New Magazine Listing: The Passionfruit Review
firstwriter.com – Friday October 27, 2023
The theme for general submissions is love: the romantic, the familial, the platonic, the intimate, the lost, the young, the wretched. Above all, Passionfruit seeks to be a home for that which illuminates something of the human spirit – pieces that explore what love is (or isn’t, or might be), when we love, how we love, what we love, and why we love.
Our focus is on poetry, but there are no particular restrictions on genre, type, or style – we will consider poetry, prose, and visual art for each issue.
New Publisher Listing: Hashtag Press
firstwriter.com – Wednesday October 25, 2023
We are looking for excellent writers with brilliant diverse stories to tell.
Please read the about us before submitting to us. We would prefer books that haven't been published already.
We love diverse and inclusive books! We are open to debut authors especially those from an underrepresented background. We publish commercial fiction books for young people that are plot driven with relatable, inspiring characters.
We are a tiny publishing house, so we are incredibly selective.
Any books that are not diverse or inclusive will be a no.
Example Of A Book Proposal That Should Have Been Accepted
financialsamurai.com – Tuesday October 24, 2023
So you want to publish the next great book! To do so you first need a book proposal.
Back in late 2011, I spent hours putting together a book proposal for my severance negotiation strategy book, How To Engineer Your Layoff.
After engineering my own layoff three months earlier, I had hoped to get a literary agent, land a book deal, and spend the next year writing the book. Writing a book was always on my bucket list. And what better time to do so than after retiring on a beach in Hawaii?
Alas, fate had other plans. I submitted my book proposal to about 15 agents and didn't get a single reply back. Undaunted, and with the help of my dad and wife, I decided to self-publish my book anyway.
Should You Write Something Different?
By G. Miki Hayden
Instructor at Writer's Digest University online and private writing coach
firstwriter.com – Sunday October 22, 2023
The obvious answer to that simple question would seem to be yes, but it’s not the answer I’m going to give you—since I care about the outcome for you. I’ll, instead, give you a qualified yes and tell you to write something different than everything that’s out there if you can’t help yourself—if the urge is too strong to resist.
Rather a while back I wrote a wholly different novel about Jesus the Christ. Quite different, in fact. That is to say an actually spiritual novel based on my training in a secret spiritual lineage: an original novel. (Which you can find currently on Smashwords—Jesus of Nazareth.) I knew I had only a few publishing houses I might approach and very few agents, but I was impelled to produce this rather different novel due to the materialistic understandings offered in a few contemporary novels. Jesus starting out as an anti-Roman revolutionary? Seriously? I had to utter a resounding no to something missing the mark by that far. Or a Jesus so fully human that not a touch of the divine might be found within his suffering. Puzzling. From a Christian publisher, I got “If we want a book about Jesus, we’ll have one of our own people write it.” So then, forget about originality and creativity. Apparently people only want their own opinions played back. Yeah, no surprises there.
Or picture me hunting down an agent amid the negatives directed at my latest production of human wisdom (if I may say so myself). An agent I knew through other means told me, “You write well, but I don’t like the book.” Yes, I’m quoting. Never mind “Not for my list. Best of luck.” You know, the typical phrases that agents use to convey a pinch of faux humility. This guy had none of that.
The book my agent acquaintance hated (though he probably read no more than a page or two), is Rescued, now out on Amazon from an honest-to-goodness publisher, having been rejected by the very few agents willing to even have a peek. And all would no doubt have thrust book two in the Rebirth series, Re-Live, aside as well—a wholly different book from what is being published these days, certainly suited to follow Rescued, both presenting transforming protagonists who are deep into the martial arts and have some appearance of contemporary heroes. Are you, like me, the victim of your own inspiration and what an editor I listened to recently called the flatness of our culture?
Want to write a novel? National Novel Writing Month celebrates 25th anniversary
eu.news-journalonline.com – Saturday October 21, 2023
On November 1st, hundreds of thousands of people around the world will suddenly start crouching over their laptops, keyboards, notebooks, journals and tablets as they try to destroy and rebuild relationships, craft the perfect murder, create a thrilling adventure, devise a winning courtroom argument, help plucky kids discover their true destinies and find new and unusual ways to dispose of a body.
November is National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo, and this year marks the 25th frantic, caffeine-driven year for millions of otherwise perfectly sane people. If you've always wanted to write but lacked motivation, commitment or plot, that pressure has now been replaced with a simple deadline. The event begins at 12:01 on Nov. 1 and it stops at the stroke of midnight, Nov. 30.
Your goal: producing a 50,000-word novel in a frustrating, exhilarating time during which you’ll push yourself to the limit of your endurance and get over the psychological fear of writing a book by whomping out something that at least looks like one.
New Publisher Listing: Sapere Books
firstwriter.com – Friday October 20, 2023
Looking for full-length Historical Fiction (including Crime, Mysteries, Thrillers and Sagas), Action and Adventure (Military, Naval and Aviation Fiction), Crime Fiction, Mysteries, Thrillers, and History. Currently only accepting previously published books that are either out of print, or not yet available as ebooks.
Craft your scary story with these 4 writing tips from Bryant’s Meher Manda
news.bryant.edu – Thursday October 19, 2023
Whether it’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula or Stephen King’s The Shining, horror stories have spellbound readers since Greek and Roman times. The genre seeks to create feelings of fear, dread, and terror, and takes skill and patience to perfect.
