Final Thoughts

After much deliberation I decided that for my creative piece, I would take the same topic and write about it for two different publications. I chose Cosmopolitan and The Sun Newspaper, as they have two completely different styles of writing. I decided to discuss the Super-Injunction debate, as it's of great interest to me and as well as being topical, it will also still be relevant in the weeks to come, as it has caused debates in courts and in the press. I studied newspapers over a number of days to see what had already been said on the subject and to learn how the press felt about a subject they didn't have the ability to talk about freely.

For the Cosmo piece, I decided to follow a format that is popular in the magazine, introducing the subject and then having two people debate their opinions about it. The opinions and the people who gave them were fictional, but loosely based on the opinions of those in the press, MPs, people interviewed in newspapers and those who have written blogs on the subject. As the alleged injunctions themselves mean the press are not able to use the names of the people involved in the debate, I followed this rule and kept references to people vague in the article.

For the Sun article I decided to do the complete opposite of the Cosmo article. I decided to create a fictional situation where one of the people involved in the injunction scandal had decided to drop their order, meaning the press were free to discuss their case. I decided to create a fictional character and events, as this made it easier for me to write about the personal life of the character, and make up events that were being reported, while keeping in in the context of what is happening in real life.

Having studied the newspaper and how it reported stories, specifically stories about this subject, I think I managed to make the article suitable for the publication. The register of the writing is quite informal, and the journalists tend to slip opinions into the articles, alongside the supposed facts that they are reporting. The term 'our source' is used in a lot of articles, and so I used this phrase to add quotes to the article.

I think that writing for the Sun was a lot easier than for Cosmo, and also a lot more enjoyable as it allowed me to be a lot more creative. I think the topic was a good topic to be discussed in both publications, although they were discussed very differently. Although Cosmo is a monthly magazine and has therefore not included an article about the subject in an issue, I can imagine that there will be something in the next issue of the magazine.

The issue discussed itself made it both easy and hard in some aspects to research. Although it is a popular subject that is being written about in papers and online, as well as obviously being a popular 'trending' topic on Twitter, the legal implications on the subject made it quite hard to find the original sources of the gossip. It was frustrating trying to locate the original blog and Twitter account that had caused the upset, as the name of the blogger was also not allowed to be used in the press. It was through Twitter that I was able to find what I was looking for.

Although it was sometimes difficult to research the subject, I think that if I was to write the creative piece again, I would use the same subject, as it was a subject I enjoyed writing about. I think that I would perhaps write for a different publication for Cosmo however, as the writing style of the magazine is quite difficult to copy, as it is aimed at young, aspiring women.

Week Nine

On closer inspection, the Quick Reads aren't as short as I thought, as the first chapter of one was around 900 words, and there was ten chapters. So I'm definitely ruling those out, as they're obviously far too long for the assignment. Also, after the lecture this week, I've decided that perhaps doing a short non-fiction piece would be easier than a fiction piece.


However, although discussing how to choose a subject to write about and how to write it will be helpful when I come to start writing my creative piece, the questions actually made me worry that I may not know enough about one subject to be able to write about it and sell it. At least not a subject I can imagine enough people wanting to read about. 


For example, in the lecture when we had to pick a subject we know a lot about, I chose the ATC (Air Training Corps.) However, although my four years experience with the ATC as a teenager means that I do know a lot about the subject, it's not something everybody is interested in. Or anybody, as far as I know. Sure, the 'I can fly a plane' line is always good to have when I'm asked for an interesting fact, (coincidently, a game we used to play a lot in the ATC) but although people are always interested to hear how I learned to do it, I don't think it's something people would want to read 2,000 words about. 

There is an Air Cadet magazine that's read by the organisation, and my mum used to read it when I took it home and the adverts were on, but I think it's just issued to ATC squadrons, not in shops or anywhere else. 

Although, strangely, this was being auctioned online!

I did have one idea of perhaps writing an article for a young teenage magazine, promoting the organisation, but I just don't think it would work. So, something else then. If I didn't learn anything else this week, I learned that I need a new hobby. 

