CLARENDON HOUSE PUBLICATIONS

Edith Nesbit (whose married name was Edith Bland) 1858 – 1924 was an English author and poet who published her books for children under the name of E. Nesbit. A political activist and co-founder of the Fabian Society, she wrote or collaborated on over 60 books of fiction for children, several of which have been adapted for film and television (including most famously The Railway Children). Born in Kennington, Surrey, the death of Edith’s father when she was four and the con

You would think, looking at the decade-long success story of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, earning billions with every film and regularly topping fan polls with superhero adventures one after unfailing one, that Marvel Comics would be doing a roaring trade, wouldn’t you? Actually, the opposite is true. In brief, the comics industry, and Marvel in particular, are in real trouble in terms of turnover and readership. Why is this? In answering that question, we can learn a

In Part One, we began to look at the layout of newsagents and to recognise that their layout in store is based on circulation figures. With newspapers selling more than 3,000,000 copies in the UK, you might jump to the conclusion that this would be the first area to try to write for. But newspapers deal mostly in news. News, by its nature, is short-lived, immediate, on-the-scene - freelance writing draws its longevity from producing articles with a longer shelf-life. Yes, new

Many writers who are seeking to make an income from their writing have considered the freelance writing market, but many don’t know where to start. If you want to begin to try to make some money by writing articles and snippets for the marketplace, the best beginning is to take a look at the magazines and papers on newsstands, in newsagents, and articles on internet sites that interest you. The more you browse, the better you will get at knowing your potential markets and b

Back in Part One, I teased you by saying that there were four factors involved in making money as a writer - leads, customers, profit margins and frequency of purchase - and that the writer was, simply by being a writer, already engaged in two of them. And that’s true - and in this article I hope to show you how the second two factors - profit margins and frequency of purchase - are much more directly under a writer’s control, but that, if managed well, they also have a posit

Having hopefully overcome a certain barrier of prejudice when it comes to looking at one’s writing career as a business in Part One, I also introduced you to the four factors involved in making any business work: leads, customers, profit margins and frequency of purchase. Leads, as we saw last time, are important. A writer cannot and should not expect any book to instantly become a best-seller as soon as it is released largely because of the mechanical unlikelihood that eve

Conventionally, modern business tells us that there are four factors you must consider if you want to grow a business. But before we can even begin to look at them, we have to briefly address that balking sensation which many of you might have felt on reading the word ‘business’ in relation to what you do as a writer. You might be writing purely for your own pleasure, or for the reading pleasure of a small circle of friends with whom you share your work and of whom you ex

I have been a follower of Superman since the early 1960s when he appeared in various comics as the god-like person who could blow out stars with a single breath or move planets with one hand. He would occasionally meet an evil twin, or a differently coloured super-being who temporarily usurped his place as the ‘world’s best superhero’, or find himself on some strange parallel ‘imaginary world’ where he had lost his powers, and so forth. Somehow, these over-the-top adventures

In order to be able to accomplish genuine improvement for you as a writer, I need to be able to communicate with you. Editing - sincere editing - has two parts: 1. Getting into communication with you so that I can understand your work and what you are trying to do with it, and 2. Doing something that improves the things you want improved (and perhaps some things that you never realised needed improving). Some of my successes are from writers who never moved to step t