101 Reasons to Stop Writing

Thanks to the diligent efforts of our field reporter Stephen Jayson Harris, 101 Reasons is often the first news source to break the big stories from the world of publishing. Below is a list of the stories you heard here first:

• Publishers Announce ‘Slushpile Moratorium’
  

  London — At a press conference earlier today, a committee comprised of representatives from many of the world’s leading publishing companies announced that starting this year, no participating publisher would accept submissions of unsolicited manuscripts or queries during the month of May. The so-called ‘Slushpile Moratorium’, planned to run in conjunction with International Slushpile Awareness Month, is designed to reduce the strain on editorial departments, who have reported steadily increasing numbers of unsolicited submissions over the last five years.

• Dan Brown, Doubleday to Publish Da Vinci Code 1.5
  

  New York — Author Dan Brown and Stephen Rubin, president and publisher of Doubleday, announced today that they would publish a fully revised version of the mega-selling 2003 novel The Da Vinci Code. The new edition, dubbed 1.5, would be “like re-reading the book for the first time,” said Brown.

• Critics’ Secret Meeting to Discuss ‘Enhanced Review Techniques’
  

  New York — Reports have emerged that a ‘cabal’ of literary and film critics held a secret meeting in early 2002 to discuss ‘enhanced review techniques’ and other new initiatives, to combat the escalating threat of inferior film and literature, at home and abroad.

• Screenwriters Vote to Strike Annually In Future
  

  Hollywood, CA — the Writer’s Guild of America announced today that under the terms of their new agreement with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, screenwriters will strike during the month of November each year, to coincide with National No Writing Month.

• Amazon’s Kindle Recalled Due to ‘Small Risk of Fire’
  

  Seattle, WA — Amazon.com founder and CEO Jeff Bezos today announced a recall of the company’s ‘Kindle’ ebook reader, due to what he described as a “very small risk of fire”.

• Starlog and Fangoria Launch International Back-Issue Bonfire Day
  

  Oregon, IL — Editors and staff of sci-fi and horror fan magazines Starlog and Fangoria today announced their participation in the inaugural International Back-Issue Bonfire Day, and marked the occasion by incinerating their entire stock of previous issues of both magazines, along with the warehouse where they were stored.

• New Keyboard Lets Writers Write Two Words at a Time
  

  Englewood, NJ — Gaming technology company WolfKing USA today announced that its new “hybrid” gaming keyboard, the WolfKing Warrior XXTreme, is growing in popularity amongst bestselling authors looking for an edge over their competition. Many writers report that the new design allows them to write two words at a time, effectively doubling their previous output.

• Bloggers Untie to Stop the Obtuse
  

  New Yolk — Bloggers across the Internet united today to draw attention to the ongoing abuse and humiliation directed towards Internet users who make accidental transpositional typos.

• James Patterson Quits Writing to Focus on ‘Ideas’
  

  New York — At the launch of his latest book, the horror novel You’ve Been Warned, multimillionaire author James Patterson announced he was quitting fiction writing, to focus his energies on “coming up with ideas”.

• International Slushpile Bonfire Day a ‘Blazing’ Success
  

  New York — The city’s publishing establishment came together this evening in Times Square to celebrate International Slushpile Bonfire Day, an annual festival to purge the industry’s ever-growing backlog of unpublishable manuscripts. New York’s literary elite mingled with industry professionals to swap stories of the worst of the worst writing to come over the transom, while truckloads of paper holding the creative output of thousands of untalented writers were dumped into a prescribed area and ignited.

• Local Man Has Great Idea For a Novel
  

  Brooklyn, N.Y. — Jeffrey “Jeffty” Talese announced today that he had what he described as a “really terrific idea for a novel”, and was seeking a publisher to bring his idea to bookstores.