You don’t judge a book by its cover, do you? If you do, be careful: it can be deceiving. Covers can be ugly or beautiful, dull or bright, black-and-white or colorful. No one expects every cover art to become iconic like the one for Burgess’s ‘A Clockwork Orange’. But at least the book cover has…
Writing and Reading for Pleasure: Can You Teach Yourself to Write? | Douglas Burcham
Douglas Burcham continues his writing and reading for pleasure posts by posing the question — can you teach yourself to write? Monday 1st June 2015 is the five-year anniversary of my frightening dream in the early hours in France when I started to write. I will open a bottle of Clairette de Die to…
Writing and Reading for Pleasure: A Tree | Douglas Burcham
Douglas continues his writing and reading for pleasure posts by setting up a research task on book structure for the summer. A tree A woody perennial plant, typically having a single stem or trunk growing to a considerable height and bearing lateral branches at some distance from the ground. — Oxford English Dictionary. I…
101 Best Websites for Writers | Writer’s Digest
The Independent Publishing Magazine has been honoured as one of Writer’s Digest 101 Best Websites for Writers in the May/June edition of their magazine. This is the third year in a row TIPM has made the list and of course we are delighted to hear about the continued recognition and support from our readers and subscribers. For the last 17…
Writing and Reading for Pleasure: Pennies Look After Themselves | Douglas Burcham
Douglas continues his writing and reading for pleasure posts by comparing writing with the financial analogy of pennies and pounds. REF – 1750, Chesterfield, letter 5 Feb. (1932) IV. 1500: Old Mr. Lowndes, the famous Secretary of the Treasury, used to say – Take care of the pence, and the pounds will take care of…
Writing and Reading for Pleasure: Looking for Gold | Douglas Burcham
Douglas continues his writing and reading for pleasure posts by looking for reading gold. “I’m going to Waterstones to look for gold,” I announce to my wife. “You would do better to go to a jeweller for something for me, or pan the rivers of Yukon or South Africa and if the latter I…
Royalties: The Seduction of Self-Publishing
Royalties: in a publishing world where there are so many new and old business models, the word gets some serious abuse and misuse and can leave authors pretty confused. In the strictest sense, royalties or a royalty paid to an author is a percentage of revenue earned on book sales. Most traditional publishers pay royalties…
Writing and reading for pleasure – The Narrow Road to the Deep North | Douglas Burcham
Douglas Burcham continues his series of articles on writing and reading for pleasure with a follow up to last month’s post – A picture is worth a thousand words? The Narrow Road to the Deep North In my last post I mentioned the start I had made to reading Richard Flanagan’s 2014 Man Booker…
Top 7 Online Tools for Writers | Guest Post | Robert Morris
There are two important aspects of contemporary writing tools: accessibility and portability. You don’t have to try hard to memorize a sudden idea you get while walking in the park; all you need is a tool that lets you catch it with no delays. Professional software suites are nice to use sometimes, but they come…
Writing and reading for pleasure – Part Seven (Advent Edition: Dec 8th – 24th | Douglas Burcham
Douglas Burcham completes his 2014 advent post. Monday, December 8th – Use different points of view and tenses Ever since reading about Joe Lampton… “There wasn’t a damn thing I couldn’t do!” in John Braine’s Room at the Top, I have loved using the first person in my writing. I do this almost by…