What's New in 2020
- As we all work our way through lockdown, now is a perfect time to finish your manuscript and to get it ready for publication or submission. This page provides a list of our editorial services for writers.
- 'It was only after two years' work that it occurred to me that I was a writer. I had no particular expectation that the novel would ever be published, because it was sort of a mess. It was only when I found myself writing things I didn't realise I knew that I said, 'I'm a writer now'...
Don DeLillo, author of 17 novels, including Americana, Running Dog, White Noise, Underworld, Libra, Falling Man and Zero. Our Comment.
- 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 17 years. We have introduced free samples and free assessments on most of these services, please see the individual service page. Copy editing services.
- My Say gives writers a chance to air their views about writing and the writer's life. So we have Natasha Mostert on typing 'The End', Mary Garden on writers' block, Timothy Hallinan on The Writing Session and Dominae Primus on WritersServices.
- Our links: bookshops reporting a significant increase in sales of longer novels and classic fiction, Book sales surge as self-isolating readers buy ‘bucket list' novels | Books | The Guardian; entertainment and educational support for parents, carers and children, Egmont offers 14 days of free content for children stuck at home; with cities and towns across the country under quarantine, bookstores closing, and in-person promotional events canceled, it's not a great time to be publishing a book, As Coronavirus Spreads, Publishers Struggle with When, and How, to Move Pub Dates; and if you're one of those people who always said they would write a novel if only they had the time: this is your moment, Finally working on that novel as you self-isolate? You're not alone | Books | The Guardian.
- If you're looking for a report on your manuscript, how do you work out which one of our four 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.
- More links: I was an audiobook failure. Not a failure at writing the books, mind you, but at listening to them, How to Start a Love Affair with Audiobooks | CrimeReads; one member of the homebound publishing community still trying to find a way to work, Coronavirus: How book publishing may change forever - Los Angeles Times; the outcry from publisher and author groups has been swift and furious, Authors Guild, AAP Outraged by IA's 'National Emergency Library'; from the megaselling author of legal thrillers, Scott Turow Finds the Thrilling Life, in Court and in Books; and I'm a hardboiled kind of gal, The Evolution-and the Future-of the Private Eye | CrimeReads.
- From Julian Barnes in our Writers' Quotes: 'Everything you invent is true: you can be sure of that. Poetry is a subject as precise as geometry.'
- If quotes are your bag, we have superb collections in More Writers' Quotes and Even More Quotes.
- ‘Do your homework. This is a very competitive genre and you need to be aware of not only current novels, but current television series and films too. There is nothing worse than working on a story for months only to find out it has already been done. I would also advise that you learn how to write a treatment of no more than two or three pages, because as a writer, you need commissions, be it in publishing, television or film...' Advice for aspiring crime screen writers from London Book & Screen Week ambassador Lynda La Plante, author of 33 novels, including The Legacy, Widows and Buried (published in April) and many TV series, including Widows and Prime Suspect in Bookbrunch.
- 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.
- Closing on 31 May , the International Welsh Poetry Competition 2020 is open to all with an entry fee of £6 for the first poem, then a sliding scale. The 1st Prize is £500, 2nd Prize £250 and 3rd Prize £100.
- Health Hazards is our special series about the various health risks for writers, including the dreaded Carpal Tunnel Syndrome. If you know you're spending too much time at a keyboard, it's worth making sure you're being careful about how you're sitting, your eyes and your wrists. Although Coronavirus may be the main health risk you're focused on at the moment, these special writers' risks are worth thinking about.
- And if Coronavirus is giving you more time at home to think about your writing, you could use it to explore the mass of information on the site. Advice for Writers.
- Our links: writers who have predicted plagues, Fever dreams: did author Dean Koontz really predict coronavirus? | Books | The Guardian; every minute with her kids is work lost, and each minute writing subtracts from precious, un-price-able joy, Karen Russell on Motherhood and Money | Wealthsimple; are there a limited number of story plots to go around? How Do You Write a Mystery When Every Plot Is Taken? | CrimeReads; and Anthony Horovitz on banning children's books, In defence of modern children's books | The Spectator.
- 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 17 years. We have recently introduced free samples and free assessments on most of these services, please see the individual service page. Copy editing services.
