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ALCS
A recently
revamped site from the UK Author's Licensing And Collecting Society should be
of interest to all UK writers with practical as well as ethical interests in issues
to do with intellectual property rights. As well as being a campaigning organisation
within the publishing industry ALCS is also pioneering online syndication for
its journalist members with the Web-based ByLine
system.
Amicus
*
Amicus is
a site that grew out of an interest in email penpals and the way that the Internet
enables speedy global interchange of communications. Such letters and emails amount
to a huge resource of different cultures as expressed by the written word. "And
so the concept of Amicus has developed," site owner, Alison McVey, says. "Yes,
it is about actively making contacts of friendship throughout the world, yes it
is about letters and articles that illuminate the experiences of other people,
other worlds... But it is also a voyeuristic experience for those of us who like
to read, travelling vicariously through the pages of a book - or books." As well
as book reviews and articles, the site has a mailing list and can be used to network
or find penpals. It also runs competitions
and exists as subscription-only quarterly
A Room Without Walls
A mouse with
a scroll button is a useful accessory when browsing Ted Warnell's list of art
resources and exhibition sites - it's a long list. The general headings are: art
resources, literary links, Canadian artists, wacky and wonderful, eclectic collections,
art newsgroups, and Web sites.
Australian Network for Art and Technology
"The role
of the Australian Network for Art and Technology is to advocate for cultural and
critical environments that support the fields of art, science and technology.
ANAT undertakes
a wide range of activities including training programs, publication, funding of
artists' projects, and conference organisation." The site also has a gallery
with examples of work by five Australian artists and information about projects
currently underway.
Australian Society of Authors
The site for
Australia's Society of Authors is colourful and well designed. Information about
the society and what it offers its members, back issues of newsletters, and details
of membership are all quickly available without having to master a conceptual
map of the site. A link to the Australian Writers' Guild
is provided for those writing in film and broadcasting.
Authors' Names Index
There is a
long list of names of authors, dead and alive, at this site. It uses a two-column
lay-out with the names, and subjects such as American literature, run down the
left-hand column with a sprinkling of quotes to add value to the white space in
the right hand column. The selection of authors is a wide one. Clicking on an
author, ultimately takes you to a list of sites, official and otherwise, where
further information can be found.
Associated Writing Programs
With 290 colleges
among its members the AWP mission is to "foster literary talent" and "advocate
the teaching of the craft of writing". Enrolment offers you a copy of the AWP
Chronicle, published six times a year, and a job placement service.
Although
this is probably the largest organisation dealing with the teaching of writing
in the world it should be noted that the flavour is distinctly American.
Barnes and Noble.com
Commercial
sites like this demonstrate how powerful the internet is when it comes to retail.
Although an American company, buying books from here needn't be expensive for
the European because books tend to be cheaper in the US and you aren't paying
for the overheads normally added for running a shop. Although the experience of
online browsing is obviously poorer than being in a bookshop the range of books
on offer is impressive and the ability to perfrom online searches for titles and
authors is very useful. Many sites have links to reviews, author profiles etc.
Amazon.com is another huge US site.
In the UK you could try Blackwell's, Heffer's, or Amazon.co.uk.
Bartleby.com
This free
online library is worth checking. It is simply designed and fast in use. The reference
books available include "The Art Of Reading" and "The Art Of Writing" as well
as assorted encyclopaedias, dictionaries, style guides, works on mythology, and
Roget's Thesaurus. Classic non-fiction texts from, inter alia, Einstein, Paine
and Mill are available along with fiction from Fitzgerald, Hawthorne, Wells, Shaw
and Virginia Wolf. American and British verse is also archived.
The Bookseller.com
*
The organ
of the booktrade in the UK. The venerable organ is a one-stop resource for the
latest news in the publishing industry. Whether it's to do with corporate buy-outs
among the publishing houses, or what agency has been selling manuscripts successfully,
you'll find it in here. The lists of what's about to be published are interesting
browsing for all writers looking to sharpen their marketing muscles. For subscribers
there's a weekly email newsletter which gives a handy digest of the current news
and latest special features.
BookSpot *
A general-interest
site that looks at literature on the Web. Contains some interesting material about
banned books, the whole area of e-books, and plenty of links to literary
awards sites.
