What's New in 2020
- 'The rules for writing under lockdown are no different to other ties. It won't happen unless you make it happen. It's incremental and frustrating, and your chances of being paid for it are tiny, but it's a fascinating process, with all the glamour and excitement of an affair but with less chance of divorce. Once you discover the joys of it, and the pains, it will bring you the deepest pleasure. Good luck...' Writing under Lockdown from Louise Doughty, author of nine novels including Platform Seven, Apple Tree Yard and Black Water, and the how-to-write guide A Novel in a Year, in the Sunday Times Magazine.
- 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...'
- You'll have to be very quick to enter The Bridport Prize 2020, which closes on 31 May. There are four parts to this Prize, as follows: Poetry, Short Story and Flash Fiction are open to unpublished work from any writer writing in English over 16. The Novel Award is restricted to UK writers. The entry fees are £10 per poem, £12 per story, £9 for flash fiction and £20 per novel. Poetry and Short Story 1st Prize £5,000, 2nd Prize £1,000, 3rd Prize £500. Flash Fiction 1st Prize £1,000, 2nd Prize £500 and 3rd Prize £250. Novel Award 1st Prize £1500, 2nd Prize £750 and 3 awards of £150. Go for it!
- Other competitions which are still open.
- We have a new endorsement from Daniela Stanciulescu in Paris, on her English Language Editing for writers who are not native English speakers: ‘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.'
- Our links: the impact on publishing and authors, How Book Publishers Decided To Move Publication Dates During The COVID-19 Pandemic; hundreds of YA book releases and publicity plans have been altered by the Covid-19 pandemic, YA Authors Move Online; this will be a very different Frankfurt. The plan is to run the event not only on the fair's grounds but also decentralized at locations in the city, and as a virtual event, Frankfurt Book Fair 2020 to go ahead | The Bookseller; a lively conversation with Judy Blume, Curtis Sittenfeld Rewrites Hillary Clinton's Life Without Bill; and "like watching an IMAX movie from the front row," NPD's Kristen McLean on US Book Sales During the Pandemic.
- 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.'
- More links: the Pandemic will hit many industries hard, there is a particularly deep fear for those in the relatively privileged cultural industries, Radical Publishing in a Pandemic; making sure your readers are on the edge of their seats, Five tips for keeping your readers gripped - National Centre for Writing; in 1909, long before the invention of the World Wide Web or the prospect of a world where we must live socially distant from each other, he arguably predicted both, How E.M. Forster's Only Foray Into Sci-Fi Predicted Social Distancing | Literary Hub; and what a truly amazing row, Romance Writers of America aims for happy end to racism row with new prize | Books | The Guardian.
- Our 20 Services for writers - just a list of what we offer at WritersServices.
- From our Writers' Quotes 'Sometimes the ideas just come to me. Other times I have to sweat and almost bleed to make ideas come. It's a mysterious process, but I hope I never find out exactly how it works. I like a mystery, as you may have noticed.' J K Rowling.
- ‘It's difficult to envision what will appeal post-Covid19; however, the current trend for uplifting reads is bound to continue, with readers looking for distraction and escape from a fairly dire reality - warm humour, salvation, (stories of) unexpected success, happiness, or beating the odds release tension and provide solace... A staple diet of Netflix thrillers should increase the appetite for more of the same but, perhaps most importantly, crime has always done well in darker times, perhaps because readers are able to take comfort in the fact that their own lives seem comparatively less bleak. Karen Sullivan, founder of Orenda Books in the Bookseller. Our Comment.
- Tips for writers is our 8-part crash course for writers who are starting out, taking you from Improving your writing to Self-publishing: is it for you? to Keep up to date and Submission to publishers and agents. 'Be prepared to redraft your work and to rethink it. Many new writers assume that their work will immediately be ready for publication, but the truth is that many highly successful writers produced several drafts of their first work before they got it published.' and 'When you've got your work into the best state you can, put it on one side for a few weeks and then look at it afresh. You'll be amazed what difference a fresh eye will make.'
