My official recommendations for pros in the book industry

UPDATED FOR 2024

Looking for professional services to bring your next book project to publication?

Here's a list of the people I've found who do excellent work:

Author Analytics, General Tools, and Data Collection:

  • ReaderLinks aka Author Helper Suite

  • I’ve been using ReaderLinks for at least 7 or 8 years now (as of 2024) and cannot recommend it enough! Get all your data in one place, track detailed sales breakdowns, and finally know what promotions work and what is a waste of money. Insanely helpful.

Formatting:

Editing:

Proofreading:

  • The editors I mentioned above can proofread just fine, and I have one recommendation for a proofreading grammar specialist. Email A. J. Maruna (ajmaruna@gmail.com) and tell him I sent you. His prices are exceptionally good, and he does excellent work.

Covers:

Logos, Designs, Book Trailers, and Author Merch (like t-shirts, stickers, things to sell or giveaway at convention booths, etc.):

  • Brad Lark (blark@blark.com) is the only person I’ve found so far with reasonable rates for shirts and general graphics work. Shoot him an email. You can see some of his portfolio here. And you can check out his full website here: Flying Pork Apparel.

ARC Services:

Email List Management / Sending:

  • I’ve used a couple different services, and MailerLite is the only one I currently recommend.

Looking for a publisher?

My own services are back!

  • After a couple years of focusing elsewhere, I’m back and offering some writer services once more.

Want your service to be featured?

  • Too bad. I only feature services that I’ve personally used and found to be exemplary. You can’t pay to be on the list. (Alright, well… at a certain number I won’t say no, but you’ll need to at least be paying a few of my mortgage payments before you catch my attention)

 

What a cheesy picture…

What a cheesy picture…

Some guidance when editing

A COUPLE WORDS ON EDITING

A two part series on editing and working with an editor.

 

Part 1: The debate between 'track changes' and comments.

Alright, so if you've worked with multiple editors, you've probably seen multiple styles. The first pro editor I ever worked with used track changes. The manuscript was trash (my first novel. It was honestly horrid.) so there were just thousands and thousands of corrections. The editor used track changes, which gives you a quick option to simply 'accept' the edit or not. You click a button and the edit is made exactly how the editor made it on the manuscript, then you move on. For my first manuscript, one riddled with errors, I spent about 2 days applying the edits. I read most of the changes before I clicked 'accept' on about 99% of them. Long story short, the novel still sucks.

Using comments: you've seen the little comment bubbles next to a manuscript. Google Docs and MS Word both support the exact same format. My second professional editor used comments, and that's all I will accept from an editor now. Let me tell you why.

Comments taught me how to be a better writer. 

When I used track changes, I just sort of mindlessly hit 'accept' on almost everything. Then when I wrote my next book, I made all the same errors again. The same damn errors.

When I read comments from my editor, I have to read the whole comment to understand what the issue is with the sentence. Then I have to read the sentence I had written to figure out where / what the error is. Then I have to make the correction myself and delete the comment. It takes far longer to do, and that's great. When I see the 4th comment correcting the same comma error, for example only using a comma before a coordinating conjunction if the following clause is independent, I learn how to write correctly. Now I don't make that mistake in my manuscripts. Well, ok, I make it every now and then, but not often. 

Learning how to be a better writer is the #1 most important thing you can gain from working with a pro editor. 

Part 2: A couple pet peeves I see in a lot of indie writing.

You might recall an article I wrote a long time ago regarding the word 'this.'

Here's an expansion of my thoughts from that article. Consider the following sentences:

1. She laughed at all this and walked on.

2. They fell into his trap. He had planned this to happen just the way it did.

3. They crested the hill by the lake. Now he had them in his sights.

4. Sixteen penguins pecked savagely at the helpless hunter. He tried to defend himself from this, but it didn't work.

5. Trump and Obama finally found the lost WMD in the cave they were currently exploring.

We'll take these sentence one at a time. It should also be said that I made all of them up off the top of my head. Obviously. They're terrible. I would never write that garbage into a book. Well, maybe something close to #4, but that's it.
 

Sentence 1: If you're a good storyteller, the reader should know why she is laughing. She knows Hillary just lost the election. You mentioned the TV in the previous line, right? Saying "at all this" is just redundant. We know why she's laughing! A better line 1: "She laughed, turning her back to walk on." - Still not wonderful, but you get the idea. Don't tell the reader everything. Tell them just enough.

Sentence 2: You don't want to say: "He had planned the trap" or anything like that because "trap" would be repetitive. As it stands, "this" is redundant with "his trap" in the previous sentence. You have a couple options with sentence 2. Perhaps try something like: "He had planned everything flawlessly." You get the idea. We already know about the trap, so don't tell us about the trap again.

Sentence 3: A little deviation from 'this' commentary. Time stamps. Unless you just finished with a memory / flash back / flash forward / something else similar, you don't need to time stamp events. Of course it is happening currently, I'm reading it currently! Just cut the time word 'now' and you have a better sentence. 

