What's New in 2024
- ‘Many people write a non-fiction book and then meet a wall of frustration and delay as they attempt to attract interest from an agent or a publisher. This often drives an author into the arms of a burgeoning self-publishing industry. To the person who has spent years acquiring their knowledge, then more years writing their book, the self-publishing industry can be attractive. They can finally hold their book in their hands, show it to friends and say, "Look what I did. I'm published." Jeff Maynard is an Australian author and documentary maker. His books include Niagara's Gold, Divers in Time and The Letterbox War of Kamarooka Street. Jeff has written widely for television and contributed articles to magazines around the world.
- The Pedant: How to make your editor happy 7: Close encounters of the word kind is the latest addition to this series by a seasoned editor: 'To coin a rather hackneyed online expression, I tried a paraphrasing tool so you don't have to. And my experience suggests that you probably don't want to. Whatever a paraphrasing tool is for, it's definitely not for writers; though it might, alas, be an invaluable gift for plagiarists. This was not a comprehensive survey of the available tools; I have instead provided a snapshot...'
- The series covers a range of subject-matter to help improve your writing and avoid common errors: Accents and dialects, Dialogue tags, The use of bold, italics and capital letters, Spoilt for choice: formats and fonts, The trouble with ‘as' and What's all the fuss over hyphens?
- Our 8 UK-based Copy editing services specialise in writers' needs, offering competitive rates and providing highly experienced professional editors. We offer a wide range of editorial services to help you prepare your manuscript for submission to an agent or publisher, or for self-publication. Our team of expert editors has years of experience in helping and advising authors; we can help you to bring your work to a professional level of excellence. Most of our editing services offer a free sample and they are all excellent value for money.
- Mslexia Women's Fiction Competitions 2024 close on 23 September. All women are eligible. The entry fee for Short Story is £12, Flash Fiction £6 and Novel (Young Adult and Children) £26. There are various prizes.
- Our first set of links relate to writers' craft: two novelists, an agent and a publisher each share their top three golden rules for publishing a book, Show up, love the process, don't follow trends: insider tips on how to write a book | Creative writing | The Guardian; five ways to use the past in contemporary crime fiction, Is History Only For Historical Novels? ‹ CrimeReads; and 'Costanza is about 'obsession, desire and control - and one young woman's incredible resilience in the face of male power', Q&A: debut author Rachel Blackmore.
- 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.
- Our Children's Editorial Services offer three levels of report and copy editing from specialist children's editors. Use their expertise to help get your work ready for publication in this tricky but potentially huge market.
- Do you want some help with your writing but don't know quite what you want? Are you a bit puzzled by the various services on offer, and not sure what to go for? Choosing a service helps you work out which is the right editorial service for you.
- Links from publishing and AI: the finances of indie publishing are broken, we need a radical rethink, The Bookseller - Comment - The sums don't work; alarmingly, the train has left the station, the ship has sailed, pick your preferred metaphor, Like It or Not, Publishers Are Licensing Books for AI Training-And Using AI Themselves | Jane Friedman; and a mistake indicative of the AI moment we now find ourselves in, How an AI-Driven Publishing Model Enabled Thad McIlroy's New Book.
- From our Endorsements page: ‘Having seen the report, I can't praise your service highly enough - both in terms of value for money and timeliness. I really can't commend your service enough - and you're welcome to put that on your site as well. Having had a bit longer to study the report, it really is the most ridiculously good value for money, and many of the comments are spot on. I've already recommended you to a fellow aspiring novelist, and I'm sure I'll be coming back to you.' Beric Davies
- Our Developmental editing service - 'If you are a new writer, setting out on your first book project, or a more experienced writer who wants to improve your skills, this service is for you. We will work with you to identify the areas where you need to develop new or better skills, to show you how to improve, and to support you as you expand your writing technique and bring your project to fruition...'
- Advice for writers - if you want to delve into the wealth of information on our huge site, here's the page which will help you find what you're looking for.
