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The Truth About Publishing – 7
Lesson 6: Get advice – from professionalsIs my writing any good? My friends and family loved it, yet publishers keep rejecting my manuscripts and won’t say why. Or worse, they don’t respond at all. What’s the matter? Why won’t they tell me anything? What am I supposed to do now?There are a number of reasons why publishers won’t tell you…
Louise Cusack on Manuscript Development
Manuscript development – most writers need it, but few know anything about it. Who better to talk about the topic than Louise Cusack, award-winning Australian author of romantic adventures set in lost worlds who has also run her own manuscript development business for the past 8 years. Her novella in the anthology Magic, Mystery, Voodoo and the Holy Grail won…
The iPad 2 Competition Winner
Ok, here's how it was judged. I downloaded all the entries into a spreadsheet, deleted a small number of invalid entries (ie those not from Australia), and ended up with 1057 valid entries, numbered from 1 to 1057.I then obtained a random number sequence from 1 to 1057 using the Sequence Generator at www.random.org. The first number in the sequence…
The Truth About Publishing – 6
Lesson 5: Why most writers never get publishedIf you’re continually being rejected, it’s time for ruthless self-analysis. These are the most common reasons that fiction manuscripts are rejected:The writer simply can’t write – or, just as commonly, hasn't taken the trouble to learn how to write;The writer has written a first draft and submitted it without bothering to edit it.…
Stephen M Irwin on The First Step
Today’s guest blog is from Stephen M Irwin, novelist and filmmaker whose short films have won awards around the world. He has written and directed TV documentaries and his first novel, The Dead Path, which has been published in many countries, was named Top Horror Title in the 2011 RUSA Reading List. His second novel, The Broken Ones, was released…