Sentence 4: Another instance where 'this' (plus 'from') could be cut to drastically improve the writing quality. I'm not going to point fingers, but I saw that exact construction in an indie horror novel I read recently.

Sentence 5: Another redundant time expression. Unless you have the story being told by Sarah Palin as a memory of that spelunking expedition she did with Trump and Obama, it doesn't make sense. Just remove the time expression and you improve the sentence. And yes, I read something almost identical to #5 not too long ago. Different characters though. Sadly...

Hopefully everything here makes sense. Oh, and do a quick Ctrl+F search on 'this.' You won't find it outside being specifically called out. You can write good fiction—and non-fiction—without using the word. 

Peer into the mind of a horror editor...

Interview with Sanitarium Magazine editor Barry Skelhorn

 

When did you get into the fiction industry and what drew you toward the horror genre?

When I was young, my Granddad lent me a copy of Frankenstein – which I devoured. Soon after that he lent me Dracula and a few collections of M.R James. Over time I read more and more horror and it grew from there.

There is just something about horror and the written word, the writer leads you one way, but it is your imagination that fills in the darker gaps and that’s the beauty of it.


As an editor selecting a story for publication, what is the line that you won't cross? How much violence, even beautifully written, is too much?

Personally I think that most subjects, if they are in the correct context can add to a story. However I won’t entertain any works of fiction with any graphic sexual reference to minors.




What is your take on the standard giants of the horror genre such as King, Matheson, Laymon, Bierce, and Koontz? How do some of the indie writers of today stack up against the legends?

Everyone has to start somewhere. As the story goes; without Tabitha King picking Carrie out of the bin and giving her feedback maybe King wouldn’t be where he is now.

 

There are so many indie authors that are making strides in the horror genre today – it would be wrong to single a few out. I would also like to give a shout out to the small and not so small independent presses that are keeping the integrity of the business together.



When selecting a story for publication, do you tend to prefer more psychological and subtle themes or more overt and graphic tales?

The way Sanitarium works is simple – you never know what is going to be behind each case file. Each issue that we collate we try and keep a mix of sub-genres so there is an eclectic collection of tales for the reader.

 

I find going from (for example) one zombie story, then another and another is great. But after a while you end up comparing them and not enjoying them as much.




What direction do you see the Sanitarium Magazine taking in the future? Any major milestones coming up?

We are working on a new look that we are bringing in one piece at a time. The magazine will be offering a printed copy as payment from the start of 2015. Also we are changing the tag line so we can cover more in its pages. “Showcasing Horror Fiction, Dark Verse and Macabre Entertainment”



Which issue of Sanitarium Magazine do you consider to be the best? What sets it apart?

Cover wise I love issue 20 with Kevin Spencer’s artwork “skull” – the vibrant colours and washed effect really works for me. As for the stories, there are a few stand out ones for me but we have found everyone has their favourites and we’re happy with that.




If you could interview any horror writer, living or dead, who would it be? How do you think they would act face to face?

Sadly one of the greats we were close to interviewing with was James Herbert. We are based in the UK and he lived only a short drive away but it was not to be. I think his style of writing where it was quite close to the bone both with gore and sexual undertones struck the right balance.

 

I would of course love to interview Clive Barker, Stephen King.


What is the most terrifying thing you've ever read?

I think this has to be put in context. I was 16, on a family holiday in France and we were staying in a large converted farmhouse just outside of Bordeaux – I was staying in the bat house.

 

Whilst staying there I started to re-read Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot. The summer storms were a sight to be seen and the atmosphere was just right for a good scare. So with every turn of the page, the story gripped me more than it had the first time around.



Have you had any horrific experiences in your own life that you couldn't explain?

I wouldn’t say horrific but there were a couple when we stayed in the farmhouse. Whilst staying in the bat house one night I felt something hit the bedframe at the foot of the bed. Thinking nothing of it I just fell back asleep. I felt it again, this time I was jolted awake and flicked on the light. My Brother, asleep in the other bed next to mine, was sound asleep. Looking around the room, nothing seemed untoward, so hitting the light I went back to sleep.

 

It wasn’t until the morning when both of us awoke did we realised what had happened. My bed, which has started flush against the wall, was now a good foot from the wall.  

It turns out that when they were renovating the farmhouse, they came across a soldier’s helmet with a bullet hole through it – I think I was sleeping in his snipers nest and he wasn’t best pleased.


Finally, does your love of horror branch into other media such as movie, music, art, etc.?

 

Most media interests me in the horror world. I have mentioned Clive Barker as a writer but I also love his style of art from “The Hellbound Heart” to “Abarat” and everything in between. If I could I would have a piece hanging in my office for inspiration. Another that I really have a lot of time for is the theatre and plays such as Danny Bolye’s Frankenstein, Susan Hill’s The Woman in Black. It would be interesting to work with some of the writers who have appeared in Sanitarium and put together a 3 Act show with some of the stories.