Calling all parents! (looking for submissions)

Hi,

As part of my publishing Masters course, we are putting together a book about parenthood and how to survive it! If you are a writer and a parent, or even if you just have a story to share, please get in contact and submit your stories! (UK and US entries only) The all important link: UCLan Blessing and Bother Call out See the call out for more information below:

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Parents, We want you!

Did your waters break in an unusual or embarrassing place? Did you fall out choosing your baby’s name? Did you find your own ways to cope with baby-blues or sleep deprivation? Then why not share your experience with other parents, in a new book of parenthood stories called Blessing and Bother: How to Have Children and Live to Tell the Tale.

Published in summer 2011 by UCLan Press, Blessing and Bother is all about parents sharing their stories of first-time parenthood, and how to survive it.

From conception to potty-training, we want to hear your unusual, amusing or heart-warming accounts of how you overcame the trials and tribulations of parenthood.

So, if you’re a mum or dad with a quirky story to share, or a midwife with an entertaining anecdote, then please get in touch. The book will be edited, published and promoted by Publishing MA students at UCLan University, who will be on hand to work with you on your story and perfect it prior to publication.

Interested? Great! Please take a look at our guidelines before you send your story.

Guidelines

We’re looking for entertaining stories about your own experiences of parenthood (about anything from conception through to potty training), of between 1000-3000 words. While we want your true account, please bear in mind that we want this book to be as entertaining as possible, with stories that are well-crafted and engaging. So here are some tips on writing compelling stories:

• Don’t give away what happens right at the start – establish what the problem is, and keep the reader in suspense about how it will be resolved.
• Try to put yourself in the shoes of a reader and anticipate what they would find interesting.
• Try to pace it so that each paragraph moves the story on.
• Try to tell it in your own words, avoiding cliches of expression.
• Small, unusual descriptive details and similes are usually more effective than long passages set aside for description.
• Don’t feel you have to end your story with a flourish, or a joke. Let the events speak for themselves.

Please email your stories as an MS Word doc attachment to Debbie Williams (DJWilliams1@uclan.ac.uk), and include your name contact details within the document. Closing date for submissions is 28th February 2011.

Terms:

• ‘Blessing and Bother: How to Have Children and Live to Tell the Tale’ will be published in eBook format in 2011.
• Stories should be between 1000 – 3000 words.
• Stories must be the author’s own original work.
• We are unable to use work which contains copyright material (e.g. quotations from other published work, songs, etc), or any material which, in the sole opinion of the editors, is deemed of a libelous, defamatory or otherwise actionable nature.
• The editors may request reasonable editorial revisions prior to publication, where deemed appropriate, and will be available to help make any such revisions.
• Copyright of all submissions will remain with the contributors, however the publishers request exclusivity for one year following publication.
• UCLan press is unable to offer any payment for contributions. ‘Blessing and Bother: How to Have Children and Live to Tell the Tale’ is a non-profit publication; any proceeds raised by the sale of the book will go towards future publications by UCLan MA students.

2010 book sales and Waterstones news

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Happy New Year to my readers and fellow bloggers!

During my usual daily visit to The Bookseller website, i discovered that Waterstones is suffering and is forced to close 20 of its stores over the year, further diminishing the amount of bookstores on our highstreets. See Waterstone’s confirms 20 store closures – on The Bookseller.com for more details.

At university in our last session before Christmas, we were asked to predict what would happen in 2011 in the publishing and book industry. My prediction was that Waterstones would end up on the brink of extinction, something i really hope will not happen, but seems more likely now there’s this incident of closing more stores due to needing to save costs.

Waterstone’s sister chain HMV is also struggling and closing stores, which is sad because a HMV has just opened up in my local town and this news makes me wonder if it will remain open.

Sales of books from shops have fallen over the Christmas period due to the bad snowy weather forcing shops to close due to the lack of customers able to reach them. Digital sales seem to have picked up however due to the growing popularity of the Amazon Kindle.

Book sales have taken a beating, as 2010′s bad weather at the start and end of the year caused a slump in book sales. In a Bookseller.com article, it states:

“As well as the weather playing a significant part in 2010′s poor sales, other factors leading to the decline include the loss of Borders in late 2009, as well the uncertain economic climate. A weak pound, strikes and the Icelandic ash cloud meanwhile, affected sales of travel maps and guides last year, while the increasing popularity of e-books may also have had a small, negative impact on printed book sales in 2010.”

The best-selling book of 2010, particularly in the run up to Christmas, was Jamie Oliver’s Jamie’s 30-minute Meals (Michael Joseph) with sales of 1,167,457 copies! Steig Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Quercus) was also a bestseller in 2010. The bestselling children’s book was Stephenie Meyer’s Breaking Dawn with her sales totalling £16.8m in 2010, possibly helped by the release of the latest film instalment in the Twilight franchise.

See Book Sales in 2010 fall by 3% on the Bookseller.com

I hope 2011 is a better year for the book industry, otherwise there are going to be some big changes and some unfortunate events. I for one would be sad if Waterstones disappears from our highstreet.