Books
Unlimited
The Guardian
and Observer newspaper's book site is a useful resource for news about contemporary
literature, with an emphasis on the UK. Although there's a strong e-commerce presence,
there is a lot of background material about books and writers, including reviews,
transcripts from author Internet chats, obituaries, literary links and informative
author profiles. Browsing by genre is a quick way into the site. Links to stories,
published in the literary sections of the print-editions of the newspapers, are
also included.
Bricolage
"Internet-related
information and resources of interest to on-line writers." This site started in
1994 and has many links to relevant sites, though has not been updated since 1997..
British Council
Literature Department
Set up to
promote British and Commonwealth literature, this site covers much ground with
information about the work it does in different genres, links to online publications
and directories, including a directory of literature festivals. Expansion is underway,
making it potentially one of the more comprehensive literary sites. Graphics are
sparsely used, which makes for reasonable access speeds.
BritishLiterature.com
Traditional
English lit aimed particulary at teachers and students. Its brief accounts of
popular literary forms are well done and informative. England is the main focus
for the essays and links, but English-speaking countries also get a mention. It's
at its strongest on pre-20th century literature.
Brittanica.com
The entire
text of the Encyclopaedia Brittanica is now available online. When it went online
in October 1999, it received 15 million hits on the first day, which brought the
system down. It's scheduled for a November re-launch, backed by bigger and faster
servers. The site also carries reports from newspapers and news wires around the
world, selected articles from more than 70 popular magazines including Esquire,
Sports Illustrated, and The Economist. To round off its usefulness
as a resource for writers of fiction and non-fiction, it also has a searchable
directory of Web sites, chosen by its editors.
The Burry Man Writers Center
*
Community,
as trAce members know, is not only an empty buzz word among the Internet chattering
classes, it is also an issue that cuts to the heart of what it means to go online.
This site hopes to bridge the virtual and the physical by eventually establishing
a physical space in Scotland. For now it is setting up bulletin boards and chat
rooms for writers to interact. It is also in the business of providing links to
resources for writers. It covers a variety of genres - from health writing to
science fiction - and is a useful addition to any writer's bookmarks. The name
is taken from Scottish folklore. The Burry Man is a traditional figure who walks
the streets of South Queensferry, Scotland, bringing luck in return for whisky
and money - all vital concerns for writers if you believe even half of the stereotypes
in circulation. The site features a large board of advisors, consisting of specialists
of various sorts including the influential horror writer Charles L Grant who has
published more than 130 books.
Community Writers Association
This writers'
resource page dates back to 1994. As well as the features, links and chatrooms
you'd expect, this non-profit organisation also hosts US conferences, international
writing competitions, lectures, support groups and so on. It caters for professional
and aspiring writers of fiction, plays, scripts, and journalism. It also has editors,
publishers and literary agents among its membership.
Digital Portal
An exercise
in information management on a grand scale here. The research group on the global
future at the University of Munich has set up this Website to pull together and
review other sites, projects, books, and so forth. The intention is to filter
and distil the essence of the digital revolution in its entirety: technological,
political, economic and cultural. The scope is immense and the content already
reflects that. On the one hand is a review of Neal Stephenson's sf novel "The
Diamond Age", on the other is a report on how Europe can make-up ground on the
US in the field of e-commerce. The site's focus is also forward looking - what
does it all mean to how we will live our lives in the future?
The Electronic
Labyrinth
Readable on
the Web or downloadable via ftp (only windows format retains the hyperlinks within
the document) this is a superb and intelligent book-length look at Hypertext.
EARL: Ask A Librarian
The old-fashioned
way of finding out facts - asking someone - is alive and well online at this site
manned by UK public library staff. E-mailed queries are answered, if a documented
answer exists, within two working days. It isn't a site for getting exhaustive
literature searches done, but it could prove very useful for tracking down hard
facts.
Eastgate Systems Home Page
Eastgate is
the main source of commercial hypertext fiction. Many of the writers of hypertext
fiction on the Web publish their creation through Eastgate.
The EText Archives
Lists that
could keep you busy for weeks. There are copious links to zines, electronic books,
mailing lists and religious texts.
