22 March 2021 - What's new
22 March 2021
- ‘I feel sorry for people who have massive success when they're young. I was 48 when Eats, Shoots & Leaves became a bestseller and that helped me deal with it. All the time it was happening I was thinking: "In 10 years' time I'll look back on this with fond memories," because at the time I was quite anxious. I was also quite amused by it, because it was hilariously unlikely that a book of punctuation would be the number one bestseller in America...' Lynne Truss, author of Eats, Shoots & Leaves and 30 other books, including four crime novels.
- How to get your book translated into English (without it costing the earth) - for non-native English speakers wanting to reach the international English language market. If your English is good enough, what about writing your book in English or translating it into English yourself, and then getting your translation polished and copy edited by a professional editor who is a native English speaker? The result should be a publishable manuscript at a relatively low cost, ready for you to publish or submit to publishers.
- The International Rubery Book of the Year Award 2021 is open to all writers internationally who have published or self-published their work in a wide range of categories. The entry fee is £37 and the prizes are £1500 plus £150 for at least three category winners. This closes on 31 March, so you need to move fast.
- Other competitions which are still open.
- 'Professional copy editing does make sense, either if you are trying to give your work its best chance when submitting it or, even more crucially, if you are planning to self-publish. But how are you supposed to tell who will do a good job, when the editorial services on the web all sound pretty much the same and it's tempting to go for the cheapest?' Getting your manuscript copy edited
- Links from the publishing world and Black Lives Matter: there's fear of the fallout if the deal goes ahead, Authors fear the worst if Penguin owner takes over Simon & Schuster | Publishing | The Guardian; good news from Italy for the children's book world, Bologna Confirms In-Person June Fair, New Programs; more on tranlators, Translators Weigh In on the Amanda Gorman Controversy - Asymptote Blog; and treating authors of colour as tools for self-improvement is an impoverished response to centuries of harm, White people, black authors are not your medicine | Books | The Guardian.
- A new addition to our Endorsements page: 'I cannot emphasise enough my gratitude to writerservices.com. I more or less expected that they would treat me and my texts professionally - after all, this is what the site offers. What I hadn't expected was the extra mile they were prepared to go on my behalf, their beautiful attention to both the letter and the spirit of what I had to say. My manuscript has now found an agent - a happy development in which they have definitely played a role. All I can say is that if I ever produce anything else, I will definitely be their client again. Sveta, Windsor, UK.
- Links to writers' stories: an author who turned 83 last month and has sold 1 million books for every year she's been alive, Are You There, Judy Blume? It's Us, the Generation of Writers You Inspired; one of the most wildly imaginative writers of any generation, Douglas Adams' note to self reveals author found writing torture | Douglas Adams | The Guardian; how did it all go wrong How I (Barely) Survived the Abject Failure of My Much Hyped Debut Novel ‹ Literary Hub; and I, too, assume that much of the contemporary fiction I read is autobiographical, Our Autofiction Fixation - The New York Times.
- Our services for writers page is just a list with links to the 20 services we offer.
- Links on audio and children's books: a year ago, very few audiobooks listeners would have realised that duvets were a valuable asset for recording audiobooks as well as for listening to them, Don't close the studio; the inside story, How audiobooks get recorded: Narrator Abby Craden shares her process; the format children read in can make a difference in terms of how they absorb information, How Children Read Differently From Books vs. Screens - The New York Times; and the Sunrise Movement contact they'd been "bossing about" was a 13-year-old, who was organising the whole thing between her classes, Naomi Klein: 'We shouldn't be surprised that kids are radicalised'.
- Working with an agent: 'Don't ever take on an agent you don't like or don't trust, however desperate you may feel. You have to be able to work with them in what should be an extremely important relationship for you as a writer. You must also feel confident that they are competent, enthusiastic about your work and can be trusted, both in terms of the advice they offer and in relation to handling your money...
- James Baldwin in our Writers' Quotes: 'Unless a writer is extremely old when he dies, in which case he has probably become a neglected institution, his death must always be seen as untimely. This is because a real writer is always shifting and changing and searching. The world has many labels for him, of which the most treacherous is the label of Success.'