- Anthology Magazine Short Story Competition for unpublished short stories is open to all. Entry fee: Early Bird: by 31 May 2020 - €10 per story, Final Deadline: 31 July 2020 - €15 per story. The Prize is a €300 cash prize and the chance to see your work published in a future issue of Anthology Magazine. Closing 31 July.
- Other competitions which are still open.
- The most recent addition to our range of reports is the Editor's Report Plus, a substantial report which offers chapter-by-chapter commentary on your manuscript, with a helpful blueprint for any further work which is recommended. It gives you the kind of expert advice which is usually only available from an in-house editor, which is why it has quickly become our most popular report.
- Our links: what are editors looking for now? In Pandemic, Dystopian Fiction Loses Its Luster for Editors; it's not why write about sex, claims author Garth Greenwell, it's why write about anything else? 'I wanted something 100% pornographic and 100% high art': the joy of writing about sex | Books | The Guardian; a vital skill that all fiction writers need to master, World-Building: The 10 Key Elements - The Art of Narrative; not going to the key children's book fair was unthinkable, A Virtual Bologna: One Agent's Experience; and the latest step in its efforts to become a global entertainment giant, Publishing platform Wattpad to develop film and TV projects based on stories from website - The Globe and Mail.
- We have a new page which gives an editor's take on using pdfs, So what's wrong with PDFs? 'If you need your file to be edited, PDF is not the ideal format; in fact, it is practically the worst format you can choose. Why? Precisely because PDFs are designed not to be tampered with or changed. When you stop to think about it, editing is no more or less than a process of changing - and correcting - your file...'
- More links: the story of an extraordinary young writer, Natural talent: the 16 year-old writer taking the world by storm | Books | The Guardian; print book sales in the US continue to defy expectations that the coronavirus crisis will lead to a plunge in sales, Print Unit Sales Post Another Double Digit Gain; "undoubtedly the best writer in America", but What to Make of Isaac Asimov, Sci-Fi Giant and Dirty Old Man? | Literary Hub; and you can read the shortlisted stories online, Shortlist for 2020 AKO Caine Prize Announced - The Caine Prize for African Writing.
- 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.
- 'And remember: you must never, under any circumstances, despair. To hope and to act, these are our duties in misfortune.' Boris Pasternak in our Writers' Quotes.
- ‘The last four or five years in publishing have been great. We're in mourning for them. But you can only dwell on that for a few moments before you say: the reading and the writing are still there. Original work will come out of this lockdown, just as it did out of austerity; it has shone a light on globalisation, and the inconveniences that we have, to a degree forgotten, like mortality...' Publisher Stephen Page, CEO of Faber & Faber, in the Observer. Our Comment.
- 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.
- 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, Writer's edit, a new line-editing service, and English Language Editing for writers who are not native English speakers. We also provide a Proof-reading service. Now with free samples for nearly all, plus some free assessments. Our UK-based Editing services for writers have a solid professional reputation and we often have authors coming back to us for further assistance, see our Endorsements.
- Our links - how Coronavirus is affecting booksellers and publishers: is this an opportunity to drag the book world into the 21st century? Could lockdown herald an exciting new chapter for the book trade? | Books | The Guardian; last fall, Kyle Hall's bookstore was destroyed by a tornado. This spring, it was almost wiped out by a pandemic, For Bookstore Owners, Reopening Holds Promise and Peril - The New York Times; big publishers are still awaiting the impact, For Publishers, It's Still the Calm Before the Storm; and, on a lighter note, Working from Home: An Editor's Tale.
- Advice for Writers is a really useful page which takes you into our archive and helps you explore our more than 7,000 pages of information for writers.
