11 May 2020 - What's new
11 May 2020
- ‘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.