The Ten Commandments of reading, writing and publishing

One of the nicest things about Twitter is the diversity of those who use it – our followers at Vintage include plenty of passionate readers and book buyers, as well as book bloggers and book sellers, authors, students and fellow publishers (and a few people who I suspect are still convinced we sell vintage clothing, but I hope I’ve converted them to the joys of reading as well). This all means that whenever we run a competition that’s a little more challenging than a tried and tested ‘RT to win’, we always have a fantastic response from people – and our quest to come up with the ‘ten commandments’ for readers, writers and publishers has been no different. Hardly surprising really when the prize up for grabs is ten sets of books, consisting of Mrs Dalloway’s Party, Cutting for Stone, Her Fearful Symmetry, Mr Nice and The Selected Works of T. S. Spivet* (cup of tea sadly not included).

We’ve had heartfelt commandments:

 ‘Write. Write anywhere. Write every day. Write in joy, in sadness, in frustration, in relief. Just write’ (thanks to @loonnatic)

slightly more frivolous commandments:

‘Thou shall not skip to the back page to see how the story ends!’ (thanks to @aceden)

slightly more pointed ones:

‘Thou shalt always try and avoid a ghost writer when writing your biography’ (thanks to @stevejadams)

and ones that had the Vintage team furiously nodding in agreement:

‘Always make time to read to your children’ (thanks to @minicat79)

(If you need any help with the last one, may I recommend our colleagues @ChattoBook’s collection A Little, Aloud: An anthology of prose and poetry for reading aloud to someone you care for)

All in all, we’ve had many fantastic entries but in no particular order, we present to you our Vintage Ten Commandments:

1. Thou shalt not covet your neighbour's eReader by @KC_Woolf

2. Thou shalt not be precious – about anything. Books reach their potential from the collaborative efforts of writers, editors and readers by @garethmay  

3. Thou shalt avoid dropping library books in the bath by @futureurban

4. Thou shalt always feel at home in a library by @amiemalamie

5.  Thou shalt never judge a book by its cover, but always judge a potential suitor by their bookshelves by @bethanee_c

6. Thou shalt read as often and as broadly across genres as possible by @jngla

7. Writers, thou shalt be prepared to murder your darlings. The phrase thou can't bear to delete is probably the one that must go by @cookierubyshoes

8. Thou shalt honour thy local bookshop by @RobAroundBooks

9. Thou shalt always make time to read to your children by @minicat79

10. Thou shalt consider reading as essential as breathing; nobody has to make time for taking breath by @paperbk_reader

Many of these work across all three categories, and I’m sure that’s because many of us cross categories: all publishers are also readers and book buyers, and some are even writers (like @JonathanCape Publishing Director Robin Robertson, who is also an acclaimed poet) while no writer could – or should! – avoid being a reader.

If you’re an author of one of the commandments above, then contact me via Twitter and we’ll get your fabulous package of goodies sent out to you…

*And if you were wondering why this competition, and others, was only open to our followers who are based in the UK & Commonwealth, it’s because we only have the legal right to publish some of those books within the UK & Commonwealth and in non-exclusive territories. Although we’d love to offer it to all of you out there, the US and Canadian publishers probably wouldn’t be too impressed if we did…