Although, if I was to write a fictional piece, I wouldn't necessarily write only about things I know. I've written stories before about subjects such as teenage pregnancy, alcoholism, post traumatic stress, antenatal depression, and death (yes, all of my stories are full of joy!) I didn't know much about those subjects to begin with, and yet they turned out alright (according to my marks anyway!) I suppose writing a non-fiction piece requires writing about a subject in more detail, but that's what research is for. In college as part of my English Language A-Level, we were given two information packs on random subjects, and given a month to study them. Then we had a three hour editorial exam in which we had to turn the information into a creative piece in one of two choices of genre. I chose to write a radio show, although the subject was that boring, I can't remember what it was. I was the only one to get an A, though. (Not that I'm bragging.) My point is though, if I can write a piece about something I didn't honestly research that much, and had absolutely no interest in, I could do it again. Although I would obviously research it a lot this time, and be interested in it, as well as a lot of other people too. 

So the plan this week is to think up some subjects that I could easily write about, and research if needs be, and in which publication to write about them. This might not be an easy task though, as, thanks to my dissertation, my brain is full of publishing and e-books and slush piles etc. I know the module is called Writing for Publishing, but I think writing one 10,000 word essay on the subject is enough; there's no way I'm writing another piece about it too. 

Week Eight

It's been a busy couple of weeks, but in the middle of all that, a chance reading of an article in Company magazine gave me an inspiration for my creative piece. It shows that the article Victoria Gallagher wrote for TheBooskeller.com  is true. With so much work to do, I've got no time to get stuck into a big, thick book, and so the feature on speed reads appealed to me straight away. Company says 'Our fave authors are releasing short, sharp 'lit' shots. All are under 130 pages long and cost just £1.99. Any shorter and they'd be on Twitter.' 


This seemed perfect for me personally, so I ordered four of them, but then I thought...this could be something I could do for my creative piece. I checked out the quick reads website, which describes the books as 'These exciting, dramatic and funny stories are ideal for adults who've stopped reading or find reading tough, and for regular readers who want a short, fast read. Quick Reads have helped hundreds of thousands of people to pick up books and enjoy reading again.'


When they arrived, I realised how short they actually were. I don't know why, but I wasn't expecting the typeface to be so big, but it's Times New Roman, size 14, so there's not much on each page. This is obviously good for new readers, or those with not a lot of time on their hands...I read the first one in about 20 minutes. The next one I'm reading, Strangers on the 16:02  is literally meant to be read on a train, which is what I'm going to do later!

Week Seven

I've started thinking about my creative piece now that the presentation is (nearly) over. I think I've settled on the idea of writing a short story, but that depends on whether I can find a publication that I can write a suitable story for. I'm going to research different short story publications next week/this week and see if I can find one I could imagine writing for.

I decided on a short story because, obviously there is a limited word count, and the only other thing I could think of doing was an article for a publication such as Cosmo, but I think that's too predictable and possibly going to be done by a lot of people people in the class, and I've also struggled with Cosmo style articles in the past. I don't think my writing style suits Cosmo.

Hopefully after getting stuck into research my next blog will be much better than this, but that's all I have to say about my creative piece at the minute.

I'm giving my presentation soon, which I'm actually suprisingly confident about, considering how I thought I'd been too ambitious. I've touched briefly on the history of the Bible, which I think needed to be done because I couldn't talk about one, new version without mentioning old versions and how the new one arrived.

Then the rest of the presentation is about the NIV, and how the theme of it is to appeal to everybody. I think this makes it interesting, as there are numerous different versions of the NIV to appeal to different audiences, and that makes for a good discussion on cover choice and design etc.

Week Six

I genuinely thought for a while that I'd been a bit too ambitious with my Bible idea for the presentation, but then I realised the logical thing to do was to just pick one publication and find as much information about that as possible. (I don't know why I didn't think of that earlier, but better late than never!) So I decided to research the publication process of my Bible, the New International Version of the Every Day Devotional Bible, with notes by Selwyn Hughes, published by Hodder and Stoughton.


As the presentation is a minimum of ten minutes, there's quite a lot of time to fill and a lot to talk about. I plan to take a few minutes to talk about the history of the Bible and it's different versions in general, and then talk in detail about the publication of the new international version. I think the Bible is an interesting choice because it is obviously different and isn't just published by one publisher. I found an article from the December 18 issue of New Yorker magazine, called The Good Book Business: Why publishers love the Bible, which sums up why I am so interested in Bible publishing...

"The familiar observation that the Bible is the best-selling book of all time obscures a more startling fact: the Bible is the best-selling book of the year, every year. Calculating how many Bibles are sold in the United States is a virtually impossible task, but a conservative estimate is that in 2005 Americans purchased some twenty-five million Bibles—twice as many as the most recent Harry Potter book. The amount spent annually on Bibles has been put at more than half a billion dollars." 

