Last July, in frustration after two years of being given the run around in London, US of A and India by a series of agents eager to see the colour of your money first, yet glibly lying why you didn’t have a hope of approaching a published without ‘my approval of your mss’ and often, I managed to get a revised mss ‘Hello Again . . .’ published on this website. Sure, it hasn’t been a best seller, or even a big seller. I didn’t expect it to be any of those; just a turning of the door ...  Read More

Hello, everybody! This is in response to Susan's comments on the blog. I think all of us would be able to empathize with her struggle, frustration at not being accepted by mainstream publishers, and joy at discovering 'abook2read.' Yes, it's a long and hard road. I also struggled for years. It's even harder in India, where there are so few quality writers writing in English. Unfortunately the publishing community here is celebrity struck. The writers that are published are usually ...  Read More

Hello there, I am Susan G the author of four of the novels on this site and I thought some of you may be interested to read a little about how I got into this writing game. I guess it all started some years ago when I was a member of a forum that ran a 'short story' writing competition. The prize was a book that I had my eye on, so with nothing to loose, I got scribbling. I thoroughly enjoyed the writing experience so as soon as ...  Read More

Abook2read.com has now been live for 13 months and in that time we have now signed 50 authors from all over the world. India, South Africa, Australia, America, Italy, Spain, Cyprus, Sri Lanka, Hong Kong and the United Kingdom have been the predominant suppliers of quality work.
I think what has taken us most by surprise is the pure volume of submissions week in week out. On average now 25 books a week arrive via admin@abook2read.com
These

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I've been re-reading Stephen King's awesome 'On Writing' and I'm delighted to find that there are several similiarities between the two of us! (Ahem!). He emphasizes that a writer must read all the time. So true! I read a lot. Fortunately we have a British Library in Delhi and I'm a member so I have a huge reservoir of fiction and literary stuff at hand. So what does one read? Should we, writers, read only heavy literary stuff? What about chick-lit? What about travel books? I read everything I ...  Read More

Mr Chesterfield I commiserate and concur with your words regarding some of the publishing community’s pompous attitude towards aspiring authors and the sometimes derogatory manner in which they speak down to them. I can’t really comment about the agents as I have not had that experience yet but I will heed your words when I do as it sadly looks as though that is my next step. I would presume that the British and American individuals are probably worse than the kiwi version and again ...  Read More

Frustrations in being published and rude literary agents

Trevor Chesterfield

Not only are British and American literary agents egotists and snobs, they take pleasure in being rude as well. Not all of them of course, but the majority that I approached during a two year period lacked the courtesy of responding, or if they did found a list of excuses, why they didn’t want to look at your work, or even a

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