European
Federation of Freelance Writers *
This Swiss-based
organisation is open to freelance journalists, writers and authors throughout
Europe. It was set-up partly to enable networking on an international as well
as local scale. Details of the "support and value" it offers to members, other
than a Press card, an ISP deal, and insurance bundled with membership, is not
specified.
Fiction House
*
A monthly
site aimed at helping fiction writers get their work published. Genre and general
fiction is catered for with a series of one-off articles and regular pages devoted
to topics such as agents, publishing news, freelance opportunities, classified
ads and chatrooms. In December 1998 the publishers section ran a piece on the
Citron Press - the author's co-operative (with Martin Amis as a patron) designed
to bypass traditional publishers and get work in print quickly and cheaply. The
site is focused and clear. I suspect it's one that will end up on a lot of people's
bookmarks.
Fragment.nl
This site
used to be called Webbah. It's changed the name of the "Cyber" Resources to the
longer, but more descriptive Cyberculture, Identity and Gender (CCIG) Resources.
The resources indexed cover a variety of areas including: MUDs and MOOs, cyberspace,
gender, and anthropology. Underlying the site is a vision of cyberspace which
operates not according to principles of mechanistic rote, but in ways akin to
some of the more colourful notions of thought itself.
Hyperizons: the
Search for Hypertext Fiction
If you want
to find information or general resources about hypertext fiction and theory this
is a good place to start. Once, it would have been the place to start.
But as it hasn't been updated since July 1997 it's in danger of becoming a place
to research the history of hypertext fiction prior to the adoption of Extensible
HTML as the Web standard by the World Wide Web Consortium in January 2000.
Hyper-X
One section
of the Alt-X site Hyper-X has been set up to explore hypertext fiction and Web
publishing. The site includes Hypertextual Consciousness
[beta-version] a hypertextual discussion about writing in Cyberspace. For
more information about Alt-X take a look at the What's New page which
gives you a good idea of what the site is about. Mark Amerika's article The
Public, Private and Secret Life of A Network Publisher is also well worth
a look.
infinity plus
*
Keith Brooke
wrote an excellent feature in the June 1998 issue of Interzone called "Site-Seeing
SF On The Net" about science fiction and fantasy on the Web. Much of the information
is also available on his genre Web site infinity plus. There's fiction (more than
274,000 words) from Interzone regulars such as himself, Graham Joyce, Greg
Egan, Eric Brown, Kim Newman and Molly Brown. And non-fiction: biographies, author
profiles, features and reviews to get your teeth into. There's a links section
too, called Site-Seeing, which has links to leading magazines in the field and
to sites of more general interest to writers (we'll come clean - trAce is one
of them). A lively site that covers a lot of sf ground and covers it well.
Inkspot * *
This is a
resource site for writers, especially those who write for children. It has an
extensive list of literary links including those for agents, contests and multimedia.
John Labovitz's E-Zine
list *
This is probably
the longest list of e-zines and journals on the web. The April 1998 edition contained
hypertext links to 2,290.
Literary Resources
on the Net
This is based
at the English Department of Pennsylvania University. The list of available material
here is huge and includes: Classical and Biblical / Medieaval / Renaissance /
Eighteenth Century / Romantic / Hypertext / Theory / Twentieth Century and much,
much more.
LitWeb
A writer's
playground and a reader's heaven? Cynics might say the two are mutually incompatible,
but the nature of the Web is increasingly interactive and this site reflects that.
It's a place where you can search out information as a reader, for example on
out-of-print books, and do some writing yourself by entering, say, the monthly
fiction slam whose winner is decided by email vote. There's a good selection of
reviews to browse. There are journals too, from dream diaries to out and out rants
that visitors can keep online and are open to view and comment by others.
Live Literature Network*
This represents
one way that The Arts Council of England is fulfilling its brief to ensure that
live literature is not left behind as available channels of communication shift
and change. It's an ambitious attempt to establish a forum for all those involved
in the creation, production, distribution and enjoyment of the spoken word. It's
not just a repository for press releases either. The intention is that it should
be interactive and feature events - locally and online. Worth adding to your bookmarks.