- Links to writers' stories: Hot Girl Summer author Sophie Gravia on her anything-but-ordinary publishing journey, Light bulb moments to bestsellers; it was another era. Not easier, but maybe not quite so crazy hectic as today. The stakes were still high, and in their day - the early 1980s - getting your first book published was still hard work, My First Thriller: Heather Graham ‹ CrimeReads; doing the research for The Silent Killer was both frightening and fascinating, though also surprisingly heartening at times, Q&A: crime novelist Trevor Wood; and Kimberly McCreight on "the fraught push-pull of the complicated mother-daughter dynamic", Thrillers that Capture the Complexities of Motherhood ‹ CrimeReads.
- 'The synopsis is a strange document; it is at once the dullest, and perhaps the most important, part of the submission package. It reduces your book, your creative project, to a few lines of plain, unadorned narration; yet it allows a publisher to see the book as a whole, to get a feel for the narrative arc and the development of the plot...' From Ask the Editor 3: Writing a synopsis.
- If you're aiming at traditional publishing, Finding an agent and Working with an agent are two practical checklists to help set up and maintain this vital relationship: 'Try to find an agency which is ‘hungry' for new clients. To keep their workload under control, an established independent agent might take on something like four new authors a year, but only to replace four departing clients. This may seem obvious, but whether or not an agent is actively looking to build their list of clients is probably the single most important factor affecting how closely they are looking at unsolicited submissions...'
- More links: Edna O'Brien, one of the most influential and widely read Irish writers of her generation, has died "after a long illness", Edna O'Brien, Prolific and Provocative Irish Literary Giant, Dies at 93; Irish novelists pay tribute to a titanic figure who liberated their country's fiction, ‘A beacon of brazenness and defiance': Edna O'Brien remembered by Anne Enright, Colm Tóibín and more | Books | The Guardian; last year, I finally realised that my habit of seeing everything through to the end was just a colossal waste of time, I couldn't put a boring book down. Now I take pleasure in saying enough is enough | Callum Bains | The Guardian; the science fiction and fantasy prize says it has culled 377 votes, Hugo awards organisers reveal thousands spent on fraudulent votes to help one writer win | Hugo awards | The Guardian; and more than 27 million UK adults are missing out on the benefits of reading more, including reduced stress levels and improved focus, The Bookseller - News - Half of UK adults do not regularly read, according to 'worrying' new survey by The Reading Agency.
- '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. This is because most poetry lists are pretty small. Poetry is not in general given much space in bookshops and it is difficult to achieve any sales for first collections. Self-publishing offers a good approach and the live poetry scene is much livelier than it used to be...' Getting your poetry published.
- Our Services for Writers is just a list of the 22 services we offfer, which we believe is the largest on the web.
- 'Writers, however mature and wise and eminent, are children at heart.' Edna O'Brien, who died last week, in our Writers' Quotes.
- ‘Even if you are writing stark realism, I think there is magic in this age group, because they are at an age at which possibility is at its most colossal. They are still on the brink of becoming the person that they will be, and there is magic inherent there. I wanted to say to children, "I think you have been underestimated. I think you have in you a capacity for boldness, and for adventure, and for valiance - qualities that the world has not always saluted in children..."' Katherine Rundell, the author of 9 books, including Rooftoppers, The Girl Savage, published in the US as Cartwheeling in Thunderstorms, Impossible Creatures and Super-Infinite: The Transformation of John Donne in Publishers WeeklyInternational news website of book publishing and bookselling including business news, reviews, bestseller lists, commentaries http://www.publishersweekly.com/.
- If you're looking for a report on your manuscript, how do you work out which one of our three reports would suit you best? Which Report? includes our latest 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 that this detail helps them to get their book right. Through our specialist children's editors we can offer reports on children's books.
- The Aesthetica Creative Writing Award 2024 is open to all and closes on 31 August. The entry fee for Poetry entries is £12 and for Short Fiction entries it's £18. £2,500 is awarded to both the Poetry and Short Fiction winners and publication in the Aesthetica Creative Writing Anthology, plus many other prizes.
