7 April 2025 - What's new
7 April 2025
- Poets ‘are the great people in literature because they manage to gather thought and feeling, and intellectual and emotional intensity into words in a way that I haven't done in my writing... I notice, going into bookshops, the brand of fantasy novel that has exactly the same way of beaming what it is to children: brighter and shinier...' Michael Morpurgo, author of 30 books for children and young people, including War Horse, on publication of his second book for adults, Spring, in the Sunday Times Culture.
- If you've come to the site looking for a report on your manuscript, how do you work out which one would suit you best? Which Report? answers this question. The Reader's Report is a short, introductory report. The Editor's Report offers more detail. The Editor's Report Plus, which we introduced comparatively recently, is our most popular report and offers an overview and a detailed chapter-by-chapter report, which makes it the most substantial of the three and can help the writer by providing a framework for further work.
- If you are a children's writer then we have our Children's Editorial Services, a suite of services specially for you, carried out by our skilled children's writers. This includes reports and copy editing.
- A new prize, the Oxford/42 New Writing Prize is for novelists, playwrights and screenwriters and open to anyone over the age of 18 living, working or studying in the UK and Ireland at the closing date for submissions. There's no entry fee and the winner will receive £1,500 along with professional representation by 42. It's closing on 30 April.
- Links on writers' stories and careers: Hanna Thomas Uose on the publication of her debut novel, Who Wants to Live Forever, Debuting at forty one: the perfect age to publish? From The Wolves of Willoughby Chase to Black Hearts in Battersea, her tales of plucky orphans surviving in industrial Britain are a keystone of children's literature, ‘One of the most beloved writers of all time': the genius of Joan Aiken at 100 | Children and teenagers | The Guardian; a survey has suggested female ghostwriters earn about half as much as their male counterparts as well as major pay differences between the UK and US, Ghostwriting survey suggests huge gender pay gap in UK while 'secrecy' drags pay behind US overall; and literary figures say the number of books being published by Black writers has ‘plummeted', UK publishing less accessible to Black authors now than before 2020, industry names say | Books | The Guardian.
- So you want to be a romance writer? You've made an interesting choice because, although a lot of people scoff at romance, it is the most stable genre of all and has continued to keep its faithful readers when other categories have changed radically and sometimes lost their audiences. It has changed a bit in recent years and embraced a more complex story, sometimes with more explicit sex in it, but essentially this is a category which marches on, providing happy endings, when all around it the world has changed. Writing romance. There are six other articles in this series.
- 'As a total neophyte as a writer, I have been doing a huge amount of research suddenly as to what services are available to writers, on both sides of the Atlantic, and am amazed that you are able to have someone read a whole book and give a serious critique for just 180 pounds. I think that is incredible value for money, compared to other similar services that appear to be available out there. I hope to be back to you again for more assistance, once I've cleaned up my work! Martin Humphries, Vancouver, BC, Canada on our Endorsements page
- 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, using our 22 services to help you get your work ready for publication. Our Services for Writers
- Links on AI, fast becoming a major crisis for writers: tech giant trains AI on pirated books, Authors pen open letter demanding big tech is 'held accountable' after Meta 'trains AI on pirated books'; ‘I am a crime writer, I understand theft,' said Val McDermid, Authors call for UK government to hold Meta accountable for copyright infringement | Books | The Guardian; court documents show that staff at Meta discussed licensing books and research papers lawfully but instead chose to use stolen work because it was faster and cheaper, Society of Authors condemns ‘appalling' use of pirated books in AI training; the explosion of generative artificial intelligence technologies caught many in the book business off guard when it began in earnest in late 2023, Book Biz to Big Tech: Pay Up, Then We Can Make Up; and academic publisher didn't ask authors first, Taylor & Francis to use AI translation tools to publish books ‘otherwise unavailable in English'.
- From our 19 part Inside Publishing series, Subsidiary Rights: 'My first job in publishing was in a subsidiary rights department. I'm ashamed to admit that I accepted the job without having much idea what subsidiary rights were. Many writers may feel just as vague about this part of publishing, so here's a quick breakdown...'
