Blogs
Welcome to the hub of ideas, solutions, and ruminations of all things writing, from writing a book to its publication. Leveraging the expertise and experience of hundreds of writers, editors and literary professionals to bring you fresh, crisp, and useful knowledge about the literary world.
The UK publishing industry is one of the most competitive and nuanced in the world. Whether you are approaching the Big Five publishers in London, submitting to an independent press,...
Some books arrive quietly. They slip onto the shelf, accumulate a modest readership, and wait. The Summer I Turned Pretty by Jenny Han did the opposite. First published in 2009,...
You are standing in a bookshop. You pick up a novel you have never heard of. You read the first sentence. In those three seconds, or fewer, something happens. Either...
There is a particular kind of urgency that arrives at eleven o’clock at night, when you close the last page of a book and immediately need to talk to someone...
There is something unmistakable about a Ladybird book. The weight of it, that satisfying, pocket-sized hardback, barely bigger than a child’s hand. The smell of the pages. The full-colour illustration...
Picture the scene. Your child comes home from school with a single instruction scrawled in their homework diary: Write a poem. They sit at the kitchen table, pencil hovering, staring...