What's New in 2020
- ‘We turn to fiction for the satisfactions that we don't get in real life. In reality you know that if a crime is committed against you they're never going to find out who did it. If your house is broken into they probably won't even show up, and if they do you'll never get your stuff back. If your car is stolen, you'll never see it again. We live with this sort of buzz of frustration and dissatisfaction. So we turn to fiction for clarity and consolation and closure...' Lee Child, author of the 25 Jack Reacher novels, from Killing Floor to The Sentinel, who has recently handed over the writing to his brother.
- From our nineteen-part Inside Publishing series, you can read up on Advances and royalties: 'Publishers usually offer to pay authors advances against royalties. How do you work out how much money you might earn from your book? You need to understand for yourself how advances and royalties work and what they mean for you...'
- From the same series, Copy editing and proof-reading explains the difference between the two. Copy editing is the painstaking job of going through a manuscript line by line to correct the spelling, grammar and punctuation. Proof-reading at a later stage is a separate check through the book when it is set up in pages, before it goes to press or is finalised for ebook publishing.
- Calling all UK self-publishers: The Selfies Book Awards UK 2021 is open to authors who have self-published adult fiction, children's books or adult memoirs/autobiography in the UK between January and December 2020. Entry fee: £25 per title to include a six-month subscription to Bookbrunch. There's a £750 cash prize for each category plus a profile in BookBrunch and the option of a special publishing deal provided by sponsors IngramSpark.
- Our links from publishing, which is experiencing big upheavals: the acquisition of Simon & Schuster by Penguin Random House shows that the industry is headed toward a monopolistic situation, Pretty Soon There'll Be Just One Big Book Publisher Left | The New Republic; the Authors' Guild and other organisations are fighting back, PRH Purchase of S&S Draws Objections; small publishers surviving the pandemic, Implement like hell; and a big shock affecting BookExpo, the biggest annual book fair in America, is being "retired", BookExpo and BookCon Are No More.
- Copy editing services - WritersServices can provide a range of services working on your manuscript, to help you get it ready for submission or self-publishing. We are UK-based and our skilled professional editors have been working on writers' manuscripts for 19 years. We have recently introduced free samples and free assessments on most of these services, please see the individual service page
- If you're interested in short stories, you can read three of the best shortlisted for the Costa Short Story Award and take part in the public vote.
- Links about writing: rather academic but fascinating, The rise and fall of the Oxford School of fantasy literature | Aeon Essays; most of us write the first draft of our memoir chronologically, setting down what happened in order, or thematically, 2 Methods for Structuring Your Memoir; big changes as the organisation commits to diversity, Royal Society of Literature reveals historic changes to improve diversity | Books | The Guardian; and a contracts checklist for when negotiating with a publisher without an agent, Andrew Lownie Literary Agency | Top tips when negotiating contracts.
- From our Endorsements page: 'Today I only want to say, "thank you". DM has done a truly great job. I have worked with her suggestions which have brought clarity and depth to my subject. Her work on my punctuation is brilliant. As I read through the manuscript now, it is like gliding on silk.' Helena Dodds.
- Links from writers: more on Lee Child, Jack Reacher's good fights - Michael Robbins - Bookforum Magazine; the wondrous Diagram Prize has come up with its latest crazy winner, Let it flow: A Dog Pissing at the Edge of a Path wins 42nd Diagram Prize | The Bookseller; and 'he would not win the coveted award today because he is a 'white, straight man', Booker Prize winner John Banville slams 'woke' movement as 'a religious cult' | Daily Mail Online.
- If you've got some time on your hands because you're locked down, now might be the time to look through some of the information about the writing world on our page Advice to writers.
- We're looking for experienced typists in the UK for our Typing Manuscripts service, so if you know of anyone who's interested please ask them to get in touch with their cv.
- 'Poetry is simply the most beautiful, impressive, and widely effective mode of saying things, and hence its importance.' Matthew Arnold in our Writers' Quotes.
- ‘Growing up as the boy I was and now the man that I am in New York, they feel like two very different people. And so, though this is on-the-back-of-a-cornflakes-box psychology, it was a good way for me to make sense of the whole of me and to sort of stitch myself together. I love the boy I was. It wasn't always easy but I wanted to conjure that world. Fiction allows you take control of a situation that you might not have control over in real life. On the west coast of Scotland, we are never allowed to think of ourselves as exceptional - never exceptionally great or exceptionally hard done to. And a memoir is thinking there's an exception there that is worth sharing... Douglas Stuart, author of debut novel Shuggie Bain, which has just won the 2020 Booker Prize, in the Guardian.
- From our 7-part series An Editor's Advice, on writing genre novels: 'How do you become a successful genre writer? You do it by getting to know your chosen genre intimately. You do it by writing, of course, but you also do it by reading a lot of genre novels. And I do mean "a lot". You read a lot of genre novels in order to get the overall ‘feel' of things. You read modern genre to understand what's currently ‘hot' so you can play with the ideas and extend them, rather than simply regurgitating the same old ideas. You read the back catalogue to understand what the current writers read before they got started. You can look for ideas, yes, but you've still got to do something new with them. You see, like all literature, genre has history...'
