1 February 2021 - What's new
1 February 2021
- ‘So in that sense, I and my fellow horror writers are absorbing and defusing all your fears and anxieties and insecurities and taking them upon ourselves. We're sitting in the darkness beyond the flickering warmth of your fire, cackling into our caldrons and spitting out spider webs of words, all the time sucking the sickness from your minds and spewing it out into the night.' Stephen King, whose scores of works include The Stand, Carrie, The Dark Tower and The Dead Zone.
- The Inside Publishing series consists of 19 articles giving you an insider's view of publishing. The English Language Publishing World looks at the traditional way in which the international English-language publishing has been split between UK and US publishers. Why does the world get divided up into publishing territories? How has this come about? How does it affect authors? Then there's 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...'
- The 2021 Page Turner Awards are closing on 30 May. Open to all fiction and non-fiction writers over 18. Five different awards aim to help writers and authors to get discovered with possible literary agency representation and potentially taking a published book from page to film. Entry fees £20 for entries received by 28 February and £30 after that. £10,000 prize fund.
- 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, English Language Editing for those for whom English is not a native language, our latest new service Writer's edit, providing line-editing, and Proof-reading. Get the right level of editorial support for your needs. Our low-cost services represent exceptionally good value. Contact us to discuss what you want.
- Our links from the publishing world: will the Department of Justice block this acquisition? Authors Guild Asks DoJ to Stop PRH Purchase of S&S; "it is not our role to further judge or punish [people] as a result of their criminal convictions", US magazine Poetry faces outcry for publishing work by sex offender | Poetry | The Guardian; a surprise move from Bezos, As Revenue Tops $380 Billion, Bezos to Step Down as Amazon CEO; more on Bezos (if you want it) from a 2008 profile, PW's Person of the Year 2008: Amazon's Jeff Bezos; twenty-five years later, an updated piece on this was still timely, 'The Unbearable Whiteness of Publishing' Revisited.
- From our Endorsements page: ‘A wonderfully detailed and helpful report. The editorial advice and knowledge sharing is extensive and generous. Your editor has identified the points where and why my novel falls short and provided clear and practical advice on how to remedy the shortfalls... I would not hesitate to recommend your service to other writers both in terms of output and value for money.' Elspeth, UK.
- Links on writing and writers: a point of view character who you can't trust for one reason or another, Unreliable Narrator: Definition & How To Use Them - The Art of Narrative; have we become overwhelmed by mindless scrolling through social media? Page refresh: how the internet is transforming the novel | Fiction | The Guardian; should you write what you know? Stay in your lane? Find your niche? Pick Your Pond: How Nonfiction Authors Can Find the Right Positioning | Jane Friedman; J K Rowling was an unpublished, unemployed single mother in Edinburgh in 1995 when she sent him the first three chapters of her first book, Christopher Little, Who Built an Empire Around a Boy Wizard, Dies at 79 - The New York Times; and something completely different, Teaching stories about cancer.
- Our page of Picture library links provides a good starting-point for finding an image for your book, whether it's for the cover or inside. Gograph was the last one we added with its 18 million stock links.
- 'I believe that a writer is a person who writes. An author is a person who has written.' Dean Wesley Smith in our Writers' Quotes.