After the presentation is over, I'm going to start my creative piece. I have to admit that I haven't given it too much thought yet, as I've been focused on other work. However, with the presentation out of the way, I can start to construct my piece without worrying about other Writing for Publishing work. 

Source
Daniel Radosh, 2006. The Good Book Business: Why publishers love the Bible. [online]Available at: <http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/12/18/061218fa_fact1> [Accessed 6 March 2011].

Week Five

This is going to be a short one, because this week there are no set readings, and the book I wanted to quote has disappeared from the library catalogue, and everything else I've been reading isn't really quote worthy!

When writing my query letter for my hypothetical pitch letter, I had to take into account the differences between that and writing one for a fiction book. We discussed in class that:

• Non consumer books/articles etc should be pitched before they are written.
• Research and knowledge of the are/subject should be proven.
• Experience writing about the area/for the type of publication should be proven.

One thing I found easier than writing for a fiction book is that, because I was suggesting a book to be written, not that already had been, I didn't have to know the content inside out to be able to write about it in a few short sentences. With the fiction book, I felt like I needed to know exactly what happened in the book and know my characters well enough, although I hadn't written the book, to then be able to summarise it.

One difficult aspect of the task was thinking of an area that I could justify writing a book about. Also, believably giving examples of experience and qualification to write the book was hard too.

This week, I'm going to be preparing for my presentation. My original idea was to do it on The Bible, as it is one of the biggest selling books in history, and I thought it would be different and interesting However, after researching the development and publications, it's been hard to find concrete figures on the number of different versions, and facts about the publication, as it goes back so far in time. So I think I may have bit off more than I can chew. Therefore, although I'm continuing my research on the different Bibles, I'm going to also continue researching my second idea, before deciding if I have enough research to present on the Bible. 

Week Four - Bestsellers and POD

 In their paper Bestsellers in the British Book Industry 1998–2005, John Feather and Hazel Woodbridge define Bestsellers as 'newly publishes books that sell in large quantities.' (Feather and Woodbridge, 2007). They make a clear comparison between bestsellers and what are known as 'longsellers', titles which are in print for many years, perhaps even for decades or centuries. (Feather and Woodbridge, 2007), but go on to argue that the 'true' bestsellers are in fact these publications, such as Shakespeare or the Bible. 


I would agree that these are the true bestsellers as they continue, after all this time, to sell and achieve commercial success. Feather and Woodbridge say: 'The bestseller lists, which reveal so much about changing taste and about the commercial culture of the trade, consist of recent titles which have been selling strongly since their publication.' (Feather and Woodbridge, 2007). I would argue that a book that has been selling strongly since their publication 200 years ago is more entitled to the label 'bestseller' than one which sells well for a few weeks during a craze or fad, and then gets left on the shelf.


The second reading this week was about Publishing on Demand (POD). Ann Haugland discusses the new technologies in her paper Opening the Gates: Print On-Demand Publishing as Cultural Production. Haugland explains how POD is an advantage for publishers, as it allows them to save content digitally, which allows them to both make copies of out-of-print books, or keep books in print longer. (Haugland, 2006) 


Haugland goes on to explain a new use of POD, publishers that are using the new technologies to publish anybody who wants to. These are subsidy publishers : authors - not the house- bear the costs of publication. (Haugland, 2006). 


Critics have dismissed the new techniques, calling them new versions of vanity presses that have exsisted for years. However Haugland explains that unlike vanity presses, these publishers are connected to legitimate book institutions, such as Books in Print, Amazon and Ingram. This means that the books that are published are available to readers everywhere. (Haugland, 2006). As Haugland says, 'it's big business': the largest of the major houses, AuthorHouse, as of May 2006, have more than 33,000 books in print. (Haugland, 2006). I went to AuthorHouse's website, and found on the homepage:

'When you publish with AuthorHouse UK, your book will be available for order on Amazon.co.uk, Waterstones.com and more than 25,000 retail outlets worldwide.

As the industry leader, we are proud to have helped thousands of authors realise their dreams of publishing and distributing their books. Find out more and get a publishing consultation at no cost!'

As Haugland says, 'In the past few years, thousands and thousands of people whose work would have remained in desk drawers or diaries have made their writing public...POD technologies enable an extraordinary  and interesting new cultural new practice - a form of popular culture centered on production rather than consumption. (Haugland, 2006).

