Books

Jump Start Your Writing Career

One of the most useful books I bought when I started out as a writer. No nonsense advice from the "queen bee" of publishing. Beth Erickson started out as a complete newbie without any fancy qualifications and now is an incredibly successful freelancer writer, copywriter and author. This book is a goldmine for new writers.

7DayEBook

How to write and publish your own e-book in as little as 7 days By Jim Edwards and Joe Vitale This is the book I used to write the Newbie-Writer's Resource book. I highly recommend it. Click here for more information about this book and to purchase a copy.

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As you'll know if you've read The Newbie Writer's Resource Book, there are free writing courses and courses where you need to pay a fee. I can personally recommend the Writer's Bureau Comprehensive Writing Course, as I am a student with them. I also recommend Rob Parnell's Easy Way to Write Romance Fiction course (see below). Although this is a fee paying course, it provides excellent value for money and is extremely useful and good fun too!

In addition to these courses I also make use of the many free courses available on the net and I would advise you, fellow newbie, to take as many of these courses as you can, free or fee paying, to improve your craft and increase your chances of getting published.

Also, remember that if there are no courses currently being offered in the subject you want to learn; you can learn just as well from books.

Quick Cash Writing Course by bestelling author Nick Daws Get PUBLISHED today! - New course reveals quick ways to get published in just a few minutes each day.

Write Any Book in 28 Days... OR LESS! New course reveals FRESH secrets. How would you feel if in exactly 28 days time, you were holding the finished version of your own book? A new course from best-selling author Nick Daws shows you how to do it in UNDER 28 days, working less than 1 HOUR a day.

www.writersbureau.com
Details of all their distance-learning writing courses, including the one I can personally recommend: The Comprehensive Writing Course, which covers all genres.

www.sttcourses.co.uk
Sister site set up by the Writer's Bureau offering a wide range of writing courses. Check it out before you decide who to learn to write with.

www.bbc.co.uk/dna/getwriting/minicourse
A massive site from the BBC, providing free mini-courses at beginner, intermediate and advanced levels across all genres. These courses were written by creative language tutors at British universities.

easywaytowrite.com
Free mini classes on writing fiction.

writingbliss.com
A selection of free e-mail and fee based courses that run all year round.

www.mridukhullar.com/forwriters/
Excellent site, run by a very successful freelancer which contains articles on most areas of freelancing. Subscribe to free newsletter and receive free e-book “Markets for the Freelance Writer”. Mridu also offers a 12 part free e-course “Query letters that sell.”

http://www.suite101.com/readingandwriting/
Lots of free courses on every aspect of creative writing and in most genres.

awaionline.com/index.php
Home page of the American Writers and Artists Institute who run the Accelerated Program for six-figure copywriting. I am a student of this course also and it is very, very good.

If you can't find the course, you're looking for, then why not search for it here:

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Funds for Writers (free newsletter)

Total Funds for Writers
A fortnightly newsletter containing over 90 calls for submissions each issue, along with articles to improve your writing craft. Only $12.00 a year. An excellent investment if you are looking to make money from your writing.

Freelance Market News
A very useful publication by the Writers Bureau with up-to-date market information - new magazines, editorial changes, submissions being actively seeked, contest details and tips on improving your craft. Subscription is £11 for 6 issues or £29 for 11 issues, comes with free membership of the Association of Freelance Writers and a useful ID card that states as much.

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Write-Sparks-lite writing prompt software This free version doesn't expire. It contains over a month's worth of sparks. Download this version to see for yourself how it works. Evaluate the free version before buying the full version. You'll also receive articles and more sparks by e-mail. WriteSparks!™ is every writer's newest best friend! If you need some creative sparks to start or end your day, WriteSparks!™ is the perfect software for the writer in you! WriteSparks!™ is a writer's software you can run from your computer whenever you need to... jumpstart your writing break out of a block get rid of boredom write away your frustrations write for the sheer joy of writing Click here to download your copy of this FREE software.

Click here to download your FREE trial version.

Free Trial version of PDF-Creator PDF files are the most popular file format in the world. But can YOU create them? The answer is NO. And you're MISSING OUT of countless opportunities because of this limitation. It doesn't matter whether you're a writer or a business professional, whether you're sending documents to Malaysia or to a Macintosh, your computer NEEDS to create PDF files... at the click of a button. And with PDF-Creator... IT CAN! PDF-Creator allows you to create your own professional-looking PDF files from ANY document. Simply open your file, such as a Word document, and click File > Print. Select the PDF-Creator printer and you're done. It'll create your PDF for you! Here are some of the amazing features of the simple PDF-Creator: Simple PDF file creation: Just click File & Print and you're done! Full Windows support: Works with Win 98, NT, 2000 and XP PDF anything: Create PDFs from ANY program that prints Copy protection: Stop people printing or copying your PDF files Password protection: Add passwords to any of your PDF files, easily! *BEST OF ALL* PDF-Creator is available as a 100% working FREE TRIAL!

