Blog
-
I’m looking for a muse
…or just an excuse? Writers, usually beginners, often refer to the muse, the participant in the writing process who is essential to get anything done. This is complete hogwash. The muse is simply an excuse not to do any writing and to go and do something else instead. It is a sign of a lack…
-
Pix or No Pix?
using photos in your book… With many of the titles that Earnshaw Books does, there is great desire, even insistence, from many authors that multiple photographs should be included. I often resist valiantly because, in my view, the most important images are those created by the words in the mind of the reader, and if…
-
Publishers
& how to deal with them? We receive probably an average of two or three manuscripts or communications from authors per week at Earnshaw Books and the way in which authors handle the reach-out to a publisher, or indeed an agent, has a significant impact on the way in which their manuscript is viewed, or…
-
Publishing your own book
to self-publish or not to self-publish? I wrote a blog post a few weeks ago about how to write a book and I thought I would follow it with one addressing the question of how to publish the book once it has been written. The quick answer if it is best seller material is to…
-
ISBN
acquiring one and it’s use. Earnshaw Books has a close relationship to the China market, having published books for 16 years that deal with China from a variety of angles, and the company is registered in Hong Kong and uses Hong Kong ISBNs—that is, the internationally recognized book registration numbers that once upon a time,…
-
China Fiction
by foreigners. Earnshaw Books gets sent a lot of manuscripts for review, probably two a week on average, and most of them are rejected because of quality issues or relevance, some because we simply cannot handle the load. A significant proportion of the manuscripts received are fictional works written by foreigners set in China, either…
-
Copyright
is for the living. As a publisher, I have an enormous interest in copyright because that is ultimately what I’m selling. I’m selling the copyright to manuscripts that have been sub-leased to me by authors. But I also think that the way that copyright operates in the world today is verging on insane, and it’s…
-
Foreign Devils
classic tales and memoirs that live on It’s now 16 years since Earnshaw Books was founded, and the first book which triggered the whole enterprise was a volume with the delightful title Foreign Devils in the Flowery Kingdom written by Carl Crow. I had been fascinated by the memoirs of foreigners living in China since I first arrived in Greater…
-
Writing A Book
where to start and how to do it The old joke about book writing features two people at a party and one says to the other, “I am writing a book,” and the other person says, “Neither am I.” This exchange succinctly reflects the situation with more than 90% of people writing books. It is…