Weekly Writer's Round-Up
Yee-haw! Welcome to the Weekly Writer's Round-up, where I lasso up the week's latest news and rootin'-tootin' writers' articles on the Net!
In bookish news, the furore over the new Kindle Lending programme continues as the US Authors Guild accuses Amazon of "boldly breaching publishers' contracts" with the scheme. (via The Bookseller)
FutureBook has been posting a series of articles on the digitisation of the music industry vs the book world: part III looks at some interesting similarities.
More on e-publishing: Smashwords is now launching a publishing service for literary agents. What are your thoughts?
Thinking of giving up your day job? Writerland has posted some eye-opening results from their Author Advance Survey.
Good news: could this be the future of book covers? Undercover, the YA imprint of Walker Books, released this animated cover of Edward Hogan's debut thriller, Daylight Saving, complete with countdown clock. Scroll your mouse over the image. Isn't that just awesome? 
Bad news: a debut novel has been cut for plagiarism. (via GalleyCat) Q.R. Markham's Assassin of Secrets was cut by Little, Brown's Mulholland Books imprint. Sad that a writer has to stoop to copying other people's work to get published.
If you're stuck in query limbo like me, you may find this post about the "no response = no" debate by Adventures in Agentland an interesting read.
Are you one of the lucky writers who have some publishing credits under their belt? Well, then do you know which are the ones you should be crowing loudest about in your query/submission? Writer's Relief has posted a list of publishing credits in order of esteem/importance.
Everyone who's tried marketing their own book have come across the same problem: how do you get your title to stand out from the crowd without sound like an irritating, broken self-promotional record? The Writer's Guide to E-Publishing has an article by everyone's favourite chick lit girl, Talli Roland: when shouting loudly isn't enough, consider other unique methods of self-promotion.
Finally, stop back here on Wednesday November 23rd for the launch of my 21 Again Birthday Blow-Out! I'm celebrating a milestone birthday (a.k.a mourning the loss of my youth) with an epic 10-day party, and I'm giving away lots of prizes to everyone willing to commiserate with me!
