What's New in 2022
- ‘How many times was I asked while still writing it: "What makes Harry Potter so popular?" I never had a good answer. It has occurred to me since that much of what young people found in the Potter books are the very same things they seek online... But the great thing about a book as opposed to a social media platform is that it puts no pressure on its reader to perform or conform. Like a friendly common room, it's there to retreat to, but it doesn't judge. It makes no crushing demands.' J K Rowling, author of the Harry Potter books, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them and the Cormorant Strike series, in the Sunday Times Culture.
- 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 21 years. We have introduced free samples and free assessments on most of these services, please see the individual service page. Copy editing services.
- 'So you want to be a crime writer? This is probably a good choice. Crime writing has long been popular with readers across the English-speaking world but it had a real resurgence a few years ago. Although publishers have reined back from the subsequent tendency towards over-production, there is still a solid market for good crime writing and many bestselling writers, such as Richard Osman, write in this category. As well as being a long term publishing staple in the main English-speaking markets, the US and UK, crime novels are much in demand in translation, especially in Europe...' Writing crime fiction in our Genre writing series.
- Young poets will have to be quick to enter the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award 2022, which closes on 31 July. Poets from anywhere in the world aged 11-17 years can enter their poems written in English and there's no entry fee. This really is the leading international competition for young poets, the Top 15 winners get publication in the Foyle Young Poets 2022 Anthology and there's plenty of other useful activity around the Award.
- Links from the publishing world: this closely watched case holds major implications for the US publishing industry, Showdown: DOJ's Bid to Block PRH Acquisition of S&S Is Heading to Trial; turmoil in the prizes business, The Bookseller - News - Desmond Elliott Prize on hiatus for 2023 while Sunday Times Short Story Award could be discontinued; more on this, The Bookseller - News - Organisers concerned for future of prize sponsorship after spate of cancellations; as an industry we assume the sky is falling down, even when it isn't, The Bookseller - Editor's Letter - Tick Tok; and the latest chapter in British publishing's increasingly furious fight with itself, From morality clauses to sensitivity readers: inside UK publishing's identity crisis - New Statesman.
- How Literary Agents Work - an article written exclusively for Writersservices by literary agent Mark Gottlieb of Trident Media: '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...' A short but clear summary of what agents do.
- 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 can help you get your submission package into the best possible shape, giving you a professional view of your submission material and clear suggestions for any improvements.
- Links from writers: the long, frustrating process of querying seems so one-sided, Why Agents Don't Give Feedback-And Where to Get It Instead | Jane Friedman; placing your novel in another period? The narrator will be forced to figure it all out, Adventures in Writing Time Travel ‹ CrimeReads; murder your darlings, Repeat After Me: "I Am Not the Great American Novelist." ‹ Literary Hub; and a key value of most diaries is that they capture the moment, Diaries: without benefit of hindsight.
- '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 in our Endorsements page.
- 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.
- More links from writers: most readers love them, and most writers love to write them, Why do so many long-running series work so well? ‹ CrimeReads; "Sixth century?" one said. "Sixth? Really? Isn't that a bridge too far?" The Challenges of Writing Fiction About the "Darkest Corner of the Dark Ages" ‹ Literary Hub; 'Take out another notebook, pick up another pen, and just write, just write, just write.' Writing practice is a way of life; living in a city of 'brutal frankness', Full Faith and Confidence: A Conversation with Denise Mina ‹ CrimeReads; and how J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle-earth almost became a setting for Dungeons & Dragons, How a Lord of the Rings and Dungeons & Dragons Crossover Almost Happened ‹ Literary Hub.
- 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.
- From Lidia Longorio in our Writers' Quotes page 'Write what you know. Learn what you don't.'
- 'In many ways writing is the act of saying I, of imposing oneself upon other people, of saying listen to me, see it my way, change your mind. It's an aggressive, even a hostile act... there's no getting around the fact that setting words on paper is the tactic of a secret bully, an invasion, an imposition of the writer's sensibility on the reader's most private space.' Joan Didion, author of 19 books including The Year of Magical thinking, Slouching towards Bethlehem, Play It As It Lays and The Panic in Needle Park.
