The Twitter #WritingCommunity: An Announcement

The #WritingCommunity hashtag on Twitter is all kinds of amazing. It’s special, welcoming and warm, and, in some ways, so far removed from the rest of the Twitterverse that it’s almost easy for its users to get comfortable without fear of judgement. In this little corner of this huge and highly populated social platform, you can find yourself a little writing or reading nook, share your thoughts and opinions, and, in the main, be accepted for your tastes and preferences. Here, you will find writers of all genres, all doing it their own way, all pursuing different goals, all looking to mix it up a little.

Since our relaunch, the Writing Community has been huge in our success. It has allowed us to come into contact with so many writers of incredible talent, all with their own unique stories to tell. In fact, 7 of our 9 recently signed authors have come from this very domain—and that’s after receiving dozens upon dozens of manuscripts to critique. That means dozens and dozens of writers have had enough faith in us that they’ve wanted to send us their work to look over. That, in itself, is pretty wonderful.

And so we’ve been thinking: when someone (or many different someones) takes a leap of faith and places some trust in you, how can you repay that? How can you say ‘Thank you’ to the many thousands of writers that have sent their synopsis and chapters, that have hit the Follow button, that have subscribed to our articles? We’re not sure you can ever repay that kind of faith in a just, balanced way, but there is one way we’ve thought of that can go some way to thanking #WritingCommunity:

By the Autumn of 2019, Notebook Publishing is going to set into publication a book; an 8.5″ x 9.5″ full-colour hardcover. This book will take a total of 200 of the Writing Community’s writers, and give them each a double spread in the book. This will be broken down as follows:

The first page will provide a brief bio (the definition of which is open to interpretation in this case, but we hope it will present an overview of what they consider to be important about themselves, why they write, how they happened upon #WritingCommunity, and what they like best about this amazing little corner of the internet), and a photograph (this can show the writer’s face or may be more abstract if the writer wishes to hide their identity).

The second page will feature an extract of either their current Work in Progress (#WIP) or, ideally, something abstract written solely for the purpose of the book.

With all of the above, the writer can choose to remain anonymous; however, it is our hope that the book will give the Writing Community and some of its hidden gems some much-needed and sought-after exposure, and so we’d highly recommend the inclusion of at least some personal details—even if it’s just a Twitter handle.

We are limiting inclusion in this book to 200 writers. As a point to be made, all of Notebook’s authors are granted a spot, no questions asked. The remaining inclusions, however, will be chosen through a carefully considered process; we are striving to take a really diverse sample of the Writing Community’s members, all offering something different and something a little bit ‘outside of the box’ and different. We want to show what the Writing Community does and can do, and all of the amazing secrets it holds.

The criteria for inclusion is simple:

• Submissions will need to be sent to our email address (you may DM us via Twitter in order to advise that this has been sent, just in case submissions are accidentally filtered out).
• Please title your email WRITING COMMUNITY BOOK SUBMISSION. We will respond to confirm receipt. (Email address: authors@notebookpublishing.co.uk).
• Your bio should be around 300 words in length; we may want your consent to edit and/or reduce this down if necessary.
• Your extract should be 500 words in length.
• You need to be following both Notebook Publishing and Hayley Paige on Twitter.
• You need to be willing to answer our interview-type questions, which will be sent to you via email.
• You must be able to provide a high-quality image for inclusion; this needs to be as large as possible.
• We will need permission to use all of the above in the book (we will send a form to you for completion).

Side note: by submitting, you agree to be added to our mailing list.

Of course, we would love to include all submissions in the book, and if books could magically be never-ending, maybe we would! All practical things considered, however, we can only accept 200 submissions, notably chosen at our discretion. The only guaranteed inclusions are for those authors published with us, and so we encourage you to make your submission as creative and interesting as possible. After all, we want to showcase the true awesomeness of this online platform for all writers!

It is our hope that this little initiative is a way of not only bringing the Writing Community as a whole into the spotlight but that it can also help to present some of this community’s most beautiful, authentic and raw writers to the world. It is also our hope that this goes some way to expressing our huge thanks for the Writing Community’s help in our achieving more growth.

And, as a side point, we hope that this again helps to separate Notebook Publishing from the many operating in this field, and to show how different we are in our approaches.