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Children's Editorial Services

About us

Editorial Services for the Children's Market

WritersServices offers a comprehensive range of editorial services for authors writing for the children's book market. All our services are carried out to the highest professional standard and offer competitive rates and excellent value for money.

Writing for children is not an easy option. It requires sound writing skills, originality, a clear understanding of the target audience and a good grasp of the market. The children's book market is thriving, and offers plenty of opportunity, but it is a particularly competitive environment.

Our expert editors are specialists in writing for children, and they will help you to make your work the best it can be.

Our services

We offer four main services for children's authors: the Reader's Report, the Editor's Report, the Editor's Report Plus and Copy Editing services for children's authors. We can also offer our Submission Critique to children's authors, using a professional children's editor. If you have any specific requirements relating to books for children, please talk to us; we will almost certainly be able to help.

It is important that you tell us the intended age group you are writing for when you send your work to us for assessment or editorial services.

Reader's Report

Our Reader's Report is a short assessment of your work giving feedback on content and style, from the perspective of your intended audience, and some indication of whether it is ready to be taken on by a publisher. In particular, it focuses on:

Content and story line;
Style and tone;
Language and vocabulary, and whether it is appropriate for the target age group;
Any further work on the manuscript that may be necessary;
The quality and suitability of illustrations;
Whether it is ready for publication in its current condition.

We recommend that you send any illustrations separately from the text as jpeg or tif files. We are happy to assess up to ten illustrations as part of the Reader's Report package.

Cost

The basic fee for the Reader's Report is £110 for a manuscript of up to 50,000 words. All fees are payable in advance.

Editor's Report

The Editor's Report is a more detailed assessment of your manuscript, and offers a comprehensive critique of your work from an editorial perspective. It offers detailed, informed comment on all the areas covered by the Reader's Report, and in addition it offers advice and guidance on:

Whether the content and language are appropriate for other English-speaking markets (if a UK-based manuscript is suitable for the US market, or vice versa);
What further work is needed to bring the manuscript to a professional finish, how the author can go about this work, and whether professional help may be necessary;
If illustrations are not included, whether illustrations would be appropriate, and some indication of the style and content of those illustrations;
A realistic assessment of the likelihood of publication in its current form, and what steps may be needed to make it ready for market.

Costs

The basic fee for the Editor's Report is £140 for a manuscript of up to 50,000 words. All fees are payable in advance.

Editor's Report Plus

The Editor's Report Plus offers our most comprehensive and detailed assessment of your manuscript. As well as incorporating the features of the Reader's Report and Editor's Report, it gives a chapter by chapter commentary, from both a reader's and editor's perspective, offering informed insights and guidance on how to improve your manuscript and make it market ready.

Costs

The basic fee for the Editor's Report Plus is £190 for a manuscript up to 50,000 words. All fees are payable in advance.

Copy editing for the children's book market

Our specialist children's book editors will copy edit your work to our usual professional standard, and will also check that your vocabulary is appropriate to the age group you are writing for, and highlight any issues relevant to the children's market. You can find a detailed description of our copy editing service for the children's book market, including costs, here.

Submission Critique

The Submisison Critique is part of our general editorial services but we assign children's editors to assess work for the children's market. Find out more here.

 

Children's editorial services story

If you are writing in English and it is not your native language, you might like to consider our English Language Editing service, a polishing service which is designed specially for writers for whom English is not their first language or who have a rough translation which needs more work.

You may also be interested in Children's Publishing from the Inside Pubishing series and our four-part series The Essential Guide to Writing for Children.