What's New in 2023
- 'Be really clear on what your book is about so that whoever's reading it can quickly get a sense of whether it would be interesting to them. You can research agents online, you can read their websites, but it can still be difficult to know who exactly likes what, so there's still some guesswork involved. But if you're really, really clear about what your book is, it will let the agent know if they're going to be interested in your book, and whether they want to invest the time to read it. If you're not clear, that's going to be a dangerous area - agents are busy, they read an awful lot of material, and if they don't see something they like in there because it isn't clear what the book is, it won't be looked at with much attention...' Kate Nash, founder of the Kate Nash Literary Agency, which represents commercial fiction, in Bookbrunch.
- 'Writing a non-fiction book is a very different project to writing a novel; the motivation, purpose, style and approach are quite distinct. ‘Non-fiction', of course, covers a wide range of genres and formats; however, there are some principles that apply across the board. In this article I will explore some of the basic requirements in writing a non-fiction book...' the new sixth article in our series Ask the Editor focuses on writing non-fiction.
- 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 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.
- The Moth Poetry Prize 2023 is open to all poets over 16 for an unpublished poem. Entry fee €15 per poem and you can enter as many poems as you like. 1st prize €6,000, plus three runner-up prizes of €1,000 and eight commended poets will each receive €250. The Prize closes on 31 December.
- The 2023 National Poetry Competition and National Novel Writing Month 2023 are still open.
- The many links this week include some from Frankfurt, the world's biggest book fair: agent Jonny Geller says 'What lies ahead leaves everyone filled with dread', The Bookseller - Comment - We need solidarity, now; expectations were high in the buildup to the 2023 fair, Frankfurt Book Fair 2023: Amid a World in Turmoil, Publishers Get Down to Business; two panels addressing two key concerns for the publishing industry, Frankfurt Book Fair 2023: Panels Take on AI, Sustainability in Publishing; and warnings from the CEO of the British Publishers' Association, Frankfurt Book Fair 2023: The AI Future Looks Bright - So Long As...'
- From our 19 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...'
- Our 22 Services for writers - just a list of what we offer at WritersServices. We believe it's the largest range on the internet.
- 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 on our Endorsements page.
- The Editor's Advice 4 is about Planning - just how should you go about planning your novel? Maureen concludes that '...The point is that in some respects it doesn't actually matter when you do the planning; the important thing to remember is that you'll have to do it at some stage in the process of writing a novel, and to find the point in the process that works best for you.'
- More links from the publishing world: the rich have got richer as the top 10 global publishing groups saw a collective double-digit jump in sales in 2022, The Bookseller - Spotlight - The world's biggest groups show huge gains in the latest publisher rankings; writers haven't been consulted and streaming will damage book sales, The Bookseller - News - Society of Authors slams 'lack of consultation' on Spotify audiobooks deals; the success of Britain's English-language export sales into some European markets is cannibalising local book sales, The Bookseller - News - Alarm across Europe as English-language export editions skewer domestic markets; a new survey on American literary agents' experience surfaces concerns about the business model's viability, diversity, and burnout in a demanding job, Outside the LitAG: A New Report on Agenting; and the first international rights fair in East Africa, Frankfurt Book Fair 2023: A New Rights Fair for Nairobi.
- 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 a printed book which needs re-typing, before the writer can proceed with revision, submission or publication. Typing manuscripts
- 'Why would you, as an unpublished writer, want to find an agent? Many writers see being taken on by an agent as the first step in getting taken on by a publisher, because it is so difficult to get publishers to pay attention to unagented writers. Agents use their contacts and knowledge of the publishing business on their clients' behalf, selling their work and then continuing to look after their authors' interests...' Finding an agent
- Links on writers' craft: a succinct and helpful article about preparing your setting, Five tips for 'setting' the setting | National Centre for Writing | NCW; so what does "Golden Age" actually mean? A matter of style: writing in the tradition of the Golden Age mystery; and a very well-informed look at the expansion of the US YA market, Who Is YA For?
