The Writers' Workshop Bookshop (in association with Amazon Tools for Writers
Tools for self-publishers  Dan Poynter's Self-Publishing Manual: How to Write, Print and Sell Your Own Book - A decent guide to a difficult game.Self-Publishing for Dummies  - The leading brand takes on self-publishing. Not sure that this is the best title in the area, but maybe useful as a back-up. The Complete Guide to Self-publishing  - A good book. Vies with Dan Poynter for the best text in the field.How to Start and Run a Small Book Publishing Company  - Self-publishing not challenging enough? You want to set up a company? OK, itâ??s probably just easier to stuff bank notes into your wood burner, but if you wonâ??t be dissuaded then at least do it right.
Books about Words and Language  Reading the Oxford English Dictionary: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages - About the creation of the OED. Weirdly inspiring ...The Unfolding of Language  by Guy Deutscher. OK. We admit it. This book sounds really, really unpromising - it's a kind of natural history of grammar. And it's amazing. It asks how come the languages of the world have developed ever more bizarre and abstruse grammatical ways of conveying tense, etc. It's a fascinating question and the answer is awesome. This book is very, very interesting - worth a look, even if you think you're only half-interested.The Adventure of English 500 AD-2000  by Melvyn Bragg. Maybe the easiest read of the the main story-of-English type books. If you haven't read any of the others then here is probably the best place to start. You could also think about David Crystal's The Stories of English - a bit more authoritative than Bragg's and still a very easy read. If you're a really lazy sort, then Bill Bryson is fun and digressive and you can't really go wrong with Mother Tongue . If you're a writer, you need to have read at least one of these three!The Language Instinct  by Steven Pinker. A monster selling title. The good professor tries hard to be fun as well as learned, and the result is both interesting and readable. Whether the book quite lives up to the hype, we're not absolutely sure ... but you won't know until you try it.The Singing Neanderthals  by Steven Mithen. The book argues that the origin of language was in the rhythmic / melodic chants that plenty of primates use today. One weird and lovely fact: all humans speak fluent monkey. That is, our pitch and rhythms are almost exactly the same as the pitch and rhythms of primates when in similar social situations. Admittedly, that's not quite the same as a team of monkeys writing King Lear - but it's still a grand fact, isn't it?Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Novel  by big selling US novelist Jane Smiley. A big, serious, good book. Also a delightfully argumentative list of 100 great novels, some of which she doesn't find so very great.
How Fiction Works by James Wood. Is JW the best literary critic alive today? Probably. This is his short, readable, beautiful meditation on - er - how fiction works. It's a terrific book. We're not sure we agree with everything he says, but it's a damn good book all the same.From the sublime to ... Stephen King. If you haven't read On Writing  , then it's very well worth a look. Half a biography, half a thought-piece on how to write, this book is an enjoyable read for any writer. If you haven't read Steven King's fiction and never want to, then buy this anyway. No horror here, beyond one nasty road accident.The War Against Cliche  by Martin Amis. An excellent compilation. And an excellent title. An excellent book. We're fans.You could argue that this book doesn't quite fit on this page, but hear us out. It's The Mating Mind 
by Geoffrey Miller. It argues that the human brain is a peacock's tail - there not to contriibute towards survival , but to attract the opposite sex. One lovely corollory of this is that Writers are Hotties. By displaying superb artistic skill, we are convincing the opposite sex to fall in love with us. You've got to love that conclusion - and the book's a good, fun, easy read to boot.
by Harry
The Psychic Bible: The Definitive Guide to Developing Your Psychic Skills 
by SpanglesThe Story of Maha 
by Sumayya
More coming soon! |
) contains all the most useful books available for writers, and the best of our 
is the first and still the best, in our opinion. Itâ??s not just we that think so: it outsells Macmillanâ??s 
by about 4 to 1.
The author, Carole Blake, is an agent and the book is a bit agenty in emphasis, but still a useful buy.
- A tremendous book. Its emphasis is on North America and non-fiction (and aimed more at publishers than at writers), but almost everyone will learn masses from this book.
- The British equivalent of the book above, and firmly aimed at publishers. We probably prefer the American one, but itâ??s up to you.
- the jumbo edition on CD-ROM. At about £190, this is a big investment but any really serious writer is likely to succumb to the temptation. If you like the paper version (and have good eyes and a lot more money), then you can get it 
. The shorter version (still not very short) is 
.