The Internet for Writers

As Nick Daws says in his introduction - 'You could almost believe the Net was designed for writers'. It represents a huge and easily accessible store of human knowledge; it allows you to communicate easily with others and to publish your work - either for profit or for promotion.

He starts from the most logical point - how to set up a connection, then how to use email and newsgroups to keep in touch with writers' groups. Then he moves on to consider how to contact publishers and submit work. This is the good thing about this book. Everything is slanted towards aspiring writers and their needs. The next part deals with using search engines to do research - including a potted explanation of the Boolean operators AND/OR/NOT.


This is useful advice - because not many people really know how these work. He then reveals a selection of online sites you can use to check your grammar, spelling, and even edit your work, using thesauruses, FAQs, and even professional help.

His pages are arranged somewhat like web pages - quick summaries, potted accounts of sites, and screenshot illustrations. There's advice on how to set up your own web pages; how to locate online learning courses; how to find free software; and how to deal with censorship, copyright, plagiarism, and publishers' contracts.

There's a good section of websites for writers, for research purposes, for publishers, and for Internet providers. But the section you are likely to enjoy most is a list of individual writer's web sites - from Douglas Adams to Tom Wolfe. These are maintained by the writers themselves, or by fans.

This is a serious resource for writers who want to make use of the Internet. If you were to work your way through all the chapters following the leads he offers - then you would end up well informed indeed.