- If you need to clear copyright for your book, Clearing Copyright shows you how to do this: 'Copyright provides a framework for trading in intellectual property. In practice it protects the author's position and ensures that the publisher is able to take on the risk of publication in the knowledge that the publisher's rights are protected. In effect authors, (the originators of intellectual property) sub-license their rights through their book contracts to different parties in individual territories and in specific forms...'
- Get your poetry assessed before submitting it or entering it for competitions with our Poetry Critique service. If you're planning to submit a collection to publishers or to self-publish, our unique Poetry Collection Editing service can help to get your work to a publishable standard.
- Links to writers' stories: commercial book publishing was (and is) unbearably white, Why Toni Morrison Left Publishing ‹ Literary Hub; when tackling social issues, it's best to tell a story, not preach, Why Genre Fiction Is So Effective in Tackling Social Issues; combining murder with a quickened pace to compete for the conscious mind of an Attention Deficit Disorder society, My First Thriller: Jeffery Deaver ‹ CrimeReads; celebrating your 80th birthday and having the busiest time of your life, ‘Goosebumps' Author R.L. Stine: ‘The World Has Gotten Scarier'; and a new writer tells his story, Q&A: debut novelist Dann McDorman.
- Writing Biography & Autobiography is a serialisation from our Archives of the book by Brian D Osborne. 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...'
- Our newly-revised FAQs page answers questions you may have, such as: Why do I need a report on my manuscript?
- Richard Bach in our Writers' Quotes: 'A professional writer is an amateur who didn't quit.'
- ‘When you read as a child you are hungry for ideas and for books and for stories like no other time in your life and I think we have such a duty not to offer the hungry anything that is thin, or vapid or fishy or complacent or poorly thought out or lazy or careless. I am very happy to belong to a community that rises to that call...' Speaking about her latest children's novel Impossible Creatures, where all the creatures from myth and legend live on an archipelago. ‘It is about these creatures, it is about a cornucopia of wonder and about the idea of what it would be like, if it was really real... Fantasy can be such a beautiful way to talk to children about the biggest question of what it means to be alive...' Katherine Rundell, author of six children's novels, including Rooftoppers, The Explorer and recently published Impossible Creatures, at the Bookseller's Children's conference, in the Bookseller.
- 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, the Writer's edit, providing line-editing, and Proof-reading. The Cutting edit and Developmental editing are two new services. Get the right level of editorial support for your needs from our professional editors. Our low-cost services represent exceptionally good value. Contact us to discuss what you want.
- Ask the Editor 5: Non-fiction submissions is the new article in this series. 'Submitting a non-fiction book for publication is a broadly similar process to a fiction submission, but there are differences, and those differences are important to understand. In this article, I will look at non-fiction submissions and how they differ from their fictional counterparts. One fundamental difference is that non-fiction books are quite often submitted to a publisher when they are still unfinished! Some non-fiction publishers, particularly those that cater to new or amateur writers, prefer a proposal to a finished book...'
- There are four other articles in this series: Ask the Editor 1: What genre is my book? Ask the Editor 2: the submission letter, Ask the Editor 3: Writing a synopsis and Ask the Editor 4: Why do I need you? (about editing services)
- Links from the publishing world (quiet at the moment as publishers prepare for the Frankfurt Book FairWorld's largest trade fair for books; held annually mid-October at Frankfurt Trade Fair, Germany; First three days exclusively for trade visitors; general public can attend last two.): all those wizards, ogres, and barely-clad elf queens in the bookstore? You have Lester del Rey to thank, Lester del Rey invented the fantasy genre in book publishing; in the UK 41.9 million children's books sold for £255.8m up to 9th September, The Bookseller - Bestsellers - Children's market heading for second biggest full year on record; and after nine years as MD of Atlantic Books, Questions for: Will Atkinson.
- National Novel Writing Month 2023 is coming up! NaNoWriMo starts on 1 November and is open to all writers across the world. There's no entry fee and you win by writing a 50,000 word novel. Accept the challenge and for 30 wild, exciting, surprising days, you get to silence your inner critic, let your imagination take over, and just create!
- 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.
- If you are Writing for the web, you have to grab your readers online. Writing effectively for the web is quite different from writing for the printed page. Writers intending to write web pages should observe some simple rules if they want to attract and keep visitors to their pages.
