24 March 2025 - What's new
24 March 2025
- ‘To call it alternate history is being too dignified about it... I almost like the idea that people would be able to see loads of inconsistencies in the worldbuilding, because it's meant to be stupid and ridiculous... There was a time when it (fantasy) was seen as proper lame and nerd stuff and now the nerds have inherited the Earth. This stuff is just totally centre of the road culture. It doesn't have that ghetto sense about it, not nearly as much as it once did...' Joe Abercombie, author of The First Law trilogy, The Age of Madness trilogy with three standalone novels, The Shattered Sea trilogy and The Devils, which will be published in May, starting a new series, in the Bookseller.
- A new article in our Worldbuilding series, Worldbuilding 11:tools of the trade? 'Fantasy literature is a niche in the publishing market but it has spawned a rather larger industry online: the myriad websites, agencies and resourceful individuals that promise to guide you through the process of creation, from inspirational beginnings to successful outcomes. These various agencies hold out the promise that you are not alone in your ivory tower - help is at hand. The most curious and interesting of these aids to the budding fantasy novelist are the worldbuilding toolkits; one stop shops that effectively allow you to construct a comprehensive world in kit form. In this article I'll explore the toolkit market and consider its utility for the writer...'
- Other titles in the Worldbuilding series are: 1: Character names in fantasy novels, 2: The basics of writing fantasy fiction, 3: Geography and physical location, 4: Technology, 5: Culture, 6: Magic, 7: It's a kind of magic, 8: Non-human characters, 9: How should my characters speak? and 10: The name of the rose, and other things.
- As well as our highly-regarded Copy editing service, which will help you prepare your manuscript for submission or self-publishing, we have Manuscript Polishing, which provides a higher-level polishing service, English Language Editing for those for whom English is not a native language, the Writer's edit, providing line-editing, and Proof-reading. The Cutting Edit and Developmental editing are two new services. Get the right level of editorial support for your needs from our professional editors. Our low-cost services represent exceptionally good value. Contact us to discuss what you want.
- Links to writers' stories: a multifaceted creator finds community on Kickstarter, At Home in the Crowd; Fiona Larkin's poem, Absence has a grammar, was picked from nearly 22,000 entries, ‘Impressive, ingenious and affecting' poem about missing an absent son wins National Poetry Competition | Books | The Guardian; and the author of the Bologna-set Tom Benjamin mysteries on the privilege of being an outsider, Q&A: Crime writer Tom Benjamin.
- The Bridport Prize 2025 closes on 31 May. There are Poetry, Short Story, Flash Fiction and Novel prizes and they are open to unpublished authors across the world, except that the Novel Award is restricted to UK writers, and to British and American writers living abroad. The entry fees are various. The Poetry and Short Story 1st Prizes are £5,000, the Flash Fiction 1st Prize is £1,000 and the Novel Award is £1,500.
- Our 19 part Inside Publishing series provides a useful guide to the publishing world. Inside Publishing The Frankfurt Book Fair starts with: 'Book fairs are an important part of the way publishing works. No book fair is more central to the publishing year than the giant annual international get-together known as the Frankfurt Book Fair...'. On Vanity Publishing: 'It is natural for writers to be eager to get published but it pays to be wary of the vanity publishers who will take your money and give you very little in return. The term ‘vanity' was coined by campaigner Jonathan Clifford in 1959 to cover this kind of activity where the author is effectively conned into paying over a sometimes quite substantial sum by the publisher's willingness to publish their book...'
- Are you ready to submit your synopsis and sample chapters to agents or publishers, but worried about whether you are presenting your work in the best possible way? It's dispiriting to receive rejections just because your submission package is not up to scratch. Our Submission Critique has helped many authors to improve their submission packages, helping them to get published.
- Links on AI and copyright: a bestselling author responding to news that the company used a notorious publicly available database of more than 7.5m books to train artificial intelligence, Richard Osman urges writers to ‘have a good go' at Meta over breaches of copyright | Books | The Guardian; here's what to do when facing false claims of copyright infringement, Protecting Your Work; at this year's London Book Fair, Wiley released detailed guidelines on how authors can responsibly and effectively use artificial intelligence tools in their writing, Wiley Releases AI Guidance for Authors; and examining the opportunities and challenges for retailers, AI and bookselling.