- The My Say series gives writers a chance to write about their writing lives, so we have: My Say 7 Timothy Hallinan on the Writing Session, My Say 11 by Natasha Mostert, 'There are few things as satisfying as typing THE END to a manuscript' and My Say 12 by Richard Hall: '"Write about what you know" - does this adage always make sense? For those planning a contemporary novel it may be sound advice to write about what you know. But what about writers of historical novels? They cannot have personal knowledge of anything before the recent past. So for historical fiction should we take the adage to mean "know'"in the sense of having academic knowledge of the subject, from reading and other research?...' Contributions should ideally be 300 to 500 words in length and of general interest. Please email them to us.
- Our first set of links: a huge increase in the adult fantasy category, With Fantasy on Fire, Print Book Sales Are Catching Up to 2023; you don't often find a new poetry editor talking about her list, The Bookseller - News - Chatto's Sarah Howe reveals plans for poetry list; it's essential to build trust between a publicist and a writer, The Bookseller - News - Managing authors' expectations is key during publication, M&P audience hears; for Arielle, discovering romance novels was like uncovering a new world, Romance novels are shaping teenagers' views on love, relationships - thanks to social media - ABC News; and lots of books qualify as comfort reads - but what makes cozy distinctive is that it offers sanctuary, The Rise of Cozy Fantasy - Reactor.
- Veteran editor Maureen Kincaid Speller
a reviewer, writer, editor and former librarian, is our book reviewer and also works for WritersServices as a freelance editor.'s 7-part series An Editor's Advice includes Points of View: 'Not so long ago, I read what ought to have been a really exciting novel filled with drama, action, treachery and romance. Or it would have been but for one thing. I saw none of this drama, I only heard about it later. Why was that? It was because the author had decided to use a first-person viewpoint character and, unfortunately ‘I' was nowhere near any of the action... In fact, ‘I' was in a bunker halfway up a mountainside, having rather a dull time of it all while mayhem broke out elsewhere. As the reader, I had to stick with ‘I' and likewise, I had a pretty boring time. It is a great temptation for the inexperienced author to write from the first-person viewpoint because it somehow seems easier to imagine oneself directly into a situation and to write about how things might seem from that point of view...'
- ‘Absolutely first class job! Very professional. Thank you very much indeed. Wish I'd found you before, it would certainly have saved me a lot of unnecessary headaches. I'll now bin the rest of the editors I've so far dealt with, and hope to keep contact with you.' Steven Kocsis in our Endorsements page.
- Links about reading, book clubs and festivals: three famous readers hold immense influence over the publishing industry. Their recommendations can make or break a book, How Celebrity Book Clubs Actually Work; Cassidy Grady's Sunday reading series ‘Confessions' seeks fresh avenues for creative expression in wake of pandemic, ‘It's a snowball effect': the gen Z niche reading event making waves in New York | New York | The Guardian; having been crowned UK Children's Laureate, he's on a mission to show kids that books will change their lives, ‘Reading's in danger': Frank Cottrell-Boyce on books, kids - and the explosive power of Heidi | Books | The Guardian; Trevor Dolby on a glorious, inspiring week in Wiltshire, Chalke Valley: bringing history alive; encouraging research, The Bookseller - News - Children's reading remains a top priority for UK public despite challenges, new PA survey shows; and large-scale, algorithmic bookselling will never outlive the necessity of local stores like ours, Bookshops will never die. That's why I bought one on Gumtree five years ago - and we're still here | Culture | The Guardian.
- Do you want to self-publish your work? WritersServices offers a suite of services which help writers get their work into shape before they self-publish. Get your manuscript ready for publication - Services for Self-publishers.
- 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 to writers' stories: how he went from working as a computer programmer in 1980s New York City to writing the iconic Devil in a Blue Dress, My First Thriller: Walter Mosley ‹ CrimeReads; Patrick Worrall on writing about Europe's dark past - as it threatens to return, Torturing my heroine; and April Henry on successfully channeling family history and criminal tendencies into fiction, I Come From a Long Line of Criminals ‹ CrimeReads.
- Are you struggling to get someone to look at your poetry? Our Poetry Critique service for up to 150 lines of poetry can help. Our Poetry Collection Editing, unique to Writersservices, edits your collection to prepare it for submission or self-publishing. Both can provide the professional editorial input you need. We've just edited our first poetry collection which was a translation, so the service was a combination of Poetry Collection editing and English Language Editing.