However, although I agree that POD can be a good thing for publishers, as it eliminates risk factors such as whether to take a book out of print or to publish another several thousand of them (Haugland, 2006), I think that it could impact on the quality of books available to readers.

As Haugland says: 'Critics complain that POD publishers are flooding the book field with titles that have gone through no quality check and have no market, written by people whose work is not worthy of publication.'  I agree with this sentiment. If people have decided to self-publish, it makes me think that they have either been rejected by publishers, meaning that their work is not worth publishing, or their either too lazy or think too much of themselves and their work to consider other peoples' opinions, and are simply vanity publishing. For this reason, I think that the new use of POD is simply vanity publishing on a larger scale, and a way for people who would normally have to distribute their books themselves (mainly only to their family or friends), to have their books made a available to much wider audiences.

Sources...

Feather, J., & Woodbridge, H., 2007. "Bestsellers in the British Book Industry 1998-2005" in Publishing Research Quarterly, Vol. 23 No. 3, pp. 210-223, New York: Springer

Haugland, A., 2006. "Opening the gates: Print on-demand publishing as cultural production" in Publishing Research Quarterly, Vol. 22 No. 3, pp. 3-16, New York: Springer

http://www.authorhouse.co.uk/

Week Three - Query Letter.

Writing a query letter in a week has been a huge challenge. Trying to summarise a book I haven't written and know absolutely nothing about, but pretending that I do in 250 words, is quite trickier than I thought it would be. To make the task even harder, there seems to be a LOT of complicated rules on how to, or indeed not to, write the perfect query letter. 


I figured the best place to start was too Google 'query letter' and go from there. I came across countless websites with 'how to' and 'how not to' guides to writing query letters. The problem is, most of them contradict each other. I came across a couple of useful websites however, including http://www.guidetoliteraryagents.com, which gives examples of successful query letters, with comments from the agents who received them. Also, courtesy of Jen, I read http://www.jmtohline.com, a blog about the answers of agents to the question 'What is the single biggest mistake writers make when querying you?'  and also Slush Pile Hell, a blog written by a literary agent with examples of failed query letters sent to him.


From what I've read, the biggest mistakes writers make when querying agents are:

•  Being over-confident/arrogant about their work.
• On the other hand, not being confident enough.
• Not taking the time to research the agent and what he/she represents.
• Sending a mass produced query letter to agents, not addressing the agent personally.

After reading several examples of successful letters, it is clear that the best query letters are:

• Short, concise and to the point.
• Set the tone of the book.
• Give a teaser of the story to get the attention of the agent and make them want to read more.
• Credentials to prove that the writer has the ability to write a good book.  

If I ever did write a book and want to publish it, seeing how what an agent has to deal with and how the respond to bad query letters, I would probably end up spending more time trying to perfect those 250 words than I did writing the novel. 

Week Two - Audience

This week we looked at knowing your market, and knowing how and why to sell your writing. I found the reading about womens' magazines particularly interesting, as I find a lot of my books from the suggestions in magazines such as Cosmopolitan and More. 


The task this week was to write a 250 piece about 'glasses' for any publication of our choice. I chose to write a piece for Cosmopolitan...

Geek or chic?

For years, people have been taunted and ridiculed for being forced to wear glasses, a less than fashionable but necessary aid in, well…seeing things. It started in the school playground and didn’t get much better as we got older.  The one absolute must, apart from the bow tie, in the stereotypical ‘geek’ themed fancy dress costume, is the big, thick rimmed glasses. But recently, with the rise of the geek chic, it seems glasses are no longer needed in just fancy dress, and rather just in, well…dress. After years of the fashion conscious secretly wearing contacts and some even going as far as to get laser eye surgery, so desperate they were to not have to wear the dreaded specs, it seems glasses have made an amazing comeback…or should that be come forward, seeing as they were never here in the first place? Suddenly everywhere you turn there is a girl, or boy, walking down the street in a pair of skinny jeans, big thick cardigan and big thick glasses to match…the bigger, the better. With celebrities such as Lady Ga Ga, David Beckham and even Madonna getting involved, it seems that glasses are no longer a sign of the geek; in fact, you’re a geek if you’re not strutting around behind bottle bottom thick lenses. So there you have it, it’s time to get rid of your contacts, dust off your abandoned specs, and embrace the geek inside you, waiting to get back out.

