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1 January 2018 - What's new

1 January 2018
  • 'A published writer has people pay to read the manifestations of her imagination, soul, and heart. For me, that remains extraordinary. It will always be the dream transaction for me, but it is also the most exposing, the rawest, unavoidable, supremely important fact in my life that I have battled desperately to understand and get a handle on these past three years...' Jessie Burton, author of bestselling The Miniaturist (just very successfully made into an excellent BBC One two-parter) and The Muse. Our Comment.
  • The Interpreter's House Poetry Competition 2018 closes on 31 January. It's open to all poets over 18 with an entry fee of £4 for one poem, £10 for three poems. The First Prize is £500, the Second Prize £150 and the Third Prize £100.
  • 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...' and 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...' Vanity publishing is quite distinct from Self-publishing, you need to be aware of the differences.
  • The question of funding for literary fiction has been in the news recently and has attracted a range of different views, ranging from the feeling that literary publishers need this subsidy to be able to carry on, to Tim Lott's feeling that literary writers have lost the plot (literally). News Review looks at whether literary novelists deserve public funding.
  • 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, Writer's edit, a new line-editing service, and Translation editing for writers who are not native English speakers. We also provide  a Proof-reading service. Our UK-based Editing services for writers have a solid professional reputation and we often have authors coming back to us for further assistance, see our Endorsements.
  • Our links: if you're a writer, here's an idea: resolve to get rejected. 100 times this year, if you're lucky, The Most-Rejected Books of All Time; a job which requires monumental effort and a certain degree of skill to research, write, and publish a 35,000-word manuscript on a different historical subject every month, Writing History; a self-publisher looking back on her various successes and failures, and trying to draw up a plan to help her books gain more readers in 2018, 10 indie publishing predictions for 2018; and a fan's affectionate appraisal of the much-loved crime writer who died this week, Sue Grafton Was a Master at Subverting the Detective Novel.
  • Which service should I choose to help me get my work into good shape for submission or self-publishing? This is the question our page Which service? answers and it then goes on to give a quick rundown on our 20 editorial services for writers, which we think is the biggest you can find on the internet.
  • More links: nowadays, the ebook has a reputation for technological conservatism - so it is easy to forget that there was significant anticipation for the Kindle's arrival ten years ago, Is the e-book a dead format? The next generation of British authors could struggle to land a book deal, according to the publisher who launched Harry Potter writer JK Rowling's career, Brexit will usher in a dark chapter for new British authors, warns publisher; John Ashbery's death in September gave my world a lurch, as the 90-year-old eminent American experimentalist was my favorite living poet, Why Rupi Kaur and Her Peers Are the Most Popular Poets in the World; and they should write better books, Tim Lott says - and asks Why should we subsidise writers who have lost the plot?
  • Stephen King in our Writers' Quotes: 'Making people believe the unbelievable is no trick; it's work. ... Belief and reader absorption come in the details: An overturned tricycle in the gutter of an abandoned neighborhood can stand for everything.'