at HarperCollins have been so supportive and enthusiastic... Read more
For the past five years or so, I've read books on my phone. The practice started innocently enough. I write book reviews from time to time, and so publishers sometimes send me upcoming titles that fall roughly within my interests. Read more
The Guardian calls Irish-Indian poet Nikita Gill "Britain's most-followed poet on social media"-she has 780,000 Instagram followers and 180,000 TikTok followers, and her Instapoetry has been reshared by the likes of Khloe Kardashian, Alanis Morissette, and Sam Smith-and she has published seven volumes of poetry and two novels in the U.K. But she is far less known on this side of the pond. Read more
Nikkolas Smith knows a thing or two about book bans. The illustrator has created five picture books over the last three years-four of which have been yanked off library shelves. There's I am Ruby Bridges, about the civil rights icon; That Flag about the confederate flag; Born on the Water, which explores slavery; and The Artivist which features a child supporting trans kids.
Simon & Schuster has acquired the largest Dutch publishing group Veen Bosch & Keuning, including all of its publishers in the Netherlands and Belgium, as well as sister companies Thinium and Bookchoice.
The Publishers Association (PA) has criticised the government's response to a House of Lords report on AI, saying that it has failed to make "any tangible commitments to protect the creative industries against mass copyright infringement".
'I'm very reassuringly honest'
‘My settings of Europe and English visitors weren't really doing it for them, so we decided Scotland would be good. I thought an island would be great, because it's a small community, and it's an opportunity for my main character to get away from it all. The team at HarperCollins have been so supportive and enthusiastic... Read more