What's New in 2020
- ‘No one reads your book as closely as a translator does, which is something you learn very quickly. I'm in such awe of them. They also read beneath it and around it. They make me consider things I thought I knew the meaning of because I use those words in everyday dialect and that's how the characters express themselves. It's made me go back and research the origins of some of the words...Globalism has allowed books to reach people who have felt excluded from festivals or literary events or readings. I think it's going to be a thing we should uphold and maintain as we go forward even when we can see each other. There's an open-door feeling to it that's really powerful.' Douglas Stuart, winner of the 2020 Booker Prize with Suggie Bain, in Publishing Perspectives.
- From our 19-part Inside Publishing series: on Copyright 'Many writers worry about losing their copyright. Before sending out your manuscript it is always advisable to put a copyright line consisting of the copyright sign ©, the year and your name on the title page...'
On The Writer/Publisher Financial Relationship: 'There's no escaping the fact that publishers and authors are essentially in an adversarial position. Even in the very best and most supportive publisher/writer relationships there is the tension caused by the fact that authors would like to earn as much as possible from their writing and publishers to pay as little as they can get away with...'
- Links to articles on well-known authors: William Boyd on 'the strange thrill' he experienced on first reading The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, John le Carré didn't invent the spy novel - he joined a tradition and made it new again | John le Carré | The Guardian; the culmination of a two-decade power struggle for ownership of her fictional world, Who Did J.K. Rowling Become? Every night at bedtime, millions of children - pyjamas on, teeth reluctantly brushed - curl up to read or listen to one of her stories, How Julia Donaldson conquered the world, one rhyme at a time | News | The Guardian; and 'How other people live is pretty much all I think about', an author's powerful encounter These Precious Days, By Ann Patchett | Harper's Magazine.
- 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? includes our new top-of-the range service, the Editor's Report Plus, introduced by popular demand to provide even more detail. This very substantial report takes the form of a chapter-by-chapter breakdown and many writers have found this detail helps them to get their book right. Through our specialist children's editors we can offer reports on children's books.
- Links on writers and writing: art and design professionals have had to both reevaluate their workflow and assess what has been lost and gained, Making Children's Books in the Covid-19 Era; can another author change your character? Lawsuit over 'warmer' Sherlock depicted in Enola Holmes dismissed | Arthur Conan Doyle | The Guardian; are they apolitical fantasy fluff? Author Alyssa Cole on Why Politics Belong in Romance Novels.
- From our Endorsements page: ‘WritersServices editors are not just excellent professionals, they are persons of letters involved in helping the writers who are trying to enter in the world of British books... I am impressed. I am grateful. I'm delighted. Thank you so much.' Daniela Stanciulescu, Paris
- Links from a rapidly-changing publishing world: for the publishing industry, 2020 began with an explosion and ended with a contraction, How a year of publishing protests rocked the industry - Vox; 95 percent of published authors are white, Number-crunching the overwhelming whiteness of the book publishing industry | Boing Boing; the glut of books this season has caused its own problems, The Ten Biggest Literary Stories of the Year ‹ Literary Hub; not the powerhouse agents or the megabestselling authors or the Big Five CEOs, PW's 2020 Person of the Year: The Book Business Worker; and, finally, a mysterious international phishing scam, Why on Earth Is Someone Stealing Unpublished Book Manuscripts? - The New York Times.
- Get your manuscript typed up so that you can revise it, submit it or publish it. Do you need to get your material typed up, but can't face doing the job yourself? We can provide a clean typed version of your work at very competitive rates. Our service offers help for writers who have an old or handwritten manuscript, or audio tapes, which need re-typing before the writer can proceed with submission or publication. Typing manuscripts
- 'Most of the basic material a writer works with is acquired before the age of fifteen.' Willa Cather in our Writers' Quotes.
- ‘Just because you can write a full-length grownup novel there's no guarantee that you can transpose that ability to a children's book. In the end it was a collaborative performance both with (illustrator) Daniela Terrazzini and my children: I would read parts of the story to them and they gave instant and very direct feedback. They were very honest and sometimes pretty brutal. When a child doesn't like something they let you know - often by getting up and walking away...' Maggie O'Farrell on her first children's book, Where Snow Angels Go. She is also the author of the wonderful bestselling Hamnet, After You'd Gone, The Hand That first Held Mine, The Distance Between Us and four other novels, as well as a memoir, I am, I am, I am, in the Observer.
- Tips for writers is our 8-part crash course for writers who are starting out, taking you from Learn on the job to Self-publishing: is it for you? to Keep up to date and Submission to publishers and agents. 'Before deciding to go for self-publishing, you should think through what is involved. Certain kinds of books lend themselves to this approach. If you have a book which you can sell after your lectures, or as a promotional tool, or there's some local or specialist interest in what you have written, then self-publishing can be a good idea. If you've written a novel and want to get it published, you should think hard about how you're going to market it...'
- Closing on 1 February, one of the very best children's writing competitions - The Times/Chicken House Children's Fiction Competition 2020 - is open to unpublished and unagented writers of children's fiction suitable for children/young adults aged somewhere between 7 and 18 years. There's no entry fee. The prize is a worldwide publishing contract with Chicken House with a royalty advance of £10,000, plus an offer of representation from a top literary agent. Also on their website, MD Barry Cunningam's tips on writing for children, from the man who first signed up J K Rowling.
- Other comptetitions and prizes which are still live.
- 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.
