19 April 2021 - What's new
19 April 2021
- 'Technology is shifting more power to the hands of authors, who now have more options for what they can do with their manuscripts. Everything from the choice of publishing channels, to content formats, but also increasing the quality of their content using tools which perhaps would have been cost prohibitive to them in the past. Authors also want to reach as large an audience as possible. This is increasingly possible and becoming easier due to technology and digitisation of content. The easier it gets, the less reliant authors are on traditional publishing houses to reach these large audiences. Ali Albazaz, founder and CEO of Inkitt in 'The Power of Self-Publishing', Bookbrunch
- 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.'
- Closing on 3 May, the new Leapfrog Global Fiction Prize is open to international entry. There's no entry fee. An Adult Fiction prize and a Young Adult /Middle Grade prize both offer a First Prize Publication contract offer from Leapfrog Press and Can of Worms Press with advance against royalties, Second Prize $150 and critiques.
- Other live competitions/awards.
- Assorted links: there's a lot of confusion about what the term means and how it really works, Everything You've Always Wanted to Know: Hybrid Publishing | Jane Friedman; did you know that UK primary schools do not have to have libraries? Children's laureates campaign for £100m a year to fix primary school libraries | Libraries | The Guardian; five tops tips for approaching the task, How to write a short story - National Centre for Writing; and Kathleen Woodiwiss' The Flame and the Flower was the instant bestseller that sparked it all off, Romance novels are big business. Here's how the genre took off. - The Washington Post.
- 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, offer exceptional value and our skilled professional editors have been working on writers' manuscripts for 20 years. We have recently introduced free samples and free assessments on most of these services, please see the individual service page. Copy editing services.
- From our Endorsements page: On English Language editing: '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.' Anthony Fitzgerald
- Links about writers: rejected by 32 publishers, his novel eventually found a home, earned the prestigious Booker Prize and became a bestseller, 'Shuggie Bain' author Douglas Stuart on love, working class - Los Angeles Times; one of the most original tots' tomes to hit the bookshops for many a decade, Terry Pratchett's debut turns 50: ‘At 17 he showed promise of a brilliant mind' | Books | The Guardian; and there are many reasons why it took me so long to write my eighth novel and not being Tolstoy is one of the main ones, On not being Tolstoy.
- Our latest new service is the Writer's edit, a top-level 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.
- Links from the publishing world: James Daunt says there's progress with America's biggest boookstore chain, Barnes & Noble, B&N CEO Says Things Are 'Much Better Now'; events are sadly to be streamed, Bologna abandons physical events to go digital only | The Bookseller; it's the same storry for the LBF, London Book Fair Opts for a Digital-Only Edition in 2021; and "It really was our backlist that saved the day for us," What Snoop Dogg's Success Says About the Book Industry - The New York Times.
- 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.
- ‘Writers Are Insane. For months we are lone wolves locked in our caves. Then overnight we become publicity hounds. It's a schizophrenic business.' Robert Mykle in our Writers' Quotes.