- Writing is a continual learning process. The best authors develop their skills over time and constantly strive to improve. And there is a lot to learn: plotting; dialogue; action scenes and set pieces; character development; continuity and consistency; style, language and tone. Our developmental edit is specifically designed to help you bring your writing to the next level. Our experienced team of editors will guide and support you, helping you to grow as a writer, as you take your book project from draft manuscript to finished product. Our brand-new Developmental editing service.
- Our other just-launched and unique new service is The Cutting edit.
- For anyone thinking about or embarked on self-publishing, our ten-part WritersServices Self-Publishing Guide by Joanne PhillipsUK-based freelance writer and ghostwriter. She has had articles published in national writing magazines, and has ghostwritten books on subjects as diverse as hairdressing and keeping chickens. Visit her at www.joannephillips.co.uk is an essential starting-point, taking you through the process step-by-step. 'Self-publishing has changed so much over the past few years it's hard to believe it was once looked down upon by the publishing industry as the last resort of the vain and desperate. At the time of writing many self-publishing authors are identifying with the term ‘indie author', which acknowledges that to professionally publish today, you don't actually have to do everything yourself!' Articles include Formatting your book for Kindle and Marketing and Promotion for Indie Authors: Online.
- The Bridport Prize 2022 Check on the individual category on their website for entry and fees for Poetry, Short Story, Novel, Flash Fiction and new Memoir category. Entry fees various, please check with them. Most are open to authors throughout the world. The Memoir Prize closes on 30 September.
- Links from the publishing world: the latest trend in US book sales, Is the Book Sales Boom Finally Over? In the UK the position of many small presses is difficult, The Bookseller - News - Rising costs mix 'bitter cocktail' for small indies; a historical perspective on children's publishing, Making Room for Children's Books; a matching article on children's book sales, Whither Children's Bookselling? And the extraordinary story of copyright under massive threat, Publishers File for Summary Judgment Against the Internet Archive.
- Writing Biography & Autobiography is a serialisation from our Archives of the book by Brian D Osborne published by A & C BlackClick for A & C Black Publishers Publishers References listing. 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 22 services for writers, just a listing of what we provide to help you get your manuscript ready for publication. We think it's the widest range on the web.
- Links from writers: let's look at Gone Girl as literature. Gone Girl is not just clever marketing and good timing. It's art, Gillian Flynn Is the Real Gone Girl ‹ CrimeReads; children's poet appointed laureate, Joseph Coelho chosen as Britain's new children's laureate | Books | The Guardian; every now and again, a character steps into a book fully formed and sheds a special kind of narrative glow, Meeting with a killer; and, for fans of the FAS, The Enduring Appeal of the Female Amateur Sleuth ‹ CrimeReads.
- Are you getting ready to publish your book - perhaps planning to self-publish? WritersServices offers a suite of twelve services which help writers get their work into shape before they self-publish. Services for Self-publishers
- Links on agencies, prizes and readers: if you're going to build a bigger agency you need to have a global strategy, The Bookseller - News - UTA and Curtis Brown deal is opportunity to respond to big publishers and streamers, says Geller; the USP of the Whitbreads, which morphed into the Costas 14 years ago, was that they didn't buy into literary snobbery, Shock ending: how the Costa book awards changed reading - and pitted husband against wife | Books | The Guardian; and depressing US survey, Over 50% of Adults Have Not Finished a Book in the Last Year.
- It may surprise you to know that the first of Julie Wheelwright's Top Ten Tips for Nonfiction Writers is: 'Story, story, story. Make sure that your story can sustain several chapters and tens of thousands of words. Keep asking yourself: Why would anyone want to read this story?'
- Links from writers' lives: how do you write a book about a tween who lives for TikTok when you aren't on TikTok? When Authors Play the TikTok Game; "Why don't you start something new. See what happens. Have fun. Play." Marcy Dermansky on Revising Without Losing Your Mind ‹ Literary Hub; something you can practice, a skill you can develop, everyone can learn it, Negotiation Tips for Writers and Creatives; and Goethe's The Sorrows of Werther is an example of both art's cultural power and also the unpredictability of its influence, When Will Novels Fix Society Already? - by Lincoln Michel.
- Advice for Writers is a really useful page which takes you into our archive and helps you explore our more than 8,000 pages of information for writers.
- 'There's an epigram tacked to my office bulletin board, pinched from a magazine - "Wanting to meet an author because you like his work is like wanting to meet a duck because you like pâté."' Margaret Atwood in our Writers' Quotes.