- More links: Malory Blackman's book examines life in an alternative Britain where black people dominate national life and have most of the money, Noughts & Crosses author hits back at race-bait claims | Books | The Guardian; the publishing powerhouse behind best-selling authors like Stephen King, Ursula K. Le Guin and Judy Blume, is on the block, Simon & Schuster Is Up for Sale - The New York Times; the argument over 'no platforming', Debate over Scottish Poetry Library's 'no platforming' stance continues | The Bookseller; and, more controversy, Woody Allen's memoirs: this is the behaviour of censors, not publishers | Jo Glanville | Opinion | The Guardian.
- Get some professional help. If you're self-publishing, you need good quality copy for the cover. Our Blurb-writing service can provide a professionally written piece of cover copy. Submitting to agents but finding it difficult to write your own synopsis? Commission a synopsis which will present your manuscript in the best possible light for submission.
- From Edna O'Brien in our Writers' Quotes: ‘My advice to writers, whether they are inspired or repelled by my work, is to read and reread, write and rewrite, keep to the grindstone, do not be swayed by fame or adulation, the work is the absolute prize.'
- 'Anyone who has ever tried to write a novel knows what an arduous task it is, undoubtedly one of the worst ways of occupying oneself. You have to remain within yourself all the time, in solitary confinement. It's a controlled psychosis, an obsessive paranoia manacled to work completely lacking in the feather pens and bustles and Venetian masks we would ordinarily associate with it, clothed instead in a butcher's apron and rubber boots, eviscerating knife in hand. You can only barely see from that writerly cellar the feet of passers-by, hear the rapping of their heels...' Olga Tokarczuk, Polish Nobel Laureate for Literature and author of House of Day, House of Night and Primeval and Other Tales. Our Comment.
- 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.
- The Moth Short Story Prize 2020 has now launched and is open to all writers over 16. The entry fee is €15 per story. 1st prize is €3,000, 2nd prize a week-long writing retreat at Circle of Misse in France plus €250 travel stipend and 3rd prize €1,000. Closing date 30 June.
- An must-read for children's authors is Suzy Jenvey's special series for WritersServices, the four-part Essential Guide to Writing for Children. The first article looks at the all-important question of age groups and what you should be aware of in writing for each one. The second part is - Before You Write: What is My Story Going to be? The third part deals with Starting to Write and the fourth part is about Submitting Your Work to Agents and Editors. This series by a hugely experienced children's editorial director and agent helps you get started on your own story or develop what you're already working on.
- Our links: was the delay in calling it off putting people's health at risk and placing an unfair financial strain on publishers? London book fair cancelled over coronavirus fears, amid growing anger | Books | The Guardian; an excellent guide to setting up that author's essential, your own website, How to Build an Author Website: Getting Started Guide | Jane Friedman; there is nothing more sustaining to long-term creative work than time and space - and these things cost money, A dirty secret: you can only be a writer if you can afford it | Life and style | The Guardian; and editing is energising, where you take your solid creation and nudge it into brilliance, When Revising Your Novel, Look for These 4 Problem Areas | Jane Friedman.
- Rotten Rejections an extraordinary collection of rejection letters sent by publishers to writers - many delivered to now famous authors of classic books - will make you laugh and provide comfort if you're having a struggle to get published. 'I regret we have reluctantly come to the conclusion that we could not publish it with commercial success...' An unnamed editor at Constable and Robinson, in turning down J K Rowling's first Harry Potter book.
- More links: as a reader of thrillers and mysteries for close to my whole life, I've always been drawn to the flawed protagonist, The New Vulnerability in the Mystery Genre | CrimeReads; Writing in the Observer in 1980, Martin Amis took to task a young New York-based writer, Jacob Epstein, for plagiarising him, Appropriation or plagiarism? Booker novel poses difficult question | Books | The Guardian; as we celebrate World Book Day in the UK, it is a reminder of how fortunate we are to have a strong children's book publishing industry, Ending illiteracy begins with children seeing themselves in books; and our world, more than at any time in history, is all about stories, but Are novelists obliged to tell the story of their private life? | Books | The Guardian.
- Which service should I choose to help me get my work into good shape for submission or self-publishing? Our editorial services have been added in response to demand, so whatever you want we've probably got it covered with our 20 different services.
- From our Writers' Quotes: 'Writers are liars, my dear, surely you know that by now? And yet, things need not have happened to be true. Tales and dreams are the shadow-truths that will endure when mere facts are dust and ashes, and forgot.' Neil Gaiman.