- Links about writers' craft: a brief tour of the Churchill War Rooms, the underground bunker from which Churchill directed his war efforts, How a Trip to a Museum Turned into the Perfect Start to a Mystery ‹ CrimeReads; 'No two imaginations work in the same way. As I travel alongside each new student, I discover more about the myriad ways a mind can work, and where it can go', Q&A: novelist Maureen Freely; along with prologues, adverbs and semicolons, flashbacks may be the most vilified - and most misunderstood - of storytelling devices, The Flashback: A Greatly Misunderstood Storytelling Device | Jane Friedman; and writing an authorised biography, Professor Sir Magdi Yacoub biography: the inside story.
- Editor's advice 3 deals with Genre writing: 'Go into any high street bookstore and the shelves are heaving with genre novels. Most people read genre novels somewhere along the way, and genre novels are what most people, intentionally or not, set out to write. The intentional thought process goes something like this: there are loads of genre novels being published, ergo, there's a market for genre novels, so I'll read a couple of these, get a feel for what's needed, and hey presto, I too can knock out a few genre novels and make some money as well... I've been reading science fiction, fantasy and crime novels since I was a teenager, and I can spot when a writer doesn't fully understand the mechanics of their chosen genre. It may not matter to a casual reader but it really matters to the fans...'
- From our Endorsements page: 'The outcome of my experience with Writerservices has far exceeded my expectation and I was amazed by their professionalism, hard work, knowledge and keenness to edit my manuscript of the novel, "Uncle Thesiger's Mashhuf", in every detail, thereby ensuring it will appeal to English readers. Their services are very helpful to all writers', Ammar Al Thuwaini, an Iraqi novelist and translator.
- Which service should I choose to help me get my work into good shape for submission or self-publishing? This is the question our page Which service? answers and it then goes on to give a quick rundown on our 22 editorial services for writers, which we think is the biggest and most comprehensive you can find on the internet.
- 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 articles about AI and social media: an attorney examines what artificial intelligence will mean for the publishing industry, Generative AI vs. Copyright; "We have to carefully navigate and regulate to protect authors," for "if we lose [the copyright protection battle], we lose everything". The Bookseller - Comment - 'Exciting and scary' world of AI explored in PW event; hoping to jump-start its push into audiobooks, Spotify Premium Subscribers Can Access 15 Hours of Audiobooks Monthly; and digital audio has been a bright spot for publishers, growing by double-digits year over year, Can Spotify Take Digital Audiobooks to the Next Level?
- The Writer's Edit is an enhanced editing package that offers you all the benefits of our expert copy editing service, plus an extra level of advice and support to help you take your writing to a new level. We will copy edit your manuscript to our usual professional standard, but in addition we will offer you a line-by-line edit specifically designed to improve your style, structure and form, and a set of guidance notes, giving commentary and advice.
- Our seven-part Health Hazards series deals with the dangers facing writers as they spend hours at their computer, including the dreaded Carpal Tunnel Syndrome. Prevention is better than cure, so it's worth making yourself aware of the risks as soon as you feel the first twinge and taking action to avoid things deteriorating.
- Links to writers' stories: a bestselling crime novelist has been forced to deny claims that she tricked readers into buying books she didn't write herself, Sweden's ‘queen of Noir' Camilla Läckberg accused of using a ghostwriter | Publishing | The Guardian; following the posthumous release of his final few novels, there could never again be a new book from the master, until Terry Pratchett: Remarkable way lost stories were found by fans; in the eighth decade of my life I am pondering the wisdom of writing a very personal memoir, Is It Worthwhile to Write My Memoir, Especially If a Publishing Deal Is Unlikely? | Jane Friedman; and a shocking new US Authors Guild survey finds that median book and writing-related income for authors in 2022 was below the poverty level, Writing Books Remains a Tough Way to Make a Living.
- 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
- '[As a writer] you have to have the three D's: drive, discipline and desire. If you're missing any one of those three, you can have all the talent in the world, but it's going to be really hard to get anything done.' Nora Roberts in our Writers' Quotes.