Malvine
This is an
EC-funded project that is aiming to collate indexes of modern European letters
and manuscripts housed in libraries, archives, museums and other places. Multi-lingual
interfaces should make it easy for anyone to access a variety of documents that
are being translated into a Web-based format.
The Market List *
Up-to-date
market information for writers of science fiction and fantasy is the raison d'etre
of these pages. It's good news for working genre writers, because the site covers
the gamut of professional, semi-professional and small-press outlets - paper magazines,
e-zines and anthologies - complete with guidelines, editorial contacts and tips
for individual markets. There's a downloadable version of the database in Windows
help-file format, and a comprehensive online version too. The emphasis is heavily
on the United States, which is useful for writers on other continents trying to
get an idea of the size of the market place.
Metaplus Writer's Resources
This handy
directory of links is organised according to category so that journalists, poets
or whatever can try visiting sites likely to be of interest. There are links to
online dictionaries and general reference resources too. There is a thorough section
devoted to non-academic conferences, largely based in the United States but usually
with a Web presence.
Mitsuharu Matsuoka's
Home Page
An astonishingly
detailed and comprehensive collection of resources and links pertinet to British
and American literature. There are specialist sections devoted to the work of
Charles Dickens, Elisabeth Gaskell, George Gissing and Emily Bronte. Ought to
be on a lot of academics' bookmark list.
National Book Foundation
"One of
the benefits of new technology is that it can inspire us to return, enriched and
refreshed, to the original wellspring - the written word."
In May
1998 the United States National Book Foundation celebrated its 10th year by launching
this site, in partnership with BookWire , to promote literacy
via the Internet. A section called "Windows on the Writing Life" offers an online
reading circle and Webcast interviews with authors. There is an archive of previously
unpublished letters, interviews and speeches by National Award Book Winners going
back to 1950.
NAWE *
The National
Association of Writers in Education was formed as a regional association in 1987.
Since then it has become the UK national organisation that promotes and supports
the development of creative writing in all educational settings.
National Theatre Online
Not just a
site to flog tickets for a prestigious theatre, although it is geared up for that.
As an online brochure, it performs well with historical notes going back to 1848
and a Web archive of productions from 1998. It also has facilities for offering
feedback on plays seen. There is also a link to NT2000, "a year-long series of
platforms charting and celebrating the progress of drama through the 20th century,
as represented by 100 plays. The list is based on the results of the NT2000 poll
and each playwright is included only once, with their most voted-for work, in
order to present the broadest and most diverse picture possible." It's an interesting
list, quietly controversial. It was drawn up by asking for nominations from playwrights,
actors, directors, journalists and other theatre professionals. What they considered
"significant" might differ significantly from what you or I would I chose.
National Union of Journalists
The site of
the UK's largest trade union for staff and freelance journalists (including HTML
editors and designers) is a source of information about issues affecting working
journalists and events in the industry as a whole. Selected articles from the
union newsletter are online, but the full bulletin is available only to members.
New Writing North
New Writing
North was set-up in 1996 to foster writing in the North of England in a variety
of genres. One of its briefs is to look at new media and writing for the Internet.
Although regional, it is also interested in wider and international contacts.
As well as running a critical reading service, it is involved in an impressive
list of national, Net and local projects such as the Durham Litfest. Could be
an invaluable resource for writers in the locality to get involved with.
New Zealand Society of Authors
Working writers,
and those who are interested in writers and writing are eligible for different
levels of membership of this organisation. It is primarily set up to defend the
rights and promote the interests of print-based writers, but it links to the New Zealand Writers
Guild which caters for writers working in broadcast and new media. New
Zealand's Society of Authors is affiliated with PEN International.
OED Online
The definitive
historical dictionary of English that shows etymology as well as giving current
definitions. Access to the latest drafts that aren't available in print is one
benefit to subscribers. Annual subscription is expensive for individuals (£350
plus VAT/ US $550 in 2000), but academic institutions may have network deals for
staff and students to get access.
The
Online Books Page
Tracking down
free books online is much easier with this directory. It has a database of more
than 100,000 titles which can be searched by author name or title. Links to other
resources and onsite features are also available.
