Crime Writing Month kicks off on May 25th

National Crime Writing Month kicks off on Thursday at Crimefest, where dozens of CWA members are attending, taking part in panels, and meeting the hundreds of readers who will be in Bristol over the weekend of 24-27 May. Crimefest will also see the Daggers Shortlist reception, from 6:30pm to 7:30pm on Friday May 25th, where the shortlists for the CWA International, Non-Fiction, Library, Short Story, Debut and Ellis Peters Historical Daggers will be announced. This event is open to all Crimefest attendees, plus CWA members and Dagger judges. If you can’t make it to Bristol, we’ll be posting the news to this website around 7:30pm.

Crime Writing Month continues throughout June, with over 50 events planned so far thoughout the UK, all listed on the Crime Month website. Look out too for some exciting competitions!

Crime Month is bookended on 5th July at the CWA Awards Ceremony in the Library at One Birdcage Walk in London, a black tie dinner when we will learn which of the shortlisted authors will win a coveted CWA Dagger. This event will also see the awarding of the CWA Diamond Dagger to Frederick Forsyth and the announcement of the longlists for the remaining three CWA Daggers, the Gold, Ian Fleming Steel, and John Creasey.

The shortlists for the CWA Gold Dagger, the CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger, and the John Creasey Dagger for a first novel will be announced later in the summer, and the winners will all be televised as part of the 2012 Specsavers Crime Thriller Awards in the autumn.

Crime fiction on the up - especially among women

A specially commissioned Bowker Market Research survey has shown that the number of crime fiction books bought for women across all formats rose in 2011 over 2010.

Sixty per cent of the burgeoning eBook crime fiction market is made up of women buyers, echoing the wealth of established best-selling female authors and CWA members such as S.J. Bolton, Ann Cleeves, Lindsey Davis, Kate Ellis, Elly Griffiths, Sophie Hannah, Dreda Say Mitchell, Cath Staincliffe and Laura Wilson.

Not only that, there is also a new wave of talented female authors like Belinda Bauer, Jane Casey, Julia Crouch, Mari Hannah, Elizabeth Haynes, Erin Kelly, Ali Knight, Claire McGowan, D. E. Meredith, Lynn Shepherd and Sara Sheridan connecting with readers in contemporary, historical and psychological crime.

Crime fiction on the whole showed a year-on-year increase from 2010 to 2011 with £112.9m spent on books and 75% of that on paperbacks. 48% of readers have purchased after reading the author or series before and 25% decide whilst browsing.

Seventy per cent of crime books are bought by men and women over the age of 45, while 41% of the overall market works full-time and 28% are retired buyers.

London is the best-selling area for crime fiction with 16% of the overall market, the Midlands next at 15% and Scotland third with an impressive 12% of purchases.

Can you write a crime story in fewer than 1000 words?

The CWA is pleased to be supporting a new crime-writing short story competition from Bloomsbury. The Short Sentence competition will take entries of up to 1,000 words with a crime theme, and the winner will be announced in National Short Story Week in November. You can enter a story each month until the closing date, and each month will have a different theme.

More details over on the Short Sentence website.