I decided to write for Cosmopolitan as it is a magazine that I buy and read regularly, and therefore I know the audience and also what to expect from the magazine. The idea for the article actually came from looking through an issue of Cosmo, as there were several advertisements for designer glasses among the fashion pages, along with pictures of celebrities embracing the geek chic style. I chose to make the piece about fashion, as fashion is clearly a big part of Cosmo, with around 50 pages dedicated solely to it in each issue, and the audience for the magazine are women aged approximately between 18 and 40, most of whom are interested in fashion to some degree.

It is a lighthearted article, designed to fill a space and entertain the audience, who could arguably be said to be either impulse buyers -just picking the magazine up during a shopping trip, or to read on the train, or have a specific interest in fashion and buying the magazine every month, or somewhere in the middle of the two. I wrote the article thinking of what I like to read, and therefore wrote it as a piece about fashion for people who like to read about it, but don't take it too seriously.

The lifespan for the article is obviously a month, as that is how often the magazine is published. The magazines stay on the shelf if not sold until the new issue comes and replaces them. 

I think the article would work well in Cosmo, as it is written in a casual, but not too casual, register, and ties in with other items that would be found in the publication.

Week One - What is Publishing?

In the first Writing for Publishing lecture we discussed publishing as a business, and the main motivations behind publishers and authors, which we summarised in one word, MONEY. One reading this week that stood out for me in particular was Peter Jovanovic's Publishing in Hard Times (2009). Jovanovic discusses the impact that the different recessions over the years have had on the publishing industry, and how best for a publishing house to prepare for the inevitable financial problems they face during a recession. 

  Jovanovic summarises his answer to a recession, saying:

"In my view, publishers preserve their business and enhance their competitive position best by focusing all of their money and attention on the following: find authors, make products (books, journals,databases, etc.), and sell them."

He says that the biggest costs in publishing are people, and therefore publishers preparing for a financial struggle should make cuts in both staff and salaries. Some publishers try to avoid laying off people by making cuts in other areas, such as travel, entertainment, sales meetings or HR training sessions. But this just causes more problems, as he goes on to explain: 

"Usually these steps do not add up to much; and, if T & E helps to find authors, or the sales meetings motivate great sales people to sell more, it is unproductive to stop them. Most of the staff finds such steps to be an irritant, which makes their working lives less productive while saving nugatory amounts of money."

One of the main messages I got from Jovanovic's work is that it is important for publishers to anticipate a financial struggle and to act fast, making short term sacrifices they may not necessarily want to make in order to get ahead of competitors and achieve more in the long term. 

In Shifting Sales Channels, (2009), Mike Shatzkin also discusses the recent recession, as well as the internet and electronic publishing and how that is impacting book sales. The results of Shatzkin's survey and interviews with publishers suggest that trade publishing is suffering, but children's books sales are still encouraging, especially when faced with the fear of the 'born digital' generation rejecting books. (Shatzkin, 2009).

  Shatzkin also discusses the rise of people buying from Amazon, which leads to the third reading, Amazon: Love Them? Hate Them? Let’s Follow the Money (2010) by Ted Treanor. Treanor discusses the rise of Amazon and how it has gone from a small company just selling books, to having $24 billion in annual revenue. "They’ve started from $0 in 1995, and will capture more than $6billion in media/book sales in 2010." (Treanor, 2010). Amazon CEO, talking about the Kindle in an interview with the New York Times, said:

 ‘‘When we launched Kindle 2 years ago, it was 90,000 titles, and today it’s more than 350,000. We’re adding thousands of titles every week. Our vision is every book ever printed in every language, all available within 60 s.’’

The former CEO of Random House said:

‘‘Traditional trade book publishers are scared...The world that they

have known, of print books and brick-and-mortar bookstores—the whole physical distribution system—is on the cusp of changing fundamentally.’’

His statement is supported by the fact that, among other investments, Amazon bought BooksSurge and Mobipocket, print-on-demand and e-book companies, in 2005 in a "clear message to both the digital and traditional book publishing industry that Amazon was investing in their vision of the future of book publishing." (Treanor, 2010).

All of this information shows that publishing is about money, and relies on money and therefore when the economy is struggling, publishing is affected and the industry has to make big sacrifices in order to survive. Also, in the face of the internet and new e-publishing technologies, book sales are threatened, making publishers worry that the industry is soon going to change.