Online Literary Criticism Collection
Lit crit practitioners
should bookmark this site. Part of the Internet public library, it has almost
three and a half thousand sites linked. These offer biography as well as literary
criticism. It is set up for ease of operation. You can browse by author name,
by title, or by nationality and time-period.
The Online Writery
Advice on
how to communicate with other writers via email and MOO.
Open Studio
Backed by
the Benton Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, this impressive
national initiative in the United States, aims to help artists and non-profit
arts organisations go online. They do that through mentor sites and access sites
in local communities. The Website has tutorials and links to other resources that
have plenty to say about using the Net and marrying creativity with technical
knowledge. There is also Digital Canvas, an online magazine where articles are
posted based on feedback from online forums and elsewhere. Some of the current
issue's pieces are about the design questions that need to be considered in order
to maximise accessibility to Web sites.
The Opening Line
Supported
by Yorkshire Arts, this site should be of interest to any writers in the area.
News of live literary events and workshops are posted online. Details of writing
groups are also listed. These are almost totally located within the region, but
a couple as far afield as Cambridge and Devon are also linked. Online work and
projects are flagged, including the forthcoming Flash-based non-poetry presentation
by the editor, Andy Campbell, with "shedloads of offensive language and a distinct
lack of morality." If you want to find out about its two-year project to encourage
new writing, check out the site.
PEN International
This organisation,
founded in 1921, with centres in 131 countries, exists to promote friendship between
writers and defend freedom of expression within and between all nations. The initials
originally stood for "poets, playwrights, editors, essayists, and novelists".
Membership is by election and is open to writers (and editors and translators)
of all sorts with appropriate qualifications. The site has links to PEN Centres
in all continents and details of the schemes it is involved in, with committees
covering areas such as: writers in prison and exile, writers for peace, and women
writers.
Ralan Conley's Webstravaganza
*
All writers
aiming for publication need to know their markets. Ralan Conley certainly knows
his, and is willing to share the fruits of his research. His chosen genres are
SF and humour, so if you want to sell in those, check out his market listings.
The listings on his impressive site are detailed, honest, to the point and updated
regularly. There are plenty of them too - more than 200 - so there's no excuse
for not sending out those SF short stories anymore. In the general links section,
there is an area devoted to online and standard agents. It is cross-linked to
another section labelled "beware", which has some useful warnings on known scam
artists who lurk in cyberspace and prey on unsuspecting authors.
Rejection Collection
If you have
some rejection letters of your own that you are especially proud of, you could
always post them up here to fish for sympathy, or give fellow writers a chance
to revel in schadenfreude. Before rushing in with a post of your own ill-treatment
by editors, be warned that it's the writers who come off worst quite often. There
are some over-sensitive souls who go overboard at perfectly reasonable editorial
responses and confirm all those stereotypes about writers as whining miscreants
unable to listen to home truths about their talent. Mind you, some editors fail
to cover themselves with glory.
Resources For Black
Writers And Readers
A list of
resources ranging from a two-day conference in 1999, Black and Wired, looking
at "cultural diversity and the issues for black artists working with new technology"
to online communities, Webzines and university departments dedicated to black
literature and arts.
Rhizome: New Media Art Resource
This is a
high quality mailing list housed on a Web page which rightly describes itself
as "a comprehensive resource for information and critical writing about what's
going on at the intersection of emerging technology and contemporary art." You get a different "splash" page from a different artist or
writer every time you log on.
Route Online
Happenings,
slams and Flash-fuelled mayhem are offered by this site which has as its mission
statement the delivery of "literature, music and high-quality digital innovations
for the lucky people locked in to the north of England". A free monthly newspaper
is available featuring regional writers. Probably not required reading for the
more conservative. A quick look at the Website will soon let you know if it's
your type of thing.
Scribble
This site
has not done its homework. When it launched in August 1999, it claimed to be the
UK's first on-line workshop for writers - a patent nonsense. Online workshops
for writers are almost as old as the Net, even in the UK. It invites submissions
of short stories of up to 5,000 for critiquing by those who join up and guest
editors. The first guest editor is Ashley Stokes, a graduate of the University
of East Anglia's MA in Creative Writing who now teaches the subject at the university.