- Our links on writers and writing: Tom Stoppard: "He was David to his friends, and, enormous though that company was, one couldn't help taking pride in belonging to it", John le Carré remembered by writers and friends; 'My ties to England have loosened': John le Carré on Britain, Boris and Brexit | John le Carré | The Guardian; from the author of the most beloved horror novels in the history of popular fiction, many of which have been turned into equally acclaimed and successful films, Stephen King Has Thoughts About Stephen King TV Shows - The New York Times; a completely different career which is indicative of many publishing trends, The Talented Ms. Calloway - Los Angeles Review of Books; and here's how to approach this form of writing, The Benefits of Writing Flash Fiction | Jane Friedman.
- Writing Biography & Autobiography is a serialisation from our Archives of the book by Brian D Osborne published by A & C BlackClick for A & C Black Publishers Publishers References listing. In the first excerpt, Managing the matters of truth and objectivity, the author says: 'Just as you need to remember that letters, reports, census forms, legal documents and so forth were not created simply for our convenience, so you also need to remember that what is written in them may not be true...'
- The inimitable Mandy Coe on Poetry as the Language of Child is this week's blog at the Children's Poetry Summit. Great blogs from Michael Rosen, Val Bloom, Brian Moses, Laura Mucha and many others.
- Links from the publishing world: it's great that it's not all gloom and doom, 'It's been a rollercoaster': how indie publishers survived - and thrived - in 2020 | Publishing | The Guardian; how have US bookstores weathered the storm? Amid COVID-19, L.A. bookstores face pivotal holiday season - Los Angeles Times; and a story of how much an industry can change and how much it can, or wants to, remain the same, Publishing saw upheaval in 2020, but 'books are resilient'.
- Here's a detailed article on how to prepare Your submission package - 'Given the difficulty of getting agents and publishers to take on your work, it's really important to make sure that you present it in the best possible way. Less is more, so don't send a full manuscript, as it's very unlikely to be read. Far better to tempt them with a submission package that will leave them wanting to see the rest of the manuscript...'
- '"The cat sat on the mat" is not a story."The cat sat on the dog's mat" is a story.' John le Carré's verdict in our Writers' Quotes.
- ‘I still suspect that most people start out with some kind of ability to tell a story but that it gets lost along the way. Of course, the ability to create life with words is essentially a gift. If you have it in the first place, you can develop it; if you don't have it, you might as well forget it. But I have found that people who don't have it are frequently the ones hell-bent on writing stories...' Flannery O'Connor, author of two novels, Wise Blood and The Violent Bear It Away, three short story collections, including Complete Stories, and 32 short stories in all.
- An essential read for children's authors is Suzy Jenvey's special series for WritersServices, the four-part Essential Guide to Writing for Children. The first article looks at the all-important question of age groups and what you should be aware of in writing for each one. The second part is - Before You Write: What is My Story Going to be? The third part deals with Starting to Write and the fourth part is about Submitting Your Work to Agents and Editors. This series by a hugely experienced children's editorial director and agent helps you get started on your own story or develop what you're already working on.
- 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.
- Our links from the world of writing: wonderful people in bureaucratic straitjackets - that's publishing, How 50,000 copies of my new book mysteriously vanished; why is publishing so obsessed with genre, It Isn't Genre That Matters - It's Story. | CrimeReads; investigating AI-created literature, Adventures in writing about creative machines; and how could this be? Nearly every second male profile lists Kurt Vonnegut as its favorite writer, Finding An Unlikely Literary Figure on Tinder: Kurt Vonnegut | Literary Hub.
- Why has my manuscript been rejected? It is demoralising to get your manuscript rejected by publishers or agents. Here are some of the reasons why this happens and suggestions of what you can do about it. Avoiding rejection.
- Links from publishing: when Bertelsmann, the parent company of Penguin Random House (PRH), the largest book publisher in the U.S., announced it was going to acquire the third largest, Simon & Schuster (S&S), to form a mega-press, the outcry was swift and plentiful, Commentary: Penguin Random House S&S merger kills diversity - Los Angeles Times; the Atlantic agrees about the dark potential of such a deal, The Penguin Random House S&S Deal Is Bad for Democracy - The Atlantic; some staff were reportedly not pleased with the company's decision to publish, Publishers are not obliged to give bigots like Jordan Peterson a platform | Random House | The Guardian; mostly they're proving themselves resilient and flexible, Book Clubs in Lockdown.
- How to get your book translated into English (without it costing the earth) - for non-native English speakers wanting to reach the international English language market. If your English is good enough, what about writing your book in English or translating it into English yourself, and then getting your translation polished and copy edited by a professional editor who is a native English speaker? The result should be a publishable manuscript at a relatively low cost, ready for you to publish or submit to publishers.
- Links about writers: from the wonderful former UK Children's Laureate and author of Noughts and Crosses, Malorie Blackman: ‘I didn't read a book that featured a black protagonist until I was 21' | The Independent; a huge deal from the bestselling author, Smith to revisit Ancient Egypt in 10-book deal with Bonnier | The Bookseller; a black writer turning to other black writers in prison, Alex Wheatle: Why the 'amazingly exciting' Chester Himes should be better known - BBC News; new novel from the Nobel Laureate, Bloomsbury lands first novel in 48 years by Wole Soyinka | The Bookseller.
- Which service should I choose to help me get my work into good shape for submission or self-publishing? Our editorial services have been added in response to demand, so whatever you want we've probably got it covered with our 20 different services.
- 'Make no mistake, those who write long books have nothing to say. Of course those who write short books have even less to say.' Mark Z. Danielewski in our Writers' Quotes.