Writers’ and Artists’ Yearbook
best-selling guide to publishers, agents, and outlets
If you’ve just finished producing your masterpiece, this book will help you to bring it to the marketplace. It’s a well-established reference guide for writers, journalists, photographers, and other people in the creative arts.
The heart of the book is its amazingly comprehensive listings. It offers full contact details of publishers, agents, and institutions who deal with writers and creative arts people. The lists cover the UK and US, as well as other English-speaking countries. In recent years, short essays have been added to each section offering advice to would-be writers and media workers. Pay attention to these: they’re written by professionals with experience and a proven track record. The information they offer will repay the price of the book ten times over.
They cover fiction and poetry; drama scripts for TV, radio, theatre, and film; graphic illustration and design; plus photography and music. The other features which make it useful are general information on publishing methods, copyright and libel, income tax and allowances, and a particularly useful list of annual competitions and their prizes.
Bonus items seem to be added with each edition – such as a list of the highest earning books of the previous year, specialist literary agents, how to prepare and submit a manuscript, and even (if the worst comes to the worst) how to claim social security benefits. The latest edition also includes sections on e-publishing, ghostwriting, distribution, adaptation, and digital imaging.
Additions to the latest edition include: Self-publishing; How to publicise your book; How to get an agent’s attention: Getting cartoons published; Blogging; Crime writing; and Can you recommend an agent?
Like many other reference books, it represents very good value for money in terms of bulk information – but more importantly it’s information which is reliable, up-to-date, and difficult to locate elsewhere.
If you have any serious intention of entering the commercial market as a writer or someone working in one of the other creative arts – then this is a book which you will need sooner or later. It’s no wonder that it sits near the top of the Amazon ratings all the year round.
© Roy Johnson 2010
Writers’ & Artists’ Yearbook, London: A & C Black (issued annually) pp.832, ISBN 1408111276
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