The question of how long a book should be is a common one. But it also seems to be an increasingly confused one, as self-published books don’t necessarily follow the same conventions as traditionally published titles, and challenges like NaNoWriMo suggest at least the...
This is my last post of 2020, and what a long and difficult year it has been. To finish the year on a high note, I’ve collected my favourite pieces of writing advice from great writers: Read, and Write “If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all...
Literary agents are not created equal, and a bad or incompetent agent is worse than no agent at all. A literary agent needs to be a) legitimate b) have a suitable track record and c) be a match for you, your work, and your career. Finding the right literary agent to...
Before a book is ready to submit to a literary agent or publisher, or to be self-published, it is usually edited to a high standard. Unedited or poorly edited books won’t get book deals. Readers avoid low-quality self-published books. Increasingly, editors at...
You made it! You got a book deal and now here are the terms – the contract. The publisher is asking you to read it, sign it and send it back. Some of it is a bit confusing, but…I mean, they know what they’re doing so it’ll be fine to just sign it, right? Wrong!...
Editing can be a thing an author both dreads and longs for. It can be so difficult to get any real, professional response to your work, especially in these days where agents and publishers may not even reply to submissions and allow the author to take silence as their...
You want to publish a book, you’ve done some research, and you think you might need an editor to help you – but how, and what will it cost? It’s the kind of question that can’t be answered without first answering a number of other questions. Will you be...
The short answer is no, certainly you are not too old to publish a first book. I will bet you there’s at least one author, in the list below, who was older than you when their first book was published. Ten writers who started ‘late’ 1. Toni Morrison, winner of...
From time to time, I’m asked to sign an NDA before a potential client will tell me anything about their book. This does seem to be more common in the USA, but I know other UK editors also run into it. These are not authors who are going to be privy to trade secrets,...
You want to get your stories out there and make some money as well. Self-publishing seems like a great way to do it: you can make the decisions over every aspect of your book and receive the bulk of the sale price in royalties too. You’re sure that if you work hard...
