Should The Author Continue: The Writers Edition ✒️: Tuesday 31st October
Good Morning writers, here's your round up of the latest thoughts and news from the writing world.
PLR Rate per loan proposed decrease. Public Lending Right (PLR) allows authors to be fairly paid for each loan when their work is lent through public libraries, receiving a modest payment (now around 13p) each time one of their books is borrowed, whether in print, ebook or audio format. For most authors, particularly those whose books are sold mainly to libraries or whose books are out of print but are still being read, PLR payments make up a significant part of their income. Society of Authors
Rachel Reeves admits mistakes after being accused of plagiarism in new book. Rachel Reeves has said she holds her hands up and acknowledges making mistakes in her new book about female economists after she faced allegations of plagiarism. The shadow chancellor admitted on Thursday that some sentences in her book, The Women Who Made Modern Economics, were “not properly referenced in the bibliography”. The Guardian
Mario Vargas Llosa says latest novel will be his last. Peru’s best-known living writer, the Nobel prize-winning author Mario Vargas Llosa, has announced that his seven-decade literary career is coming to an end and that his latest novel will be his last. In a postscript to the new book, Le dedico mi silencio (I Give You My Silence), the 87-year-old novelist writes: “I think I’ve finished this book. I’d now like to write an essay on [Jean-Paul] Sartre, who was my teacher as a young man. It will be the last thing I write.” The Guardian
Five-year-old Birmingham author hosts story session at library. A five-year-old author is holding a storytime session reading his own books to people at a library. Jayce Joyce, from Sutton Coldfield, first started writing at the age of three, his mother said. His illustrated books, A Beach With No Sea and Jayce's Sweet Tooth were both released on World Book Day. BBC
In other news
- Authors booked in for Book Week Scotland: 13-17 November.
- Adimora launches new publishing consultancy and studio.
- Scholastic reverses decision to separate books on race, gender and sexuality.
Bloomsbury’s fantasy list helps it to record £17.7m first-half profits. The book publisher Bloomsbury has hit record profits in the first half of the year thanks in part to a boom in fantasy fiction driven by the American author Sarah J Maas, the British novelist Samantha Shannon and the continuing popularity of Harry Potter. The Guardian
Penguin Random House launches high schoolers’ award to combat book bans. Publisher Penguin Random House has launched a new writing award in the US celebrating freedom of expression in response to a rise in book bans across the country. The Freedom of Expression award invites applicants to write about one banned book that changed their life and why. The $10,000 (£8,168) prize will be awarded to a high-school student planning to attend university in 2024. The Guardian
Tottenham Literature Festival 2023. Monday 13 – Sunday 19 November 2023, Join The Black Writers Forum at TLF23, and a host of Black writers, poets and artists as we explore what it means to live as whole selves today. Black Writers Forum
Meet the author events at Knowsley Libraries. Huyton and Kirkby Libraries are hosting two special meet the author events in October and November. Join author JP Maxwell at Kirkby Library on Tuesday 31 October where the author will read from his most recent novel ‘Water Street’ which is based on based upon Liverpool’s clandestine involvement in the American Civil War. Knowsley News
The Guardian’s Book of the Day: Baumgartner by Paul Auster review – amiable aimlessness. I suspect anyone who was ever spellbound by the existential gumshoe shenanigans of The New York Trilogy – postmodernism in a fedora – will always take a chance on a new Paul Auster novel, however much he has tested that faith with the fiction he has produced in the decades since. The Guardian
British Library celebrates the surging popularity of fantasy fiction. At the top of Neil Gaiman’s notebook, a doodle of a woman with shaggy hair and huge, black, perfectly round eyes stares out above an early draft of his children’s novel Coraline. In Ursula K Le Guin’s sketchbook, a ring, decoratively pierced and etched with symbols, is drawn cracked in two, just as it appears in the second volume of her Earthsea trilogy. The Guardian
Should The Author Continue Crossword
Which author wrote the book? Take a look at the clues and put the authors into the crossword.
Across
2.Tess of the d'Urbervilles
3.Cranford
4.Harry Potter
6.Lady Chatterley's Lover
7.Pride and Prejudice
10.Great Expectations
11.Middlemarch
Down
1.Alice in Wonderland
3.Lord of the Flies
5.Wuthering Heights
8.Gulliver's Travels
9.To the Lighthouse