SFF Net *
Although science
fiction, fantasy and horror are prominent, they're not the full extent of this
site. It's dedicated as a place where authors, readers, editors and publishers
can come and join together to discuss all aspects of literature. That includes
Mystery and Romance as discrete genres too. Chat rooms, bookselling and links
to other literary sites are all on offer. One neat feature is that authors, who
have home pages hosted by the site, also have their own web-based newsgroups.
There's some lively interaction between writers and readers going on in some of
those.
SIGLNK Home Page
SIGLNK organise
the annual Hypertext conference, which is probably the most prominent conference
on hypertext and hypermedia. You will find their newsletter here and information
about forthcoming events and papers.
The Society Of Authors
"The Society
of Authors is the leading association for writers of fiction and non-fiction in
the United Kingdom. Its members also include artists, illustrators, playwrights,
and scriptwriters (for both radio and television)."
The Society
acts as a trades union for writers, offering advice and support of the moral and
legal varieties. Unagented members, for instance, can send in contracts they've
been offered by publishers to have them vetted - a very useful service. This site
is a comprehensive introduction to the Society and its activities and links. It's
not just a tour de force in the content stakes, it's also an easy site to navigate
around.
Storyspace
Storyspace
is sold by Eastgate - and is the most popular system for writing hypertext fiction
or non-linear projects in general. Its graphical interface makes it very easy
to follow the way your project is going to interconnect.
Tangled Web UK
Although this
is the site of a UK specialist bookshop - crime and mystery being its genres -
it's got a lot more going for it than e-commerce. The book reviews, interviews
and author news/biography pages are all well presented.
totallyword.com
While streaming
radio was quick to take off on the Internet, it was inevitably characterised by
a lack of imagination and anything resembling creativity. Totallyword.com is a
welcome departure from the endless commercial rehashing of minor conventional
radio station playlists. It offers spoken word radio where the emphasis is on
the literary and the experimental. There is music and sound, but it's not pop.
In the late spring launch edition of 2000, there was a collaboration between the
weird and wired author Jeff Noon and David Toop the musician, composer and sound
curator - not the sort of thing likely t be aired by your local commercial FM
station. Readings by critically acclaimed contemporary authors who do not sit
comfortably in the mainstream are a strength. So is the promise of live events
being added.
Who Wrote Shakespeare's
Works?
So, who did
write Shakespeare's stuff? Good question. Shakespeare? Perhaps that's too simple.
All I know is it wasn't me. If cryptography and literary ciphers are your game,
this is probably the site for you. It also helps if you're one of those who doesn't
have GIF animation turned off by default. The theory, going back to Julius Caesar
and then on to the 17th century with some number crunching stuff from Francis
Bacon, is intriguing for those who are numerate as well as literate There's a
case outlined here as to why Bacon is a candidate for authorship of the Shakespeare
canon. It's a convoluted case and the page with the main evidence takes an age
to download. However, reluctant students of English literature might find something
to annoy their teachers here.
The Word Pool
The emphasis
at Word Pool is on promoting children's literature in the UK - print-based literature
that is. Reviews are listed by category with non-fiction titles particularly well
catered for. Included in the reviews are e-commerce links to direct the user to
the appropriate pages of an online bookshop. There is a lot of information for
parents, teachers and would-be writers of children's books. But the site doesn't
lock out children, which is a trap some kid's sites have fallen into. The lists
of favourite titles children submit should be of interest to potential authors
even there are few surprises in the kids' choices with Harry Potter titles joining
the established canon of Tolkein, Carroll, Dahl, Lewis and Pratchett.
Worldwide Freelance Writer
*
Writers wanting
to sell rights to markets outside their country will find some useful advice in
the articles at this site. The market lists, organised by genre and category,
from sport to fiction, are not as exhaustive as some of the sites exclusively
designed for North American markets, but they are growing and are global in nature,
with only a few from the US and Canada but plenty throughout Europe, the Middle
East and South East Asia.
Writelink.co.uk *
Sue Kendrick's guide to (mostly
UK) writers' markets, competitions etc. An email newsletter is available.