“Horror is most successful when it unsettles the reader with the ordinary,” says History, Literature, and Arts Lecturer Meher Manda, MFA, who’s teaching the College of Arts and Sciences’ “Fiction Writing Workshop.” “People talk about Stephen King as the great bastion of American horror, and many of his novels revel in suburban disturbance where this well-meaning town of well-meaning people has a darker underbelly.”
As a writer, editor, and cultural critic, Manda enjoys horror — especially the stories that shock readers into imagining fears they never knew they had. To help individuals who are creating their own bone-chilling stories, she offers the four following writing strategies.
Outside Frankfurt’s LitAG: A New Report on Agenting
publishingperspectives.com – Thursday October 19, 2023
A new survey on American literary agents’ experience surfaces concerns about the business model’s viability, diversity, and burnout in a demanding job.
‘An Industry in Flux’
This year’s Literary Agents and Scouts Center has been a quick success, with all 584 tables sold out long before the fair opened.
With its tables and chairs turning quickly between rights meetings, a lot of lore—almost a romanticism—has made itself part of the mystique of Frankfurter Buchmesse.
Easily one of the biggest smiles in the LitAg this year will be on the face of Gina Winje, the literary agent whose Winge Agency in Porsgrunn, Norway, represents Jon Fosse, who recently won the Nobel Prize in Literature. Winje was touched, she said, to be hearing from co-agents, scouts, co-publishers and others in the industry: “I’m overwhelmed by the warmth and happiness,” she told Publishing Perspectives.
But as much as the industry understands and appreciates the LitAg as “the beating heart” of the world’s largest international book fair, a report that arrived early this month indicates that many literary agents may be struggling in their work as the industry evolves, many markets’ economies go into flux, and making ends meet gets harder.
Literary agents—so critical to the international industry’s viability and health—could use some attention, as members of the profession report they’re experiencing more burnout than before, not least because the job entails so much “invisible labor,” for which agents aren’t paid.
Inque Magazine is a literary force that will memorialise our time
itsnicethat.com – Wednesday October 18, 2023
Editor-in-chief Dan Crowe, and Pentagram partner, designer and former New York Times Magazine art director Matt Willey uncover the process behind issue two of the magazine that will only have ten.
Who doesn’t feel it? Being perplexed at how we’re going to define this generation. Living in the age of information, where stories from near and far are accessible at just a click, and the allure of the most revered crumbles under increased access to their lives and methods, it’s no wonder that a highlight reel may not be so easy to assemble. But, in the case of Inque magazine, literature is a powerful force that can remind us of the power of our collective now, in just ten years, with a projected ten issues, in a feat to memorialise the 2020s. “Every issue is its own adventure; tracking down new writers, or finally getting in touch with someone I’ve always wanted to work with,” Dan Crowe, the magazine’s editor-in-chief tells us of his journey to commissioning the likes of Annie Ernaux, Sheila Heti and Stephen Fry for its second issue.
Dan, as with all of us, has seen an increase in writers, publishers and magazines throughout the literary sphere. “But, sometimes I wish for there to be an explosion of a new and interconnected group of authors, like a new Martin Amis, Ian McEwan, Julian Barnes and Salman Rushdie hegemony, a diverse and younger school,” he tells us. “And, this seems to occur when there is a coherent force to fight against, a common enemy, and everything just feels so fractured now.” In an effort to bind this generation’s efforts, designer Matt Willey creates with the knowledge that Inque may never make sense until the decade-long ride is over. “It takes on a shape; there’s a beginning, middle and end. Like in Agnes’ photo booth series; she will change over the course of a decade, she will age, life will change and things will be different,” Matt adds.
The next wave of indie publishing
documentjournal.com – Tuesday October 17, 2023
The founders of 5 independent publications join Document to discuss the past, present, and future of the little magazine
“It’s not exactly a fun time to start a magazine, nor is it a convenient one,” wrote Rebecca Panovka and Kiara Barrow in the inaugural issue of The Drift, a leftist literary magazine founded in 2020. “A magazine is by definition an optimistic, social project. The list of reasons for despair is long. The list of arguments against starting a magazine isn’t terribly short.”
Three years later, the statement still rings true—but it hasn’t stopped a new generation of founders from doing just that. From worker-run journalism outlets like Hell Gate and 404 Media to online publications like Byline, Dirt, and Cashmere to print-only projects like The Whitney Review of New Writing and Forever Mag, a wave of grassroots publishing projects are springing up to fill the gaps in today’s media ecosystem—not in spite of the existential crisis facing modern media, but because of it.
“Working in media, you get this suffocating feeling that you’re expendable—that at any point, your Slack emoji could disappear, and you have to return your laptop at 5 p.m.,” says journalist Max Rivlin-Nadler. It’s why he co-founded Hell Gate, a scrappy, subscriber-funded news outlet that is run by its worker-owners, all of whom earn the same salary and contribute equally to the company’s editorial direction. “We were witnessing a real disconnect in the industry: The people doing the work were being treated as disposable, at the same time that everyone was like, We need journalism more than ever,” says Nadler. “We thought, What if a company’s resources just went toward journalism, and it wasn’t beholden to private equity firms or tantrum-prone billionaires? What if we did it ourselves?”
Get the free newsletter | Submit a news item or article | Get Writers' News for your website
