18 May 2020 - What's new
18 May 2020
- ‘It's difficult to envision what will appeal post-Covid19; however, the current trend for uplifting reads is bound to continue, with readers looking for distraction and escape from a fairly dire reality - warm humour, salvation, (stories of) unexpected success, happiness, or beating the odds release tension and provide solace... A staple diet of Netflix thrillers should increase the appetite for more of the same but, perhaps most importantly, crime has always done well in darker times, perhaps because readers are able to take comfort in the fact that their own lives seem comparatively less bleak. Karen Sullivan, founder of Orenda Books in the Bookseller. Our Comment.
- Tips for writers is our 8-part crash course for writers who are starting out, taking you from Improving your writing to Self-publishing: is it for you? to Keep up to date and Submission to publishers and agents. 'Be prepared to redraft your work and to rethink it. Many new writers assume that their work will immediately be ready for publication, but the truth is that many highly successful writers produced several drafts of their first work before they got it published.' and 'When you've got your work into the best state you can, put it on one side for a few weeks and then look at it afresh. You'll be amazed what difference a fresh eye will make.'
- Anthology Magazine Short Story Competition for unpublished short stories is open to all. Entry fee: Early Bird: by 31 May 2020 - €10 per story, Final Deadline: 31 July 2020 - €15 per story. The Prize is a €300 cash prize and the chance to see your work published in a future issue of Anthology Magazine. Closing 31 July.
- Other competitions which are still open.
- The most recent addition to our range of reports is the Editor's Report Plus, a substantial report which offers chapter-by-chapter commentary on your manuscript, with a helpful blueprint for any further work which is recommended. It gives you the kind of expert advice which is usually only available from an in-house editor, which is why it has quickly become our most popular report.
- Our links: what are editors looking for now? In Pandemic, Dystopian Fiction Loses Its Luster for Editors; it's not why write about sex, claims author Garth Greenwell, it's why write about anything else? 'I wanted something 100% pornographic and 100% high art': the joy of writing about sex | Books | The Guardian; a vital skill that all fiction writers need to master, World-Building: The 10 Key Elements - The Art of Narrative; not going to the key children's book fair was unthinkable, A Virtual Bologna: One Agent's Experience; and the latest step in its efforts to become a global entertainment giant, Publishing platform Wattpad to develop film and TV projects based on stories from website - The Globe and Mail.
- We have a new page which gives an editor's take on using pdfs, So what's wrong with PDFs? 'If you need your file to be edited, PDF is not the ideal format; in fact, it is practically the worst format you can choose. Why? Precisely because PDFs are designed not to be tampered with or changed. When you stop to think about it, editing is no more or less than a process of changing - and correcting - your file...'
- More links: the story of an extraordinary young writer, Natural talent: the 16 year-old writer taking the world by storm | Books | The Guardian; print book sales in the US continue to defy expectations that the coronavirus crisis will lead to a plunge in sales, Print Unit Sales Post Another Double Digit Gain; "undoubtedly the best writer in America", but What to Make of Isaac Asimov, Sci-Fi Giant and Dirty Old Man? | Literary Hub; and you can read the shortlisted stories online, Shortlist for 2020 AKO Caine Prize Announced - The Caine Prize for African Writing.
- Last year we launched the Writer's edit, a top-level new service for writers who want line-editing as well as copy editing. Does your manuscript need high-level input from an editor to help you get it into the best possible shape for submission or self-publishing? This may be the service for you, offering the kind of editing which publishers' senior editors used to do in-house on their authors' manuscripts and which is now hard to find. Our other copy editing services.
- 'And remember: you must never, under any circumstances, despair. To hope and to act, these are our duties in misfortune.' Boris Pasternak in our Writers' Quotes.