Janice Cumberlidge's Blog

It’s my pleasure to announce my new role in Book Production and Marketing at Pomeranian Books, the new imprint created by Booker longlisted author, Louise Dean. The imprint will publish quality works of literary fiction and is accepting submissions now. Books published through the imprint will also be put forward for consideration to many of the top literary prizes and will be submitted on an author’s behalf.

In my role, I will take an author’s raw manuscript and turn it into a beautifully f...

If you’ve ever wished you could write a book that would be received as well by adults as it would by children, or if you’ve ever dreamed of achieving even a tenth of the success of JK Rowling or other hugely successful authors (and I don’t mean just in monetary terms), then The Novelry’s How To Write A Classic course could be for you.

Last year, I wrote a first draft of my first ever full-length novel in just 56 days, thanks to The Novelry’s Novel in 90 course. The Novelry is headed by multi...

If you’ve ever wished you could write a book that would be received as well by adults as it would by children, or if you’ve ever dreamed of achieving even a tenth of the success of JK Rowling or other hugely successful authors (and I don’t mean just in monetary terms), then Kritikme’s How To Write A Classic course could be for you.

Last year, I wrote a first draft of my first ever full-length novel in just 56 days, thanks to Kritikme’s Novel in 90 course. Kritikme is headed by multi-award-wi...

Would you like to be able to edit your own work and take your writing to a more professional level?

Having a well-edited manuscript to self-publish or send off to agents you’re hoping will represent you is key to getting noticed in the right way!

I first heard of ProWritingAid when listening to a podcast, and as with so many tools, I thought, ‘Oh, that sounds cool,’ but never got round to trying it out…until recently, when I wanted to get a piece of work up to scratch before I submitted it. N...

Do you have a process from getting swiftly from first to second draft? A process that ensures your second draft includes everything you need to potentially make it the last draft you write before editing to completion?

In this video, I share the process I’ve developed that gives me confidence to write my next draft, and removes the worry that I’ll end up having to make yet another draft after this one.

Have a watch and let me know if it helps, or if you have a different process that gives yo...

After championing darling Scrivener as my writing tool of choice for the past year and a half, I admit, I’ve been cheating on him lately (mine’s a male it seems – who knew?!).

Well, not exactly cheating. More like buddying up with another partner at the same time. He’s cool with it though, he knows I’m just getting to know my new friend and I’ll be back when I need him.

I recently purchased a copy of Vellum, the delicious book formatting program for the Mac. Velum’s slogan is ‘Create Beautif...

J.D. Salinger’s character, Holden Caulfield, caught me from the first sentence of the book, The Catcher in the Rye, with the line:

“If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap.”

From this short introduction you already get a sense of Holden’s character and how cynical he is, which sets you up...

I’m currently working on a novel and am using dual timelines – one for my protagonist as an adult, the other from a child’s viewpoint. At the start of the novel, the child is eight years old. I’m writing in first person point of view, and I want the language I use for these chapters to be both believable and realistic for a child of that age.

In researching how to write as an eight-year-old, here are a few tips I gathered, which I hope you may find useful too. If you have any others, I’d love...

Self-Publishing Masterclass Part3 – Marketing Strategies This is the third and finalpart of the workshop I ran for the Just Write author group in Preston, in January 2017. Here’s what you can learn aboutin part 3: Thebest marketing strategies to help you get more readers and sell more books both now and in the future Which is the most important marketing strategy and how all other strategies come back to this one Why you can’t rely on Amazon for future sales How to use book promotio...

Self-Publishing Masterclass Part2 – Amazon Kindle Upload Process This is the second part of the workshop I ran for the Just Write author group in Preston, in January 2017. Here’s what you can learn aboutin part 2: The step-by-step process for uploading a new eBook to the KDP platform What each setting means and what to choose for each What you need to do if you have more than 10 authors/contributors The most important part of your book description you need to get right How to find a...