2 May 2022 - What's new
2 May 2022
- 'In our world authors may grumble at poor advances, royalties and meagre sales, but at least - in the main - the money flows, as it should, towards the author and availability in shops is a given. In the alternative reality of hybrid, subsidised or contributory publishing, it is authors who provide the investment in return for giving up their rights. The rewards can be dubious... I take an old-fashioned view of such things. If authors are having to invest their own money in their publishing then they need to be clear on their goals and how their money is being used...' Philip Jones, editor of the Bookseller, in his editorial.
- From our nineteen-part Inside Publishing series, you can read up on Advances and royalties: 'Publishers usually offer to pay authors advances against royalties. How do you work out how much money you might earn from your book? You need to understand for yourself how advances and royalties work and what they mean for you...'
- From the same series, Copy editing and proof-reading explains the difference between the two. Copy editing is the painstaking job of going through a manuscript line by line to correct the spelling, grammar and punctuation. Proof-reading at a later stage is a separate check through the book when it is set up in pages, before it goes to press or is finalised for ebook publishing.
- If you're looking for a report on your manuscript, how do you work out which one of our three reports would suit you best? Which Report? includes our new top-of-the range service, the Editor's Report Plus, introduced by popular demand to provide even more detail. This very substantial report takes the form of a chapter-by-chapter breakdown and many writers have found this detail helps them to get their book right. Through our specialist children's editors we can offer reports on children's books.
- Links to articles about publishing: all told, it's rarely had a better decade, The Bookseller - Editor's Letter - Book publishing will have rarely have had a better two years than during the Covid-19 pandemic; the US Big Five and how they got there, Over the Past 25 Years, the Big Publishers Got Bigger-and Fewer; a challenging article about the UK Publishers' Association, Is the PA's leadership representative enough of the industry it serves? It's amazing just how much there is still to talk about, and how vital book publishing remains even as many newer technologies have come along, Book Sales in the U.S. Are Stronger Than Ever; the impact of the pandemic and continuing efforts to make the industry more inclusive, Michael Pietsch on Publishing at BISG: 'Best of Times, Worst of Times'; and an overview of how book fairs are doing now, International Book Fairs Still Thrive in the Digital Age.
- The Novel Prize 2022 is open to a book-length work of literary fiction written in English by published and unpublished writers from round the world. There's no entry fee and the winner gets $10,000 and publication of their novel by Fitzcarraldo Editions in the UK and Ireland, Giramondo in Australia and New Zealand, and New Directions in North America. It closes on 1 June, so not long to submit.
- Other competitions which are still open.
- Are you struggling to get someone to look at your poetry? Our Poetry Critique service for 150 lines of poetry can help. Our Poetry Collection Editing, unique to WritersServices, edits your collection to prepare it for submission or self-publishing. Both can provide the professional editorial input you need.
- Links from writers: many UK authors end up out of pocket if they sign deals with ‘hybrid' publishers, The Bookseller - Features - Author unions call for reform to address concerns over paid-for publishing deals; some of my readers don't seem to think that I should have been allowed to write the book that I wrote, Let Fiction Be Fiction; why should your average non-author know what an author actually does in the process of writing, publishing, and promoting a book? The 9 Biggest Myths About Nonfiction Trade Publishing, Debunked; and a survey shows an 11% increase in children's reading, The Bookseller - News - Children reading more books but enjoyment levels in 'worrying decline', report suggests.
- Have you been working on your book? Are you now ready to submit to publishers or to self-publish? We offer the widest range of editorial services on the web, tailored to writers' requirements and carried out by our professional editors, Our Services for writers.
- From our Endorsements page: 'The copy-editor perfectly captured the spirit of my story, making not only pertinent corrections, but also a string of brilliant suggestions and comments that inspired me to improve the text on my own. So happy I chose Writers Services. Rasmus, Chile.'
- More links from writers: the long, rich history of private eyes - and why contemporary novelists keep on turning to them, Why the Mystery Novel Is a Perfect Literary Form ‹ CrimeReads; Swiss author tries his hand at publishing his own work, Bestselling Swiss author Joël Dicker tries his hand at self-publishing - SWI swissinfo.ch; how do you portray violence with some sense of morality? The Complicated Ethics of Writing Violence in Fiction | Time; and a real problem relating to writing fiction involving cutting-edge technology, How to Fictionalize New Technology Even As It's Constantly Changing ‹ Literary Hub.
- 'I don't choose my characters, rather, they come to me. Books choose their authors, at least that's what I believe.' Suzy Davies in our Writers' Quotes.