- 'Professional copy editing does make sense, either if you are trying to give your work its best chance when submitting it or, even more crucially, if you are planning to self-publish. But how are you supposed to tell who will do a good job, when the editorial services on the web all sound pretty much the same and it's tempting to go for the cheapest?' Getting your manuscript copy edited
- Our links about writers: a very popular winner with a history of being turned down by publishers, Douglas Stuart's Booker win heralds arrival of a fully formed voice | Booker prize | The Guardian; editor Peter Blackstock was behind last year's winner too, Talking to the Editor Behind Back-to-Back Booker Prizes | Literary Hub; the second oldest profession, The Evolution of Espionage Fiction | CrimeReads; metafiction, sex, feminism, death, and the end of the world in her latest poetic masterpiece, Welcoming Disillusionment: PW Talks with Margaret Atwood; and already it's on track to become the bestselling presidential memoir of all time, How Barack Obama's Book Sales Stack Up Against Other Big Memoirs.
- How to market your writing services online is a useful article 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 about selling yourself as a writer. 'Recently someone commented to me that I seem to be doing a pretty good job of promoting my writing services on the internet. I was touched by the observation - we writers get so many rejections that a little praise is especially gratifying. And I began to wonder - what does it take to market yourself successfully as a jobbing writer today?...'
- Get some professional help. If you're self-publishing, you need good quality copy for the cover. Our Blurb-writing service can provide a professionally written piece of cover copy. Submitting to agents but finding it difficult to write your own synopsis? Commission a Synopsis which will present your manuscript in the best possible light for submission.
- More links on what's going on in publishing: Penguin Random House purchasing Simon & Schuster is not the gravest danger to the publishing business, The Penguin Random House-Simon & Schuster Merger's About Amazon - The Atlantic; avoiding 'traditional writer' think, Business Musings: Trainwreck November Edition - Kristine Kathryn Rusch; do we need new marketing strategies after Covid? How Do We Market Books Now? So how is printing being affected? As book publishing shrinks during the pandemic, how are India's printing presses coping? And a very sad story for poets, poetry readers and poetry, Poets House Suspends Operations Amid Pandemic; Employees Cry Foul.
- If you are submitting your work to an agent or directly to a publishing house, check through our guidelines to give it its best chance. Making submissions.
- 'Each writer is born with a repertory company in his head. Shakespeare has perhaps 20 players. I have 10 or so, and that's a lot. As you get older, you become more skillful at casting them.' Gore Vidal in our Writers' Quotes.
- If Quotes are you bag, we have substantial collections in More Writers' Quotes and Even More Quotes.
- 'Why does the writer write? The writer writes to serve - hopelessly he writes in the hope that he might serve - not himself and not others, but that great cold elemental grace which knows us. A writer I very much admire is Don DeLillo. At an awards ceremony for him at the Folger Library several years ago, I said that he was like a great shark moving hidden in our midst, beneath the din and wreck of the moment, at apocalyptic ease in the very elements of our psyche and times that are most troublesome to us, that we most fear...' Joy Williams, author of The Visiting Privilege, The Quick and the Dead, Ill Nature, State of Grace and The Changeling.
- For anyone thinking about or embarked on self-publishing, our ten-part WritersServices Self-Publishing Guide by 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 is an essential starting-point, taking you through the process step-by-step. 'Today's indie author can feel confident that they are in good company - indeed, many traditionally published authors are leaving their publishers and going indie by choice. Tired of creative compromises, covers they can't stand, zero promotion and tiny royalty percentages, they are joining the ranks of self-publishing authors and reaping the benefits. If you have a book you are passionate about, if your main objective is to get your work in front of readers and make it professional and accessible, and if you're tired of doing the ‘rounds' of agents and publishers and facing soul-destroying rejection, there is an answer. Self publish...' Articles include What is Self-publishing and Choose Your Self-publishing Route.
- 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, English Language Editing for those for whom English is not a native language, our latest new service Writer's edit, providing line-editing, and Proof-reading. Get the right level of editorial support for your needs. Our low-cost services represent exceptionally good value. Contact us to discuss what you want.
- Links from the publishing world: millions of Chinese understand perfectly why e-commerce giant Alibaba adopted this as a marketing slogan for its hugely successful Singles' Day, The past is prologue; tomorrow is online; you'll know who's won the Booker by the time you read this, but Africa basks in Booker boost for female writers - BBC News; more impending consolidation amongst the big battalions of the publishing world, 'NYT' Says HC, PRH Top Contenders to Buy S&S; and nearly one milion children's books in print, Self-Published Author Moves Brand into Consumer Products.
