29 July 2024 - What's new
29 July 2024
- ‘Many people write a non-fiction book and then meet a wall of frustration and delay as they attempt to attract interest from an agent or a publisher. This often drives an author into the arms of a burgeoning self-publishing industry. To the person who has spent years acquiring their knowledge, then more years writing their book, the self-publishing industry can be attractive. They can finally hold their book in their hands, show it to friends and say, "Look what I did. I'm published." Jeff Maynard is an Australian author and documentary maker. His books include Niagara's Gold, Divers in Time and The Letterbox War of Kamarooka Street. Jeff has written widely for television and contributed articles to magazines around the world.
- The Pedant: How to make your editor happy 7: Close encounters of the word kind is the latest addition to this series by a seasoned editor: 'To coin a rather hackneyed online expression, I tried a paraphrasing tool so you don't have to. And my experience suggests that you probably don't want to. Whatever a paraphrasing tool is for, it's definitely not for writers; though it might, alas, be an invaluable gift for plagiarists. This was not a comprehensive survey of the available tools; I have instead provided a snapshot...'
- The series covers a range of subject-matter to help improve your writing and avoid common errors: Accents and dialects, Dialogue tags, The use of bold, italics and capital letters, Spoilt for choice: formats and fonts, The trouble with ‘as' and What's all the fuss over hyphens?
- Our 8 UK-based Copy editing services specialise in writers' needs, offering competitive rates and providing highly experienced professional editors. We offer a wide range of editorial services to help you prepare your manuscript for submission to an agent or publisher, or for self-publication. Our team of expert editors has years of experience in helping and advising authors; we can help you to bring your work to a professional level of excellence. Most of our editing services offer a free sample and they are all excellent value for money.
- Mslexia Women's Fiction Competitions 2024 close on 23 September. All women are eligible. The entry fee for Short Story is £12, Flash Fiction £6 and Novel (Young Adult and Children) £26. There are various prizes.
- Our first set of links relate to writers' craft: two novelists, an agent and a publisher each share their top three golden rules for publishing a book, Show up, love the process, don't follow trends: insider tips on how to write a book | Creative writing | The Guardian; five ways to use the past in contemporary crime fiction, Is History Only For Historical Novels? ‹ CrimeReads; and 'Costanza is about 'obsession, desire and control - and one young woman's incredible resilience in the face of male power', Q&A: debut author Rachel Blackmore.
- An essential read for children's authors is Suzy Jenvey's special series for WritersServices, the four-part Essential Guide to Writing for Children. The first article looks at the all-important question of age groups and what you should be aware of in writing for each one. The second part is Before You Write: What is My Story Going to be? The third part deals with Starting to Write and the fourth part is about Submitting Your Work to Agents and Editors. This series by a hugely experienced children's editorial director and agent helps you get started on your own story or develop what you're already working on.
- Our Children's Editorial Services offer three levels of report and copy editing from specialist children's editors. Use their expertise to help get your work ready for publication in this tricky but potentially huge market.
- Do you want some help with your writing but don't know quite what you want? Are you a bit puzzled by the various services on offer, and not sure what to go for? Choosing a service helps you work out which is the right editorial service for you.
- Links from publishing and AI: the finances of indie publishing are broken, we need a radical rethink, The Bookseller - Comment - The sums don't work; alarmingly, the train has left the station, the ship has sailed, pick your preferred metaphor, Like It or Not, Publishers Are Licensing Books for AI Training-And Using AI Themselves | Jane Friedman; and a mistake indicative of the AI moment we now find ourselves in, How an AI-Driven Publishing Model Enabled Thad McIlroy's New Book.
- From our Endorsements page: ‘Having seen the report, I can't praise your service highly enough - both in terms of value for money and timeliness. I really can't commend your service enough - and you're welcome to put that on your site as well. Having had a bit longer to study the report, it really is the most ridiculously good value for money, and many of the comments are spot on. I've already recommended you to a fellow aspiring novelist, and I'm sure I'll be coming back to you.' Beric Davies
- Our Developmental editing service - 'If you are a new writer, setting out on your first book project, or a more experienced writer who wants to improve your skills, this service is for you. We will work with you to identify the areas where you need to develop new or better skills, to show you how to improve, and to support you as you expand your writing technique and bring your project to fruition...'
- Advice for writers - if you want to delve into the wealth of information on our huge site, here's the page which will help you find what you're looking for.
- Links to writers' stories: Hot Girl Summer author Sophie Gravia on her anything-but-ordinary publishing journey, Light bulb moments to bestsellers; it was another era. Not easier, but maybe not quite so crazy hectic as today. The stakes were still high, and in their day - the early 1980s - getting your first book published was still hard work, My First Thriller: Heather Graham ‹ CrimeReads; doing the research for The Silent Killer was both frightening and fascinating, though also surprisingly heartening at times, Q&A: crime novelist Trevor Wood; and Kimberly McCreight on "the fraught push-pull of the complicated mother-daughter dynamic", Thrillers that Capture the Complexities of Motherhood ‹ CrimeReads.
- 'The synopsis is a strange document; it is at once the dullest, and perhaps the most important, part of the submission package. It reduces your book, your creative project, to a few lines of plain, unadorned narration; yet it allows a publisher to see the book as a whole, to get a feel for the narrative arc and the development of the plot...' From Ask the Editor 3: Writing a synopsis.
- If you're aiming at traditional publishing, Finding an agent and Working with an agent are two practical checklists to help set up and maintain this vital relationship: 'Try to find an agency which is ‘hungry' for new clients. To keep their workload under control, an established independent agent might take on something like four new authors a year, but only to replace four departing clients. This may seem obvious, but whether or not an agent is actively looking to build their list of clients is probably the single most important factor affecting how closely they are looking at unsolicited submissions...'
- More links: Edna O'Brien, one of the most influential and widely read Irish writers of her generation, has died "after a long illness", Edna O'Brien, Prolific and Provocative Irish Literary Giant, Dies at 93; Irish novelists pay tribute to a titanic figure who liberated their country's fiction, ‘A beacon of brazenness and defiance': Edna O'Brien remembered by Anne Enright, Colm Tóibín and more | Books | The Guardian; last year, I finally realised that my habit of seeing everything through to the end was just a colossal waste of time, I couldn't put a boring book down. Now I take pleasure in saying enough is enough | Callum Bains | The Guardian; the science fiction and fantasy prize says it has culled 377 votes, Hugo awards organisers reveal thousands spent on fraudulent votes to help one writer win | Hugo awards | The Guardian; and more than 27 million UK adults are missing out on the benefits of reading more, including reduced stress levels and improved focus, The Bookseller - News - Half of UK adults do not regularly read, according to 'worrying' new survey by The Reading Agency.
- 'Poets are naturally keen to see their work in print but it's actually quite hard to get a first collection taken on by a publisher. This is because most poetry lists are pretty small. Poetry is not in general given much space in bookshops and it is difficult to achieve any sales for first collections. Self-publishing offers a good approach and the live poetry scene is much livelier than it used to be...' Getting your poetry published.
- Our Services for Writers is just a list of the 22 services we offfer, which we believe is the largest on the web.
- 'Writers, however mature and wise and eminent, are children at heart.' Edna O'Brien, who died last week, in our Writers' Quotes.
