Customer Reviews

The New Authors' Handbook

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This fully revised and updated version of the Author's Handbook, written by author and literary agent David Bolt, dates from 2001.

The content is packed with useful dos and don'ts, and takes the author or prospective author through the process of:

Stage 1 - Planning your work: equipment needed, style, grammatical errors to avoid (long and interesting section on the language); writing in the first person, writing poetry and prose; focus on sub-genres like non-fiction, children's books, novels and short stories; collaborators, co-authors and ghost writers

Stage 2 - Presentation: manuscript, synopses, titles, pseudonyms, quotations and disclaimers, illustrations, dedications

Stage 3 - Getting it published: Choosing a publisher or agent; working relationships

Stage 4 - post-acceptance: legal issues, agreements, copyrights, royalties; lawyers and libel laws; serial rights, translation rights and book club rights; house style, proofs, jacket design, blurbs and endorsements, sales, advertising, promotion; financials such as VAT, and lending rights

All in all, Bolt covers just about every part of the process of the conception, writing, publication and promotion of a book from A to Z and leaves no stone unturned. It's very comprehensive - EXCEPT for the most recent developments, which are slowly revolutionising the industry. These are:

* Internet publishing (which he does touch on but only briefly)

* Self-publishing (now for the first time realistic to contemplate, if you're prepared to put in the work and take the risks)

* Publishing-on-demand - i.e. you order the book and they print it, bind it and mail it to you

* New reading media like Kindle which, after 30 years of promise of `electronic books' are finally reaching a standard of readability, reliability and affordability to make serious inroads into hard-cover and paperback book sales; mercifully the publishing industry is rising to the challenge of these new formats and hasn't been caught with its pants down like the music industry was with online file-sharing in the 1990s

So, the book needs another update, Mr. Bolt: time waits for no man (nor woman neither), and the times they are a-changin'; for this reason the book drops a star from its otherwise five-star rating.

Overall though, the hard-headed and realistic advice for a would-be author in TAH is excellent. If you're thinking about or engaged in writing a book on any subject and are not yet an established professional author, the content is indispensable. Save yourself making serious errors and going up blind alleys: do yourself a favour and read it.