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Here are the best sites (other than this one!) for Newbie-Writers. Visit them, sign up to their newsletters, download the free e-books, read and learn!

Don't forget to sign up with Paypal - a must if you are going to work for international magazines.

www.tabmarks.com A free Homepage which allows you to store collections of all your favourite website links in a personal organiser format, access them from any computer and share them with friends and colleagues. Keep a collection for your kids favourites sites, one for your writing research sites and another for all your everyday websites such as banking, news and info sites.

www.writing-world.com Edited by Moira Allen and me (Dawn Copeman) as the newsletter editor. The newsletter is bi-monthly and the site has 78 articles on Getting Started alone, as well as genre specific articles. It is a huge, comprehensive site.

WritersMarketUK The must visit site for UK writing markets. Free, searchable database.

EasyWaytoWrite.com Fantastic newsletter, subscribe & receive a free e-book. The Easy Way to Write Stories That Sell! ($21 value) The site also offers free mini classes on writing fiction.

www.Wellfedwriter.com - Fantastic site full of everything you need to know to become a freelance commercial writer. (A very lucrative writing field)

www.londonwritersgroup.org - Friendly writing group based in London but now with a web presence.

writelink.co.uk/index.php Brilliant British writing site run by Sue Kendrick – membership is at two levels – readers who can read most of the site content and writers who can access the whole site – including the market listings and can post work on the site too. If you become a writer member you get loads of useful freebies from Sue including: Writelink Paying Markets, The Freelance Writers’ Business Pack and Write and Seek – a guide to researching on the internet.

Writer2Writer - fantastic site, free courses, free contests, free information and free ebooks.

www.oncewritten.com – useful site for writing fiction complete with writing prompts.

www.writersdigest.com/ Online version of America’s best writing magazine – it is well worth subscribing to the paper version too.

www.mridukhullar.com/forwriters/ Excellent site run by a very successful freelancer which contains articles on most areas of freelancing. Subscribe to free newsletter and receive free e-book “Markets for the Freelance Writer”. Mridu also offers a 12 part free e-course “Query letters that sell”

www.writersweekly.com/ This newsletter contains excellent articles, weekly job listings and calls for submissions and news from the publishing world. When you sign up you receive a free e-book on how to be a freelance writer with details of 103 paying markets.

www.bbc.co.uk/dna/getwriting A massive site from the BBC providing free mini-courses at beginner, intermediate and advanced levels across all genres. These courses have been written by creative language tutors at British universities. They are excellent. The site also lists some competitions and news from the world of writing. It is well worth a visit.

fundsforwriters.com Site that lists grants and funds for writers, but also publishes 3 useful newsletters with job listings and articles - Two of which are free. Newbies should try FFW Small Markets. If you are serious about making money writing, consider signing up for the Total Funds for Writer newsletter instead – at $12.00 per annum it offers you over 90 paying markets per fortnight, plus writing tips, tips on finding agents, publishers or more.

www.filbertpublishing.com Beth-Ann Erickson’s site, offers a good newsletter and an excellent free e-book Power Queries.

www.absolutemarkets.com This is Jenna Glatzer’s site. Sign up for free newsletter, which contains some market listings as well as useful articles, and get “Writers’ Online Guidelines e-book”.

www.writingfordollars.com free newsletter plus free e-book, “83 ways to make money from writing”

www.ukauthors.com This site has loads of useful resources for writers including several forums. It also runs regular competitions.

www.ukapress.com - the publishing arm of ukauthors. This is a small press which pays royalties to its authors.

www.writersbureau.com/fmn - Freelance Market News provides up-to-date market information, editorial changes, magazines seeking submissions, contests and tips on improving your skills. £11 for 6 issues or £29 for 11 issues.

www.writersnews.co.uk Useful site for Writers News magazine - excellent forum.

www.writersmarket.com I

www.writersbreak.com This is another excellent site with useful articles across many genres. Free newsletter.

www.woodenhorsepub.com/spreportssales.html These special reports from Meg Weaver are based on over thirty years’ experience as a freelance writer. It costs around $6.00 to download each report. I’ve downloaded three and found them to be very instructive.

www.freelancewriting.com/index.html Another useful site, this one has a jobs listing page too.

Freelancers - Welcome to freelancer.co.uk, where you can find freelancers and freelance projects of all kind.

www.worldwidefreelance.com/eu/ Same as above but for European markets.

www.writergazette.com/ Free weekly newsletter with job listings, competitions etc.

www.writethismoment.net A jobs listing site you need to pay to use but it is excellent value.

www.organizedwriter.com/resources.htm Site ran by Julie Hood, author of "The Organized Writer" – has details of useful websites for research, information and calls for submissions.

www.poynter.org/dg.lts/id.13061/content.content_view.htm An excellent site full of though provoking articles to teach you how to write tighter prose and more compelling hooks and ledes

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