Phoebe Morgan's Blog, page 4

Pricing and promotions

When you give over control of your book to a publishing house, your publisher will then decide on the pricing – how much the ebook retails for on Amazon and other e-tailers, and, through deals with the stores, how much the book will be sold at at retailers such as supermarkets / WHS / Waterstones etc. This is usually something which goes on very much behind the scenes, but it can be a source of anxiety to writers (especially when it comes to ebooks) so I thought I would try to explain it a li...

Responding to edits on your book

As an editor, part of my job is to send authors feedback on their novels and let them know what I think is working well, and what perhaps needs a little more work. As a writer now too, I’ve also experienced this from the other side and I wanted to do a quick post about it. Receiving edits on your book can be a very strange feeling – after all, this is something you’ve probably spent months labouring over, and you’re understandably nervous to see what someone else in the publishing industry th...

Restructuring your novel

Someone on Facebook recently posted to ask me about how to restructure an entire book if it needs a bit of an overhaul. This is something I work with authors on at Avon, and it’s also something I had to do for my own book, so I do have a few tips on the best way to approach this. Looking at the structure of your finished novel can feel quite overwhelming – especially when you’ve already written 100,000 words and can’t bear the thought of having to move them all around like a nightmarish jigsa...

On being kind to each other

I recently had a bit of an odd experience in an author Facebook group, and it got me thinking about the wider writing community. I suppose I have been lucky – this was the first time I’d ever been subjected to online hate, and let me tell you, it wasn’t a picnic in the park! Overall, since I have been in the publishing industry I have found almost everybody to be incredibly supportive and kind, and I just want to emphasise here how important that is as I don’t think I am alone in my unfortuna...

Writing a first draft

I had someone ask a question recently about how to write a first draft and thought I’d do a blog post on this. The short answer is: you just have to write it! That’s not the most helpful piece of advice in the world, but it is the truth. Writing out that first draft can feel like pulling teeth at times – I’ve written three full length manuscripts now in total and there were points in all three where I had to really force myself to keep going. Persistence, as they say, is key.

In addition to...

Writing a Synopsis

When I first started trying to write, I spent ages agonizing over how to craft a good synopsis to send to literary agents. It was before I worked in fiction publishing, so I didn’t have as much knowledge about how it all worked as I do now. But after a question from the lovely Rae Cowie, I wanted to just address the topic in case it’s helpful to anyone else.

So without further ado, here are my top tips for writing a good synopsis to send out to literary agents (or to publishers, if you’re goi...

Happy new year!

I wanted to just say a huge thank you to everybody who has been following along with my little blog so far – it’s been a lot of fun writing about the publishing world and I hope to do more in 2018! This year has been a very exciting one book-wise, and The Doll House has now been chosen by six bloggers as one of their books of 2017. This is a huge honour (and surprise) for me – I know just how hard book reviewers and bloggers work (usually for free) and it’s a real privilege to hear reader res...

Digital-first vs paperback publishing

As some of you might know, I am a big fan of digital publishing – my Kindle is my prized possession, it goes everywhere with me and the day my old one broke was a very dark day indeed (luckily, I got a new one WITH A BACKLIGHT)! As a commissioning editor, I have to do a huge amount of reading for my job, and my Kindle makes this so much easier because all I have to do is forward the word documents I receive from literary agents onto my device and start reading. I also love the flexibility Kin...

Plotting vs winging it

Whenever I speak to other writers, one of the things I’m always endlessly curious about is whether they plot out every stage of their novel, or simply start writing and see where the book takes them. I’m definitely in the latter camp, although I did try to plot as much as I could for my second book (which I’ve just handed in to my agent – yay!) I find it very interesting that different authors approach writing in totally different ways – and I don’t personally believe that one way is better t...

Your publisher’s decisions

Signing with a publishing house is undoubtedly a very exciting experience, but it can also come with a side of confusion, especially for debut authors. It can be hard to let your work go, because you’ve worked on it so hard and up until now, you’ve been in control (perhaps with your agent too). I wanted to explain some of the decisions publishers might make for your book, and why.

1. Changing your book title

I work for a very commercial publishing house, so we do this quite a lot for our auth...