Its all about Lazy Days...

LazyDay Publishing is a new company which will officially launch on the 1st December 2010. They are an e-publishing company, looking to create partnerships with authors who, upon acceptance of their writing, can look to benefit from royalties of 40-50%.

To apply to LazyDay Publishing, submit only completed manuscripts, or a previously publishing book whose rights you still hold. Initially it is suggested that you submit a query letter in the body of an email. Include in that email a summary of the book, the word count of the entire book, the genre and title of the book. Then attach a synopsis of book and also the entire manuscript to the email.

Remember to include the title of the book, your name, the book genre, word count, your phone number and your email and postal address in a header or footer on both the synopsis and the full manuscript.

Check out LazyDay Publishing's full submission details on their website, www.lazydaypub.com

Stories about dogs

Labradors Forever is a 24 paged magazine for the registered charity The Labrador Rescue Trust. Magazines are released for each season.

The magazine accepts stories about pet dogs that are between 150 and 200 words, plus one or two images.

Letters to the editor which are between 50-100 words in length are also welcome.

For support on article writing, check out Words Worth Reading.

Luath Press seeks new book ideas

Luath Press are an Edinburgh based publishing company, established in 1981. They have over 300 books in print including modern fiction, history, travel guides, and poetry.

Luath Press are currently accepting manuscripts for books that are worth reading.

It is advisable to take a look at their current publishing programme prior to submitting. If, once you have checked out their up and coming publication list you think that your manuscript will fit with their style, send in a book synopsis of up to 250 words, a selection of sample chapters or the full manuscript, an author biography and a cover letter. Ensure a SAE is included with your submission, and post submissions rather than sending in via email.

Enquiries can be emailed to submissions@luath.co.uk and information on post submission details can be found on their website www.luath.co.uk

Lonely reading

What has happened to our reading habits? Rick Gekoski reported this week that when he was younger 'there was a common culture of books you were expected and assumed to have read. Not anymore.'

I know that there are many books I have read and my peers have not and vice versa. It is not that younger people are not reading books; it is that they are reading a great diversity of books. I don't know if this is a problem. It is certainly harder to talk about books with your peers when no one seems to have read the same thing but with technology ever evolving and specialising surely it is possible to find other who have read the same as you and wish to discuss it.

Twitter has many book groups who read a book a month and tweet about it to each other whilst they are reading it. This sense of community seems appropriate for this digital age. Young literary groups are also popping up in the cities with monthly meetings to discuss face to face what book they are currently reading.

Gekoski finishes by saying that he wishes 'that the pleasure of reading, across the whole spectrum of literature, in all its variety, were part of a shared culture amongst young people today. But it isn't, whatever...[his] irate tweeters may say. '

If you love discussing books then visit Words Worth Reading's discussion forums.

Journalism: To specialise or not to specialise?

Nikki Osman wrote in her column 'Diary of a budding journalist' in the Guardian this week about a debate surrounding the entry to journalism. Do you try and specialise in one particular field so that you become an expert or do you diversify and cover many different topics so that you are versatile.

Journalism is a competitive arena and as a career it requires a bit of grit and determination to pursue. If you choose to find a specialism you need to find something that no one else is writing about. This can be problematic as the topics that no one else is writing about tends to be topics far away from the popular and you are likely to know little about them as well. Yet once you find a niche and start delving into that topic, it can put you in a unique and desirable position to offer you writing to specialist magazines, columns of the newspapers either as a freelance or on contract. Yet if you choose to be more a general journalist you can adapt to all different situations and you are a better prospect for full time employment at a newspaper or magazine.

Nikki finishes her column with a quote:
'To return once more to wise words of successful freelancer Johanna Payton: "I know plenty of journalists who have plucked a specialism out of thin air and are doing brilliantly with columns, regular pages, staff jobs and booming freelance careers." Herein lies the dream.'

If you need a well written CV to kick start your career then visit Words Worth Reading’s site for more information.

Selling your writing through leaflets and flyers

In this age dominated by the internet it can seem odd to sell your writing through a printed medium. The writer's forum highlights the advantages of printed marketed:

- It allows your potential customer to find out a bit more about the author's biography and their other titles in print.

-'It allows gradual absorption of a message; reinforcing an impression gained'. If you have been to see the author speak or have heard a little about them then printed information can strengthen this image.

- 'It can be passed onto a third party, including those who may like to book you for a talk or writing event.'

- It offers great value for money.

Selling your writing through printed material can give customers a more focused interest on the author. If you need help writing your marketing material then contact one of our team for more information.

