Chris Holifield

Chris Holifield is the co-founder of WritersServices.  She has spent her working life in publishing, employed by everything from global corporations to start-ups.  She was editorial director of Sphere Books, publishing director of The Bodley HeadRandom House imprint, publishing director for the start-up of the upmarket book club, The Softback Preview, editorial director of what was then Britain’s biggest book club group, BCA, and, most recently, deputy MD and publisher of Cassell & Co. She is also currently the Director of the Poetry Book SocietySpecialist book club founded by T S Eliot in 1953, which aims to offer the best new poetry published in the UK and Ireland. Members buy at 25% discount. The PBS has a handsome new website at  www.poetrybooks.co.uk.

During all of this time she has been aware of the problems faced by writers, as publishing has changed from an idiosyncratic cottage industry, ‘an occupation for gentlemen’, into the corporate business of today. Writers have encountered increasing difficulty in getting their books edited or published. 

With the arrival of print on demand writers can now self-publish at a reasonable cost and with the rise of the internet, digitisation and the ebook many new avenues are open to them. It's also a time of unprecedented change in publishing. All of this means both fantastic opportunities and and new problems for writers.