Phoebe Morgan's Blog, page 5

The 2018 First Novel Prize

I’m really honoured to have been asked to judge the 2018 First Novel Prize next year alongside literary agent and author Sam Copeland. Sam and I will be reading manuscripts next summer and entries open in February 2018, so if you are an unpublished or self published writer (i.e. you own the rights to your book) of adult fiction, then please do consider submitting!

Full details are on the website, but your manuscript must be over 50,000 words in length and sadly YA, children’s, and non-fiction...

Self-publishing vs traditional: author interview with Mel Sherratt

I’m so delighted to be hosting the wonderful writer Mel Sherratt on the blog today. I’ve had quite a few people asking me about self-publishing over on Facebook, and because my experience is only in traditional I decided I needed a bit of an expert to step in, and Mel very kindly agreed to answer a few questions. Mel has been both self and traditionally published, so she really does know both sides of the coin, and in addition to that she’s an incredibly successful author with over one millio...

Managing your writing time

One of the things people ask me quite often is about time – how there’s time to write, especially when you have a full time job/several other jobs/children or a family to look after. I don’t have kids so I can’t currently comment on that, but I will say that I have the utmost respect for parents who write. Several of my writer friends are parents and I think they’re absolutely amazing.

A lot of authors do still hold down full-time jobs, and many have other commitments too. Having worked with...

My reads of 2017

As Christmas approaches (who am I kidding, in publishing Christmas pretty much begins in July!) I’ve been thinking about all the books I’ve read over the year, and what my favourites are – the ones I’d recommend to everybody, the ones I’ll be wrapping up and putting under the tree. With my job as a commissioning editor, I have to read an awful lot, so it is understandably harder to find the time to really read for pleasure. I love the books I edit and publish, but I’m no longer objective abou...

Halloween giveaway!

The lovely folks over at With Love for Books are hosting a guest post from me, all about what Halloween means to me. They’re also giving away a free bound copy of The Doll House, plus some Halloween sweets that I will send to the winner!
If you want to check it out, and see their review of my book, please visit their site here: http://www.withloveforbooks.com/2017/11/the-doll-house-by-phoebe-morgan-book.html

Dealing with rejection

One of the things that crops up again and again when speaking to writers is the idea of rejection. Hand on heart, I don’t think I know a single author who has not been rejected in some shape or form, so believe me when I say it is not uncommon and you are NOT alone!

There are lots of examples of famous writers piling up their rejection letters – J.K. Rowling and Stephen King to name just two. However, we can’t all become household names (sadly!) and I think it’s also helpful to think about t...

What authors can do for themselves

Taking more inspiration from the brilliant Book Connectors Facebook group, I wanted to answer some questions about what sort of marketing/publicity things writers can do for themselves. Previously, I wrote about what a publishing house can do for you, and this post will cover some of the things you can do to add to that.

Grow your Facebook following. Facebook is still one of the largest tools we have for connecting with a wide platform – although other mediums such as Twitter and Instagram a...

Why the submission process takes so long

One of the things that gave me a huge amount of anxiety when I was first trying to get published was being on submission, which I’ve written about briefly before. However, the thing that crops up time and time again through talking to other writers is the waiting times – how long it can sometimes take for editors to come back to you or your agent on your novel. I wanted to try to shed a light on the reasons for that, as I know it can seem really baffling to a first-time author.

There’s no dou...

Publicity – what to expect as a new author

I had some great suggestions for blog posts this week from the lovely Book Connectors Facebook group – thank you everybody for commenting! It was really interesting to see some of the questions people were wondering about, and I want to do my best to try to answer some of them in the next few weeks. A common question that keeps cropping up is about publicity – what authors can expect from a traditional publishing house, and what they can do themselves. I will tackle part 1 of that question he...

What an editor looks for and why

This should really be called what a commercial editor looks for, as that’s what I’m talking about here! As part of my day job as a fiction editor, I need to commission a certain amount of titles per year to make sure that our division of the company makes money. This is, in fact, a wonderful job to have, as reading is my biggest passion, along with writing. However, it can sometimes be tough, as we get a lot of submissions per week and sadly, we can’t buy every book that comes into our inboxe...