“Talking books”, and Booksellers who don’t read books!

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I thought today i would share some interesting news articles with you today, both based on the literary and publishing world.

The first is on the subject of “talking books”, which on Sunday 7th November turned the grand old age of 75 years old. For those of you who don’t know, this scheme of recording books and newspapers has been in place since the First World War, helping blinded soldiers to be able to read when they couldn’t see. It has been welcomed over the years by many people, and not just those who are blind or have poor eyesight, but also by those who simply prefer to listen than to read. I have to say that it is a great service, and my grandad has been helping keep the “talking newspaper” scheme going in his local area, and has been doing this for a long time. I’m sure many people who depend on these talking books look forward to being able to access what everyone else can see.

For more information, and the article i read, see Sales soar as talking books turn 75.

The second is on a recent article in which the chief executive of the book store Foyles in London says he has never read a book cover to cover.

I find this shocking for someone who is clearly passionate enough about books to work for a bookstore,  and i wonder how many other workers are employed in bookshops who don’t really care enough to read the books they sell.

I myself have tried several times to get a job in a bookshop and many of the applications i have filled in have required me to be passionate about book-selling, and as i have always loved books and even did my first-ever work experience in my local now-deceased Ottakars, i have always wondered why i never managed to get the job. Often i have come across people who don’t care about the product they are selling and it does show. You can always tell someone who just does the job for money.

So therefore i think it isnt really acceptable for a bookseller to not care about what they sell, i mean, in some cases it is ok to not to care so much for the product, like if its your first part-time job, but to be an executive of a bookstore and NOT care enough to read books just seems ridiculous to me!

For the article, see The bookseller who doesnt read novels.

I hope you enjoyed this and i hope you have been enlightened!

The death of the library?

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An interesting discussion i was part of today was that of the future of the library and how we can improve them to keep them going.

It would seem that the average local library is only used by children and the elderly, which in many cases i have seen is true. The sad thing is that people just arent interested in the library anymore, what with cheap books being so readily available or people just arent reading as much as they used to these days. See thebookseller.com article on library usage for more information.

When i was little, i spent hours in the library, and always took the full allowance of books out (maximum of 3 books, i believe) each time, and the majority of the time i finished at least 1 of them by the end of that same day ( not bragging but i was a fast reader!). I loved reading and i was reading at a higher level than the other kids in my school year, so i read my way through the school’s books and then the libraries books until there wasnt much left!

Thinking in terms of money, there is no way that me or my parents could have afforded to buy books at the rate i got through them!

Sadly, as i got older there was a poor choice of books for older readers and therefore i moved onto buying books with the endless supply of book tokens i used to get for birthdays and Christmases and spent the same amount of time browsing bookshops instead of libraries.

It was only once i got to university that i really started to use libraries again, mainly because their library was so well-stocked with all the books i needed for my course. I spent a fair amount of time in the library, using their meeting areas to discuss group work, their computers to look at ebooks, and enjoying the traditional browsing by walking up and down the book aisles.

University libraries seem a much more sociable place to hang out than the local libraries, which need to address the age-old problem of seeming like places where you can’t meet and talk about things and are full of dusty old books.

Some libraries try to encourage people to use them by adding computers for internet access (aimed at those without a computer at home), and holding events like talks by local authors and so on.

Of course, they could be doing so much more. An overhaul of the layout of libraries is needed, to make them a more sociable place to visit and hang out in, maybe by adding zones with comfy seats where people can read quietly or where they can talk in groups in a relaxed way. Local groups could have their meetings in the library, maybe a book club could be set up, catering for a mixed age group, or even just for those of a certain age, like young people.

Parents may encourage their children to use the library and libraries do cater fairly well for children, but the parents need attention in the library too, if they are to spend a fair amount of time there with their children and not get bored. A section dedicated to parents should cater for all reading tastes, whether it is adult fiction, non-fiction, newspapers or computers with internet access. Libraries could also have drinks and snacks vending machines to make the visit a more relaxing and comfortable experience, as well as lengthening the amount of time spent there.

I personally think most libraries need longer opening hours, as most adults work during the day and if they chose to visit the library during the day then they would be limited on time there if libraries close at 5pm. If they were opened until 9pm then they could comfortably spend more time there without worrying about being sent away.

Of course, everyone has their own opinions, i just think these changes could help libraries attract more people.

With regards to the ever-growing industry of Ebooks, this is having a big impact on libraries as well as the publishing world, as in recent news the subject of Ebook lending has caused quite a headache for many people. Libraries lend print books so why not lend Ebooks? Academic libraries do lend Ebooks currently and have done for a while, although the technology is not as good as the new Ebooks. The problem is with needing to place geographical restrictions on Ebooks lent by libraries, as the system can be abused. (For more information see Restrictions on Ebook lending in libraries from the Bookseller website.)

However, if libraries manage to sort the Ebook problems they are having, then everyone could access free Ebooks easily, possibly ruining the market for publishers trying to sell Ebooks! You really could just go round in circles with the whole Ebook debate!

I hope this has been an interesting read for those of you who are interested in this sort of thing!