- From our Endorsements page: 'I cannot thank you enough!! Your editor has worked her magic and I am delighted with the results!! Please thank her for me, I really appreciate what she has done!' Wendy White
- Advice for writers - if you want to delve into the wealth of information on our huge site, which now has over 10,000 pages, here's the page which will help you find what you're looking for.
- There are eight sets of Tips for Writers on our site, which range from Improving Your Writing and Self-publishing - is it for you? to Keep up to date and Submission to publishers and agents: 'Get your work into the best possible shape before you start submitting it' and 'Do your research on agents and their clients. Many agents specify what they don't represent (scripts, children's and science fiction are often excluded), but try to gauge from their client lists what they might actually be looking for.'
- Links to self-publishing, hybrid publishing and writers' craft: most writers dream of being published by a major traditional publisher and becoming a bestselling author. It can take a while to realize that the number of writers with that kind of luck is vanishingly small, Seven Questions for Finding the Right Hybrid Publisher; if you could improve your productivity by adding one step to your writing routine, would you do it? Want to Write Faster? How Tracking Your Word Count Can Boost Your Productivity | Jane Friedman; a lockdown epiphany made Rachel McLean an indie author star, and she has been growing her Ackroyd Publishing business ever since, The Bookseller - Author Interviews - Indie author Rachel McLean on the steep learning curve of self-publishing; indie authors may think that an effective publicity campaign is out of their reach. Think again. The Bookseller - Comment - Self-published authors can have standout publicity campaigns, too; and an indie novel scores a traditional book deal, Moving the Needle.
- 22 services to help you get your work ready for publication. We've been offering editing services for writers from our office in London since 2001 and have the widest and best-value range on the web. Get your work ready for publication or submission with the help of our team of skilled professional editors. Our Services for Writers
- For a down-to-earth and practical account, How Literary Agents Work - an article written exclusively for Writersservices by literary agent Mark Gottlieb of Trident Media in New York: 'I have often heard that authors are interested in how literary agents work. It is very simple: a literary agent exists to provide services to authors...'
- Links from publishing: London Book Fair 2025 was bursting at the seams, with US publishers splashing serious cash as "solutions- based" non-fiction and escapist fiction soared, LBF 2025: ‘Incredibly busy' fair upbeat as US spends big, but some hit by IRC problems; one of the featured panels at this year's London Book Fair paired David Shelley and James Daunt, two executives that each run powerful companies on both sides of the Atlantic, London Book Fair 2025: James Daunt, David Shelley Stay Optimistic; global turmoil permeated the London Book Fair this week, but was mostly muted by the overall enthusiasm of the crowds thronging packed aisles, panels, and staircases at the London Olympia, London Book Fair 2025: Publishers Are the World's ‘Professional Survivors'; a new report released Tuesday at the London Book Fair, Fiction Sales Grow, Nonfiction Declines Across International Book Markets; and the company, launched in 2011, has been acquired by new company Boundless, after writers have been left unpaid for months, Authors await overdue payments as publisher Unbound goes into administration | Books | The Guardian.
- From our 17 part series, Ask the Editor 4: Why do I need you? 'Well yes, in the old days an editor was a necessary part of the writing process. But times change, right? Innovations in digital technology have produced handy editorial software that spots the errors in your writing and corrects or makes suggestions for amending them; online thesauruses offer you options for word and phrase choices to make your writing more exciting and impactful. So with all this new-fangled help just waiting online for your call, you don't need the intervention of an editor. Do you?'
- Do you need to get your material typed up, but can't face doing the job yourself? We can provide a clean typed version of your work at very competitive rates. Our service offers help for writers who have an old or handwritten manuscript, or a printed book which needs re-typing, before the writer can proceed with revision, submission or publication. Typing manuscripts
- ‘You don't choose the books, the books choose you. The best novel you can write at any given moment will be the one that's calling your name the loudest.' Maggie O'Farrell in our Writers' Quotes.
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