‘There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.’
Maya Angelou
After many years of editing educational and other material, I am excited to be offering editorial services for independent publishers.
If you are a writer or aspiring writer, fiction or non-fiction, I can help you consider your goals, shape the structure of your manuscript and, when you are ready, edit it, with a view to publishing under your own imprint or under that of Black Quill Press.
As an editor, I have the luxury of immersing myself in content and working with the author to shape and refine it; as a publisher, the requirements are more pragmatic, wide-ranging and involve a constant striving to protect the integrity of a book in an increasingly marketing-driven world.
Independent publishing is not new, but the plethora of publishing packages facing writers is, and it is easy to feel overwhelmed. In an age when – or so we are told – everyone can be an author, the market is flooded with self-published books of varying quality which has hardened booksellers’ resistance to stocking ‘indie’ books. So, it is very important to put the focus back on to good content, well produced. Only then do issues of marketing and publicity become relevant.
In liaising with editors, typesetters and designers, printers and distributors, and in assuming responsibility for marketing, I am supported by and indebted to a small team of publishing professionals without whom there would be no Black Quill Press. It is great fun working together on a common goal, and each contribution is utterly invaluable.
Mini Style Guide: An Introduction to Good Writing and Manuscript Presentation by Denise O’Hagan, Black Quill Press, October 2018.
Chinese Whispers: In Search of Ivy by Alison Choy Flannigan, Black Quill Press, February 2018.
A Roman Death (new edition) by Joan O’Hagan, Black Quill Press, October 2017.
Jerome & His Women by Joan O’Hagan, Black Quill Press, October 2015.
Black Quill Press 