Amazon.co.uk Review
No writer can afford to ignore the Internet and its multifarious offerings. It's just like visiting the library, albeit the largest one in the world, as Jane Dorner shows in her clear, jargon-free
The Internet: A Writer's Guide. She assumes that you can switch on the computer and operate a mouse because "Books on writing do not generally tell you how to hold the pen, nor do they describe it" and this, specifically, is a book which will help you "to explore what the Internet can do for
you as a
writer".
Dorner takes you through "written phone calls" (e-mail), including how to use it to submit work to publishers, conduct interviews and write collaboratively. As well as providing sections on virtual communities, electronic imprints, new writing opportunities and internet publishing possibilities, she also offers sensible advice about retrieving from the World Wide Web the sort of information you, as a writer, are likely to need. And most useful of all is the comprehensive list of writing-related Web site addresses.
All good teachers are adept at finding familiar avenues through which to explain the unfamiliar and Dorner, with her incisive prose style, is certainly one of them. "The World Wide Web is the nerve centre of the Internet," she writes, and "computer-speak will never be as rich a source of vocabulary as war or religion or sport but it will be interesting to watch developments". How ironic that this immensely detailed but unusually readable book is just that--a book. Bibliophiles can smile: even as the subject matter is rapidly changing technology, we still turn to an artefact for information. --Susan Elkin
Product Description
This is a practical and in-depth guide which explains how the Internet can be of use to the writer. The book covers both general issues, such as getting connected, using e-mail and navigating round the world web and writer-specific issues, such as advice on publishing opportunities, research techniques, ownership, privacy and plagiarism.
by Ann Hoffmann
by Oxford University Press
by Maurice Waite
