16 January 2023 - What's new
16 January 2023
- ‘It's a big part of the job. Being able to put yourself in their shoes is really important. I'm not a writer, but I watch a lot of author content online and I read a lot of stuff from authors. Having that perspective is really important for me to be able to give my authors context. Their emotions are important. If they're disappointed we didn't sell, so am I. Being able to sit in that space is important, but my job as an agent is to move the author from despair to strategy, asking questions like: what are we doing to do next? What do we learn from this? It's a skill to sit in the darkness with them, and to get ourselves out into what's next... Hannah Schofield, literary agent at LBA in London, in Bookbrunch.
- Our Worldbuilding series continues. Worldbuilding 4 deals with technology: 'There is a scene in Indiana Jones - Raiders of the Lost Ark where Jones is suddenly faced with a ninja swordsman. The ninja performs an elaborate show-off routine with his sword, preparing for the kill; Jones takes out a revolver and shoots him. It's a neat comic episode, but it could also stand as a caveat for writers of fantasy fiction: get your technology right or your epic may turn into a comedy...'
- How to get your book translated into English (without it costing the earth) asks writers who are not native English speakers with a manuscript which needs polishing or translating: "If your English is good enough, what about translating your book yourself or writing in English, and then getting your work polished and copy edited by a professional editor who is a native English speaker?" This could be a cost-effective way of reaching the international English-speaking market, using our English Language Editing service.
- The BBC National Short Story Award 2023 has now opened and closes on 13 March. It is open to British nationals and UK residents, aged 18 years or over. There's no entry fee. The winner gets £15,000 and four 4 shortlisted authors get £600. They will all benefit from excellent publicity.
- For other opportunities, including the Carcanet open submissions window for poetry submissions, see this page.
- Links to news from the publishing world: an excellent insider's view of the recent attempted publishing merger, Markus Dohle's Failed Bid to Eat Simon & Schuster; a well-argued article about publishing v self-publishing, When a publisher might not do as good a job as a self-publishing author - The Idea Logical Company; the latest trends in US book sales; The Bookseller - News - US sales of print books dropped 6.5% in 2022 but adult fiction sees increase; a review of the world in publishing from a veteran publisher, Richard Charkin: A Selective Year-End Assessment of Publishing; a terrifying picture of where book censorship could lead, A Perfectly Inoffensive School Library.
- From our 19-part Inside Publishing series, The Relationship between Publishers and Agents: 'Why do publishers need agents? Actually they don't need them, although they have come to rely on them. In many ways publishers would prefer to deal direct with unagented authors. It's authors who need agents. Writers need someone to sell their work and then to look after their relationship with their publishers....'
- From the same series, Marketing: 'If you are looking into publishing from the outside, it helps to understand the different functions of the publisher's internal departments. The last few years has seen the inexorable rise of the marketing department in ‘trade' or general publishing. This is part of the increasing dominance of publishing by sales and marketing, as the more traditional editorial control over publishing decisions has diminished sharply...'
- Our 22 Services for Writers offers links to all our editorial services - the biggest range on the web.
- Links to writers' stories: What began with an innocent flirtation quickly devolved into a full-blown affair, Unguilty Pleasures: My Year of Reading Romance Novels ‹ Literary Hub; how important is it where you are when you're writing, A Thin Place: Carole Johnstone on Moving to Scotland's Outer Hebrides ‹ CrimeReads; "My grandmother said, ‘Hungry dogs run faster,'" says the 75-year-old. "I've always been a hungry dog." How Author James Patterson Writes 31 Books at the Same Time | GQ; the book I came back to, Philip Pullman: ‘I had to grow up before I could cope with Middlemarch' | Philip Pullman | The Guardian.
- 'I cannot emphasise enough my gratitude to writerservices.com. I more or less expected that they would treat me and my texts professionally - after all, this is what the site offers. What I haven't expected was the extra mile they were prepared to go on my behalf, their beautiful attention to both the letter and the spirit of what I had to say. My manuscript has now found an agent - a happy development in which they have definitely played a role. All I can say is that if I ever produce anything else, I will definitely be their client again.' Sveta, Windsor, UK, on our Endorsements page.
- 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 may feel you need.
- How to prepare your prelim pages: There is a set order for the pages at the beginning of a book (known in the business as 'prelims') and you will need to send them to the designer with the rest of the manuscript for them to work on if you are self-publishing. Here we provide detailed instructions for preparing your prelim pages, according to standard publishing practice.
- More from writers: Happy New Year, book lovers! TBR Pile Threatening to Topple? Let Go of the Guilt . . . ‹ CrimeReads; best known for her novels exploring society and class, The Bookseller - News - Celebrated novelist Fay Weldon dies, aged 91; UK Authors' Earnings and Contracts 2022: A Survey of 60,000 Writers, Surveying the Profession(s), How Much Do UK Writers Earn? and, perhaps the most acclaimed book editor of his time, Robert Gottlieb edited Caro, le Carré and 'Catch-22' but is OK being 'unseen' : NPR.
- Rotten Rejections provides a note of the things publishers wish they'd never said: on Animal Farm by George Orwell ‘It is impossible to sell animal stories in the USA' and Carrie by Stephen King 'We are not interested in science fiction which deals with negative utopias. They do not sell.'
- Have you ever wondered why you don't win any of those competitions? What can you do to improve your chances? Our tipsheet on Entering Competitions.
- A miscellany of links: I sought solace in crime fiction, Men Are the Most Likely Victims of Homicide. Why Do Crime Writers Kill So Many Women? ‹ CrimeReads; Aaliyah Aroha's video, posted to her account, now has 2.5 million views and more than 431,000 likes, BookTok trope-ification debate: How hashtagging titles is affecting authors and readers; people from many different industries have watched the rapid erosion of Twitter... but for me, Twitter has and always will be a platform that helped me find my way in book publishing, Finding Connection on Twitter; in 2022, translation has become a disruptive innovation in what has been termed a monoglot and insular world, Gains in translation for fiction readers and publishers - The Irish Times.
- ‘I cannot find any patience for those people who believe that you start writing when you sit down at your desk and pick up your pen and finish writing when you put down your pen again; a writer is always writing, seeing everything through a thin mist of words, fitting swift little descriptions to everything he sees, always noticing.' Shirley Jackson in our Writers' Quotes.