- From Tom Chalmers, formerly of IPR, two articles about rights for self-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...'
- Our last set of links are about publishing and AI: after the UK election result, The Bookseller - News - Labour landslide: put 'profound challenges' of AI and intellectual property rights high up on agenda, author bodies urge new government; how Artifical Intelligence can help sell more books, Part 2: 5 Ways AI Can Transform How Publishing Sells Books; for this year's trends, look to last year's hits. Rinse and repeat, The Bookseller - Editor's Letter - The book trade: open for business; and while at the sales conference of Jonathan Ball Publishers, a veteran publisher sizes up the South African book market, Richard Charkin: 'Where the Lion Feeds'.
- Are you ready to submit your synopsis and sample chapters to agents or publishers, but worried about whether you are presenting your work in the best possible way? It's dispiriting to receive rejections just because your submission package is not up to scratch. Our Submission Critique has helped many authors to improve their submission packages, helping them to get published.
- 'Just write every day of your life. Read intensely. Then see what happens. Most of my friends who are put on that diet have very pleasant careers.' Ray Bradbury in our Writers' Quotes.
- ‘I've been thinking for some time that science fiction, as a genre, is finished. The world it once imagined has arrived, and interest in the future and new technologies is widespread. Instead of appealing only to a niche audience, sci-fi has been absorbed into the mainstream of fiction. And as fantasy enjoys a boom in popularity - the "Romantasy" subgenre in particular - much of what is now published as science fiction has a fantasy element to it: space opera, alternate histories, sagas set on alien worlds...' Lisa Tuttle, author of 18 novels for adults and children, including My Death, A Nest of Nightmares, The Mysteries, The Bone and The Flute, Dolphin Diaries, a series for children, various short story collections and several works of non-fiction, in the Guardian.
- This week we have another new article in the Ask the Editor series: 'A new writer, setting out on that curious and occasionally perilous journey that, sometimes, ends in publication, needs help getting there; very few writers get it all right without advice or intervention. The internet has made the task of finding appropriate help and advice much easier; if your ivory tower is connected, that is. Recently, however, the limpid waters of literary support have been muddied somewhat by the advent of a plethora of AI tools. In this article, I'll consider the advantages - and limitations - of editing software...' Ask the Editor 12: The limitations of editing software.
- The 11 other articles in the Ask the Editor series cover subjects as diverse as Writing non-fiction, How I assess a manuscript and The submission letter.
- Our 8 UK-based Copy editing services specialise in writers' needs, offering competitive rates and providing highly experienced professional editors. We offer a wide range of editorial services to help you prepare your manuscript for submission to an agent or publisher, or for self-publication. Our team of expert editors has years of experience in helping and advising authors; we can help you to bring your work to a professional level of excellence. Most of our editing services offer a free sample and they are all excellent value for money.
- Our first set of links covers writers' stories and writers' craft: over the course of my life, I have chosen names for two real human beings and approximately 200 fictional ones. The processes are surprisingly similar, How Naming a Character Is Like Naming a Child | Jane Friedman; from the authors of a non-fiction series for children, The Selfies questions for 2024 children's book winners Jill Michelle Smith and Jennifer Watson; in selecting this, the author uses a narrator who knows everything about the story, Third-Person Omniscient Point of View: Explained & Defined - The Art of Narrative; 'Writing different books at different times allows me to stay creatively fresh and engaged, as well as reach various kinds of readers', The Selfies questions for 2024 non fiction winner J F Penn; an astonishing, deeply compelling story about what happened to them when they were 15, Turn Fact Into Fiction-Without Hurting Someone or Getting Sued | Jane Friedman; and Horrible Histories TV writer Gabby Hutchinson Crouch explains how she adapts her satirical writing from screen to the page, Writing comedy: start with a family.
- Closing on 30 September is the The Bridport Prize Memoir Award 2024, which is open to unpublished work from any writer writing in English over 16. Entry fee: £24 per entry. 1st Prize £1,500 + a year's mentoring, Runner-up £750 and Highly Commended 3 awards £150. Please read the details carefully.
