Big News from Black Dog

It has been a big day, and now all the contracts are properly signed: Black Dog has now joined Walker Books Australia. Black Dog is now an imprint of Walker Books.

I am the publisher (and director) of Red Dog Books and of Wild Dog Books. Red Dog is our imprint for adult readers (that always sounds wrong but there is no other simpler way to put it). Red Dog is being distributed by Dennis Jones and Associates. Wild Dog is packaging and publishing photographic non-fiction for young readers. It is the imprint we have been using in the US for those books.

Maryann is working with Walker as the publisher of the Black Dog imprint.

So exciting times. Walker is the perfect place for Black Dog's authors and illustrators. It is a like-minded imprint and this is an opportunity for the list to grow.

I would like to thank all the terrific people I have worked with, both those clever and creative people who have, and are, working within the kennel and those clever and creative people who were outhouse. I have learned a huge amount and there is yet more to learn.

So it has been a big day.

new flash - English improvements (thanks to Warwick Forge)

The European Commission has just announced an agreement whereby English will
be the official language of the European Union rather than German, which was
the other possibility.

As part of the negotiations, the British Government conceded that English
spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a 5- year phase-in
plan that would become known as "Euro-English".

In the first year, "s" will replace the soft "c".. Sertainly, this will make
the sivil servants jump with joy. The hard "c" will be dropped in favour of
"k". This should klear up konfusion, and keyboards kan have one less letter.


There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year when the
troublesome "ph" will be replaced with "f".. This will make words like
fotograf 20% shorter.




In the 3rd year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to
reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible.


Governments will enkourage the removal of double letters which have always
ben a deterent to akurate speling.

Also, al wil agre that the horibl mes of the silent "e" in the languag is
disgrasful and it should go away.
By the 4th yer people wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing "th" with
"z" and "w" with "v".
During ze fifz yer, ze unesesary "o" kan be dropd from vords kontaining "ou"
and after ziz fifz yer, ve vil hav a reil sensi bl riten styl.

Zer vil be no mor trubl or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi TU
understand ech oza. Ze drem of a united urop vil finali kum tru.

Und efter ze fifz yer, ve vil al be speking German like zey vunted in ze
forst plas.

If zis mad you smil, pleas pas on to oza pepl.

"Inside the Story"

It was a pleasure to go down to Frankston to talk to the Chisholm Writing and Professional Publishing Students. I hope they enjoyed it as much as I did. (I heard from the lovely Shirley Marr that Mr Billington had enjoyed the talk.) It was fun to be in a dark smoky bar in the middle of the day - much better than any formal lecture theatre. Thanks to Julie Richards for inviting me. (I would also like to thank Shirley Marr again for allowing me to use the submission letter she wrote when she submitted Fury to black dog.)

I did say I would put up the links I had mentioned in my talk:

Kindle Direct for self-publishing on the kindle platform

Create Space the print-on-demand Amazon option for self-publishing

Smashwords ebook publishing for authors and independent publishers

The Emerging Writer's Festival Do go next year!

Cursor and when you properly understand what Richard is doing do please let me know

Red Lemonade one of Richard/Cursor's first publishing ventures

Richard Eoin Nash's Website:

Amanda Hocking

JA Konrath

A blog to follow about how publishing is changing:

The Shatzkin Files

If you are interested in what is happening in the publishing industry in a little more detail then two conferences worth following the buzz on are

Digital Book World

Tools of Change for Publishing

And if I did not actually say it in these words: Public success as a writer for most writers is now 1% inspiration and 99% self-promotion and publicity. So don't be shy. The few who do it successfully work hard and spend a lot of time doing it - the promotion (as well as the writing).

Sue Lawson and sentences

I was talking to Sue Lawson in the office about this, that and the other, in the office, as you do in an editorial chat. It is always a delight when Sue comes down to visit the Gertrude Street office. We were talking about The Crucible and then drifted over to sentences and Stanley Fish's How to Write a Sentence and How to Read One, which I finished reading a week ago or so. (I am a fan.) There was a snap moment between Miller's play and the nasty sense of being the sole owner of truth and a sentence Fish quotes from Increase Mather's (what a name!) A Brief History of War with the Indians in New-England (1676). Mather asserts:

"That the Heathen People amongst whom we live, and whose Land the Lord God of our Fathers has given to us for a rightful Possession, have at sundry time been plotting mischievous devices against that part of the English Israel which is seated in these goings down of the Sun, no man that is an inhabitant of any considerable standing can be ignorant."

What a superb sentence for justifying out and out theft! Those Puritans were a scary bunch, which Miller's play does such a good job of putting on stage.

PS Be prepared for Sue's next book!