- An endorsement from Anthony Fitzgerald for our English Language Editing Service: 'The result? A book that reads like it's written by a native speaker for only 13% of the price a complete translation would have costed. Thank you, writersservices.'
- Links from writers and about writing: Nigerian-American author's Half of a Yellow Sun has been voted the best of the Women's Prize's 25 years of winners, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Is Women's Prize 'Winner of Winners'; SF anthology stalled since 1974, Harlan Ellison's The Last Dangerous Visions may finally be published, after five-decade wait | Books | The Guardian; he was just 16 in 1968, it was a moment of change and social revolution, Novelist William Boyd Looks Back to the Past; and author of the cult classic novel, in which a bored psychiatrist lets "the dice decide" his options, The Dice Man author George Cockcroft (aka Luke Rhinehart) dies aged 87 | Books | The Guardian.
- If you are submitting your work to an agent or directly to a publishing house, check through our guidelines to give it its best chance. Making Submissions.
- Links of general interest: if you'd like to improve your writing setup, this useful guide may help, 11 Actually Useful Digital Tips for Writers - National Centre for Writing; 'some days we think of poetry as a dead antelope', a serious look at poetry and prizes, On Poets and Prizes / Juliana Spahr and Stephanie Young - ASAP/J; 35% of the world read more due to COVID-19, but go online to look at this properly, Infographic: World Reading Habits in 2020 | The Digital Reader.
- Working with an agent explains how to get the best out of the relationship with your agent: 'It can be hard work finding an agent to represent you. Make sure though that, when you set up the relationship, you do so in a professional manner Don't let your eagerness to find representation mean that things are left vague. You will be depending on the agent to process all your income from the books they sell, so you need to have a written record of your arrangement, preferably a contract...'
- 'Meeting writers is always so disappointing. I got over wanting to meet live writers quite a long time ago. There is this terrific book that has changed your life, and then you meet the author, and he has shifty eyes and funny shoes and he won't talk about anything except the injustice of the United States income tax structure toward people with fluctuating income, or how to breed Black Angus cows, or something.' Ursula K Le Guin in our Writers' Quotes.
- ‘We can't really take in everything we read in a book. When you think about what you remember of a book a month or a year later, it's a distillation - sometimes you remember an image or a scene or a moment in the plot, or an idea in an essay. You don't actively remember the entire experience, at least not consciously. My father used to say that culture is what's left when you've forgotten everything... Claire Messud, author of The Emperor's Children, The Burning Girl, The Last Life and The Woman Upstairs in the Observer.
- From Tom Chalmers, formerly of IPR, two articles about rights for self-publishers, which are also illuminating for writers working with publishers: Self-publishing - the rights way and How to get your book in the hands of an international audience. 'It's a fact that most self-published authors understand the process that takes them from a written manuscript to a published book, but few realise the additional elements that make publishing a profitable business. Rights licensing is arguably the most vital element in this equation. Whether it's selling translation rights, audio rights or optioning the film rights, these all help balance the book's books...'
- 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 on writers and writing: a really helpful article about writing non-fiction, Common Reasons Nonfiction Books Don't Sell | Jane Friedman; an author who is alarmed by the ever-growing impact of the internet on our lives, Our gravest danger; a delicious and exciting setting includes the place, weather, time of the day, nature, trees, animals... you name it, The Most Haunting Settings in Crime Fiction | CrimeReads; in October 1920, the world had the first opportunity to read a murder mystery by a new writer, 100 years of Agatha Christie: a retrospective on the Queen of Crime - The Boar; and, more on Christie, a murder takes place in a misty Himalayan hill resort, 'Queen of crime' Agatha Christie goes to Bollywood - BBC News.
- Our Services for Writers is just a simple list of what Writersservices offers, with links to the individual pages. We've been going for 19 years now and take pride in our wide range of services - the largest on the web - the professionalism of our editors and the good value we offer.
- Links relating to bookshops, Black Lives Matter and Children's books: Independent shops have been "more agile", Covid: Small shops better at surviving virus than big ones - BBC News; Black Lives Matter in publishing, ‘There Are Tons of Brown Faces Missing': Publishers Step Up Diversity Efforts - The New York Times; a surge in interest following the protests over the summer sparked by the killing of George Floyd and by Black History Month, Black-owned bookshops call for more diversity in UK publishing | Books | The Guardian; two new reports into representation in children's books are published, Children's books eight times as likely to feature animal main characters as BAME people | Books | The Guardian; and first-time writer has spectacular success, S&S sells Steadman's middle-grade series in 23 languages | The Bookseller.
- Getting your poetry published: 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. Should you be considering self-publishing?
- 'The best advice on writing was given to me by my first editor, Michael Korda of Simon and Schuster, while writing my first book. 'Finish your first draft and then we'll talk,' he said. It took me a long time to realize how good the advice was. Even if you write it wrong, write and finish your first draft. Only then, when you have a flawed whole, do you know what you have to fix.' Dominick Dunne in our Writers' Quotes.