- Our new seven-part Worldbuilding series is designed to help fantasy and science fiction writers think about the various things they need to consider when constructing the world in their novel: 'Fantasy fiction is a niche market, but a very popular niche market. It is particularly popular among new writers, and I suspect this is a consequence of growing up on a diet of best-selling fantasy fiction over the last couple of decades. In this article, I will look at the differences between writing fantasy fiction and other genres, and also the similarities. Then I will look at some of the issues involved in writing fantasy fiction...' This series is just what you need if you want to write in these exciting genres. The titles are: 1: Character names in fantasy novels, 2: The basics of writing fantasy fiction, 3: Geography and physical location, 4: Technology, 5: Culture, 6: Magic and 7: It's a kind of magic.
- 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. Our expert editors are specialists in writing for children, and they will help you make your work the best it can be. Children's Editorial Services.
- Links from the publishing world: in this exclusive interview, Blake Friedmann Literary Agency's Vice Head of Books Juliet Pickering shares her advice for aspiring romance writers, Agent Q&A with Juliet Pickering | National Centre for Writing | NCW; the latest news on UK book festivals funding, The Bookseller - News - Nine UK literary festivals have released a joint statement calling for 'increased support', as Bloomsbury donates £100,000; indie author Mo Fanning questions how he can help booksellers sell more copies than the online giants, Why indie bookshops and indie authors need to work together; rebuilding from a fire, competing with Amazon and launching during lockdown - how these indies continue to thrive, Meet the people behind three of the UK's brilliant independent bookshops | Books | The Guardian.
- ‘Thank you again for all your wonderful work. I really appreciate it and feel very blessed to have benefited from your services.' Cissi Williams on our Endorsements page.
- Are you having difficulty writing a blurb for the cover of your book? Our Blurb-writing service can give your book a professional look. What about your synopsis - often a tricky task for a writer? Our Synopsis-writing service can provide a synopsis of whatever length you need for your submissions.
- So you want to be a romance writer? You've made an interesting choice because, although a lot of people scoff at romance, it is the most stable genre of all and has continued to keep its faithful readers when other categories have changed radically and sometimes lost their audiences. Romance has changed a bit in recent years and embraced a more complex story, sometimes with more explicit sex in it, but essentially this is a category which marches on, providing happy endings, when all around it the world has changed. Writing Romance
- More links: the popular notion is that J.R.R. Tolkien single-handedly transformed the genre of modern fantasy. This is just plain wrong. Tolkien did not transform modern fantasy. He invented it, The Literary Power of Hobbits: How JRR Tolkien Shaped Modern Fantasy ‹ Literary Hub; reading screenplays is the latest book fashion, Hollywood's Newest Money-Making Scheme Is... Books; Maris Kreizman on Independent Publicists, Books Tours, and Vanishing Book Coverage, Do Authors Really Need to Spend Their Own Money to Make a Book Successful? ‹ Literary Hub; and thinking of defecting to the dark side? Here's what I've learnt, The Bookseller - Comment - Revelations of an editor-turned-agent.
- For a down-to-earth and practical account, How Literary Agents Work - an article written exclusively for Writersservices by literary agent Mark Gottlieb of Trident Media in New York: 'I have often heard that authors are interested in how literary agents work. It is very simple: a literary agent exists to provide services to authors...'
- PhD editing service - get your PhD edited by a professional editor to make sure you achieve the best result you can. Are you working to prepare your PhD for submission? Professional editing can help you improve the presentation of your work and iron out any grammar or spelling errors, so that you can achieve the best possible result.
- Have you managed to find a publisher for your work and are you now enjoying the thrill of knowing that your book will soon be published? If you're wondering what happens next, here is a helpful outline of the processes involved. Preparing for publication
- This page provides a list of all 22 editorial services we offer - we think it's the largest range on the web.
- 'Some novels known as the greatest works of literature are crime novels, and some crime novels are great works of literature.' Lynne Constantine in our Writers' Quotes.