A Writer's Guide To The Internet
*
Trevor Lockwood
& Karen Scott's "A Writer's Guide to the Internet" was published in the UK
by Allison & Busby in November 1999. Naturally enough you can buy a copy of
the print version of the book (signed as well) from this site which is run by
the authors. Usefully, the site also contains hot links to the sites they discuss
in the book. And they are going to try to keep those links up to date. In itself,
a worthwhile supplement to the book, but the site also has content such as competitions
and details of short-run printing.
Writers Guild of America, East
The interests
of American writers who work in assorted branches of broadcasting and who live
east of the Mississippi are looked after by this organisation that has a history
of campaigning for writers' rights from the 1920s on. Details of what it is continuing
to do for writers are on site, along with information about joining.
Writers Guild of America, West
This is the
site for those American writers who produce work for film, TV and new media industries,
and who live west of the Mississippi. The union's history and membership requirements
are online as are some useful links for research, script-writing software etc.
Writers' Guild
of Great Britain
This trade
union for writers is affiliated to the TUC and represents the interests of writers
who work in film, radio, television and theatre as well as publishing. It works
to negotiate minimum terms in the industry and helps with individual contract
details as well. The Website contains information about applying for membership
and has application forms in Adobe Acrobat format for downloading and filling
in. The main site sections are: books, radio, theatre, film, TV and animation.
The separate links to writers' resources are extensive and aimed at helping writers
get in touch with organisations and companies operating in different areas of
the print and broadcast media.
Writers Home
This site
is a mix of commercial and community site. You can pay to have a home page designed
and hosted by the company, or you can browse the resource lists looking for inspiration,
tuition, or pointers. The art-work is firmly in the realms of bundled clip-art,
but the advice on the mechanics of freelance writing is sound and some of the
links are going to be very useful for those who want to use the Web as a reference
resource - organisations as diverse as trAce and Romance Writers Of America can
be found on its links page.
WritersMarkets.com
*
Angela Adair-Hoy
is famous for the amount of money she makes from e-publishing and also for the
newsletters she sends out. WritersMarkets is a free weekly newsletter full of
online job vacancies for freelance writers as well as details of paying markets
(print and online) actively looking for writing. Competition details are often
posted on the Website too.
WritersNet
*
Getting an
agent is top of the priority list for many new writers. Getting put on hold or
lost in voice-mail hell is not unusual for cold telephone callers. Spending a
fortune on postage stamps to write to everyone listed in the Market yearbooks
is another option. Then there's the Web. This site offers an international database
of agents to explore, some of which have full listings setting out what they're
looking for in the writers they represent. Agents on the Internet have attracted
some bad press, a discussion area onsite here ensures that any cowboys who sneak
in will not remain undetected for long.
Writers' Showplace Inc
Describing
itself as "an on-line literary referral agency which connects writers of fiction
and non-fiction novels with agents and publishers worldwide", this site might
be of interest to commercially minded writers. It's a place for posting query
letters, plus bios and samples of work which can be browsed online by publishers
in the market for specific types of books. Launched in 1998, in the their first
year, 178 full manuscripts were requested off the site resulting in 15 agent contracts
and two book contracts for authors.
The Write Page *
An online
newsletter running to more than 300 pages of info for writers and readers who
are interested in genre fiction. Although comprehensive, it's never dry - the
compiler's attitudes shine through at every opportunity. Readers and browsers
of dictionaries of lit terms will be mightily impressed with the definition of
genre fiction as "fiction you read because you want to, not because the professor
says to and not because you think it will improve your mind. It might make you
think, but that is an undocumented side effect."
Written on
the Web
This is a
very good article about hypertext fiction. Take a look if you want a quick guide
to what all the fuss is about. If you're prompted for a username and password,
just hit the cancel button in the dialogue box - you'll get to the article, honest. .
Xlibris
The dream
for many writers is to cut out the middleman, the publisher, and sell their work
directly to their readers. Self-publishing through a company like Xlibris, which
Random House has invested in, is one way of doing that. Not all books are suitable
for their print on demand service, but details of what they can do and what sorts
of royalties are involved are available on their web site.
the
zone
This interactive website has been created by Lincolnshire Library Service to promote
and encourage the joys of reading and writing for pleasure. It is divided into
two areas - the ReadZone and the WriteZone. The website was partly funded by an
award from trAce.
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