- From the same series, Copyright: 'Copyright has evolved over the centuries to protect rights in intellectual property. It provides a basis for trading in these rights and a means whereby they can be exploited commercially. Rights holders are able to license the rights in their work to be exploited in different ways (e.g. in book form or to be made into a film) and also in different territories, in a system of exclusive sublicensing...'
- From Joanne PhillipsUK-based freelance writer and ghostwriter. She has had articles published in national writing magazines, and has ghostwritten books on subjects as diverse as hairdressing and keeping chickens. Visit her at www.joannephillips.co.uk, The Business of Writing for Self-publishing Authors offers terrific advice for all writers: 'Self-publishing authors - also known as ‘indie' authors or author-publishers - have had a steep learning curve these past few years. Getting to grips with the various sales channels available to them, producing top quality ebooks and paperbacks, and finding a place in mainstream outlets have left many writers struggling to keep up with the paperwork. What follows is a brief guide to the essentials your self-publishing business needs - because it is a business, even if you only publish one book!'
- More writers' links: 9% of us experience stress at least once a month, The Bookseller - Comment - Is your author stressed? The US nonprofit, whose online community encouraged members to write a novel in a month, has been rocked by controversy in recent years, Scandal-hit creative writing website NaNoWriMo to close after 20 years | Books | The Guardian; and I started Forest Avenue Press in 2012 to publish the kinds of novels I love to read, Trust Your Instincts: Why Writing for Yourself Leads to Better Books | Jane Friedman.
- WritersServices editor Kay GaleWritersServices editor who has worked for many years as a freelance editor for number of publishers. on The Slush pile: 'When I started working in publishing over thirty years ago it was part of my job to check through the pile of unsolicited manuscripts that arrived on a daily basis, and like every other enthusiastic young editorial assistant, I dreamed of finding the next bestseller in the "slush pile". I was soon disillusioned...'
- From our 17-part Ask the Editor series, Writing your blurb or cover copy: 'So what is a blurb? It is, properly speaking, a species of what some in the trade call 'teaser copy'; an invitation to read a book that offers a promise of excitement, drama, romance, or whatever the genre provides. It is not a summary or synopsis of the book; rather, it is a snapshot of the reading experience, an advance taster of what the reader can expect from the text...'
- Our final set of links are from publishing: if you're self-publishing, designing a professional-quality book cover can make the difference between attracting readers or getting overlooked, DIY Book Jacket and Cover Design: A Guide for Indie Authors; the global graphic novel market is getting more attention in Bologna this year, with an expanded number of exhibitors and panels dedicated to the topic, Bologna Children's Book Fair 2025: Going Graphic; and an "upbeat" and busy Bologna Children's Book Fair 2025 has seen a marked appetite for shorter and illustrated works, The Bookseller - Features - Bologna Children's Book Fair 2025: packed halls but politics cast a shadow.
- So you have finished your book, but you know it is too long; how do you go about reducing the word count without losing important parts of your work? We're here to help. Our experienced editors will work with you to reduce the word count of your book while preserving the main narrative elements and your individual style. This service is available for both fiction and non-fiction. The Cutting edit is just one of our eight copy editing services.
- We all know that computers can do everything far better than mere humans, right? In this computer age we are (understandably) turning more and more tasks over to computers and AI... but very few works of non-fiction can do without an index of some description. From the simple cookery book to the mammoth legal tome, each book has a reader, and each reader will at some point want to look something up in the book. The Ins & Outs of Indexing
- From our Writers' Quotes ‘To get the right word in the right place is a rare achievement. To condense the diffused light of a page of thought into the luminous flash of a single sentence, is worthy to rank as a prize composition just by itself... Anybody can have ideas - the difficulty is to express them without squandering a quire of paper on an idea that ought to be reduced to one glittering paragraph.' Mark Twain