- More links: genre is a funny thing, Genre Labels: What Makes a Book More Thriller Than Sci-Fi? | CrimeReads; novelist N.K. Jemisin was a teenager the first time she read Octavia Butler, and nothing had prepared her for it, Octavia Butler's prescient sci-fi resonates years after her death; families! Look no further for a source of fears, How Having Kids Can Change Your Life - And Your Horror Fiction | CrimeReads; it's been 15 years since Little, Brown published Stephenie Meyer's Twilight - a book that sold more than 100 million copies, launched a multi-billion-dollar movie franchise, and kicked off a vampire craze, The Return of the YA Vampire; and you can't have a good thriller without a nasty and formidable opponent for your hero, How to Write a Killer Villain 2 | Jane Friedman.
- Have you ever wondered whether there's any point in entering competitions? Someone must be winning, but why is it somehow never you? Here's some tips to help you achieve a better result. Entering competitions.
- Seven prizes and competitions which are still open.
- 'Only Southerners have taken horsewhips and pistols to editors about the treatment or maltreatment of their manuscript. This - the actual pistols - was in the old days, of course, we no longer succumb to the impulse. But it is still there, within us.' William Faulkner in our Writers' Quotes.
- ‘I think this period, if it's doing nothing else, is probably making reading a more central part of people's lives than before. Reading is always, in one sense, a form of escape. It's escaping into a life which is not the life that you're actually having to live. That's why we do it.' Penelope Lively, author of Booker Prize-winning Moon Tiger, Family Album and more than 38 other books for adults and children in the Observer. Escaping the Lockdown.
- An Editor's advice on planning, part of our 7-part series, 'Some people like to know exactly what they're doing before they start writing. They make very elaborate diagrams of the plot, note what each character is doing and when - this is particularly useful if you're writing a story which depends very heavily on a complex series of events coming together at just the right moment. Some writers focus on building detailed descriptions of their characters, so they know how they will react in any given situation, and then put them into the action. Once they've made a plan, they stick to it, but they then make a note of the ideas they have as they work, and then go back later and see if they can be incorporated into the story. If not, they might be worth using elsewhere...'
- The Aesthetica Creative Writing Award 2020 is open to all. The entry fee for Poetry entries is £12, with £18 for Short Fiction entries, but hurry because there's an offer if you enter by 10 May. £1,000 is awarded to both the Poetry and Short Fiction winners, plus publication the Aesthetica Creative Writing Anthology, which is awarded to 60 writers shortlisted by the judging panel. Closing 31 August.
- 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.
- Our links: A Portable Paradise, which has already won the T S Eliot prize, moves from the Grenfell Tower fire to the Windrush generation and the legacy of slavery, Roger Robinson's poems of Trinidad and London win Ondaatje prize | Books | The Guardian; ever since early March independent booksellers have been tweaking their business models in an attempt to remain solvent, Virtual Author Events Are the Next Big Thing; a significant proportion of the UK and Ireland's smallest independent presses say their businesses are at risk as a result of the Coronavirus lockdown, Small presses fear being 'wiped out' by autumn | The Bookseller; if you're in any way a member of the independent publishing community, welcome, What Can Independent Presses Do to Survive These Uncertain Times? and another really thorough article, How to Write a Novel Synopsis | Jane Friedman.
- If, in spite of Jane Friedman's help, you find it difficult to write your own synopsis for submission to agents and publishers, our Synopsis-writing service can help. If you're preparing to self-publish and having difficulty with your blurb, our Blurb-writing service from a professional copy-writer will make your book stand out.
- More links: 'I miss writing stories in which a life lived online does not figure, On the Relief of Ignoring the Internet in Fiction | Literary Hub; on publishing when bookshops are closed, being an ‘exercise nut' and the dangers posed to writers by mob rule, Lionel Shriver: 'Some people think I'm evil incarnate' | Books | The Guardian; the Queens of Crime who dominated the Golden Age of British detective writing, Christie & Sayers & Allingham & Tey | CrimeReads; and, from a fan of the great poet who left it too late, Dear Eavan Boland, I Wanted to Send You a Letter | Literary Hub.
- 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.
- From our Writers' Quotes, Stephen King on audiobooks: ‘I listen to my own books. The reason why is because you can hear everything you did right and everything you did wrong. This is the most honourable form of storytelling there is.'