Google is to start translating poetry

Translating words and passages on a search engine can throw up some interesting results. I can remember submitting my French homework into a search engine and copying word for word the translation it gave. The teacher, of course, saw right through this as the result was often garbled. The translation of poetry online can be seen as even a greater challenge. Poems are so deliberate in their form and language that it is hard to see how an online translation can maintain the poem's integrity.

According to the Guardian, Google, 'the internet's favourite one-stop shop is now working on the machine-translation of not just words, but meter and rhyme.' How the poetic nuances of words can be captured in translation is difficult to see. Surely a machine will not be able to distinguish between 'flaw' with the meaning 'blemish' and 'flaw' with the meaning 'broken'. Minute distinctions within themselves, but essential to the meaning of a poem.

If you need help editing your poems then visit our writer's page.

The importance of Information Governance

Good information governance is crucial to every company, business and organisation. This is particularly the case for companies that work for healthcare services, independent healthcare providers, or for NHS bodies as there is now a requirement for each of these services to submit an Information Governance declaration and self assessment response relating to the standards of Information Security and Data Protection that are adopted by their organisation. For more information on how Words Worth Reading Limited can support you in the completion of this declaration and assessment, visit our IG page.

An example of Information Governance 'gone wrong' was plastered all over the press last week, as news of a Doctor from the East and North Hertfordshire Trust who left a memory stick containing patient identifiable data on a train broke. To date, the memory stick has not yet been found.

Research reported 2 years ago by the Health Service Journal, undertaken in a London hospital, demonstrated that 79 out of 105 doctors regularly carried sensitive patient data on memory sticks, and only 5 of them had followed NHS rules on encrypting the data.

Sounds like a few more training packages are required in this element of patient safety...

Skills Passports

The Health Service Journal this week discussed how skills passports have a lot to offer recruiters by streamlining the recruitment process and avoiding duplication in training.

Skills passports for use in health are an online tool, brought about as part of the Modernising Nursing Careers initiative, run by Skills in Health. Each individual is provided with a unique log in to a secure online repository where they can enter the details of their skills, qualifications and work experience. "Every time a new competency or qualification is acquired, it can be validated in the system by the employer or training provider. Employers can then check prospective employees' credentials during the recruitment process."

Whilst this is a new venture for health care, the concept of using skills passports of this nature has already been implemented in other sectors such as catering and IT.

There is now a call for the independent health care sector, voluntary sector and entire NHS to adopt the use of skills passport, for at the moment skills passports are not used consistently across health care. Until this happens, the full benefit of this concept cannot be realised. A strategic working group has been set up to really test and understand the benefits of a skills passport. The outcome of this strategic group was that, "it offered huge benefits for employers [as well as staff], especially in the context of quality, innovation, productivity and prevention and the drive to realise efficiency savings", says Skills for Health project manager Sally-Ann Marciano.

Savings can be seen in training efficiencies too, particularly in statutory and mandatory training where there currently exists a significant level of duplication in training provided as a staff member moves from one organisation or role to another.

The question is, how can the concept of skills passports benefit other organisations or companies over and above those working in health care?

To find out more about Words Worth Reading Ltd's role in supporting health care delivery, visit our business pages.

The future of publishing

The rise of ebooks over the last couple of years has radically changed the approach to publishing. Authors can now bypass the publishers to release their own titles as ebooks with little fuss. The role of publishers is in danger of being redundant unless they start working with new formats and consider new ways to generate income for themselves and their authors.

Stephen Page wrote yesterday in the Guardian that: 'The brief furore surrounding Odyssey Editions, a digital-only imprint launched by the Wylie literary agency in July, showed us just how appealing a new entrant to the field can appear to those eager to dig the grave of "old publishing". In times of rapid evolution, a newcomer can always steal a march; but such times also offer a great opportunity to more established players who can adapt quickly'

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2010/oct/05/future-of-publishing

Are ebooks greener than paper books?

In the 'green' section of the Guardian this week the enviromental effects of the ebook were examined against the paper book. The Amazon Kindle is considered ecological because you can download a whole library onto a small device. But what happens when it breaks?

'Does a multi-use gadget such as the iPad increase the environmental credentials of the ebook because it means this single piece of electronica – unlike the Kindle - also provides lots of other uses? But what about the fact that most electronic gadgets have a limited life span before the Next Big Thing comes along? For example, how many iPods has the average music fan gone through over the past decade? Or mobile phones, for that matter? By comparison, a book made of dead trees can last hundreds of years – and, furthermore, be recycled into another book upon its demise.'

Further discussions are happening on the Guardian web pages.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/green-living-blog/2010/oct/05/ebook-printed-books-kindle-environment